A Year in the Life of...

girlatplay

savingholmes said:

I'm glad your DD opted to increase her contribution. Bills are going up substantially - and I'm sure it will help ease the burden... 

I'd apologise about the 175 comments on my diary to catch up on - but then you quoted my diary about returns. I think I've always had a mental block on returns too - but have thrown silly £ away over the years not returning things promptly. We are absolutely worthy of getting what we paid for and returning what we don't need / doesn't match expectations. Thanks for your encouragement. Well done on returning the item.

I managed to catch up with your diary, it was the longest one of all the ones I read!  That's exactly the same as me, I've thrown away so much money.  It was just an exchange I was after and they have an exchange policy so there shouldn't have been any hesitation from me but I also dislike using the phone and that was the only way I could do it.  I just went for it and it was completely fine.  Don't know what I was worrying about.

beanielou said:

How lovely of DD to do that 

She is lovely.  It was completely unexpected but it will help a bit.

girlatplay

Money shuffle done.  Accounts are looking quite healthy.

Mortgage down to £85,670 and 20 years today I should be mortgage free! 😆  Of course, that doesn't allow for buying our forever home or for mortgage interest rates getting to the ridiculous stage.

The dipping pot now has £715 in it.  I might have to use some of this, this month.  We are really cracking on with the decorating as we are going to have to market the flat.  We put a huge (ridiculously huge) offer in for our perfect property a few weeks back but didn't get it.  The timing of this meant we lost our sale too.  I'm still pretty gutted about it but just trying to move on.  I used some Christmas money to buy new curtains and a new curtain pole for my bedroom and in my opinion it looks better already. Got to finish painting the woodwork in the hall then I think I'm going to pay someone to paper it with lining paper, then we'll paint that ourselves.  I'll need to accessorise (mirrors and a radiator cover) then that will be it done.  Kitchen after that but we'll get to that.

Holiday account has £125.

Grocery budget has £211.15 left out of £250 as I pay for the veg boxes at the start of the month and there are three this month.  LMG says she wants chicken on Friday and we have none left so that will be a shop trip this week.  I've told her to only buy chicken!

Everything else is ticking along.

savingholmes

Thanks for your encouragement

EssexHebridean

Absolutely lovely of DD with the money - what a lovely human you've created! 

The property you missed out on wasn't for you - just try to remind yourself of that. When it's right, everything will flow. When we bought where we are now, we saw two others that we loved - one we put an offer in but subsequently withdrew when it because apparent that the sellers weren't going to honour the agreement to take it off the market immediately and in fact were going to try to draw us into a bidding war to bump the price. The other was above our price limit - we could have stretched to it but it did also need work, and in the end we had to accept that we couldn't offer for it. With hindsight, neither of those properties would have been ideal for us at all, for various reasons, so it all worked out well in the end!  

girlatplay

EssexHebridean said:

Absolutely lovely of DD with the money - what a lovely human you've created! 

The property you missed out on wasn't for you - just try to remind yourself of that. When it's right, everything will flow. When we bought where we are now, we saw two others that we loved - one we put an offer in but subsequently withdrew when it because apparent that the sellers weren't going to honour the agreement to take it off the market immediately and in fact were going to try to draw us into a bidding war to bump the price. The other was above our price limit - we could have stretched to it but it did also need work, and in the end we had to accept that we couldn't offer for it. With hindsight, neither of those properties would have been ideal for us at all, for various reasons, so it all worked out well in the end!  

Thank you.  She is quite a decent person but oh my goodness she is grumpy sometimes!

I know you are right about the house, of course, but it is still really disappointing.  I have a couple of health issues which means we have 2-3 absolute needs in a property and what I need is not easy to come by within our budget.  This property not only ticked my needs list, it also ticked every single one of our wants list too.  Every single one.  The only other property that ticked everything was a new build which ended up being too far out of our budget and we couldn't stretch to it.



I contacted my solicitor for a quote for marketing our property and it's fairly reasonable, as estate agency and conveyancing fees go.  We are using a firm which is very well known around these parts so I know they will do well for us.

LMG is doing more painting as we speak.  She's keen for us to get moving.  The little idiot downstairs has got to the point of trying to stare her out when he sees her in the street.  LMG just ignores him but it makes both of us feel uncomfortable, which is obviously his plan.  And the banging.  What on earth is all the banging?
They had a massive barney last week, proper shouting.  It was pretty awful.  It ended with him walking out and not coming back.  He was away for two days and honestly, it was the most peaceful two days in the past 8 months.  She was still there with the kids but she was nice to them.  It was calm. There was no banging.  Don't get me wrong, she's as awful as him but it's clearly him who causes all the noise and winds everything up.  Thing is, I don't think she can cope with the kids on her own.  That's the impression we get anyway.  So he came back 😢
We NEED to get away from here.

savingholmes

Really wish you luck with your escape plan. 

girlatplay

I've managed to get hold of my council tax demand for 22/23.  The £150 has been deducted from the full amount so the first month payment is £5 less than 21/22 and the other 9 are £11 less (I'm in Scotland, water rates are added to council tax demands, that's why it's not a straight £15 each month for 10 months).

I've downloaded all my power bills to see what we are using.  We have only been with the supplier since June so not a full year yet but I think it might be worth taking a closer look.  I do regular readings and always check my bills but I've never really looked at the usage before.

The grocery spends are creeping up a bit again.  I thought we were doing ok but I just totted up the spend so far and it's more than I thought.  LMG is off tomorrow and then a mixture of early's and off's for the rest of this week so we'll do a meal plan then order a delivery.

LMG says she'll do some more painting when she's off tomorrow.  I'm so exhausted for some reason, I did no decorating at the weekend.

Not a lot else happening in my world at the moment.

savingholmes

Hope your exhaustion lifts soon. I'm with you on unexpected spends. Good luck with keeping your energy bills low.

girlatplay

savingholmes said:

Hope your exhaustion lifts soon. I'm with you on unexpected spends. Good luck with keeping your energy bills low.

Thank you.  I've felt a bit better over this weekend.
The heating is off and we're using blankets and hot water bottles.  Preparing for April 1st.

girlatplay

We've managed to get quite a bit of decorating done this weekend.  I'm exhausted again but it's because I've put effort in.  We really want to get this place on the market soon so it has to be done. I've asked my folks if we can store some of our rubbish at theirs to make it less cluttered here.  They have said yes but that's a job in itself!

We put out the equivalent of three black bags of clothes, a bag of shoes, a small chest of drawers, lamp, laundry hamper, big bag of books, some pet blankets and a couple of other bits that escape me now, to charities yesterday morning.  Still got more to go but it was good to get that cleared.

I folded down all the cardboard we had and we put it in the recycling at the end of the street.

We bought two sets of bedside drawers for my bedroom (the small ones given to charity were ones I bought from charity about 10 years ago as an up cycling project.  Never got round to up cycling but I used them for bedside.  Only had one set). I've made up one of the new ones and will do the other one when I have a spare 50 minutes (I timed myself haha).

I have bought a radiator cover and a mirror to go up in the hall once the painting is finished.  When we first started decorating I took down a set of coat hooks and I thought I had binned them.  My finger was hovering over the "buy now" button when I decided to double check that I had definitely put them out.  I hadn't!  Saved myself £16 👍🏻 Just need to find suitable screws as I know I binned them.

We just need to keep doing little bits at a time but we are definitely getting there.