A new royal start

QueenJess

Having a very lazy day today before going back to work tomorrow.  Had a rifle through the cupboards and the nicely organised freezer and I don't think I need anything.  If I really need something I can pop out to the corner shop, but otherwise staying away from supermarkets this week.  I have the usual Riverford veg/fruit delivery this week and will pop to the farm shop that's on the way back from gymnastics on Saturday to get my usual fix of cheese.

Today's lunch is spicy swede and parsnip soup with pumpkin seeds and tons left over for the fridge/freezer.  Dinner is hm pizza with the last of the pizza dough defrosting on the side right now.  Will throw whatever I can onto it.... it is looking like local soft cheese, sun dried tomatoes, peppers and mushrooms.  Next time I make the dough I'm going to do 50:50 with white and brown flour to see if anyone notices.  Need some more bread, but don't quite have the time to do it today (got up too late!), so will make a loaf tomorrow.

Keeping a very close eye on the budget at the moment and feeling quite a bit poorer after I redid the budget.  Waiting for tomorrow when the mortgage comes out and I will round it down using whatever I've managed to squeeze into the savings account so far.

Edit: Realised I forgot to add in desserts *shock*, but the freezer is nicely stocked with chocolate brownies and there is still banana bread and shortbread in the tin.  No one will be going hungry!  Will also check on the Riverford order later and see if I can curtail it even more based on what I think we may need over the next week.

QueenJess

Having seen the news on mortgage rates reducing, I had a look online and saw that the tracker I signed up to is no longer competitive and actually the fixed rate mortgages are looking better (even factoring in the best guess of where interest rates will end up).  So I rang them up and cancelled the other offer and signed up to a 2 year fix instead.  This will mean our mortgage will increase £120 rather than £250 a month and is more manageable. 

The only downside is that I will be constrained on the amount of overpayments we can make each year (to 10% of the balance at the start of the overpayment year).  As the mortgage fix comes to an end at the end of the month, I need to go and see if there is anything I can move around in my accounts to release cash to use as much of the overpayment allowance as I can before the end of Jan and pay myself back later.  I'm considering taking it out of the emergency fund and repaying myself over the next few months before saving again for the next overpayment period.  DH wants to put some cash in too and so we just need to work that out.  In the meantime, I did round down the mortgage and it is currently £137,400.  I will have a think and probably make another overpayment tomorrow or next week.

So the new aim will be to try and max out the overpayment allowances each year and see if we can get below £100k in 2 years time when the fix ends.  Everything will be reassessed in 2 years time as we will no longer have nursery fees then and so I may be able to pay down the mortgage quicker or alternatively throw money into my pension and retire earlier.

Other than this it is back to the reality of work, although struggling to get myself into the mindset.  I've written myself a big list of things to do today, although as much home stuff as work stuff on there.  About to throw a load of washing on and the bread is already proving.  Back to gym tonight, so DH and DS will be fending for themselves later as I have to eat really early.  I am making a tofu stir fry with noodles for lunch and dinner will either be the leftover soup from yesterday or more likely the leftover stew from Tuesday.  I don't eat desserts on Thursdays as it doesn't work out, but there is fruit, banana bread, chocolate brownies, yogurt and shortbread for DH and DS.

QueenJess

After a lot of thought, I decided not to deplete some of my emergency fund to overpay the mortgage, even if I could repay it in the next couple of months.  Looking at the long game, although I would love to get the mortgage paid off, there is no point in leaving myself uncomfortable to do that and then have to blast through enough savings for retirement post that date.  It actually makes more sense to save for retirement/emergencies with extra going to the mortgage, even if it means it takes longer.

DH had the whole of the 10% overpayment saved up, but also decided to only part with some of it for his own emergency funds.  So in the end we have paid down to a lovely new mortgage total of £130,000.  Spare cash will still go to the mortgage over the next couple of years and I would love to get to the maximum overpayment, but it is more important to make sure I am contributing enough to pension etc first and not making myself asset rich and cash poor.

Lunch today is leftover stew and hot rolls and dinner will be easy jacket potato and beans as I have too many potatoes right now.  Will be making some ice cream at lunch, but dessert options are still yogurt, ice cream, chocolate brownie, banana bread and shortbread.

QueenJess

Ouch. Why is January always so expensive? Although saying that I have DH’s birthday, my mums birthday, then immediately in Feb DS’s birthday and my birthday, then a couple of weeks break for DH’s dads birthday and another 3 weeks until DD’s birthday. Serves us all right for being winter babies!

Did a massive shop on my day off today as we were low on multiple things and managed to spend £210!!!!! It did include loads of stuff I don’t buy as often (tissues, cooking oil, nappies, toothpaste etc). It will definitely last 2 weeks, but we have lots now, so hoping with the odd top up we can last the month now. I have milk deliveries and all my fruit/veg delivered weekly, so there are still ongoing costs.

I also popped into IKEA (I timed myself from when I parked the car to when I got back into the car and it took me 17 mins!). I am very focused and take all the shortcuts, so was in and out just with the small list of things I needed including batteries and some protective desk pads for the kids so they don’t ruin everything in sight. I did treat myself to a windowsill greenhouse which I’m hoping will germinate seeds a bit quicker. It’s already up and I’ve sown some herb seeds I already had as I love fresh herbs and am trying (very slowly) to make all our diets more healthy. I have managed to finally change our diets so that we have 4-6 days a week meat free (frankly amazing considering DH always thought a meal without meat wasn’t a meal) and DH has even been using more of the veg when he cooks. The kids have been weaned off expensive and unhealthy snacks at home and partly when we are out and about and are eating a lot more fruit. It makes my Riverford delivery more expensive, but I’m not going to complain about that!

Also made a loaf of bread, another batch of vanilla ice cream and prepped the pizza dough for tonight. I used 150g of brown flour to 450g of white to see if anyone notices. If not I will slowly increase it. Sadly I am very low on yeast now and so will have to do an online order for that.

Lots of expense so far this year and coming up.  Need to pay for DH’s present and my mum’s present and the main present for DS (everything else for him has already been acquired). DH also wants to go out for a nice lunch on his birthday in the week (just us). Later in the month I will need to get some bits for DS’s party - it’s a cheap at home affair where I will make the cake and some pizzas and we will play games. But I will need to buy ingredients and a few little prizes for the games. DD also has been told she’s moving up in nursery to the final year and they are require to wear a uniform 🙄. All nurseries round here seem to do that and personally I think it’s unnecessary. They provide one jumper and polo shirt, but we have to buy the rest, so that’s more expense.

In my aim to do more stuff for me, I went out at the weekend in London, although it was for a friend’s party as he’s emigrating 😢. I also went out for dinner last night to a local pub with a neighbour as we never seem to be able to get together, so put a date in the diary. So feeling poor already and lots of expense left to come and it’s only the start of the month! I think the overpayment in Feb will be small or non existent. Need to do a few surveys this month to see if I can put some money aside.

Absolutely tons to do at work for all the handover I need to do. I have 8 hours of handover time in the diary and I don’t even think it’s enough! Only 7 weeks to go and then I can start the new job!

Been so busy today that this is the first time I’ve sat down all day whilst DS is swimming. Speaking of which, he finishes soon and it takes 5 mins to walk back around to pick him up so I’d better run!

QueenJess

After all that spending yesterday, I'm more in conservation mode now!  I remembered that the reason my personal account looked very low was because I haven't submitted my work expenses and so I've done that this morning.  It's already been approved, so hopefully it'll be paid soon.  I've also done the odd Opinium and Prolific surveys and treated them as breaks from work.

As it's gym later, I need to make sure I eat well and have lots of filling things with no big sugar spikes (otherwise it's a disaster if your sugar levels crash as the class is 8:30pm-10:15pm and you just can't do gymnastics without proper energy, but I also need to eat at least 3 hours before the class starts so my stomach is relatively empty otherwise it makes me feel a bit ill).  So lunch was a spicy stir fry with noodles and tofu to use up a load of fridge veg (onions, purple cabbage, green cabbage, red pepper and sweetcorn).  I also cut up loads of beetroot, celeriac, sweet potato and leeks which I roasted in lots of harrisa sauce.  The plan is to have this with some couscous for my early dinner.  There should be lots of veg leftover for another day, but DH keeps picking at it, so that remains to be seen!  DH is making pesto pasta for himself later and DS is having leftover hm pizza from yesterday.  No one noticed I put brown flour in the pizza, so I will increase it again for next time.

Right, really better do some work now.  Just struggling to concentrate and get back into it post time off at Xmas and the knowledge I am leaving soon anyway!

South_coast

Ooh, thanks for the pizza mention - just reminded me to get the dough out of the freezer for tomorrow 👍!

QueenJess

South_coast said:

Ooh, thanks for the pizza mention - just reminded me to get the dough out of the freezer for tomorrow 👍!

No problem... there is no shortage of food mentioned here.  I love food, just in case anyone didn't get that

So apparently couscous raised my blood sugar a bit too quickly and I had a minor crash at gym (solved by eating my emergency banana).  I should try wholegrain, but I need to eat up the amount we have left and I'm the only one who will eat it.  Saying that DH is really lazy and so if I cook he will eat it as the alternative would be to make something himself!  So back to the wholegrain pasta before gym for me.  No great harm done and I spent the whole session doing conditioning stuff which my arms and abs are definitely recognising now!

Breakfast today was banana, yogurt, kefir, flaxseeds and hm granola.  I tried kefir for the first time this week and actually I really like it (I thought I might hate it), so that's been added to my daily diet now.  Lunch will be the leftover harissa roasted veg from yesterday, although I will add some chickpeas to it when I reheat and serve with some couscous.  As I have too many leeks and potatoes, dinner will be leak and potato soup with some crusty half baked rolls from the freezer and hopefully more leftovers for easy in the week dinners.  DH doesn't believe soup is a dinner, but I do tend to make them really thick so they even fill him up!

If I'm feeling virtuous I'll whip up the chickpea water to make meringues; if not, I'll shove it in the fridge to deal with on another day!  As it's the weekend, I will rummage around for some apples to make an apple and cinnamon crumble for desserts.

It will definitely be a NSD today and I've just reached £5 on Prolific, so my bank account can be slightly increased today.  Sadly we have a dying motor on our filtration system and so we are getting someone to fix that when he has time.  It's another £195 I didn't know I needed to spend this month .  DS has also got a couple of awards at gymnnastics, which yes, as you guessed, require to be paid for tomorrow.  Hopefully I'll be able to slightly catch up with myself a bit next month as there will be no council tax coming out.

No plans yet for the weekend, but DH is saying it is his birthday weekend and he wants to go to some car show thing.  I would hate it and DD would be bored, so looks like it will be a girly day on Sunday.  Tomorrow we are lounging around (and taking DS to gymnastics) and I am looking forward to a roast chicken, lots of veg, roast potatoes and hm yorkshire puddings for dinner.  Lunch will probably need to be the favourite leek and cheese orzotto as we really seem to have acquired a lot of leeks!

themadvix

Ooh, if you'd like some kefir grains to grow your own kefir, let me know - mine will no doubt have multiplied again very soon!

QueenJess

themadvix said:

Ooh, if you'd like some kefir grains to grow your own kefir, let me know - mine will no doubt have multiplied again very soon!

Ooh - thanks. I may take you up on that, but not quite organised enough at the moment. Once I sort myself out and have got through my backlog of stuff to do I’ll give you a shout!

LadyWithAPlan

Sounds all busy and focused at yours ! £130k is still heading in the right direction
No doubt you are ready to move onto the new job not having to handle the last bits of your current one.