Getting shot of the mortgage sooner than 2049!

Honeysucklelou2

R1verf0rd also give the option of weekly, fortnightly, three weekly or monthly boxes and you can alternate between as you need or want to.

Bluegreen143

Thanks both of you! I’ll look into it, but the boxes I get locally aren’t organic so not sure that it’ll work out price wise to switch to organic.

MissRikkiC

We had A&C for a month or so and enjoyed the variety and might do Rivford too at some point. 

We also had one box from a local provider but it didn’t fit the bill as it was pretty much your roast dinner type vegetables which I know are cheap as chips otherwise and I don’t mind buying as we use them weekly. 

Shame yours hasn’t been that good but hopefully your email will help 

Bluegreen143

Got a few Tuesday Tasks done today:

- cancelled Kindle Unlimited (which I’d had as a free trial) 
- phoned GP to book in to replace contraceptive implant, but apparently I need to have a telephone appointment first before my face to face appointment (why?) and I need to wait until next Wed for the telephone appointment… yawn. At least the process has begun. As I already feel very conflicted about not having more babies I’d prefer if the process was at least less annoying 😆
- wrote up details on a cheque for £11 (travelling expenses I incurred a while ago for the clinical trial I was on; I’d forgotten entirely that they were sending a cheque to me!) and stuck in an envelope to get posted to Monzo bank tomorrow.

Tonight I plan to make BIL a birthday card and buy/print an Amazon voucher to go in it. Unimaginative but I’ve run out of mental space for gift getting 😅 finally, need to do the mealplan and amend the the Tesco order for tomorrow.

Food
Made really nice chocolate oat energy balls today. Will definitely make them again. They helped to use up some of the chocolate peanut butter I made before Christmas but didn’t love (nice taste but my food processor isn’t really strong enough so the texture wasn’t quite right).

Meals today:

B - porridge for me, cereal for kids
L - had an early pre-meeting lunch of two energy balls and (erm) a bag of crisps 🤣 then a later post-meeting lunch of sliced tomatoes on toast drizzled with balsamic & olive oil
D - mac & cheese with veggies in (with the kids will ignore) and veggie sticks on the side (which they are already eating even though I’m still making the pasta 🤣

Health & outdoor time 
Been doing well at getting to the play park or local community green space each dry day after school. Manages both days this week so far, it’s going to rain tomorrow apparently so will go to the library then instead 🙂 could be getting to bed earlier and eating less junk though…

Conservatory
We’ve decided what we want, and got a quote (£28,400). We can’t book it in yet because you need to pay 25% deposit if not using their finance, and we are adding it to the mortgage instead (yikes, their finance was 10% APR!). It will be another few weeks to get the mortgage confirmation but the conservatory company have confirmed they will honour the quote at that point. We will have some expenses very shortly for building inspection thingy (I’m not the technical one!) and also revaluing our house but we’ve put money aside for these.

themadvix

Can you not pay in the cheque to Monzo by taking a photo of it in the app? You can with Starling and even with quite a few old fashioned banks these days. Would save the stamp and the faff!

Bluegreen143

Alas no, you have to post it!

Bluegreen143

Hello diary friends!

Such a busy day today. I’m trying to designate Wednesday as “downstairs cleaning” day but I was too busy at work with lots of meetings, so I barely found time through the day to do the dishwasher never mind clean! 

Then after work I took the kids to the library so didn’t have time then. 

We had a most enjoyable time though as the library we went to has only just reopened this week after shutting in March 2020. Luckily we are midway between two, and the other has been open since the lockdown ended last spring. But it was fun to go to a different one and browse different books! And of course it’s a nice frugal way to keep the kids entertained.

Meals today:

B - chocolate & banana milkshake for the kids and I 

L - pastrami sandwich, veg sticks and two oat energy balls… also had two mini Milky Way type bars later on, oops 😆

D - teriyaki chicken with egg fried rice and broccoli (Red & I really enjoyed this meal but it was NOT a hit with either child. I’m talking refusal to eat most of it even when bribed with a sweet 🤣 next time I’ll serve the sauce on the side so they can have their chicken plain and just a taste of sauce, and maybe with plain rice too)

No spends to report today which is good! Petrol light came on the car and hoping to hold off til Red gets paid on Friday… we’ll see 🤣

Bluegreen143

Another busy and slightly stressful day at work. Ah well, I’m off on Fridays so that’s three days I don’t need to think about it!

We’ve booked a caravan for the long weekend at the start of June 🙂 one of Monkey’s school friends’ mums has become a good friend and asked if we wanted to join them going away that weekend. Very excited as the kids all play lovely together and we both get on with the adults. 

It’s £309 for the three nights which isn’t cheap but I’m happy to funnel a bit extra to the holiday fund to cover it. We do have 7 nights away booked at the end of June too (also a Scotland holiday) but we’ve got a good bit of that saved up already, 

We didn’t really do holidays at all when I wasn’t working and I’ve been really keen for us all to see more of Scotland as it’s atrocious how little of my own country I’ve explored! The place we are going is up in the highlands, it’s right on a beautiful beach, with lovely walks all round and there is a pool/restaurant/bar/activities etc on site if it rains 😆

Yesterday I managed to forget that I did have a big spend - £88.64 in Tesco. But Red is paying for £15 of it as he got a bottle of Port and lots of goodies he wanted. So that’s £73.64, most of which came from our groceries category but roughly £10 was pet stuff. So we should be OK for our grocery budget til payday.

Bluegreen143

Hello diary friends! Red gets paid Monday, not today, so I had to fill up the car - but just “borrowed” the money from another pot til then 😆

Had my first PT session at the gym today, was really good but think I’ll be sore tomorrow 🤣

Also had an appointment with the conservatory guy we are going with to go through it all, and paid £399 to do admin stuff and building regs stuff. We can’t pay our deposit yet til the extra mortgage borrowing is sorted out though. Unfortunately when I spoke to them and got the agreement in principle I was hoping that work would just give me a permanent contract so just gave them those details but in the end they could only extend it for 13 months (they have a freeze on permanent hires just now mainly due to Covid etc I think). So now I before I can do the actual application I need to phone the mortgage people and have that awkward conversation that actually the details aren’t right 🤦‍♀️ Google suggests that my mortgage company often gives mortgages if there’s at least 6 months left on a fixed term contract so hoping it’s OK 🤞🏼

Bluegreen143

Went to the park after school today - that’s 29.5 hours outdoors logged for January. My aim for February is to get at least 40 hours ☺️ am on 7 books read in 2022 - aiming for at least 52. 

Read a great book last week called “The Age-Well Project” discussing what health changes will be most impactful for becoming what they term “successful agers” or “super agers” eg the type of 80 year old who is independent, social, intellectually sharp and still active. 

I have a couple of grandparents who fit this bill (my 85 year old grandfather especially who plays bridge 3x a week, lunches out constantly, walks up to 20k steps a day, still does his own DIY and gardening and was regularly travelling abroad until widowed). I see a huge difference in their retirement experience and whole later life versus other family elders/grandparents who were infirm decades earlier and mainly sat and watched TV for hours a day. Probably not a coincidence that the grandparents in my life who have had health in their 80s were the well off ones- it’s much easier to remain healthy, active and socially engaged if you have enough spare cash to live a healthy, active lifestyle! Bit harder if you’re constantly worried about money and can’t afford to put your heating on never mind anything else!

However putting aside the money aspect and the obvious point that nothing you can do can guarantee good health, there was a lot of common sense in the book about doing what we can to reduce our risk. So suggested activities for healthy aging include the obvious physical stuff - lots of healthy plant-based foods, walking and strength-based exercise - to tips around keeping engaged both socially and intellectually with the world around you.

Interestingly the authors didn’t think much of early retirement (apparently it’s a big risk factor for earlier death and illness) but instead suggested aiming for part time work or a career change in later life, or switching to voluntary work, if you don’t enjoy your job - but not giving up work entirely. Food for thought as currently I’m already looking forward to my (hopefully early) escape!

Anyway, back to money-saving! 

Dinner today was butternut squash & coconut soup with (shop bought) crusty breads and apple crumble/ice cream for pud.

Red got paid today so transferred £1k to the joint account and the rest will follow tomorrow as he can only do £1k at a time. So closed off my January YNAB and started budgeting the £1k into Feb.