Giving every £ a job

savingholmes

Our water bill went up a similar amount - due to most of us being home more. 

Glad you are still having a low spend month.

Blackcats

SH - thank you for the encouragement.  

I just did a very big shop in Lidl's but have stocked up on lots of store cupboard essentials and the fridge is full too.  

Made my first council tax payment today and squeezed an extra 10% payment too which helps me towards my target of paying the humongous bill over 9 months instead of 10.
other than Lidl's no spending today. 

Had a fun few minutes this morning watching my daft cat chasing his own tail - he was really trying so hard to catch it and then slinked away trying to look dignified 😺

Sun_Addict

My cat has been engrossed in watching The Dog House on C4. She loves watching TV 😆

scandimore

Your council tax bill is pretty eek blackcats! I thought ours was bad. Good idea re paying it back over 9 months. Tempted to do the same for a 3 month break!
We've found the water leak - it's the toilet flushing twice for every flush. The second one doesn't happen for a fair few minutes so we hadn't noticed until recently. New part coming on Thurs and Mr S on the case.
Wish the older lady who had this house before us hadn't chosen a water meter- very sensible of her but could do without it!

Blackcats

Sun Addict - your pets have got such personalities.  I love that the dog's bubble bath of choice is Moulton and Brown - what a discerning choice.
scandimore - yes the council tax bill is mahoosive - I don't live in a huge house but I'm in a very expensive postcode and there are some stonking great houses round here - the land of the footballer's wives 🙄
I'm using my personal spends money this month on getting some photos printed - they will be ready mounted and stick straight on the wall.  Just choosing which ones will make it into the gallery 🤣
Other than that not much spending done or needed.  Having scraped out the remnants from 2 hand cream tubes I've now started a new tube from a selection I was given at Christmas - it's a fancy one so it feels like a nice treat and smells lovely.
my current energy supplier have been in touch to say that they are sorry I'm leaving and would I like £100 to stay.  Shame they waited til I'd switched to bother offering me any incentives or even a good deal.  According to my rough calculations I'm still better off switching.  

Blackcats

Met a relative outside today - we would normally enjoy a glass of chilled white wine but it was so cold we had a hot chocolate instead.  The benefit of buying so much stuff in the past is that I found some nice glass hot chocolate mugs  (unused and I don't even remember buying them 🤷‍♀️). I salvaged some mini marshmallows - I usually eat them before any ever make it into hot chocolate and we had a piece of homemade cake. A very nice and relatively inexpensive afternoon.  

GrannyKaye

Hello Blackcats and everyone else!  Hope you don't mind me gatecrashing.  I've just started reading your diary, I'm on page 13 and enjoying and can also relate to a.lot.  I look like a newbie here, well I'm a returning newbie, been away for 3 or 4 years spending too much money again, but have forgotten my password and have a different email address had to create a new account.  So I'm off back to page 13 and also to try to figure out how to subscribe to your diary if that's ok!  xx

Blackcats

Hello granny Kaye - lovely to meet you and welcome.   I was really nervous about starting a diary but I've enjoyed the company of visitors, it's kept me accountable to myself and my virtual chums and it's also helped me see my slow but steady progress.  

Not much to report today but that also means no I necessary spends.  I had to buy the posh seafood duo in gravy cat food which is the only brand and flavour acceptable to 2 rescue cats that were previously rough sleepers on the streets 😻.  

Equally exciting news is that I made a rice pudding 😋.  It's still so cold that a nice comforting rice pud seemed like just the right thing for tonight and indeed it was.
I'm going to check some retirement planning figures at the weekend- I think they are ok but I've been a bit blasé and not really validated my planning assumptions which is not very sensible given that my non working future depends on the figures being right 

savingholmes

Hope the retirement figures come out as needed

savingholmes

PS had to laugh re cat food. I think pets are ridiculously fussy about food - I have had 2 rescue cats...