Simple living in the country - back to basics

Baileys_Babe

If you get the toilet seat before the end of the year, then it won't feature on 3 years lists 😉

Cheery_Daff

Baileys_Babe said:

If you get the toilet seat before the end of the year, then it won't feature on 3 years lists 😉

I know - an exciting prospect! 😂😂

Haven't actually measured it yet, mind you 🙄 Got sidetracked sorting out paperwork while the house was quiet. Current set up is NOT ideal - it's in a drawer in a bureau, which is fine - but there are piles of books on the floor in front which make it difficult to open, and I've just been posting paperwork through a small slot rather than actually filing it 🙄

I think for now, I'm going to remove the main two folders to the shelves in my study - more visible, and easier to file paperwork as it comes.

It's good adding front sheets to all the accounts too - clarifying for me what everything is, when fixes etc are up, but also makes it much easier if anyone else should need to deal with it. I'm also going to create an annual list of what's due when. Feel like I should have one, and it IS in a folder organised by months, but a master list will be useful!

Cheery_Daff

Ooh, bargain of the day. I'd picked up 2 of those M&S light up tins as presents, and ended up rejigging some presents for the people we saw on Christmas day, so needed to replace one. They're now half price 😊 if you've got people you haven't seen, they had a fair few left in our local shop, and other half price festive goodies too 😊

Loo seat ordered 😊 Along with a new calendar, and a duster as ours has started disintegrating and creating more mess than it's cleaning up.

Humdinger1

Am on p344 of your diary @Cheery_Daff.  I may well not fully understand the principles of happy wheel/MB but I think I've heard that you only win in the medium to long term if you own the casino.  Don't want to rain on your parade as you are plainly doing better than average and it looks like good fun but for the time it takes, is it worth it? Love Humdinger xx 

Cheery_Daff

Humdinger1 said:

Am on p344 of your diary @Cheery_Daff.  I may well not fully understand the principles of happy wheel/MB but I think I've heard thar you only win in the medium to long term if you own the casino.  Don't want to rain on your parade as you are plainly doing better than average and it be good fun but for the time it takes, is it worth it? Love Humdinger xx 

Hello 😊 I do understand your caution, and yes, in the normal scheme of things, the only winners are the casinos. 

What I'm doing is slightly different - ONLY playing using special offers. So, normally, slots will have a 'return to player' (RTP) ratio of around 92-97% - let's say 95% for ease of calculation. That means that, on average, over thousands of plays, for every £1 spent, you'd expect to get 95p back - you'd be losing overall, and the casino would be winning. 

With an offer, you might get, say, 10 free spins worth 20p each when you spend £10. So, under the normal scheme of things you'd play your £10 and expect to get back, on average, £9.50. Then you'd get your 10 free spins worth 20p each - the equivalent of £2 - which you'd play, and out of that, you'd, on average, expect to get 95% back - in this case £1.80. But obviously those spins were free, so that £1.80 is free for you - so you can add it to the £9.50 you got back from playing your own money, and now, on average, you have £11.30 - and as you only spent £10, you have an additional £1.30 - that is the 'extra' money you have from doing the offer.

Obviously, the average is worked out over thousands of plays, so on any individual occasion you might lose money, which is why this isn't a quick fix, and isn't for anyone looking for an immediate solution to debt. 

Obviously, the casinos give these offers to entice people in - they hope that people will be tempted by an offer, and then go on to just play for the excitement, even just an extra few spins. So this is not for anyone who might be remotely tempted to spin a few more times for good luck, or do anything outside an offer. 

There are things you can do to make it lower risk - play your initial £10 using 10p spins, for example, which means that you do more spins, so on average your ups and downs will be less volatile than if you just did one big £10 spin each time. Or different slots have different levels of volatility - some you win little bits frequently, some nothing for ages then a giant win - they're pretty heavily regulated in that sense and have to list RTP and volatility for every slot. 

I use the Team Casino website. They identify offers, and give precise instructions on how to play, when to claim free spins and where from, which slots to use, any warnings to look out for etc. 

I've had people I've mentioned it to in real life be very skeptical, think I'm being conned, and ask if it's so good why isn't everyone doing it? The answer is, of course, like many things we do on MSE, is that it's a bit of a bloody nuisance 😂 It can be fiddly, certainly when you're getting the hang of it. You have to open accounts with dozens of online casinos, which not everyone wants to do. It can go up and down - I've had a few months where I've been down, but overall I'm over £7.5k up over the last few years, and I don't even do it very much compared to some. It's quite an admin task to keep track of everything.

So thank you for your concern, and you are absolutely right that in the long run, casinos usually win when people play normally. But if you ONLY ever take advantage of their offers, and NEVER stray outside of that, then the odds shift in your favour. They know this, of course, and have rules against it, and people are regularly banned from individual casinos for doing exactly that 😂 The correct response is to move right onto the next casino - as one would when taking advantage of any other MSE scheme, eg bank switching. 

But, again, NOT something for anyone who might be tempted to gamble, or who can't afford the ups and downs, or who isn't organised enough to keep very close track of everything 

Xx

Cheery_Daff

So, today has been a useful and practical one. Some financial admin this morning, then out for a couple of remaining presents, a quick nip round the charity shops, a walk round the park, and a visit to the big supermarket, where we picked up some reduced Christmas items. It was nice to see all the fairy lights in a different town 😊

Got home to 2 National Grid vans on our drive 🙄 Stopped for a quick chat - the power had been off, but they'd managed to reconnect our house and immediate neighbours, but not others down the hill. We have one of the big transformer pole things on our land so they're often messing about with it. Fingers crossed it stays on now! 

Plans are afoot for the next few days. Looks like we are visiting friends in Wales for new year, and as my family are pretty much on the way, we could visit half on the way there, and the others on the way back - nice way of saving some diesel and a load of driving 😁 I do need to ring and make sure we can rearrange though, as we were meant to be going on Saturday (I only told one person that though, and it wasn't a big sit down dinner or anything, just popping in).

Plotting and scheming is afoot, and I'm starting to think more about next year's budget... Of which more tomorrow, I think.

LadyWithAPlan

@Humdinger1 I also can attest to the profit of only doing special offers on the casino .. (no extra spins just sticking  exactly to the offer) 

I also do offers on the sports  as well but casino has become the main earner there as often the bookies stop you trading with them once you make too much money which I have done . 
so Cheery is 100% right , it’s up and down, and not for those who have control or gambling issues but it is very profitable over the medium term if you don’t overspin. 
and it’s tax free … and for me who is also organised a profitable hobby ..  you need a calendar as often next day or next  week the free spins arrive. 

I do £1 spins now since they stopped auto spin so my ups and downs are greater but I am up every year always by 4 figures - 

i use outplayed but I think all organisations who do mb/hw are probably fairly similar . What is good is they look at all offers and tell you what to and which slot to play. 

Cheery my subscription next runs out in March so if you have a referral code  for your team casino I may try that for a year 

I like to take my mb /happy wheel profits each month and split it between house fund and my SIPP  

Cheery_Daff

Can't see that there's a Team Casino code LaPlan but will let you have it if I can find one! 

A big frog ticked off in this house today - we have bought Mr Cheery a new laptop! You may remember his got fried by lightening way back in June. There have been ongoing attempts to fix it by various people, and we have retrieved most of the stuff off it now, but the laptop itself (which was about 8 years old) is properly dead. 

He's been using mine ever since. Theoretically I wouldn't mind, but he uses it basically as the TV, so it's in a cabinet plugged into a big screen with separate mouse & keyboard, and it's in use a LOT of the time, so it ends up being quite inconvenient for me to use it. Which means I don't back up photos as often as I'd like, or write blog posts etc - and also I only do Prolific stuff on my phone which is a bit annoying! 😂😂

Anyway, bought one now, through BackMarket so refurbished and with a 1 year warranty 😊

Should be here next week. Marital harmony restored! Only took 6 months! 😂

He's off to see his dad tomorrow, and I have a list, so going to have an Internet free day. If you see me in here, feel free to tell me off! 

KajiKita

Good luck with the internet free day - we will miss you 😉 Enjoy your free day. 
Yaay for the laptop - that would have driven us both mad …. 😂
Thank you for the detailed explanation of MB - I am now settled in my belief that it’s not for me (at this time anyway) as I just wouldn’t have time to keep up with the admin of it all. 

KK

Cheery_Daff

Afternoon MSE chums 😊

Well, yesterday was pretty productive - apart from when I drove 20 miles to get my sister a very specific addition to her present, and realised I'd forgotten my purse 🙄 So a fruitless trip, and we are heading back today (combining it with some other errands).

I have been checking the financial reports for this year. I won't write out everything, but here are some notable points.

Mortgage accounts for 26% of our total annual spend, and diesel 8% 😱 Council tax 6%, garage 5% 😱 (we switched back to our previous cheaper garage after a hefty bill so hopefully this will reduce).

Monthly DDs account for 41% of our overall spend (mortgage, council tax, LPG, electric, Internet, water, life insurance, mobiles, and my union fees). Not much we can do about most of those.

Food & household has been an average of £362 a month this year 😱 £262 last year. Going to split into smaller categories to analyse further. I've been adding all kinds of things like lightbulbs etc - going to split into
- groceries (food, washing up liquid etc)
- booze 🙄
- household supplies (lightbulbs, batteries etc)

If you have a better way of splitting let me know! 

Diesel has been £297 a month on average - last year was £301, so this seems to be the new normal while we are visiting Mr Cheery's dad so often. We could cut more local trips, but there are other things I'd rather cut more.

The cars have cost £220 a month on average (MOT, insurance, breakdown, maintenance, tax (both £30 a year) - but NOT including diesel). That's two 15 year old cars, so not too bad.

We've spent an average of £40 a month on dentistry between us 🙄

Joint treats (cafes, eating out, tickets, events etc) have been an average of £175 a month 😱

My personal spends, on top of the above, were an average of £129 😱 and Mr Cheery's £62 (although he often gets paid in cash which i don't track, and spends some of that on personal stuff too)

Christmas and birthdays have been an average of £81 a month over the year.

Income has been roughly equal to outgoings this year - we are apparently ending the year with net worth (just money, not houses/car) DOWN £155 🙄