Returning to MFW, my elusive unicorn!

coldcazzie

• I logged into my HMRC account, and apparently the TC are renewing automatically this year. Our earnings for last tax year means our tax credits are going up, by ~£200 pcm. Honestly, I nearly cried.

• We've agreed on a modest £150 as a buffer on our joint account. We would like to increase it eventually, but not just yet - more important things right now!

• I believe I can apply for the small business grant from next week, so I will have a closer look at that probably next weekend.

• I am getting much closer with the digging. I think around 3/4s of the digging is done now. I had several days off last week when the weather was less good. The last few days have been easier - as I've cleared more it's been easier to clear the remainder. I've also got a system going for sifting the earth. We've fetched out a tonne bag that we had in the shed, and I've been filling that with excess soil. I can see it finished in my head now, which is a great motivator!

• It's been a modest spend month. We finally had to top the car up again, which means £40 of fuel lasted us 7 weeks! Usually it lasts 1-2 weeks, depending on what home ed groups and trips we have planned and how far away they are. 1 week to go until the CC tickover and the food spending is currently at 77% of budget, so that seems okay I think.

• Sold an item of clothing, but put the money back into the clothing pot as it was immediately replaced.

Think that's all for now. Hope everyone is doing well in this Time of Ongoing Weirdness.

coldcazzie

• Grocery shop today - last one before the next CC tickover. I may have also bought a plant (an Acer tree). I may have named it Jasper  

Monthly Totals for Food/Booze
Food: £436.62/£475 = 92%
Booze: £44.79/£25 = 179%
Overall: £481.41/£500 = 96%

• Prolific cash out of £6.07. Transferred to the OP account, which has taken it over £200! Balance now stands at £205.75. I'm now really feeling the urge to pay either £100 or £200 onto the second mortgage account. Don't know whether or not that is a good idea... but I really want to 

• THE DIGGING IS NEARLY DONE! Like, I probably could have finished it today if I hadn't had to go shopping and then had horrible backache. The cooler weather is rubbish for lounging around in the sun, but much better for gardening. Gardening in baking sun is Not Good.

• Payday is Friday next week, so now counting down the days!

coldcazzie

• THE DIGGING IS DONE, as of yesterday!! Tomorrow we will cover with weed fabric and sand. In the meantime, I started on the next portion of digging ( a desperately overgrown section of flowerbed), and managed to get a really deep puncture wound in my baby finger from a bramble. I've taken this as a sign and stopped again  

• I have applied for the self-employed income support grant. They say it'll be in my account within 6 days, which is rather prompt of them. It's certainly better than nothing, but I'd rather have been working since March!

• In a nice rollercoaster of emotions, I received our tax credit renewal, which it turns out hasn't taken into account my income at all, and also dips significantly in August because of the fact that Big Small turns 16 in July, and I made a small oversight in not yet sending the form back to HMRC to tell them she is staying on in education next year. I've popped that in the post now, but it's definitely dumped my feeling of relief into the sea

• We have paid the charge for the garden wheelie bin for the next year, and also breakdown cover for the car.... not that it's going many places right now, but it would be sod's law that it breaks down on the driveway through lack of use!

I shut the broody chickens out of the chicken coop today, and they've grumped around the run all day. It's been 6 weeks since they went broody and I'm so fed up of them hogging the nest boxes and growling at me Small Small wrote to 2 of her friends and posted the letters today. She wrote a little thank you note to the posties on the back  

South_coast

Aaargh, that does sound a bit "gives with one hand, takes away with the other" 😦

Love the idea of the thank-you to the posties though 😍

coldcazzie

Yes it does!

We got the idea from a little girl in America who has been decorating her envelopes for the postal workers over there, and one of the postal workers shared her decorations in a postal worker group, and she's become a bit famous in the group and a bunch of other workers from across the country have been sending her letters saying thank you for being so lovely in these hard times  

In the last couple of days we have also officially deferred Big Small's exam that she was supposed to be sitting next month to next year. We talked through her options (defer to the autumn, defer to Jan 2021, defer to June 2021, withdraw) and she chose to defer until June 2021.

coldcazzie

Cashed out another £7 from Prolific, taking the OP account to £212.75. Signature updated.

coldcazzie

Not sure how almost a week has passed since my last post... although since all the days seem to be blurring together maybe it's not that surprising! I'm massively enjoying the slowness.

• The SEISS arrived right on time. I've set up a standing order to put a small amount each month into our joint account - roughly half what I'd usually pay myself. I am tentatively hopeful that there may be some work on the horizon, but if not I've enough to pay this small amount for 5 months (May-Sept).

• Have finished our TC renewal declaration, and also informed them of Big Small staying on in education, which of course has messed the planned payments up. It baffles me how they do the calculations for the payments. The HMRC website also only tells you about four payments in advance, but two of those are apparently next week (not sure why it had to be two?), so I've no idea what the rest of the year will be like (and if they have properly taken into account that Big Small is not leaving education) yet.

• Payday today!! and this month's wages for Manwife came with a lovely extra - his wage rise backpay. The wage rise that is due to happen in August each year (can you hear my eyebrow raising?!) that the Union have been arguing about since early last year. (So yea, backpay since August 2019.) Putting The Eyebrow aside for the moment, it is a nice little extra.

• We intend to pay all the bills/put savings away as usual, and then see what the excess is on June 1st. At that point we will divvy up the extra and put it towards several things: house savings, my pension, building our emergency buffer, some spending money for each of us, and probably some into the OP account.

• We are thinking the new front door may be installed in July, perhaps?, assuming things start moving again and companies get back to business. It's hard to say, of course, but we are putting as much as we can aside for it. Unfortunately all the garden work has put a bit of a crimp in that, as we have had to buy several things - supplies, new tools after current ones have broken etc - and that trend is going to continue as we have various jobs that need completing soon in order to get the chickens into their new accommodations asap. We HAVE to get them in before winter as I'm not sure their current coop will withstand another winter. We do anticipate that a sizeable chunk of the extra money this month will go into our house savings account though, which will be good for both door and garden.

• On the topic of the garden, I mentioned about ten days back that the digging is complete. We covered the area with weed fabric and used the remains of a tonne bag of builder's sand that we had left from doing the patio a couple of years ago, and finished off by laying 14 concrete slabs that had been sat in the garden. It looks so much better than it did, even without the gaps being mortared yet. It's been 5 weeks approx from start to almost finish. We know what our next step is in the garden, and it's going to be another one that takes several weeks of work - raising a flower bed from the height of the lawn up about 10 inches.

• I am still renovating the shabby bench that I rescued via fb. It's had much of the work done and I am currently levelling the legs best I can so that it doesn't wobble - it;s a bigger job than it sounds because the arms and legs were horribly rotten, so all the rotten wood was removed and is now being built back up with exterior wood filler. About 85% of the bottom of 3 out of 4 of the legs is wood filler rather than wood I'm looking forward to it being finished though. I'm planning to paint a couple of wooden planters in the same colours as the two benches, to tie them together.

I think that's all for now - I'm off to do some editing on an ebook before bed!

Grogged

Just caught up, you've been busy! 👍😀
Are you planning anything special for your new patio area?

coldcazzie

Grogged said:

Are you planning anything special for your new patio area?

Erm, water butts?! Lol. Probably an azalea in a pot.

coldcazzie

Finished the May bills where I thought we would, gave Manwife and I each a smidge of extra spending money, and then put the rest of the excess into savings/my pension/the buffer. Since then we have spent a bit buying the remaining parts we needed to hardwire the internet into all the bedrooms. Our internal walls are all brick and the wireless cards in the kids computers often struggle, which is a problem when they're watching videos for maths or science lessons for example. Some of the money has come from my parents as they gave us £100 towards the cost at Christmas last year, and the rest from our 'house' saving pot.

The current account is now sitting happily at £300 in credit as its new "zero".

Cashed out another £5.69 from prolific (currently on 81 submissions, hoping to hit triple digits soon!), and combined with a rather large Tilly Tidy on the 1st, means that the OP account now stands at £266.02, which is 53.2% of target, so a bit ahead of where I wanted to be considering we are not yet half way through the year, so that's nice my stretch target would be £800, rather than £500. I do think that is unlikely though.