Busy Mee's Last Leg

Busy_Mee1

Mr Mee has gone to visit the outlaws and I got a pass, so I am enjoying a bit of peace and quiet this afternoon.

It has been a horrendous week at work, really busy and a lot of bad behaviour from adults who have big egos and behave like children :mad: On the positive side it has been very comforting to think to myself that I can just walk away from this in 12 months time:D

Nothing major to update on the finances. We had friends to stay last weekend and spent £15 on a round of drinks after a walk and then £35 in the posher Indian. It was our first time here and was very nice.

Other than that we have spent £113.87 so far this month on groceries, which is probably on the high side but includes a few bulk purchases as stores were running low or empty. I try and bulk buy when I see things on offer or below a certain price point as it helps keep costs down and saves time. It means that often we can skip a week grocery shopping because we have most things in stores.

I popped to Lidl this morning on my way to the gym for their weekend deals and stocked up on shampoo, conditioner and toilet rolls. Next week they have grated cheese and teabags on offer so I will stock up on those. The grated cheese freezes brilliantly.

I am still fine tuning all my retirement spreadsheets and retirement plans and am finding the more detailed these get the more confident I am that I can actually retire and live comfortably :T

I think that is all. I am going to tackle the plastic container cupboard this afternoon. We have a cupboard full of plastic containers but can never find one with a lid :mad:

ShineALight

Hi Busy Mee,

We have one of those plastics cupboards too, pretty sure I spent an hour not matching any tops to bottoms a few weeks ago and shoved it all back in there for someone else to find...

After you posted on my little diary, I've read yours from top to tail and it's amazing to see how you've done it. As someone who has only just tentatively started to take those steps it's pretty mind-blowing stuff to read!

teapot2

Hope work is better in the coming week BusyMee. Retirement planning sounds good :cool:

gallygirl

Busy_Mee1 wrote: »

I think that is all. I am going to tackle the plastic container cupboard this afternoon. We have a cupboard full of plastic containers but can never find one with a lid :mad:

I have a box of lids, all 'filed' in size order and a larger plastic box with the square ones stacked in one pile and rectangles in another. I only put lids in if I have the pot to also put away and vice versa. Orphaned pots or lids get stored in a bag with other orphans (mainly lids as I use a lot of pots as storage elsewhere). They stay there until their partner turns up or they turn into odd socks .

Suffolk_lass

gallygirl wrote: »

I have a box of lids, all 'filed' in size order and a larger plastic box with the square ones stacked in one pile and rectangles in another. I only put lids in if I have the pot to also put away and vice versa. Orphaned pots or lids get stored in a bag with other orphans (mainly lids as I use a lot of pots as storage elsewhere). They stay there until their partner turns up or they turn into odd socks .

Oh dear. I have just thrown away some of the plastic containers I did not have lids for but my drawer (wire drawer in a cupboard) holds loads and loads. Many of these I don't ever use now (stopped work so need for little pots of stuff to fit in rucksack has reduced!). For reasons akin to stationery (love of), I am drawn to plastic boxes at the local store and I do have some old Tupperware that I love. Now that could be a thread all on its own...

Busy_Mee1

After a week of dismal weather, rain wind and more rain, it has finally stopped raining and the sun is peeking out this morning :T

I have had a productive week this week, in sorting out quite a few financial things. March is car and house insurance time and April is utility switch time.

I sorted out our utility switch ready for April and ending up sticking with our current supplier @vro, who have a competitive 12 month deal again.....so that was easy. I just need to get a refund on our credit at the end of our current deal.

In terms of the insurances we currently have all four car insurance and the house insurance insured on a multi car policy with @dmiral. This gave us good discounts on the young driver policies and they continue to be competitive. However you have to go through the rigmarole every year of receiving the renewal quote and then ringing them up to get a better deal. Which I did and got six hundred pounds off the renewal price.....that is six hundred pounds :eek: It is shocking because I bet there are lots of people who just accept their renewal year after year.

The nice lady that sorted this out also managed to get our house insurance down considerably by playing with the excess. We started with £250 excess on both contents and buildings, however by reducing the excess on the contents to £200 and increasing the excess on the buildings to £300 it reduced the cost by over £40 a year. A great tip to try when shopping around for your quotes.

Our house insurance is expensive because we had two claims in 2017 and couldnt even insure with the mainstream insurers last year. We ended up with a specialist company paying in excess of £500....thankfully this year we are down to £318 a year.

Work has been busy and I have been dealing with fractious people all week to deliver a major piece of work...but we delivered it well and got some great recognition for it, which was nice.

I am off supermarket shopping today....which actually should be the last time in March as we are away next weekend :T We also need to visit the outlaws as we can't go next weekend.....it is a bit of chore at the moment because FIL is so miserable and ungrateful. I try to be forgiving as he has had some health problems but he is just so mean spirited and sucks all the joy out of life :mad:

Other that that I plan some cooking for next week...stuffed peppers for the lunch boxes and I am making cakes for our team meeting. I hopefully will also manage a dog walk without getting soaked to the skin

try_harder

Great work as always , i am looking forward to seeing your numbers i have a feeling you have had a very good month.

Hope you have a lovely weekend

Busy_Mee1

Just a quick check in as we are away for a long weekend. There is just me and the pup up at the moment.

We are having a great time, the weather yesterday was unexpectedly glorious, one of those bright, cold sparkling days and the gorse was blossoming in a beautiful sea of yellow everywhere.

We had a fabulous walk across the cliff tops to a fantastic beach, walking around seven miles. Me and Mr Mee are having some great chats, good quality time and eating some nice food and a fair amount of snoozing This is just what I needed and I hope this will be what it will be like when we are retired....although I guess we might not appreciate it as much when we are not working. The pup is having a great time too....lots to explore.......lots of swimming and lots of exciting things to roll in :eek:

In financial news we received the second part of our HSBC switching bonus. We received another £50 each on top of the £150 each we received 12 months ago :T. We also got a TCB payout of £56.33. However despite me obsessively checking my regular savers none of them have had the interest added yet...I suspect the interest might start dropping in at the end of March/beginning of April so will need to be accounted for in April savings.

So £156.33 that I have sent to Mr Mee's N@t West account. I have inadvertently started a new odds and sods account in that account trying to make the donor account look active, so I have been Tilly Tidying into it and adding any extra rewards and bonuses. I am going to designate this for holiday spending money.

On the subject of spending, we are keeping well within the £1200 budget and that includes the spending money for this weekend away.

It is payday on Friday so once we are home not long to go :T

Busy_Mee1

Pay Day is early this month as the last working day is Sunday :T. It will make April a five weekend month though.

I am pleased with our spending through March, we have comfortably kept within the £1200 budget and I am confident that this is the right " number" for us. Any less would feel tight and anymore and I feel like we would be wasting money. I am also pleased as we have covered the petrol and spending money for a long weekend away out of this budget rather than the holiday account.

It shapes up as follows against my budget allocations:

Petrol/Car Parking. £271/£200
Entertainment. £252.16/£200
Household. £45.00/£150
Groceries. £299.99/£250
Medical. £145.30/£100
Personal. £38/£150
Gifts. £58.86/£150
Misc Mr Mee £13.30

Total £1123.99

So our overspending is on petrol and entertainment (from our weekend away), groceries (quite a bit of bulk buying) and medical ( my dentist). This has been offset by our personal spending ( no clothes purchased in March people :T), so just my regular hair cut and colour. We also underspent on gifts - no Birthdays just Mother's Day.

Looking forward into April, this is a five weekend month with Birthdays, Easter and a twos trips to the elderly parentals so I expect it will be tighter. So we will need to be a bit more careful.

I will be back over the weekend with the March financial round up x

Busy_Mee1

It is my favourite time of the month again, although not very exciting this month. We have saved the normal £1500 a month, as the interest from the regular savers hasn't dropped in yet. I am expecting this next week, but I will have to watch which side of the tax year this arrives to ensure we don't exceed the PSA next year.

So the figures are as follows:

Savings in month. £1500
Total savings. £73,500
Repayment mortgage. £58,404.87
IO mortgage. £169,000.00
Total mortgage. £227,404.87

Savings offset mortgage to: £153,903.87

Holiday savings £1150/3228.52 :T. I am pleased with this. We managed to save £706.73 into the holiday pot this month, largely due to the back pay I received.

The weather yesterday was glorious and I spent 3 hours in the garden weeding . My plan was to try and do the weeding ourselves this summer, rather than pay the gardener. However it took me 3 hours to weed about 4 metres of border ( although this did include taking out about 6 large woody lavenders) I need to see how far I get today but at this rate I will be weeding every weekend until June, just to get round the garden once

I am cooking a roast dinner later and I am looking forward to the kids are coming round. Have a happy Mother's Day everyone :j