The end is in sight

Porridgecat

That's my cat @Chiglepig.

Porridgecat

I've bought a large very multi coloured filing box folder type thing and spent yesterday afternoon and some of this morning sorting paper out. Put everything over six years old into the 'to e safely disposed of' pile and located and went through all the random piles of paper stuffed in odd places and filed most of them. There's a few bits that MrP has to make decisions on / put somewhere else, mainly to do with his dad's estate from last year but its now one finite pile and not lots of bits in odd places. Am I the only one though that finds that despite many of our transactions being on line now I'm getting more and more stuff needing shredding or burning? 

beanielou

Laughing at the car 
Funny how they rule our lives in so many ways!

powerspowers

Naughty cats! Just caught up, you’re latest op update is impressive 🙂
Apparently there’s a shortage of garden gnomes! Lack of raw materials and everyone doing their garden, so I’m not surprised about the furniture. You’ll get there though 

Porridgecat

I've been really busy for a bit and haven't really had much to update. I guess that's the problem with making big overpayments at the beginning of the month, I'll be checking budgets carefully later to see if I can overpay any more. On the down side, we had an email from Octopus to say we were behind according to our meter reading which I assume is due to wfh during the lockdown so I've made an extra payment and hopefully we'll be on an even keel now. 
I've got £7.59 in PA so I'll move that later and see if I can add it anywhere else to make overpayments.

Porridgecat

First overpayment of the month made £562.75. I'm not quite sure how many more I'll be able to make this month. We've had a spendy couple of weeks. I've had two lots of £481 for ceramic teeth caps. I could have just had amalgam fillings but didn't want that, I don't really like to compromise on health costs when we do actually have the money available, we then spent nearly  £100 on various garden bits and yesterday our vacuum cleaner died so we bought a new one for £199. Its been mostly covered by sinking funds but I did move £250 from my little easily available emergency funds for the second dentist bill, we'd paid out £318 pounds in Feb for MrP's new glasses so that and nearly  £1000 on dental bills has wiped that fund out. I think I'm going to budget some of the usual overpayment amount into filling that fund up, hopefully we won't need much now for quite a while but I will be happier if there's something in it. 
I had also planned to put £500 more into long term savings this month as they've been a bit neglected lately. We've opened a vanguard investment account and will be putting £100 a month into that from June, just to give us another different savings vehicle. MrP has increased his pension payments by 1.5% to 7.5% which is the maximum his employer will match, although they actually match it to 10.5%, so more building up there as well. 
I'll have a play around and see what's what in YNAB later.
In other news we've booked hotels for three nights in June along the North coast route in Scotland, we only just got the last room in our first choice in Ullapool as it seems lots of other people have the same idea. the money is budgeted in the holiday fund.

Porridgecat

I've made a second overpayment of £250 into the mortgage, making £812.75 in total. I've also put an extra £250 into long term savings this month and topped up some pots with the extra £500. I'm feeling much more comfortable now I know that there is money in the medical/dental/glasses pot if we need it. 
That means its probably it for the overpayments this month unless we manage to save some more bits in various budgets. Next month we'll have the extra £100 going out to vanguard which I'd like to try and cover from savings in other places (this could turn out to be hopelessly optimistic) and I want to chat to MrP about upping our charity budget. I watched a vlog yesterday by an American woman who was talking about being frugal ignorer to be able to spend money where they chose to and on what they prioritised, one of the things she spoke about was giving and helping others. I remembered that we had agreed that when we'd paid on one particular bill we'd look at giving more to certain causes but hadn't actually done so. I'll look at things this weekend as I'm not sure where we'll 'put' it, I research our charities as much as our purchases, if I'm paying something I want value for money 

Chiglepig

Boo to vacuums and dentists!

Really good  progress, Porridgecat.

That's really interesting about giving. MrChigle picks one cause per year, and usally tries to make it local or otherwise underserved. Some causes I agree, financial donations make most sense (for me foodbanks so that they can balance and prioritse their stock), but there are also other things to consider, like always completing giftaid forms when offered, donating good quality items to charity shops (in a considerate way), volunteering time (I run a volunteering module for undergrads, the benefits for both sides are amazing and sometimes humbling).

Porridgecat

Another small £20 overpayment yesterday. I sold some china on eBay with / for MIL and had forgotten that some bits were mine, fortunately she hadn't and gave me an unexpected £80 on Saturday so I've split it evenly between long term and short term savings, the mortgage and the holiday fund.  So I've overpaid by £832 now. 

Porridgecat

This feels like a very long week and its only Tuesday. the students are pretty nuts at the moment, loads of silly squabbling, being horrid to each others and lots of vandalism going on in the school. Not sure quite what it is, we are starting to pick up some who are really struggling and know that a few with real behaviour issues are finding things hard but this seems to be completely across the board at the moment. 
Still only two weeks to go after this one and then we're off to Scotland for the week, it'll be good just to get away for a bit and always great to see friends.