This time I'm sticking to it!

rdone

Oh no @WinterWarrior sorry to hear you're in the same position!

Yes, the NI increase will not be fun for anyone.  But I will not get political here...

We had a good weekend at my brothers and did indeed eat in a lot.  Went out for a roast yesterday and ate so much we didn't even need to eat tea last night so have that meal for lunch today.

Going to make the weeks meal plan shortly and then a shopping list for what we need from that.  I'm loving being back to meal planning and eating good.  Makes such a difference!

rdone

Lots of DDs have gone out today for savings and bills including a surprise £48 which upon questioning my husband is a new gym membership that he's signed up for.  The one that he told me was £10 for Jan and Feb and he'd be cancelling.  Yeah, that one!  He is using it so I'm just going to add up his sessions to check he's using it enough to pay for it monthly.  Love random DDs that aren't in a budget!

rdone

Fully back on meal planning and savings after my recent holiday (without the DH and surprisingly I spent a lot less without him!) and it's making me feel good.  DH went swimming Tues morning and I planned to go with him and do the food shop at A*sa.  However when I got there it wasn't open, and neither were any of the cheaper options so I had to go to Mr T instead.  Feel proud though as stuck to list, put some things back when I liked the look of them and spent £65 in total.  Hoping to go somewhere else next week to compare the cost.

The oil boiler saga continues in that I ordered oil and it'll be at least 5-6 weeks.  And we were only allowed to order from that company as we currently pay them a DD for our tank.  So boiler is always off unless we need hot water to shower - which we have worked out that for the two of us it needs to be on for half hour to heat up enough water.  Thankfully it's warm this week but our neighbour has said it's going cold again next week so that'll be fun.  We do have two electric heaters but they're not ideal either!

We do now have scaffolding up on the side of our house which is the start of the end of the oil.  We're taking the chimney out and then we'll have a new boiler (LPG gas) and be able to put an electric shower in our main bathroom so at least cold showers will be a thing of the past.  We looked into alternative heating systems but unless we reinsulated the entire house and put underfloor heating in (a recommendation from every one and every thing I read) it wouldn't be any good.  And we just can't afford to do all of that at the moment.

Our dream is to build our own home (which will be the only reason I will move from here) and I'm hoping it'll be off grid so there'll be no having to abide by price caps etc!

rdone

Yesterday ended up an expensive day as had to take the oldest dog to hydrotherapy.  But she loves it and after the awful and cruel life she has had I'll do anything to make her retirement with us a happy one!

Today I'm hoping to be a NSD, we have everything in for food and no plans to go anywhere.  DH has had every covid symtom this week but has tested negative everyday.  He's isolated anyway just to be safe!  We've had scrambled tofu for breakfast, got JP for lunch and I'm about to make pizza bases for tea - all from stores.

The only thing I think might ruin the NSD is if I manage to convince DH to ring his phone company and ask if there's any deals for him to upgrade his phone.  It currently lasts an hour without being on charge and is a hand me down from me - and I bought it in 2015.  Looking at some deals with his company they're only a few £ more a month than he's currently paying so worth it in my eyes!

Is anyone else checking their energy use every day?  I'm quite obsessed with seeing how much we spend and am making sure everything is turned off - even made sure our laptops were off at lunch times.  Not sure if it makes much difference but every little helps I guess!

rdone

We had a lovely weekend and actually kept spending to a minimum!  I volunteered at parkrun Saturday morning and DH went to cheer on some friends at a local duathlon then we went to pick up his mother a present, got a free cafe N each with a voucher and came home and spent the afternoon in the garden.

The dogs physio suggested buying a raised food bowl for them both (even the one who doesn't need physio), I went into lots of different shops but couldn't find any tall enough.  So DH knocked one up out of some left over bits of pallets that we had in the garden - absolute genius!  So we not only saved money but reused some left over items and didn't bring anymore plastic into our lives.  Happy days!  I also commented that if he cut down a tree it would give us an extra hour of sun, so that came down too.  Our garden is going to have a complete redesign this summer (not the final landscaped redesign but a cheap in the middle design) and as I did with our old garden there will be a lot of areas for wildlife so I'm happy with the tree being gone.

I think I mentioned that our chimney is being brought down tomorrow and this morning we made the decision that we would also pull out the old boiler and live without it for a while.  The price of oil is crazy (plus a 6 week wait at present!), we rent our tank at £80 a month(!), and if we pull out the hot water tank we can put an electric shower in (chimney and water tank are in the way in the bathroom for where I want the shower to go).  We ordered our new boiler a month ago but as yet have no delivery date... so it's a bit of a risk doing this if we don't have a new boiler by the time we want to put the heating on but that won't be for months yet!

Hoping this all ends up money saving, it should do but with electricity increasing it might not be - we'll just have to keep our fingers crossed.

WinterWarrior

We have an elderly oil tank that came with the house…we shine a torch in the top to see what’s left as the gauge died. I wouldn’t want to rent one…or replace this one! I don’t know if there’s an oil waiting list here as I’m trying to hold out a bit longer, but I’d be surprised as we’ve never had a wait before. 

rdone

That's the position we were in @WinterWarrior and unfortunately our tank split and we had to pay a lot of money for them to come and transfer it to a new tank so we didn't have a huge oil spill!  It was awful!  We only went with rent as we knew it was short term, we would have bought otherwise as it's £80 a month to rent!
My parents have been on oil for the last 15 years and are for the first time ever waiting.  The oil companies here are saying it's due to the war - how true this is I have no idea!  We did wait back in February for about 5 weeks and that was before the war so it seems to be a supply issue around here.

rdone

In good news the chimney has started to come down!  They've taken it off the roof and made the roof good and brought it through the attic and taken the cupboard out of the bathroom.  Tomorrow the chimney will come out of the bathroom and the utility and we'll be chimney free!  Very exciting.  Also spoke to the builder about the rest of the work and he said he has a price for me "somewhere" and will dig it out.  I cannot wait for this to be done, it's going to be incredible (if I do say so myself).

As the scaffolding is up we're going to paint the side of the house with paint that we bought for the old house but then moved so didn't use and my parents recently painted the outside of their house so using their paintbrushes etc - so no cost at all but a great job ticked off the very large list.

Bought a new dog running harness today which was probably far too much of an extravagance but the current one we use is just not comfortable for me.  I really need to get back to selling some things around this house, we have far too much and even though we're happily affording to pay the CC and everything we spend each month as well as saving something we do seem to waste a lot of money.

Talking of wasting money we didn't have a take away all last week!  Which for us is huge.  DH is playing squash tonight and is determined he's stopping at the chippy but as soon as I've finished typing this I'm going to make enchiladas to try and not have take away.  Because of where we live it actually takes longer to drive and pick up a take away than it does to make something (made vegan carbonara from scratch last night in less time) so it puts us off a lot.  Plus fuel prices and we're well over the millage in our car so trying not to use it!

rdone

Water tank is gone!  Most of the oil boiler is out except for the actual thing itself which will be going tomorrow.  It's all very exciting here.  No more oil to deal with!  We have around 400 litres in our tank so the oil company are going to barrel it and take it to my parents house which will save them a tidy fortune at the moment.

We're going through the renovation fund quite quickly and we still have rather a lot to go (not the entire house, we have a 5 year plan for that) but for this first bit and I'm trying not to worry as we knew we were going to be tight.  But it's rather scary!

I've been through our statements and we've hardly spent anything that isn't an absolute must.  We've also been really good at sticking to our meal plans.  We're away this weekend but most will be spent with my parents so hoping they'll pay for a few things.  Probably the most costly bit will be the 5 hour drive either way with petrol!

There was a different coffee on offer this week so I bought it and just took my first sip - eww!  Tastes like they burnt the beans and unfortunately the plumbers are drinking tea so can't even give to them.  Oh well, must not waste it.  Maybe I'll get used to it!

We've had quite the bargain on the new shower - bought the tray and glass off marketplace for a total of £120.  The tray is stone and 1500x900 and the glass is 1200 long.  I did a search and the cheapest glass I could find was £220 (plus £30 delivery as not in stock for us to click and collect) and tray £300.  My plumber was taking an electric shower out of someone else's property so he brought that along for us (would have been around £80).  So all in all a good saving!  This situation is only temporary until we get round to doing the bathroom reno (end of year 2 on the plan) but might now keep the tray and glass for good as they're what I would have chosen anyway.

CC is going down well.  I say well, it's got a DD for the reduced amount and is happily growing smaller each month.  Maybe I should start a new diary to limit spending for the renovation.  Probably better than talking about it here as it doesn't quite fit.

Baileys_Babe

What a bargain on the shower, even more so if you will keep it in the long term 😊

Boo to horrid coffee, I'm sure it will soon be gone