Busy Mee's Last Leg

Moneyfordreams

I have lovely porcelain tiles on my raised patio from my bi-folding doors. I would like another level to extend lower. They were pricey, but are fake wooden planks, they can be used inside or out. mine are oyster in colour. The inside still has plywood until I get my new kitchen   

Busy_Mee

We are going for porcelain tiles too. Our deck is actually on the second storey at the back of the house ( we are two storey at the front of the house and three storey at the back.  The deck leads off a large open plan kitchen/dining/living space with a wall of french windows, so is more part of the house than the garden. It is south facing and so needs to stand up to quite warm temperatures, which porcelain will do. 

They will be more expensive than wood, but I think will look better.  I am thinking about pale grey, but funnily enough I saw the fake wood ones and they do look nice Moneyfordreams. We need to get some quotes, but I think it will be expensive as the deck is 9 metres x  4 metres, so a large expanse to cover.

try_harder

I am pleased that you got your refund ,I have had one refund from our Easter holiday and am now waiting for the refund for our May holiday

Suffolk_lass

Ooh, just had a bit of a perv over outdoor tiles - These look nice

savingholmes

I'm that person that does a cartoon slide accidentally on tile so that would worry me a little. They had tiles mixed with decking at our holiday let last year and they looked stunning.

Thick_n_Thin

Just popping on after binge reading your entire diary in one sitting... thanks for all the tips in your summary, I particularly love the sacred cows, sweating the small stuff and feeling the tension in your budgets, also in awe of your money laundering! Thank you, you have given me loads of ideas 😄

Cornish_mum

Hi BusyMee
Our PIL have outdoor nonslip tiles at their house in Portugal- they are great but you need a pressure washer and to install strategically placed drains. We had decking once inherited from former owners it was a right pain.
CM

Busy_Mee

Gosh thanks ThicknThin for reading my diary and glad you found it helpful. Most of the financial stuff I do is learned (pinched) from other diaries on here. I find that it is such a generous community in terms of sharing ideas.

I have been rethinking my targets ( yes I know I said I wasn't going to  ), and I am going to commit to chipping £1k a month off our interest free mortgage. A couple of things are contributing to this change of heart, firstly my temporary promotion looks set to continue until the end of the year and secondly our much reduced spending in the current lockdown environment.  My TP gives me an extra £300 a month and we are literally only spending on food and stuff for the garden at the moment. I can obviously review this as things change, but I want to make the most of not being able to spend at the moment. This means more money in the forever savings pot, so that when I do retire we will be able to do more. It looks like I will be working for another year, so I can benefit from the higher salary for my pension, but to be honest that suits me at the moment. 

I also want to introduce another target, which is to increase our ring fenced savings to £215k. We started off with £210k and will add interest through the year, but I want to be able to "tidy" it up to £215k by the year end.  

All of this will put a bit more tension on the finances but I want to stop money just leaking away, which I can feel it doing a bit at the moment. To this end, I am going to get a grip of the grocery spending again, we have been spending far too much. This has been to keep us well stocked during the crisis but there have also been lots of treats. We have managed this week to only go shopping once, there has been no weekend top up and I want to maintain this once and done approach now.

Nothing else very exciting to report this week. We ordered two compost bins and a water butt ( all the glamour here). I finished work early on Friday and we drove to the local reservoir for a walk ....actually that was quite exciting to have a change of scenery. There weren't actually many people about, although we did drive past an older couple out for a walk on the moors wearing marigolds and face masks   I am not sure where they thought they were going catch the virus, in the middle of nowhere...from the sheep maybe. Made us chuckle though.

I think that is all my news, I am hoping to get in the garden today x

South_coast

Yay, new plans 😀! Loving the idea of the "once and done" on the food shopping, it's something I'm definitely keeping up with once lockdown is over too 

try_harder

I am always changing my plans and aims , I find it motivates me .
My food budget has spiralled lately , I will think about reining it in at some point too ,I love the idea of shop once and done ,I will give that a try for a week I think , i dont know if i could manage it though as i always seem to run out of something ..

Keep up the good work ,i am looking forward to your end of month numbers