Ongoing Journey to being a Frugalista..

brizzlegirl

PS engineer here now. We should be back in business shortly panels wise. £5 per day we have probably lost.. maybe more. Gawd. Oh well. One of lifes ups and downs. Will write that letter tho

lucielle

That's so annoying! At least you'll feel like you've done something.
L

beanielou

At least hopefully sorted out now.

Seasidegal58

Well done on the grocery bill brizzle. As you say, especially good as you are so organic!:j

jwil

How annoying about the panels, hope the complaint works!

brizzlegirl

A rest day.. thank god. Had a lie in. MUCH needed!!

Just done big money shuffles and attacked the Car account hard which is great. Will try and do some analysis on June later and generally catch up.

Hope everyone is good

Brizzle x

brizzlegirl

Hello All

So here we are again..

The good news is as follows:

- groceries last month were £299..blimey. Thats a complete record for us.. :j :j
- days out/entertainment budget was half of what it was in May..haircuts etc were loads lower and we paid some over and above what we usually do into the ISA and pension :T
- setting apart the car purchase we were under May's spends so happy to say that we nominally hit the savings rate of 25% (but of course we didn't really as we had to shell out for a car)

Panels are back online after a repair. That was paid for out of the 'repairs' account though which felt good. We are just waiting for a monitoring device so we can immediately see if they go offline again, but with a 10 year warranty on the inverter this time we are hoping we stay trouble free. Have to say this having pots of money to ease the unexpected is a bit of a revelation. I can't wait to get up to full strength on these, it has to be a focus for the next 12 months, to have a properly functioning EF.

But in less good news..we paid for the car so its now ours for better or worse and so I now am hammering down the 0% credit cards that we paid for it on. We also paid the insurance for the year. We shopped around for both this and our business insurance but interestingly both were best with the current providers. I wonder if they are tweaking the algorithms and learning?? The 'Restaurants' category was well up on the previous month. However one of our 'new' places is a BYO so that helps and generally we are trying to drink much less which helps the spends.

In July we will need to put something aside for the family holiday (everything else is paid for, including the Autumn holiday before DD goes travelling (if she has the cash!) and I have to pay my tax on account. However the 'tax' account has been replenished after being ravaged earlier in the year so thats all in hand and could be paid today if necessary. So as ever, in summary, I do need to keep my eye on the ball and its too easy to slip. If my income dropped (as it will in fact in August as I am taking some holiday) we hit a more rocky path. I signed up for the Frugalwoods' July challenge again but haven't really started it. So thats a job to do/start too. The beauty of that though is you could start on any day you choose as long as you work through the daily emails.

I am reaching for a drink after work much much less and gradually the weight is dropping. I don't get much sleep though which I am sure makes it harder to shift. But thats a feature of my life at the moment and not sure what I do about it. Work to be done on exercising too. I am updating my signature. I need to run more, have only been twice this month but am loving my classes which feel wonderfully restorative after a brutal week at work. Went yesterday with OH and it was great. Slept so well afterwards. All in all life could be much much worse. For which I am supremely grateful

Am loving the weather but think its on the turn, certainly here in the SW anyway.

Love to you all and as always thanks for checking in

Brizzle x

beanielou

Love to you too xx

PurpleFairy26

All sounds so goodbrizzle running in this heat is too much so any exercise in the last 4 weeks is a win in my book.

Keep up the excellent work. Much loves x

greent

How's the weather been? - we had a massive downpour for about an hour on Friday afternoon but then it warmed right back up again and yesterday was scorchio and today looks to be rather warm, too! I don't think that the gardens have really benefitted from the rain - there was lots of it but it didn't last long and just ran off the super hard earth. Water butts are all fully topped back up again though! :T
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