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

ElmoR

A few small changes since last week. DH is set up to work from home now too, so we are all home together with our own spaces carved out during the work day. I go out the front door, and come back in again around 5pm to shout out 'hi, I'm home' to mark the transition from work to home time. It seems to work. DD has upcycled a skirt and baked cake/cupcakes. This led to a padlock being installed on a box containing all sweet things to keep them out of my reach, since my will power started to crack. Did a tiny bit of online shopping for several seed packets - parsley and coriander - to grow in the herb planters I received as a mothers day gift. Most amazingly, the carrots, spring onions and potatoes have all sprouted through the compost and I'm starting to wonder what the next stage is...

Managed a large OP earlier in the month, but not sure that will continue now? Not sure what to do about Hawaii hotel booking and flights as yet either? Part of me wants to still hope it might happen, but maybe I'm delusional? DD's under 17 driving school Easter course gave us the option of postponement til July initially, so have taken that option for now rather than a refund. Was wondering what I could do to help out, beyond my work stuff, so signed up to give blood next week. Set up a monthly payment to the Trussell Trust. Will mull over more possible actions...

Stay safe and well (and sane) everyone

ElmoR x

A_Frayed_Knot

Weather here sunny at the moment, so great all your seeds have taken sprout (get it?) I'm sure all gardens

will be pristine this summer due to folk wanting out in the sunshine, but not going too far,

and great to know that both of you can work from home, so many are not so lucky.

Shame about lovely holiday, and hate to be a gloomy person, but as I said to my neighbour when they said,

"I wish this was all over, so I can get my holidays this year" - I said "That ain't gonna happen" - they have 6, yes

6 different holidays booked this year, but managed to get to NY earlier in the year.

Personally think no travel this year, but would love to be proved wrong. 

Stay safe.

ps - managed to get toilet rolls , now just looking for masks and gel, which is a bit harder to find.

ElmoR

I suspect you are right about travel for this year AFK. The silver lining is that the money building up in the regular saver matured in time to pay for the holiday that isn't happening now, so I bunged a big blob at the mortgage and squirreled the rest into savings. We'll have another year to save up again...in the meantime the mortgage is rapidly dropping now, we've saved 6 months of payments off the spreadsheet since starting this MFW mission. These spreadsheets are super addictive! I started a FIRE one now too Not entirely sure I know what I'm doing there yet. It'll be a project to get properly stuck into in a year or twos time maybe, once things settle?!

The biggest change under lockdown here has been the gardening projects. The spud sacks are now outdoors along with (too many) garlics planted in pots. I guess I can always harvest the garlic and freeze it if all of them actually do grow. Not quite sure what I was thinking when I bought two baby garlic plants, I didn't realise it would lead to 30+ babies. And that's after giving the neighbour some too. Strawberries planted but in the conservatory still. The other seedlings all still taken over the conservatory too. Oh, parsley and coriander planted in the herb planters I was given for Mothers Day Gosh, I do hope these all grow. I am having to hold myself back from buying more online because it isn't very MSE and the space left to put any of these is getting very limited now. My DH is already struggling to move around the conservatory without knocking pots over.

Otherwise, the new normal ticks along. The batch cooking continues. The lockbox for forbidden foods has helped get weight back under control though I am looking forwards to some chocolate egg...

Stay safe and well everyone,

ElmoR x

ElmoR

Where did that time go? We are chuntering along in the new normal. DD seems to be the best adapted out of the three of us in finding ways to keep herself busy and entertained. Update from the gardening efforts are mixed in that the strawberry plants are really not happy (no idea what I've done wrong), but the spuds and garlic are growing really well. I spent ages planting out the carrot seedlings into a mini plastic container in the garden only to find one of the cats asleep in there one afternoon, with most of the seedlings all squashed Maybe some will recover...

On the finances front, things are ticking along and the lack of occasional work coffees and misc spending is helping. We would also have had holiday bills to pay around now but I decided that we'll throw that money at the mortgage as an O/P at the end of the month since it's pretty darn obvious no one is going anyway for the foreseeable. I need to check the mortgage T&Cs but am fairly sure that the fixed rate ends in October this year, at which point we no longer have to pay any penalty for paying it off early. The trick will be trying to then pay it down as fast as possible because it will be on the standard variable rate. So...I'm thinking we could start a new mission...fling everything at the mortgage so that as few payments happen after October as possible. In theory, with no big summer holiday costs, this should be a do-able mission?! Best check I've understood the T&Cs too...

Some of you have done house renovations - does anyone know if there is such a thing as insurance to cover you when you come to sell your house for unexpected issues? In particular, I bought this house in 2011 (less stringent building regs etc) and it was owned by at least three people before us. One of the previous owners added a conservatory and made the attic into a 4th room, where we now have a double spare bed for visitors. It does have proper stairs going up there, but there is no radiator/heating. There are dormer windows that you could climb through in the event of a fire. I know that neither home improvement had planning permissions. When I bought, I did have a survey done etc and this was all highlighted, but I wasn't involving estate agents and snapped it up many thousands of pounds below the market value. Any information anyone could share on whether I need to consider retrospective paperwork? or whether there is any tailored insurance for this type of thing would be fantastic. We aren't thinking of moving as such, but may want to in the next 2 to 6 years maybe?! So this is thinking ahead and trying to cut off any future problems at the pass.

Stay safe and well everyone, here's hoping that we follow the other EU countries into slow un-lockdown soon...

ElmoR xx

ElmoR

Is there such a thing as a Groundhog month? It's not just the days that are merging now. 

Ticking along and trying to see this as practice for retirement maybe? Developing (cheap/MSE) interests/hobbies that distracts away from work mind space. The veggies are coming along with the exception of the strawberry plants which I may have killed. The carrots recovered from the cat sleeping on them. Planted some back up carrots into a couple of big pots as insurance.  We did something very un-MSE this week - we bought a greenhouse It is due to arrive on May 18th ish. Decided that we didn't have the courage to buy a used one and dismantle/remantle. Our marriage might not be strong enough for that on top of a pandemic lockdown? So we went for a new one. DH is going to make the shelving though, so we'll save a bit there. I'm excited! Should keep me busy and finally develop a hobby.

My DD has been a source of joy recently too. She wanted to dye her hair, so we tried blue. It also dyed her skin blue so now she looks like smurfette. Her first shower also looked like a smurf murder scene. We have had a lot of laughs. Every teenage girl should experiment with hair colours and experience disasters, its a rite of passage.

End of the month finances were good, we simply decided to take the holiday money saved up and fling it at the mortgage with a nice big juicy OP. I changed my annual mileage on the car insurance with H*stings, so not sure if 2 months less mileage will result in any part repayment from them, but at least I tried. Two larger mobile and landline phone bills than normal (thanks a lot zoom for not letting me join by tinternet and forcing me to use a phone, really annoying), largely cancelling out the savings in petrol bills. Trying to keep a control of impulse spending on the internet which could be so easy to do but would distract away from the end goal...

Take care everyone, stay safe and well

ElmoR x

Cheery_Daff

You're doing so well ElmoR, with your veg and mortgage OPs and all sorts 

Excited about your greenhouse! Mr Cheery and I dismantled and remantled one a couple of years ago (from an MSE chum, as it happens), and I was surprised that neither of us ended up buried under it It actually wasn't as bad as we thought - it had been well maintained so wasn't rusty or with bolts stuck or anything, and came apart fairly easily. Of course the challenge was keeping all the bits in order... and while all the glass miraculously survived a three hour car journey, two panes randomly broke while stored in the garage. 

Is someone putting your new one together for you? I did the frame pretty much by myself, and just got Mr Cheery to help with the top of the roof, and then it was actually pretty straightforward to put the doors on first. The absolute worst bit I found was making the ground level in the first place. I HATE making ground level I swore SO much when I was building the base for the greenhouse, and for the chicken run Still, it's done now and I do love having a greenhouse (although another pane broke a few weeks ago in the wind - I've got a few plastic replacements arriving this week apparently)

As for the house insurance for stuff done without buildings regs... Mr Cheery did some stuff to our old house (without approval) about 20 years before we moved, and I was worried about it coming up. I was told that basically your buyer can ask for an indemnity policy (about £100 one off payment I believe) to cover against the local authority finding out. If they do find out, and it's still within whatever their cut off is (ours wasn't anyway), they might have to inspect, which might mean removing part of it or whatever. But I was told an indemnity policy was the way to go - but that there was little point paying for one in advance, just wait until it's requested by buyer. As it happened, our buyers never even had a survey done, and none of it was ever mentioned. 

Sorry, waffling!

Baileys_Babe

Yes, I believe in groundhog month

Please give your Smurfette a big hug as her exploits made me smile.

When I was a teenager my Mum told me and my sister she didn't want us dyeing our hair (her way of saying forbidden). Months later my Mum went on a weeks holiday with her friend, about an hour after she left my Dad asked where the hair dye was and instructed us it was better to get done sooner, then all the mess would be dealt with before she returned and if there were any disasters we had time to find solutions, somehow they are still happily married

Over our teenage years, we both coloured our hair all sorts of colours without repercussions. One thing I did learn is to think about the reasons I was wanting to say no to my children, is it the mess or the expense or age inappropriate etc

ElmoR

Thanks Cheery for the information about an Indemnity policy, I've cut and pasted that onto a sticky note and will keep it for when the time comes. It sounds familiar too, I reckon that was the advice someone gave me a decade ago and I then forgot it, such is the decline of my once awesome memory.

A couple of people on the forum have said they survived the greenhouse dis- and remantle processes, I just didn't think we'd survive. DH went squinty eyed just talking about it. We are going to build it ourselves though and we have very detailed instructions written in English that were sent already. The date for arrival is May 18th...   Preparing the base is the first step, possibly made easier (or harder? we cannot decide which) by already having an 8x6 ft area already paved. It had been intended for a shed, but I never got around to buying one and the garage serves as a huge shed anyway. So, we *just* need to extend that surface by a couple of feet in each dimension. What could go wrong?!...DH is still calculating and recalculating the number of concrete bags he needs. I suggested we set it as a maths problem for my daughter to do on the day she would have been sitting her GCSE maths exam

The smurfette is morphing into a rainbow head as the blue washes away at different rates on her head and the previous permanent red colour starts to show through again. A couple of our towels will never be the same again. Baileys_babe - I remember using boiled rhubarb roots to try to dye my own hair red as a teenager. It ruined a saucepan and wasn't visible on my hair at all until I went to swimming club and red drips ran down my head in the pool, looking like I was bleeding! The joys of teenage hair experimentation.

So, this past week had been samey otherwise. Getting quite stressed by my workload again, coinciding with preparing another grant application. This really must stop!! It's like a form of self harm? Maybe I should ban myself from applying for any more this calendar year? Moneywise, DD needed some clothes after another growth spurt. Plus the greenhouse to pay for this month, so OP going to be far less than previous month, but that's ok. I did just switch energy tariff early too, which should  save £270 a year according to the switch comparison site.

I've been following edinburger and Suffolk_Lass talking about various topics, including a potential raid by government via pensions/tax to pay for the current spending. It makes me wonder if paying extra pension contributions is still the way to go? I read a series of articles by The Acc*mulator on the MonEvat*r website and the take home message I took on board was that pension beats ISA because of the extra government contribution as you pay it in (combined with the 25% you can take out tax free). Working out the sums if they change that rule is going to make my brain melt. I guess we wait and see? It will be very irksome if they change the rules just as our generation get to retirement, we already had to weather Thatcher and graduate into a recession with no jobs, much like the current generation of young people are facing. I remember applying for one job and being told they had over 2000 applications for it. I stayed in education for longer as a result, when I really wanted to get a job. It also involved working abroad and losing out on National Insurance payments that way too, without knowing you could top them up later. It wasn't the sort of thing you were taught at the sh*tty comprehensive that I went to. Folks say that millenials have a tough time, and Gen Z's will be challenging, I didn't think it was much of a picnic for Gen X either. Clearly someone is doing well out of all the adversity, but it's not clear to me why they aren't being asked to chip in? I suppose it's not our place to ask questions like that? Plus,I will have a greenhouse soon, so I mustn't throw any stones

Have a good long weekend all, stay safe and well,

ElmoRx

ElmoR

Another groundhog week, turning into a groundhog month. Looks like June will be more of the same working from home too. Another funding application completed and out the door, meaning I feel like a huge weight has been lifted and have now promised myself to do no more of these until 2021. Must practice saying "No".

The big news this week was that the greenhouse arrived. In more than ~30 pieces? We started to clear the area where we need to expand the base. Concrete and slabs purchased and ready. This weekend will be ...interesting. I hope neither of us ends up under the slabs or cut in half by a pane of glass. Really looking forwards to it being up and operational, it will be a triumph.

The veg that I have going already are doing well: garlic is about a foot tall (no idea when you harvest them?), potatoes very green and bushy ( currently protected from the high winds by our wheelie bins surrounding the sacks), my 8 (big wow! a whole meals worth?!) spring onions are still growing and the carrots are bushy. The greenhouse will allow me to scale up hopefully. The coriander and parsley have failed, no idea what I did wrong there? The strawberry plants all died bar one too.  Will try again once the greenhouse is up and running.

I had a moment of weakness on the internet though and bought a bundle of mini fruit trees: gala and yellow apples, pear, plum and cherry. Allegedly they will be happy growing in pots on a patio...They came with a 'free' load of plug plants, so will sort out some hanging baskets too. I feel a bit bad about splurging but hey ho. Once the greenhouse is in operation, I can try to grow more plants from seed and that will save me from future splurges. The conservatory is going to be very empty once the carrots and spring onions move out, and I have half a dozen pots in there that are empty, so suggestions on what exotic/warm plants that I could try growing from seed would be very welcome. They need to be super resilient though. I've killed numerous orchids and a bourgainvilla (spelling?) and cacti in the past.

Nothing much to add on the finances front, just waiting for the end of the month and payday now...

Have a good long weekend everyone

ElmoR x

Cheery_Daff

Ah, plants don't count as 'splurges', they're essential, especially if they're food plants! 😁 

Sounds like your garden is coming along nicely! Good luck with the greenhouse... I love mine, and I think we'll be on the lookout for another one once second hand stuff is up and running again. I did a load of reporting yesterday, everything's growing so fast! My sweetcorn seems to be growing about half an inch a day. Not sure we'll have a long enough summer to get any sweetcorn off it mind you... but tis exciting to try.

Good luck with your grant application! I just got roped into another one too 😂 I do need to stick in at least one more this year (a rehash of one that's already been rejected twice), so I probably learn to say no to being involved in other people's so I can concentrate on my own... Still, got to be in it to win it and all that. Got two in at the minute, but both a pretty minimal amount of my time. Need one that will buy me out of some teaching! 

Just been having a read back - I died my hair blue as a teenager too 😂 It went a kind of grey very quickly, and a load of it rubbed off on a radiator I was leaning against at a friend's house. Lots of scrubbing before his mum came back! 😮😂