Forever Starts Now

Cheery_Daff

Ooh,what a lovely evening! And a good tip for the pizzas - I got a pizza stone for Christmas and my family are meant to be coming tomorrow for a pizza party. I was going to make them one at a time though and just roll and put straight onto the stone, I hope that works after your experience! 😮

starnac

Goals for 2022

Money
Last year we threw every last penny we had into savings ready to move. Thanks to a tax mess up by the solicitors we had to completely wipe out our savings as the house cost us more than we had budgeted for.

Everything is more expensive in this house as it's bigger and in a nicer area. Mortgage, council tax and utilities, which means we don't have as much spare cash as we did. I would like to start building up some emergency savings and also to reduce the mortgage to the next 10 bracket. That should be done by regular payments plus a few overpayments. 

Health
I need to lose weight! I put on at least a stone over the lockdowns and it needs to go. I feel sluggish and a lot of my clothes don't fit. Thankfully I am still working from home for the foreseeable future but I can't go on like this! I am 40 this year and want to feel good about myself. 

I am a runner and my weight is affecting both my actual running and my motivation to run. I have a few races that were deferred from last year and a few others that I want to do so losing weight must be a priority for me!

House
In January I would like to concentrate on our bedroom. I did say this would be the last one done as no one sees it but us, but that was before DH started pulling the wallpaper off in there "to see what was underneath" ARGH! So the rest needs to come off and that room painted. I'm hoping it's as easy as that. 

The bottom garden needs to be ready for chickens, hopefully in the spring. DH is currently building a wood store so that we can have wood for the fire next winter. Next on the list is the chicken run (DH) and the veg garden (me)

Family
I am 40 this year EEK! and I would like to celebrate with a family holiday (Covid allowing).

I would also like to have a bit more fun this year, especially with the kids. They are growing up and I'm going to blink and they'll be married with their own families. 


I think this is enough to be going on with for now!

starnac

Cheery_Daff said:

Ooh,what a lovely evening! And a good tip for the pizzas - I got a pizza stone for Christmas and my family are meant to be coming tomorrow for a pizza party. I was going to make them one at a time though and just roll and put straight onto the stone, I hope that works after your experience! 😮

Let me know if it works  

Karmacat

Lovely plan, starnac, with everyday living as well, it sounds nicely full but not overwhelming.  Your 40th will be great!  I was quite pleased to turn 40 by the time it came around, because every time I'd say to a new person "I'm 39", I'd get lots of jokes about shaving years off my age ... it got quite boring after a while!

savingholmes

Someone said to me - that people get happier with age. I think there's some truth in that. In my 40s I started caring a lot less what others thought and that brought increased freedom...  

Happy New Year

Jessy103

Happy New Year! All the best for your targets this year 🙂

starnac

Happy New Year all. Thank you for the comments about turning 40. 

It's quite odd actually as I've been dreading turning 40, to the point where I've led in bed unable to sleep because my brain has been going "40! only 10 years to 50, then you'll be 60, wow your life is almost over" but as it's getting closer I'm calmer. I'm actually looking forward to turning 40. Age is nothing in the grand scheme of things. I'm really surprised by my new attitude to be honest. It's nice! 

starnac

Almost back to normality now. DH has gone back to work. Kids are supposedly going back to school on Thursday, we are just waiting to find out if there will be new restrictions here in Wales surrounding that. 

I'm working from home for the foreseeable future, which is a bit sad really as a new office space was built for my myself and another coworker so that we had the option of having company while we worked. Now the rules say we can't use it as we have to work from home. I was looking forward to having company for a few hours that doesn't have 4 legs and woof! Never mind! 

Today I plan to go through our finances. Most of our bills should have come out today, the first working day of the month and I think I need to have a shuffle of money between accounts. 

starnac

Banks are a nightmare. My NW account is showing the mortgage payment as gone but it has yet to arrive in my mortgage account. I mean how hard is it these days? It's not like someone has to actually walk the money from one bank to another! 

In other money news, I took my eye off the ball a bit in December and we are now in our overdraft. It was a combination of Christmas and not really knowing how much our new bills were in this house. All our bills have gone out though and DH will be paid in 10 days time. 

In the meantime, I have made a budget so that I know how much money we need each month to pay the bills. Our gas bill seems quite high but that's because this house is much bigger than our last one. The kids go back to school tomorrow, meaning I'll be the only one in the house all day so I can turn the heating down and wear a thicker jumper if needed. That will reduce the bill slightly. 

We sat down as a family and made a meal plan for the week. That will help with both budget and my waistline! We will only buy what we need for the meal plan which will stop us popping to the shop for milk and spending £30! It will also stop takeaways and food waste. 

It's so easy to take your eye off the ball isn't is? I must try harder! 

Cheery_Daff

Gosh, yes, it is SO easy, and then the money just dances round in the bank account and gets up to all kinds of mischief. Most pesky. Definitely better to keep an eye on it, although obviously I often don't manage that myself 😂

It took me months to settle into the bills in our new house, what with refunds from the old one, not taking meter readings on the first day, some people charging in advance etc. It did settle down though (and is a lot more expensive than the old house...). Hope you can get on top of things more quickly, and your gas bill settles a little. We're not on mains gas so I imagine ours will always feel ludicrous, although I'm hoping having a working thermostat on the boiler will make some difference!

Sorry about your office, what a nuisance. Hope you can get back there soon.