Keep calm and carry on....

South_coast

The bag was passed through the window (a challenge in itself, as the window is quite high and I was stretching over the worktop - plus it was heavy!) and then he retreated back towards his car 😀

coldcazzie

I am chuckling at your reaction to being bought flowers not sure if an Easter egg is better than that or not... I usually find them quite disappointing in terms of the quantity of chocolate to money paid ratio. We usually buy them on sale after Easter  

South_coast

As BF put it at the time: "I might as well have given you a dog turd" 😂

I agree about the chocolate:money ratio - but then it wasn't my money 😂!

South_coast

Morning all 😀

Aah, 4 days off and no plans at all, just a few vague inklings. I have decided to go food shopping on Monday, so have got that to look forward to though 😂 

I was meant to have the 4 days off after Easter, very pleased to have been able to cancel that. Fortunately I didn't have any plans, just a thought that it would be nice to have a proper break from work without using too much leave. Actually, work has been reasonably enjoyable this week (what am I saying 😮!) so I really don't feel like a break is needed and 4 days off will be more than enough. 

Think I'm going to do a bit of tinkering with the figures today. No rush though - and need to actually get out of bed first 😂!

Jessy103

Ooo food shopping with the £2.10 left of your grocery budget, that should be interesting 😂😂

Hope you have a lovely, restful weekend x

South_coast

Well I'd make a better attempt at it than BF 😂! No, I shall be appropriating the petrol budget. Actually, had better move that across - good shout!

South_coast

Petrol budget duly moved across. I've not bought petrol since 19 March - that's hilarious 😂!

coldcazzie

South_coast said:

Petrol budget duly moved across. I've not bought petrol since 19 March - that's hilarious 😂!

We topped the car up on the 13th, and still have almost half a tank left last I checked!

South_coast

I think I've got about 350 miles - bonkers!

Well I've definitely been tinkering with the finances....😂

I've decided to try and live on what I have set as my emergency budget of £1k per month (except I would like to maintain my £250 per month to my savings pots as the emergency is not quite upon me yet - so the budget is to be £1250). My actual bills add up to £913 a month (I'm really surprised at this - I thought it was a lot lower!) which leaves me with £87 for groceries, petrol and personal. Now this would be easily doable if I lost my job in normal circumstances as I wouldn't need any petrol and could eat very cheaply. But with grocery shopping being a bit haphazard at the moment, this could be a challenge! However in the interests of not getting bored, this is a challenge I am going to accept! It's almost certainly completely unachievable, but will at least demonstrate to me that the emergency budget should probably be a little higher 😂!

So, on to the £250 per month savings allocation.... Now I know I'm not going to need to pay a huge excess mileage charge, the amount to save for the cost of changing my car in a couple of years doesn't need to be as much and I can start the saving later, meaning the start date for the other savings pots which will need filling in the meantime can also be pushed back. So for the months of March, April, May and June my £250 savings is going to be into the "pay off mortgage" account - the deliberate mistake here being that the March money was part of the £450 which went AWOL on payday. However I remain confident it will turn up somehow so I'm continuing to act as though it exists. 

I have also bitten the bullet and cancelled my June road trip 😦 Mainly because something I really want to visit has confirmed they will still be closed then and I don't want to miss out. However it's been there since 1809, so I'm reasonably confident it will still be there in 2021 😀 Trying to look on the bright side that it gives me the chance to plan the trip a bit better next time round. It also gives me back the £300 I had set aside for spending money, which is now safely tucked away in the pay off mortgage account. £148 refund for the main hotel is to follow (on the card I'm not using at the moment, so that will be another call to get a credit balance refunded 😡) and I have a credit note for the hotel that had the single night booking. 

Finally (for now) I've also moved the savings pots around so the pay off mortgage and pay off credit card accounts are the ones with the 0.15% better interest rates (I'd clocked that some pots earned interest and some didn't, but never had time to investigate it). It wouldn't normally make any difference as I wouldn't normally carry a balance in there, but if there is going to be a balance building up in them for a little while then every little helps 😀!

savingholmes

Some good money organising there. Enjoy your time off.