Working the numbers 2019 style

Homegrown0

Happy New Year Mark! What a lovely way to bring in a new year

DestinyGamer

Happy New Year Mark! I’m loving the privilege of reading your numbers and goals. I’m trying to focus on one goal with my diary. I find if I have too many avenues my attention wanes and I get frustrated. Plus I’m not really a chart gal. I’m loving the working towards 1% challenge becuase I’m seeing numbers go up while others go down and that’s a great incentive for me.

Aaleigha

All quiet here today
Happy new debt busting new year

DireEmblem

Hey Mark - good luck with your efforts. Have you ever thought of tracking your budgets online - moneydashboard as one for example, might make things a little easier?

For the weight part - they say its 2/3 diet, 1/3 exercise. For the latter - try looking up tabata and see if that would fit in. Myself I'm trying to lose a bit of weight to help with my marathon training, so planning on 1 cheat day a week, the rest will be all home cooked - soup or stir frys.

DD265

Happy new year :beer:

mark55man

Thank you all for your lovely wishes - I really appreciate and am touched by them . I am going home tomorrow and will update more fully. Plus down to the serious business of making sure we can afford to repeat the experience next year !!

mark55man

Our holiday experience has turned out to be very enjoyable - the usual slight drawbacks of having to do it on a budget but we love Cornwall (St Ives in particular) and have been coming for decades. Was nice to see a few new places as we were staying further East than we normally do (normally right down the end at or near St Ives

We are based at a Youth Hostel (a new adventure) with rooms made from old shipping containers, but very well designed interiors + there is a communal large tent with kitchen facilities where we have been having self catering breakfast and supper with our friends. Kind of like being in a restaurant once you are sat round the table, but with the cooking and washing up to do!

St Ives was great but its difficult and a bit more expensive being there without a base as if we wanted to warm up inside we had to buy something - and it wasn't really that cold - the weather was dry and a mild 9 degrees. We fitted a lot in:

• coffee on the terrace at the Pedn Olva - the posh hotel with stunning harbour views but no more expensive than a coffee shop
• walk around the 4 main beaches (St Ives is funny like that)
• Pasties (obviously)
• Ice cream (single scoop)
• A little bit of shopping
• Couple of beers in the Lifeboat - then sat on the window ledge outside watching the fancy dress participants parade around town - our friends had brought some cardboard emoji's on sticks so we were rewarding people with smiley's and grins - they seemed to appreciate that
• Another long wonder to get the steps in and enjoy the vibe and the view
• We had a late fish and chips supper inside - this was probably most expensive but still only £10 each
• We exchanged early HNY messages with our family as we knew getting a signal out of St Ives on the stroke of midnight was going to be difficult
• and then we settled down on the wall by the pier where the fireworks were and just waited and chatted for the fireworks and the prosecco and a nip of best Scottish warming fluid from a hip flask
• Then watched the fireworks and the midnight skinny dippers/swimmers and walked back up to the car (right at the top - I had the lovely experience of having done my fitbit stairs target by 1am
• The harbour street (the Wharf) was a right mess at the end with quite a lot of debris and mainly happy drunks and teenagers -so no real surprises

So very much fun and lots and lots of time to talk to OH and our friends, but being without a base was a challenge and we will need to rethink this if we do it again - bad weather would have made the above pretty much undoable.

Anyway - a little extravagant but still only just under £30 a head all in so not too bad. Will put some snaps in the next few posts if I can but MSE website is not being kind to me at the moment

mark55man

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7lIE3NWWlI


This is from someone else (MSE stopping me from posting images), but gives a good feel and the last 30 seconds are pretty good

mark55man

Finally home an hour ago (traffic was a bit terrible)

As I mentioned on DIA's thread my "frog" is to get in control of all the mobile phones that I run for myself my OH and kids. So I had a inital bite at that with EE to take advantage of being home on a working day and ended up £20/month better off with a £30 refund on unrequired apple music charges - so I'll count that as a win and a saving for now - with other phones up for renewal in March so action planned for Feb (the earliest I can cancel/move them)


just off shopping now (the house is empty), then we can try and get the food situation normalised after xmas

doingitanyway

Good progress! Roll on the other renewal dates

Using the posh hotels for coffee is something I've only got wise to. As you say, usually no more expensive than coffee shops with vastly superior settings