Returning to MFW, my elusive unicorn!

coldcazzie

Family
Me, Manwife, offspring x3 (Big Small 17, Medium Small 14, Small Small 12), cats x2, rabbits x2, chickens x2

Finances
Bank Accs
- 1 FD joint account, into which gets paid his employed wage and my self employed earnings, plus CB and CTC [CTC will stop in April]
- 1 NW joint account for home education expenses
- 14 savings pots to cover all regular and irregular expenses: clothing, gifts, health, food, toiletries, cleaning, pets, entertainment, office, house, home, car, holiday, sundries/misc
- Big Small and Medium Small have their own bank accounts, Small Small has a goHenry card
- Manwife™ and I both have individual Starling bank accounts for our personal spending money

Debts
- 1 AMEX card, paying 1% cashback, which we clear each month
- Car PCP - £189.22 pcm
- 1 mortgage, 2 sub accounts currently standing at £85579.20 as of Jan 1st 2022. Int rate: 1.89%. MF date: 2043.

Achieved since Jan 2021
- OP £404.62 on mortgage
- replaced dishwasher, washing machine, fridge freezer and oven
- traded in old car for new car, and also bought second car
- Himself got a new (much better paying) job which started in April
- 2 teens now at college full time
- I started training for new/additional career pathway
- best year ever in my business

2022 Goals
- don't have an OP goal yet, but I doubt it'll be high  
- sort out attic extension stuff
- ACTUALLY finish building new chicken coop/run!!
- hoping for a similar year in my business

coldcazzie

Baileys_Babe said:

Have you had your iron and thyroid levels checked recently?

OH gets cold much more easily since his thyroid isn't as active as it should be, despite medication 😥

Repeatedly. Apparently I'm "fine". Mhm, thanks NHS.

Baileys_Babe

coldcazzie said:

Baileys_Babe said:

Have you had your iron and thyroid levels checked recently?

OH gets cold much more easily since his thyroid isn't as active as it should be, despite medication 😥

Repeatedly. Apparently I'm "fine". Mhm, thanks NHS.

I am glad you have had them checked, I understand your frustration with being within the so-called normal range, I am for a few things but evidently, it is not normal for me otherwise I wouldn't feel like this.

coldcazzie

Baileys_Babe said:

I am glad you have had them checked, I understand your frustration with being within the so-called normal range, I am for a few things but evidently, it is not normal for me otherwise I wouldn't feel like this.

That's it, isn't it. Just because something is in the average range for the whole population doesn't mean it's right for that one particular person. Very frustrating.

coldcazzie

Paying £90 today for the gutters to be cleaned, which will come out of the house account. Should've done it in the autumn but, as usual, it slipped us by. I have added it to our cleaning app as an annual job! Hopefully that will help!

coldcazzie

Well they cleaned the gutter, and cleared a blocked downpipe which we knew about.... and also unblocked the drain at the front of the house which we didn't even know was a drain! We thought it was a soakaway! It's been blocked for the entire time we've lived here and we've been here almost 7 years! Feeling both relieved and a bit stupid. Pinged them £100 instead of £90 for the trouble, as they weren't going to charge us any extra and were super quick and professional.

coldcazzie

How dare I think that we were recovering okay from all the appliance replacements. Sadly we had to have our eldest cat pts yesterday, as he had cancer. We had originally had an appt booked for Monday morning but he took a sudden downturn in terms of health (although was still normal and happy in himself, but that's a good thing tbh as I didn't want to wait until he was miserable), so we pulled it forward. Vets are expensive.

I also don't think, with the imminent increases in gas&electric, that we can actually reasonably afford to extend the mortgage. Gonna need to have a long hard think and examination of the figures.

South_coast

Sorry to hear about your puss, Caz 😥 Glad you didn't have to see him struggling though. It may put a smile on your face to know I am being stalked by Oodies all over the internet after I made the mistake of Googling them after you mentioned yours - everywhere I go, there they are!

Good luck with the number crunching x

coldcazzie

South_coast said:

I am being stalked by Oodies all over the internet after I made the mistake of Googling them after you mentioned yours - everywhere I go, there they are!

pmsl yes that definitely makes me smile! They are super snuggly. Like wearing a really fluffy tent!

coldcazzie

Two months on and we are slowly getting used to being a single cat household. It's very quiet. Vet debt is now cleared, as of the beginning of this month.

We are slowly making progress on the next section of digging for the chicken run/garden upgrades. It's an area approx 1 meter wide by 6 meters long, and will eventually be a path/steps that will go between the chicken run and our shed, and lead to the bottom half of the garden. However, it involves digging down maybe 18" to 2' at one end, and there's a lot of clay we moved a pieris bush which was planted in the section we are digging out. It now resides in a raised border bed, which I am slowly filling with the 4 tonnes of topsoil we had delivered last year. Have moved half the soil so far. It's slow going because the bed has to be dug over first, and I keep finding bramble roots behind the fence posts, which are really hard to remove. Plus we both have to be careful of our backs, what with neither of us being in the best of physical health. We can see the progress we are making though, which is nice, it's just really bl00dy hard work! Hattie has started laying again the sound of the egg song is ringing out!

I applied for (and have been offered, and accepted) an ad hoc employed role for a charity alongside my business. Not a big number of hours, but something different and possibly a bit of extra cash.

We decided, in light of the rise in fuel costs, that the teens would get public transport to college as well as home. That's an additional £40 a month on bus fares, but we will save more than that in fuel costs.

Our gas and electric fix runs out in about 3 weeks I think, but thus far we have not heard anything from our supplier about what the specific new rates, and therefore predicted payments, will be.

Council tax bill has arrived. Obviously the bill has gone up, but the actual monthly payments we make will drop by about £5 because last year we missed one month when we were changing to the new payday and then had to pay a higher amount the rest of the year.

I have yet to OP anything this year. The CC cashback is due this month though. In previous years I have either OPed that or used it to buy home ed stuff for the kids. Need to have a think about what we want to do with it this year - there is a home ed subscription that will need paying this month, but perhaps we'll OP the rest after that. Small mortgage account now starts with a 6 instead of a 7 - that felt good to see!!