Simple living in the country - back to basics

slm6002

Just checked my £50 premium bought for me when I was born in 1977 - it is not me lol.  Have never won but DD's and DS have won a few times since getting theirs

Cheery_Daff

@Elisheba I used the tracing service as my mum thought someone had bought me £5 when I was born - they had! Sadly, they had won precisely nothing in the interim 😂😂 Definitely worth tracing! 

Sadly nothing for me this month 🙄

Is this incessant fog going to ever let up?? Feel like I've not been able to see out of the windows for weeks 😂😂

Mind you, it's meant to turn cold up here next week so I'll probably be longing for fog again... 🙄😂

Elisheba

Thanks, @Cheery_Daff, I'll look into it! 

Cheery_Daff

Let us know if you've been sitting on a fortune all these years! 😁

Had a thought about financial goals for next year (sorry, I can't remember who was talking about that on their own thread this week!)

I want to sort out savings accounts.

At the minute we have premium bonds (well, they're all in my name so I suppose that's another thing to sort out!) We've got other savings accounts with the usual bank but there's no interest, and we don't use them.

I use YNAB, so everything is in virtual pots, so I don't see the bank balance and think "yay, shopping spree!", I look at what is in each YNAB pot and move it around virtually in there.

However, that does mean that there's now more money in the current account than there is in premium bonds... 🙄😂

That was fine when interest rates were a pittance, but perhaps less fine now. 

Don't want to lock it all away of course - a lot of it is saving for things that will be spent, eg MOT, LPG bill (which can be up to £900 at a time as we pay per delivery, not per month), house and car insurance etc. 

Jan/Feb is often quite startling as we have house and car insurance, usually an LPG bill, TV licence etc - all saved for, but does deplete the overall bank balance somewhat.

Anyway, we are finally back to being able to save from normal monthly income again now (not just extras like the Happy Wheel), and with interest rates rising, it seems sensible to divide things up a bit. 

Not something I'm going to investigate properly right now, but one to ponder...

Baileys_Babe

My premium bonds were given to me when I was born. I had lost all track of them, probably with my parents. I used the tracking service and found my holdings were 50% bigger than I thought £3 not £2 🤣 that has been my only PB win to date.

I'm further north than you @Cheery_Daff and we too have had fog for what feels like months, in reality, it is more like a fortnight, I am so needing sunshine.

Cheery_Daff

Woo hoo to your extra holdings BB! 😂😂

Delighted to report that the fog seems to have lifted a bit! Good job, as I'm always disappointed if we have visitors and they can't see the view 😂 Mind you, it's flipping freezing out there 🥶🥶🥶

Right, plan for the morning

* breakfast
* shower and dressed
* tidy up, probably with flylady podcast for company 😂
* nip to village shop for milk and cake (yes, I could make one, but I'm not exactly a master baker and my cakes are usually a bit experimental...). Also not putting thr oven on for just one cake, and don't have time to make anything else to go in it!
* make some chicken porridge to dole out later

Probably won't be any more time after that - they're due at 11 and they are the 'older, more responsible, and less layabout hippy' end of my friends spectrum so will likely be roughly on time 😂😂

Cheery_Daff

Well, I've managed breakfast and nothing else... Best get a shift on, not long to tidy up 😮

Another minor annoyance (they're coming thick and fast at the minute!) - my laptop order has been cancelled 😡 Email from Back Market said 'It looks like our seller has had some trouble synchronising their stock.' - or, in other words, they were selling they didn't actually have 🙄 Not sure why it's taken 3 days to figure that out but hey ho.

Have found another one with similar spec, but for £15 more so that will have to do. Let's hope that's not cancelled as well! (It's a different refurbished so fingers crossed). 

Let's also hope it doesn't get lost in the mysterious post vortex between here and the local village! 

And now I really MUST get dressed!!

Cheery_Daff

Well, I did manage to tidy up, so the house feels nice and organised now 😁 Visitors were cheerful, we had tea and cake and a stomp round the fields, then have been to the cafe for lunch. I'm home, chickens have had bedtime treats (they'll be in bed by 4 i imagine), and I'm just going to have a cuppa (and maybe another sneaky bit of cake) before getting on with the funding bid again for a few hours.

Would be nice to get a proper draft of the main bit tonight. I did a lot last night, but a lot of it was notes, ideas,  decisions etc - all important but I could do with getting a proper draft written at this point so I can see where the gaps are in terms of references, other decisions to make, things I might need from other people etc.

Might set a limit on it though - I was sat at my desk til 10.30 last night 😱 Feel like I might be more productive if I have a cut off of say 8pm. 

Mr Cheery is still at his dad's and not coming home tonight either, so I might find a festive film that he'd hate 😂 Might even cast on to knit a new pair of socks (ooh, or some more present bags...) We'l see...

Cheery_Daff

Ooh, two more things.

Checked the LPG tank again today, and got round to checking the website to see how we compare to their estimate. We're at about 55%, and they're estimating it at about 46%. I'm not going to alter it at this point - it's not that big a difference, and I don't mind if we get a delivery before we're almost empty anyway. It doesn't usually trigger til they estimate we're at 30%, so it'll be interesting to see if we get there before Christmas. 

Second thing. I showed our visitors the cellar - it's quite interesting, with a well and an a cellar. Apparently it now also has a resident hibernating bat 🙄😂 How did it get in?! Been checking out the Bat Conservation Trust website and they can get through tiny spaces, so there's clearly a teeny crevice somewhere (probably by the window at the top of the cellar steps). 

Nothing to do about it - I barely ever go in the cellar anyway, certainly don't store anything there as it's very damp and floods occasionally - but clearly it's the ideal cave-like environment for a hibernating bat! 

Just need to decide on a name, and hope it can find its way out again come the spring.

badmemory

Cheery_Daff said:

Another minor annoyance (they're coming thick and fast at the minute!) - my laptop order has been cancelled 😡 Email from Back Market said 'It looks like our seller has had some trouble synchronising their stock.' - or, in other words, they were selling they didn't actually have 🙄 Not sure why it's taken 3 days to figure that out but hey ho.

They thought they had it but someone has "removed" it.  Then of course there is the one that keeps getting returned as faulty that they finally admit IS faulty & forget to remove from stock.