Returning to MFW, my elusive unicorn!

debtfreeoneday

Sorry to hear about your FIL. 

coldcazzie

Thank you both

coldcazzie

We are nearly at the end of the month, and I think we're going to be glad to put May behind us because it's been A LOT.

Summing up things that have changed since the last update:
- Medium Small has been offered a place at college.
- FIL's estate is almost all dealt with. Himself and BIL picked up the ashes today.
- Tech: 5/5 of us have had a computer upgrade, 4/5 of us have had phone upgrades, Big Small has a new drawing tablet which she is LOVING, I bought a BT speaker/clock for the shower, I bought a swanky new printer with extra swank for business use as well as personal.
- Cars: we now have a brand new car on a PCP @ £189 pcm [mine], and a second [second hand] car [his]. Part exchanged our old car for mine, as well as putting money down. Car is big enough for 3 birth pools plus all the bits, and also meaty enough that I don't need to worry nearly so much about snow over the winter.
- Himself's tax appears to have been sorted (I hope!), and we are going to be sweeping almost all of the leftover money each month into our house savings account towards renovations. We also put around £5k in there already, out of the redundancy money.
- I intend to do some small OPs each month, of varying amounts. Don't want to lose track of that, even if we do also have other priorities at the moment.
- Made another dinky OP of £5.12 after cashing out some prolific surveys.
- Next week we are having off. Week after we are contacting some folks to come and top the massive honking cherry laurel/cut back some current bushes in our back garden, as well as removing some fuschia bushes from the front garden, and then our neighbour over the road is going to build us a shiny new front wall as the current one is falling down.

2021 OP running total: £174.79

debtfreeoneday

Extra swank… love it. 

coldcazzie

debtfreeoneday said:

Extra swank… love it. 

It's VERY swanky 😂😂😂

coldcazzie

End of bills OP made today of £68.78 to take us down to a nice round number in the bank account.
I've also put an extra £440 in our house savings account, which stands at around 5.5k. We've had to make some bigger purchases - eg, we bought a rather powerful brushcutter to help us deal with the ridiculously overgrown garden.

I confess I'm having a work-related wobble again, wondering whether I should pack my business in and get an employed job. I know it's an anxiety based reaction and that it'll pass but... oof. 

2021 OP running total: £243.57

coldcazzie

My work wobble has passed, thankfully. I have a couple of interviews with potential clients scheduled for the next few weeks, which is reassuring - I always have a "OMG WILL I EVER WORK AGAIN??" panic after putting my fees up

Today I am spending the day doing anti-racism training, so I'm off to collect snacks and fiddly items in preparation for spending several hours sitting in front of a screen listening. July is looking to be a fairly quiet month, work wise, so I have a few training workshops/online courses that I'm planning to do - three at least, which will be about 22 hours of CPD. Depending on how I feel, I may schedule another for over the summer before I refresh my annual stuff at the end of August.

Bill cycle seems to be good - the money shuffle is complete, all the spreadsheet stuff set up for next month, everything ticking over. Overpayment this month looks to be about £50-60 I think?

Haven't done anything on prolific for a long while as it is on my list of things that I can't handle when I'm feeling stressed, so no mini OPs. I'll get back to it though.

Yesterday was our wedding anniversary and we went out for tapas at a local place we've not been to before. It was very nice and we will definitely go there again.

coldcazzie

OP was more than I thought at £75.95!


2021 OP running total: £319.52

coldcazzie

Dearie me this month has been TIGHT.

Things in July:
- 2 hen dos, complete with drinks and clothing
- 1 wedding, complete with drinks and clothing
- 1 birthday party, complete with lazer tag and takeaway
- 1 birthday meal out with family
- 1 wedding anniversary dinner

Also we paid a local company to come and attack our garden with chainsaws, and rip out the fuchsia bushes in our front garden.

All of which has conspired to mean that my OP after the eng of July/beginning of August bills is a grand total of £3.50 and there is precisely 0 spare cash to sweep into savings towards our home improvements.

coldcazzie

In other news, the new chicken coop, which I'm sure you are all dying to hear about, is finally making some progress. The base bricks are going in this week - we had to dig down a fair amount in order to put mesh underneath so that nothing can dig into the coop, and also to make it flat because the garden slopes really bad. My BIL is coming round next weekend to do some more digging for the base of part of the rest of the run, so I am cutting back plants so that he can access the ground.

We bought a paddle mixer which doesn't half make mixing up mortar much easier! I highly recommend! It's very much like a giant cake mixer lol.