Learning to walk before I run

edinburgher

Bought a 5.6kg turkey reduced to £2.50. Mrs E is going to murder me 😂

KajiKita

edinburgher said:

Bought a 5.6kg turkey reduced to £2.50. Mrs E is going to murder me 😂

You remind me of the elderly chap at the fish counter in moreesons when I was buying the trout. He had already bought two whole salmon’s worth of steaks and was debating buying a third … His granddaughter was saying ‘Don’t granppy, gran will kill you!’ He did anyway! 😉😊

KK

rtandon27

@edinburgher - if you are doing the cooking of the 5.6kg monstrosity then MrsE will be singing your praises!

edinburgher

@KajiKita - I love that story! 😄

@rtandon27 - the beast is already in the oven and is 2/3 done. I've also had to make stock from the last carcass to free up a freezer shelf. Mrs E's reaction was what I expected - momentary shocked outrage (very mild) followed by good humoured acceptance of my nature. "I forget I'm not allowed to let you go to the shops after Christmas!" Followed by "didn't something similar happen last year? 🤔" I think that was a 7lb ham... 😂

rtandon27

@edinburgher - I'm not technically allowed in the shops after xmas either, but I do have a list of things we actually need to get whch are currently on sale so were ordered online - I've said to OH that I"m going for a walk to Waitflower tomorrow morning to get a free coffee & his answer was that I was to leave the rucksack at home & yellow stickers were to be limited only to things that are on the grocery list that I'm able to carry in a small shopper & that it did not include any kind of chocolate!

Suffolk_lass

I invited people over to avoid the opportunity to shop, but I might yet go today for more veg...

edinburgher

I slightly regretted the small dinosaur cooking project by the time I had finished cooking and the dishwasher went on for the third time... I ended up with 4x 500g bags of turkey (2.5 dark meat, 1.5 white meat) and the bulk of a leftover breast. There was also enough bones for 2x freezer bags for stock. Turkey isn't particularly generous in the meat/bones ratio. My previous set of turkey bones was enough for 1l of lovely concentrated stock, tastes like Chrismas

I think today will be leftover turkey (Christmas), pickles and veg, cheese board again, and the remains of a small jar of keta caviar that's lurking in the fridge. It's a hard life (burp)! My Dad is visiting tomorrow, so I'll stock up on some reasonable supermarket cakes and biccies today. We won't need to feed him, which simplifies things greatly.

We had a bit of a chat before Christmas and decided that 3 years was unrealistic for our extension, much as we might like it. We've decided to give ourselves 5 years instead, and have upped our target to £60,000 cash contribution. Although we felt that we could readily save the £50,000 over 3 years with a fair wind, this allows a little more wiggle room and I'd rather extend with an 8-year-old DD2 than a 5/6-year-old. We will still aim to carry out some other renovations during the 5 years, including a bathroom renovation and various garden repairs/projects. We're attempting to be pragmatic rather than backsliding, the monthly ask is still a hefty £983 + the cost of any other renovations (oh blue shrieking emoji, I miss you so).

• £20.36 OPed (doubtless one of the last at 6.15%)!
• £6.30 moved to EF
• £6.89 withdrawn from Prolific and paid into my personal spends account
• A few £ moved to my personal savings account
• A couple of £ moved to my personal tax savings account

Off to the shops with the girls, hope everyone else is having a relatively relaxed break.

Greying_Pilgrim

ed - stop being so hard on yourself.  I didn't read extending project saving perameters to 5 yrs from 3 as backsliding!   Far from it!  Your being practical - heavens, you've even built in a bigger cost overshoot to allow for price rises/different design requirements/ideas in the interim.  If anyone has thought through this project from every which way, well then it's you and MrsE.  As you say, even with a reasonable timeframe, the saving criteria is still quite an ask.  ed you and the fam. have set yourself a worthwhile target that will require considerable reach, and consistent perserverance - good luck! (not that you will need it - but I envisage your spreadsheet will constantly be running red-hot with budgetary machinations! 😁).

Greying X

edinburgher

Thank you @Greying_Pilgrim- force of habit! 

MIL has informed Mrs E that she will no longer be giving cash gifts to either her or SIL. While there is, of course, no obligation whatsoever for a parent to send their children cash, Mrs E has always welcomed and made good use of these small infusions, particularly as she doesn't have any of the beer money options that I do (wrong demographics). 

MIL has expressed surprise that her outgoings have been so high over the last year and appears to have no insight into the cost of dating someone after a 40+ year break, her increasing reliance on takeaways or the impact of subbing a non-contributing adult child for 3+ years Check me out, I sound like a broadsheet article bemoaning Gen Z spending trends Joking aside, I do worry that she isn't grasping the impact of inflation, and I know that she doesn't budget or track spending in any way. 

Hypotheses aside, we will try and limit the impact for Mrs E. I've updated YNAB to reflect a 3% uplift to our personal spends from January, this should replace the missing monies. It's not a huge amount but it will make a useful difference and after all, that's what money is for, eh? We have intentionally kept things relatively restrained on the personal spends front after we lost them entirely after the mini budget fankle and the financial pressures from that have started to ease.

Nearly time for dinner. The last of the Christmas turkey (plenty of post-Christmas turkey still to come), roasties made from the stoorie pre-Christmas potatoes, carrots and gravy using some of the tasty HM stock from yesterday. I am starving!

Suffolk_lass

They are not the same, but close - Are these those you miss??