Our forever home

bellevie

Last weekend flew by and now suddenly so has the week!

Tea turned into lunch with friends as time was changed. It was a lovely afternoon.

One of my friends is going to be joining my team at my workplace. I am so happy for her, and my team she truly is a gem,  I worked with her for 6 years prior to us going in different directions after the restructure. One other person has also secured a post and I think there's a case going forward for a 3rd. Fingers crossed, it'll be great to have a full team again.

Home wise DH is planning to get the kitchen done in October, months ago now we picked up a second hand kitchen for £200. We need a new worktop, dh wants a new sink and we will change the flooring I hope to keep it all under 600 in total. the reason for my penny pinching is DH does want to extend the kitchen but that's some way away, so this is our interim kitchen that hopefully won't fall apart for 5 years. Current kitchen is rotting, we had hoped to just need to replace doors but the units are just too weak.

Starting to panic slightly for the winter ahead, we are locked in to our gas tariff until February but keeping an eye on the new tariffs, the unit charge has close to doubled and so has the daily standing charge. Looking at the standing charge only that will add an extra 241 to our yearly bill. The house cost a fortune to heat last winter it was a shock to the system seeing the cost spiral on the meter.

We've now got carpet with good underlay, new doors and curtains so I'm.hoping that takes the edge off.

bellevie

I have only just noticed the mortgage interest is added daily, so my signature updates have not been correct at all 😔

Decided to amend to track the over payment amount which is accurate. 

We have a small SO set at £25 at the minute that's gone up and down over the past few months, at times we've managed £60, other times as low as £5.

I managed to check yesterday's balance and today's, interest charged £24.92, I wondered then if tomorrow's interest will be a little higher again because of the updated balance. Decided to check it daily for a while and note the difference in my diary.

Kakiste

I feel you on heating costs. Ive managed to build £150 credit across the summer and I'm hoping that the buffer as well as keeping the heating off until its really needed should keep our costs down. 

bellevie

That's a good position to be in. We didn't manage to build a credit, our supply was taken over earlier this year our dd was set too low, i increased it as soon as our account was up and running but it took a fee months. We should be at £0 balance by October with extra payments we are making, then need to build up a buffer as quickly as we can.

bellevie

£25 overpayment went out today, overnight interest was £24.86.

Kakiste

Every little helps. 

bellevie

It is definitely better than nothing at the moment.

Ontop of the usual bills we have just over 400 per month going on buy now pay later bits for the house. They will wrap up by Feb. For a few months that money will move to our ivf fund for the final push, when that's over and done with we can look to increase our Overpayments 🎉

bellevie

It's been a spendy month!

Strangely a few days before social media black out I'd decided to start printing photos so had ordered close to 400 prints - thank goodness for the 50% off deals! It all went down and I thought I actually don't want to post anymore its full of adverts these days anyway. When it came back up I went through the remaining online albums and printed. Just need some physical photo albums now. 

The fuel crisis calmed this week, prices have not though it cost a fair chunk to top up.

I've been slowly picking up christmas and birthday presents. Dd is done, still a bit more to get for dh.

DH is going to start knocking through a kitchen wall tomorrow itll make our kitchen around a metre wider, taking a larder style area from our utility room. And the bargain kitchen sitting in our garage should be in place by the end of the week. We really are excited!! Well not so much for more wall paper stripping, painting, hammering but for the finished outcome absolutely 🥳😊

bellevie

We ended up going a topsy-turvy way round out kitchen work. We had dates booked in for DH and friend to fit kitchen. Planning to paint and tile evenings running up to that. We both ended up being flat out work wise and were shattered. So new kitchen was fitted as planned but we are still to tile and paint. Both still tired after working flat out last weekend and this week so not sure we will progress this weekend.

Still kitchen feels great already.

Mse wise, had a shock that contents and buildings insurance was going up £61 for no reason. I ran a search and found a quote £145 cheaper than renewal for identical choices.  That saves £8 on existing dd per month.

I have switched temporarily from my spreadsheets to my hand written notes. I'm so sick of staring at a screen I rarely want to get my laptop out evenings. Will try tracking spends in my notebook too see if that keeps me on track grocery wise.

powerspowers

Ooh yay for new kitchen! I seem to remember out last kitchen had to wait for tiles and paint as we were fed up by the time we fitted it 😂 you’ll get there