Simple living in the country - back to basics

Staffordia

Hi Cheery, reporting back on the £2 bond.......no winners here I'm afraid.

Cheery_Daff

Staffordia said:

Hi Cheery, reporting back on the £2 bond.......no winners here I'm afraid.

Oh no! That would have been SO super cool 😁 Maybe next time...

I've been having what passes for a flurry of activity here. Hoovered living room, music room, bathroom, stairs, kitchen and dining room, and the offshot - and we've shifted stuff out to the garage and taken the recycling and rubbish outside so the floor is pretty clear now. 

What is also quite clear is the need to dig out the mousetrap 🙄 Our little furry friends have apparently been running riot in there while we've been ill. Well, I'm quite well enough to be driving up to the mouse lay-by in my nightie now, so the traps will be set this afternoon and we'll set about reclaiming our living quarters! 😮

Washing machine is on with some bedding, so between radiators and dehumidifier i hope to have that dry by tomorrow morning. 

Right, lunch, and then the next round of cleaning 🙄 Not feeling any enthusiasm for it - but I'm feeling quite enthusiastic about the place being a bit more sparkly, and we don't have a cleaner, so needs must!

EssexHebridean

I'll be honest - we're starting to think about shifting the money out of PBs  too - in our case we might well use that chunk as part of the deposit for the new house - there is just a shade under 11k there at the moment, and while we have had wins, they've never been above £25 at a time, and I can't even see us getting too many of those any more. One to ponder on I think - they are at least tax free, which is something! (And of course having seen TMV's win I'm now questioning the logic all over again - sigh!) 

We use Reg Savers a lot - mostly with a monthly standing order (or "regular payment" from a current account) to them so if you're saving from income rather than reinvesting savings they can work well. We've both got the Principality ones, and I have the dinky Nationwide one as well although that is simply for personal savings. Then we also have Coventry (which allows higher amounts, but is lower interest than the first two there) - those are all funded from income. Then funded from reinvested savings we have Santander regulars, and the old Nationwide "Flex regular savers" which are no longer available, sadly. Finally there is a FD one which is fabulous at 7% and allowing £300 a month. The only one I have to remember to do is the Nationwide one as it wasn't easy to set up any sort of regular monthly payment there. A reminder on the phone usually nudges me though. Oh - I do have to remember the transfer from the santander savings to the Reg Saver as well otherwise the joint account balance scares me! (And yes, I appreciate that you've probably now decided on all this, but I'm just catching up...!) ours will all be being quite dramatically simplified in a few months I suspect - I'm being cautious about opening new ones now as current ones mature as we need to work out where we will be money-wise going forwards.

redofromstart said:

I am hitting the threshold due to interest on the lump sums and historically being the lower earner which we didn't spot earlier in the year. We have both moved 20k to Isas this year, and will move 20 more in April if we haven't bought a house by then. I feel guilty posting about it, when others are struggling but this is a mix of our long term savings and mr redo pension lump sum, and a redemption penalty that makes paying off the mortgage not cost effective. PBS would be interesting but the rate of return is poor when we still have his 1k to play with.

I struggle with similar guilty feelings Redo as we are in a very similar situation albeit without any lump sums! (or currently, a mortgage, come to that!) 


As for "uninvited guests of the furry kind" our friends in the Hebrides were suffering a similar issue recently - I must see how their trapping efforts went! 

maggiem

Sounds like a plan Cheery Daff. I have some savings in PBs too and did earn the princely sum of £25 this week but much better than my ISA with Vanguard that is still losing money. 

I've just opened the Nationwide Saver but also opened a Chase account. I've been very pleased as it gives 1% back on purchases and I can have, I think 10 savings pots, earning 2.7% from today. I've tried putting all my pots together into a higher rate interest account but really struggled o watch each pot (I used to have an Intelligent Finance account that allowedpots and I suppose I got used to that). The interest rate seems to have gone up reasonably quickly after BoE changes and I like the rounding up option too. Not the highest rate but very easy to open ( I get very frustrated with 'faffing' that some accounts need to do. You don't need to transfer a current account either! Hope that's useful to someone. 

Cheery_Daff

That is indeed useful Maggie, thank you! 😊

EH, you are the Regular Saver Queen! 😂😁

Morning all 😊

Another grey and drizzly one here, uninspiring, and I still haven't shaken off this cold 🙄 It's getting rather boring now. I'm back to work on Monday, will have had 24 days off (!) And what have I done? One trip to my family, two trips to Mr Cheery's family, and that's it. Not seen anyone else. Did finish my Christmas shopping before Christmas and we've had a few tentative cafe trips, but no days out, no festive socialising, no DIY and getting the house in order.

Moan moan moan! 

Still, I suppose I have got a few things into the freezer, sorted out my blog, done a bit of tidying, distributed some family presents at least, and done a fair bit of plotting and scheming. And had a hundred baths 😂 and read a couple of books, and done some yoga. Not too bad all in all. 

I would like SOMETHING cheerful to happen today. Getting dressed would be a start! Then I'll get some soup into the hay box, since I didn't do that yesterday. A list maybe (although I've ignored every other one I've made this week...)

* make soup
* organise pantry
* decide a day to visit remaining family members
* clear out chicken run and replace bedding
* paint final tiny bit of study wall
* paint a bit of kitchen wall??
* change bed sheets

That'll probably do for now I reckon. We'll likely end up leaving the house for a little bit today i think

themadvix

Morning Cheery,

I don't know about you, but I definitely think getting out and doing stuff has become harder since the pandemic - our mindsets have changed, maybe? I'm sure the cost of fuel doesn't help, but just going somewhere/doing something fun, seems harder to achieve. My mum and I were saying the other day, that we hardly ever seem to go further than the towns she and I live it - certainly not for a fun trip to mooch around shops or something different. (Maybe this is saying more about us than about the world more generally and maybe its something for us to address, but it just feels a bit more-efforty these days!).

Tescodealqueen

You are not alone. This lurgy has left me washed out since before Christmas. Had to make an effort to go out today as on way back from collecting son from tram as he couldn’t get train home from work last night because of strikes noticed it seemed very dark sure enough the “dip” part of headlight wasn’t working so dragged  myself to the garage after dropping him at tram again (another strike) to get a new bulb fitted ( it’s really fiddly to change so worth it to me to pay an extra tenner to get it changed in about ten minutes.) Did a bit of food shopping and got petrol and feel as though I have been busy all day not just an hour and a bit. I am rarely ill last time I felt like this was a viral flu like thing in 1990 so can’t wait for it to disappear

Baileys_Babe

We are the same TMV our horizons have definitely reduced which I think has mainly been due to Covid and OH's health declining.

Karmacat

Yep, me too on this, horizons reducing is unfortunately a very good way of putting it  

redofromstart

If I am looking for something cheerful I always take a stroll round the garden - even now there are tiny signs of growth, snowdrops that will be up in a few weeks and the last few days of relative sunshine have really encouraged things.