Staying on track to be MF and ready to support my daughter at 18

ElmoR

Roll on Halloween AFK! :j


Just totted up how many payments I've made this year as part of the 2019 MF Challenge and I have managed to hit my target for the year already :j:j. The impact on the monthly charges is certainly significant. If I can just keep up this level of O/Ps until October 2020, then the mortgage will revert from it's current capped rate to a SVR and then I can pay it off with no penalty for early repayment. The key is going to whittle it down as hard as I can so that once it reaches that SVR, there isn't much left to pay. That's the plan...
The grit in the machine might be increased pension payments now due and the looming prospect of redundancies at our work place.



Batch cooking and lunches still going well. No longer feeling guilty with the milky coffee treats. I'm also within 1 stone of my target weight at slimming universe, at which point the sessions become free, saving £5 a week. Something to aim for and focus on for now...the darker /wetter evenings are making the evening walks less appealing though


Have a good week everyone

ElmoR x

ElmoR

Not much to report this week. Just plodding along with everything. Increased my MFW 2019 target by another £4K to keep me motivated for the remainder of this year.

Probably fallen back into working too much (or letting it take up too much brain space) and not saving enough energy for myself and will try to address that next week. Booked a few days of A/L from now til the end of December, so have those to look forwards to and recharge the batteries. October is going to be a long slog though...
ElmoR x

ElmoR

Same as last week, still on that long slog called the work treadmill. This coming week is going to be an epic one, but hopefully the workload reduces the week after to something less insane...


Experimenting with new recipes for batch cooking my lunches, to add some variety. Also going to buy a countdown at slimming universe that'll take me up to Christmas, save a couple of weeks in subs, and will give me a challenge to complete my weight loss target once and for all! Then attending sessions becomes free after that. A 10 week final push! Totting up, I think it's cost me approx £110 at slimming universe so far (plus the countdown cost), plus buying several of their recipe books (but they mostly came second hand off tinternet). I guess it's worth it to be 2 stone lighter so far and I don't think I could have achieved that alone without the group support keeping me accountable. There does seem to be negative comments about SU online but it seems to work ok for me so far.



Unexpected expenditure this week, the washing machine died. New one arriving on Friday. Plus a trip to the vets for one of the moggies. £40 hit there, but the moggie is cured and much happier.


Have a good week everyone.



ElmoR x

Cheery_Daff

Glad you're finding Slimming Universe working for you! :j It's worked for me in the past, but lately I can't get on with it so much - I started last summer and lost a stone, but have now put all that back on again, all the time paying and going to classes, but not following the plan :mad: I've finally admitted defeat (for now) and stopped paying, and am joining the gym instead. I think for me it's all about novelty - clearly I just need to change eating patters/exercise regimes about every 12 weeks to keep me interested :rotfl:

Glad the moggie is cured and happy too :j

ElmoR

:jIf you can be bothered with the gym, then I reckon that is a much better way to tone up/slim down than Slimming Universe Cheery. My back injury prevents anything other than walking for the time being. There is something dysfunctional about the SU ethos in that everyone recounts stories of terrible lapses in the past week and the group tends to laugh it off . There is a big obsession with drinking too. They should add a counselling service into the support equation to help everyone find out why the lapses happen, since it clearly works once it is kept to religiously but if your support groups finds stories of falling off the rails fun then that isn't going to help much?!. Luckily, the group I attend also has some seriously 'on it' people too. They pull you along. I read some scary stats online in medical journals that of those who lose weight bigstyle, less than 20% have kept it off after 2 years. I'm desperate not to be in that majority . Anyway, related to all this, I ended up buying a 6 week countdown rather than the 12 and decided to sort my s*** out quicker! :eek:



New washing machine installed. RIP the old one.

Epic work week survived . Very sore back though. Still waiting for the chair with back support and the raisable desk to appear as per Occupational Health's report to my line manager. 4 months wait so far...


Been visiting local school sixth forms and colleges with our daughter and she has made her first choice. Fingers crossed she will get an offer from them in January. The second and third choices aren't awful though if not.



Ticking along steadily moneywise, in the groove...



Have a good weekend all

ElmoR x

ElmoR

And another plodding week over :T Taking Monday off as an Annual Leave day, so a 3 day weekend Daughter is on half term so we can chill together. She received news that she has a place (subject to doing ok in her exams during the summer) at her preferred sixth form college, so that has been cause for cake (that I can only enjoy watching them eat!).

Moneywise, ticking along on track.

I am wondering about a small home improvement job though...The previous owners of our house knocked out the main patio door at the back of the house when they had a conservatory added. I have had an insulating inner ceiling added to the roof of the conservatory which stops it getting too hot in summer and stops some heat escaping in winter. But it still leaves the kitchen cold at night and during the morning. I feel that the kitchen radiator is churning out heat and it goes straight out through that roof. Makes the kitchen chilly and is wasteful energy/heat wise. I really should get some quotes for putting the main door back in again and then we would conserve more heat. I suspect what the previous home owner did was illegal/against building regs too, and I'm worried I might open a can of worms. I don't think they had permission for the conservatory?! I know I should tackle it before colder weather gets worse too oop here in the North. I don't seem to have any ummmphh for getting on with organising it though?!



ElmoR x

Cheery_Daff

Congratulations to your daughter on her 6th form place! :j :j

Sounds like a good plan to tackle the conservatory :j No advice, but we've currently got building regs people involved in our building work and they're lovely :j But there had been stuff done to our previous house and we too were worried about opening a can of worms... (fortunately that came to nothing in our case). Can you read through the relevant buildings regs to see what you think the issue might be? You might be solving it by putting the doors back in as I think one of the things is around energy efficiency anyway. Good luck! Xx

ElmoR

Your comments were incredibly helpful Cheery, thank you!
After doing a bit of reading about the rules and regulations, it looks like we will be fine so long as we have that external door back in place. No idea what the previous owners were thinking when they took it out, all the heating left the house, and continues to leave the house with it gone. Even made the leap to getting builders quotes and had two nice guys round. One has already sent a quote and it is around the £1000 mark, much less than I feared it would be. I'm now wondering why I didn't get this done years ago?! It will make a dent in the savings/mortgage O/Ps but not too drastic and our heating bill will reduce with any luck. Having lost weight, I'm also freezing all the time, so a warm downstairs will be very welcome :j
The rest of the finances are ticking along. My monthly salary has dropped slightly due to pension contributions having to increase (all subject to an ongoing pension scheme dispute between employers and union) and now paying union subs (because I am now fearing for my job security). I used to be in the union but left when they didn't support me over an equal pay claim. Funny how equal pay is now a thing nearly 15 years later.

Anyhow, weekend ahead to be spent trying to ignore (but firmly imprinted in my consciousness) all the sweets that weren't given out to trick or treaters ...
Have a good weekend all,
ElmoR xx

ElmoR

:jHello all


Tedium and work treadmill for the past couple of weeks. Even my weekends have been taken over by work (and no extra pay) and it has been a bit of a wake up call. I agree to do outreach or publicity type activities and it seriously eats into my own time/family time/relaxing time. I don't actually enjoy doing it either, it feels like a duty or obligation?! Even if I took a week day off instead, I still never manage to take all the time owed, there were 8 annual leave days that I missed out on last period, so adding in flexi type days will only add more days to that. Why am I doing that to myself?! Seriously, why?! So I have decided that I shall limit such activities to just two for the entire year of 2020


Finances ticking along ok. It's going to be tight to reach the newer MFW2019 challenge I set myself this year but it's ok, because I managed to meet the original target so I am not going to beat myself up. Most festive presents are now bought apart from my OH and DD, though those will be the more pricey ones.


We also picked a builder from a few quotes and the outer door between the kitchen and conservatory will be rebuilt during the first week of December. I cannot wait to see what difference it makes to the temperature in the kitchen and on our heating bill.


Not sure what to do about slimming universe subs after next week though. There is one more week of the 6 week countdown left and I am 4 lbs from target. Nearly there but not quite. Probably makes sense to pay weekly again. It's very irritating when friends say ' oh you can easily lose that in a week or two'. No! Have you tried losing a significant amount of weight over a sustained period? It's a long, hard battle for every half pound lost. :mad:



Best get ready for work...:(



ElmoR x

Cheery_Daff

Certainly is a long hard battle for every lb ElmoR :eek: Quite agree with you there. I've never found it easy to lose any weight at all, let alone a sustained 2lbs a week (or even 0.5lbs a week sustained over a long period!) Good on you for getting this far! :j

Excellent work with the conservatory too :j Sometimes things just get put off for mental rather than practical reasons, in my house at least Glad to hear it won't be as bad as you think and hopefully will make a massive difference to the heating bills! :j

Also very wise to limit your extracurricula activities to two in 2020 :j I'm doing something similar this year. My job can VERY easily spill over with extra things that feel like obligations, but attract no extra pay or kudos. I'm being a lot more strict with my time at the minute (and am even going so far as drafting template emails etc so I don't have to keep thinking about what my response to something will be) It's paying off though :j I'm not NOT doing anything, but being rather more 'efficient' as to how I do things, if you see what I mean. And yes, I usually limit my weekend activities to one or at the absolute most two a year.

And DO take your holidays! They'll manage without you for a few days I'm sure