Returning to MFW, my elusive unicorn!

coldcazzie

Three things:
1. Good lord, how have we accumulated all this sh!te?!
2. F*** ME, THE DUST. MY POOR LUNGS.
3. *weeps into a cup of tea*

coldcazzie

In other news:
- first lot of cloth face masks arrived in the post today. Unfortunately they smell really strongly of washing powder so they will need to go through the wash before they can be worn.
- sold another thing on eBay. Will be posting that on the morrow.
- cashed out £5.something from prolific.
- bought a little wooden plaque off Etsy that says "in this house we hate the Tories" on it. Looking forward to that arriving so I can hang it in the hallway  
- fakeaway from tea tonight, which I really must go and put in the oven.

coldcazzie

In yet another case of emotional whiplash, our friend pulled out of swapping the dresser with us (not her fault, just a rubbish situation). Having spent 2 days working my !!!!!! off to have the room ready to pick it up, this was a rather big blow and I went to bed at 9pm in a huff. We are now trying to source an alternative one from elsewhere, with limited success so far.

HOWEVER, we also discovered that our upright freezer is rather more 'almost-dead-but-not-quite-dead-yet' than we thought, and we now have a brand new shiny upright freezer being delivered tomorrow, before we accidentally end up losing all our belongings in a house fire. All our emergency money (plus the surplus I was planning on putting into savings/TT this month) has gone on that, which I KNOW is the entire point of having saved said money, so I am really very glad I did it, but is still annoying, as I am sure you will all understand.

I am peeved. Really peeved.

But I am also looking at the positives:
* The dining room sort out needed to happen either way. This has been true since the beginning of this diary, and is the precise reason I spent all that time filing/shredding stuff earlier on this year. This situation forced my hand, and even if the ending is not what I pictured, I am still glad I did it.
* I'd rather have a new freezer than a housefire/lose all my batch cooking/bulk bought food. And it's bigger, which means more room for more batch cooking/bulk buying! And we almost never buy brand new anything, so... S  H  I  N  Y.

regularsaver

coldcazzie said:

In yet another case of emotional whiplash, our friend pulled out of swapping the dresser with us (not her fault, just a rubbish situation). Having spent 2 days working my !!!!!! off to have the room ready to pick it up, this was a rather big blow and I went to bed at 9pm in a huff. We are now trying to source an alternative one from elsewhere, with limited success so far.

HOWEVER, we also discovered that our upright freezer is rather more 'almost-dead-but-not-quite-dead-yet' than we thought, and we now have a brand new shiny upright freezer being delivered tomorrow, before we accidentally end up losing all our belongings in a house fire. All our emergency money (plus the surplus I was planning on putting into savings/TT this month) has gone on that, which I KNOW is the entire point of having saved said money, so I am really very glad I did it, but is still annoying, as I am sure you will all understand.

I am peeved. Really peeved.

But I am also looking at the positives:
* The dining room sort out needed to happen either way. This has been true since the beginning of this diary, and is the precise reason I spent all that time filing/shredding stuff earlier on this year. This situation forced my hand, and even if the ending is not what I pictured, I am still glad I did it.
* I'd rather have a new freezer than a housefire/lose all my batch cooking/bulk bought food. And it's bigger, which means more room for more batch cooking/bulk buying! And we almost never buy brand new anything, so... S  H  I  N  Y.

I think you are definitely looking at it in the right way regarding the freezer. Its 100% better to have a new one than a house fire, but I know what you mean about having spent the emergency fund etc to get it as it takes time to build up that fund doesnt it! 

It being bigger, like you say is a real bonus!!!

Hazelnutty

coldcazzie said:

- bought a little wooden plaque off Etsy that says "in this house we hate the Tories" on it. Looking forward to that arriving so I can hang it in the hallway  

Love this!!!

coldcazzie

Updates.

2 weeks in to having a new freezer. The new freezer is *marginally* bigger than the old one. It is taller, but somehow inside is not as wide. So it is bigger, but not as much as I had thought/hoped. It's okay - when we get a new fridge freezer we will be going for a 70/30 one as opposed to our current 50/50 one, and I think overall the freezer space will end up being more or less the same (and obviously more fridge space). We aren't planning on getting a new f/f anytime soon, but we are aware that it will need to happen soonish because 1, the kitchen is our next room on the list to redecorate and 2, the previous owners put the f/f bang next to the oven and it would not be an understatement to say that the fridge is slowly dying because of this.

After making my last post I managed to find a dresser on fb marketplace that was in a vintage/secondhand furniture shop. I rang them to ask if it was available (it was) and if they could deliver (they could), and we arranged for them to bring it that evening. It is lovely. It has unexpected lights in the cupboards. It was £110 delivered, which is obviously more than we were going to give our friend, but that's the way these things go, isn't it.

We are slowly sorting out all the junk we evicted from the dining room - 4 giant bags have gone to charity shops, I've a big box of stuff to put on ebay when I feel inspired to do so, we took a fair amount of stuff to the tip, including several tins of paint, and generally everything is becoming less chaotic. The dining room looks much nicer, and is much less stressful to sit in. And my 'hate the Tories' sign looks awesome hanging on the dresser

FIL gave us a bit of money as a gift (because he also gave some the BIL who has just moved into a new flat). Some of that has gone towards starting to build the emergency fund back up (meaning we will hopefully end the month at around +£130-150 ish?); some of it went towards getting Manwife a new computer chair as his old one was giving him horrible back and leg ache.

CC tickover is today. Food, booze and vape are all well overspent this month. Most other categories are underspends. Had a trawl around some charity shops at the weekend and picked up some t-shirts for Medium Small, some plant pots, and a set of hooks to go over the bathroom door. Spreadsheets have been updated to reflect the spends.

Got my latest tattoo just over a week ago. It was a design done by one of the artists over lockdown which I snapped up. It's healed up nicely and I am liking it very much. I saved up my own spending money over lockdown for this, so didn't feel bad about spending family money on something for me!

Car and home insurance are due at the beginning of next month. I know I could leave it later but I find it less stressful to do it early. I've had the emails from the insurance company and both the renewal prices are higher than last year so I'll be doing a comparison I guess, and then ringing them to see if they can bring it down.

Still no update on our Tax Credits. After the next payment which is due next week I have no idea what's happening. This is causing me a fair bit of anxiety.

As far as I can tell, I should be able to apply for the second SEISS grant. I need to look into this more.

Think that's all for now! Hope everyone is doing okay, and hasn't melted over the past few days!

coldcazzie

I applied for the second SEISS today. This one is worth 70% of your income and is for businesses still affected after July 14th. Morbid curiosity had me working out how much money I've "earned" since the beginning of March after a comment from someone on fb that "I know someone who spent it all on herself instead of her business" like that isn't the bloody purpose of it *eyeroll* anyway, the answer is £55. In 5 and a half months. I'm gonna be annoyed about this for the rest of the day.

coldcazzie

Payslip day today. Payslip is looking very good! In spite of our additional spending last month it looks like the extra from the payslip and the money from FIL will cover the freezer, so we will be able to end our month on our usual +£300. I think by the end of the year I would like to have raised that to +£500, and (she says tentatively) next year I'd love to see it at +£1000 at some point.

My SEISS has gone into my bank account. I now have enough to pay myself at my current reduced rate until the end of the year. I sincerely hope I will have found some more clients by then! If I'm not I will have to rethink some things.

Today is Big Small's enrolment day at college, so that's exciting.

Car insurance has risen this year. Our renewal is about £30 higher than what we paid last year, and the lowest comparison was £30 higher than that. Not sure why as nothing has changed from last year? Has anybody else had this? I haven't yet compared the home insurance yet, but the renewal quote given was also higher than last year. Getting these sorted is my task for today.

the_cross_rabbit

Hi our home insurance is higher this year (not by much) and when I did a check to see if I could get it cheaper they were either higher than my orginal quote or £2 cheaper. Decided to go with orginal insurer as I would need to ring to cancel and they take forever to answer with covid and I can't face 20 to 30 minutes of their music.
CRx

coldcazzie

Sold some items on fb marketplace and put £30 in the OP pot. This makes me feel much better about not being able to TT at the beginning of the month balance now stands at £349.83. If I had thought a bit harder I would have sneakily transferred a bit extra to round it up to £350 but I didn't, so that will have to wait until the next TT on Sept 1st.

Have some other stuff up for sale as well. Hopefully that will shift soon. Aside from anything else, mentally tagging things as being on the way OUT of the house rather than on the way IN is very freeing! (Not least cuz we've just had to bring in a load of new clothes for Medium Small who has grown another 2 inches, and now no longer fits in the clothes he was bought in the Spring he is now entirely in men's clothing sizes. £50 on 4 pairs of pants )