Simple living in the country - back to basics

themadvix

Great goals for this year Cheery and fingers crossed for the bathroom, although that is a big project.

How annoying about the electricity - hopefully it's not too expensive to sort and not too disruptive either.

EssexHebridean

Morning Cheery, and HNY to you! As always I love your old year round up, new year planning - and as for your Dad, if it suits him not to mark big occasions in any way, then you have to take a view I think on whether it suits YOU to mark them, so you carry on, or you acknowledge that if he isn't bothered about it, then there may be better uses for your money? Not an easy one to square away in your head I can imagine.

I hope your electrical thing turns out to be a simple fix! (And that one or other of the neighbours can recommend a decent electrician. Otherwise, we've found that Checkatrade seems to be a fairly good source for tradesmen - although that may vary by area. 

Cheery_Daff

Thanks all 😊 And yes, EH, you're right about my dad! His birthday is mid Jan, and he won't be getting anything more than a card. To be fair he does usually do Christmas presents, but he's been rather incapacitated the last few weeks with his foot in a plastic boot thing. I'll send a birthday card, and see if he remembers my birthday, and then we'll take it from there...

Some progress this morning. Text from one neighbour saying their electrician has retired (so has the one who did the other work on our house). No reply from other neighbour (who is probably at work) but I have found someone who looks decent on check a trade, will ring them shortly. 

Been messing with banks. Set up new YNAB budget and logged into all bank accounts to get accurate balances. Annoyingly, Mr Cheery's Barclays switch hasn't paid the incentive 😠 Mine has - they both went through on the same day, and we both had texts saying they'd gone through. Looking at the MSE thread some are still outstanding, and they do say themselves to allow 28 working days, which isn't for another couple of weeks. Will put it in the diary to check.

Also annoyingly - I planned the next switch to Nationwide, but they ended their offer just before Christmas and I missed it 😠 It didn't have an end date last time I looked, most vexing - that's £400 we've missed out on. I couldn't mentally have dealt with anything else in the run up to Christmas but it's still annoying, and a good lesson to jump on it when I see it next time! 

Hey ho.

Final remaining one is to switch one of us to the FD joint account. That's already open, so I just need to apply for the switch - annoyingly it's a joint account so we can only do one of us! My Barclays is the sacrifice in this case - they're too annoying to keep open 🙄

Have also applied for an FD regular saver. Can only have individual ones, even though the account is joint, so I've just done me for now. That'll be £300 a month at 7%, so £136 interest. Now got 3 regular savers on the go:

* £50 a month @ 8%, matures Jan 2025
* £200 a month @ 5.5%, matures Sept 23
* £300 a month @ 7%, just applied today, runs for 12 months

It would be great if we could fund all of those each month without drawing from the easy access savings account... but that might be a tall order. The early part of the year is always dire, with house insurance, car insurance, and an LPG payment all due out in Feb 🙄

Trying to retrieve various bits of cash that have been distributed across switching accounts. Barclays accounts each have around £1k in, but they're notoriously twitchy about transferring money apparently, so I've done a test £50 from each and will do more over the next few days. FD has £800 in - I'm leaving £300 for the regular saver, but was going to transfer the rest then set up a DD for next month, but their app is now playing up and won't allow transfers 🙄

Feeling slightly thwarted this morning! 

Cheery_Daff

Got off the sofa and made myself feel more positive! Have raided the fridge - 2 bags of 'roasting veg' roasted and ready for soup. They were £1.99 reduced to 20p so a nice bargain (although literally big, uneven chunks of carrot and parsnip so outrageous they were charging £1.99 in the first place!)

Also a couple of 15p bags of parsnips are roasted ready for a Joe Wicks recipe - parsnip & parmesan soup. Not had before but anything with both parsnips and cheese has got to be good 😁 Enough for 2 portions of that. 

Plus 3 portions of moroccan chick peas stew in the hay box, ready for the freezer. 

Trying to get back into the mindset of making good use of the things we have. Hay box is looking a bit lacklustre - going to replenish with hay from the outbuilding tomorrow. I've also got into a bad habit of tipping coffee grounds down the sink 😱 so reinstating the coffee grounds pot so they can get into the compost, where they rightfully should be! 

Mr Cheery has put all presents/clothes/assorted stuff away from the weekend, so we are looking nice and homely 😊 And our other neighbour is finding the number for their electrician, so all good 😊

themadvix

That does all sound good and very productive!

Using what you've already got is always good (as is making the effort with the little things like the coffee grounds, but it's so easy to slip out of the habit!). I need to venture into the fridge later - it needs a clean and I need an honest assessment of what we need to use/bin (fortunately it's not looking too terrible on the bin front, just know there may be things lurking that need eating sooner rather than later - Brussels may feature heavily in tonight's stir fry!

Cheery_Daff

Ha, we have 2 bags of sprouts but Mr Cheery just tends to eat a bag at a time done in the microwave, so they won't last long! 

Soup is made and in the freezer. Flapjack is made and in a tub. Burned the granola 🙄 I'd turned the oven off but it wasn't quite cooked so I left it in... 🙄 Rescued what I could, but about a third went in the bin. Very annoyed with myself! 

Folded the washing from the other day, and got all the tools and bits ready to put the study shelves up over the next couple of days. They WILL be done before I go back to work!! 😱

Arranged to meet a friend in the city tomorrow, she's just here for a few days so it will be nice to see her 😊 She's suggested a trip to the museum in the morning, so hopefully we can be home in the afternoon and get the shelves up! 

Have also texted the plumber - Mr Cheery suggested that since our electrical problem is being caused by an old central heating thermostat, he may be able to sort it while he's here servicing the boiler (although we don't have a date for that anyway...). If he hasn't replied by tomorrow I'll ring the electrician.

And now I'm stopping. Have run a nice bath, and I plan to laze around for an hour watching yesterday's Call the Midwife and doing the Happy Wheel 😁

themadvix

Oooh was there Call the midwife on Sunday (assume that’s what you mean, rather than Monday)? I couldn’t find when the new series started, so that’s good 😊 

badmemory

A lot of plumbers do have some electrical qualifications.  Mine does for showers & obviously central heating.  Always worth asking.

Cheery_Daff

themadvix said:

Oooh was there Call the midwife on Sunday (assume that’s what you mean, rather than Monday)? I couldn’t find when the new series started, so that’s good 😊 

No 😂😂 I assumed as there was one on Christmas day, the next would have been new year's day, but it's actually 7th Jan 😂

badmemory said:

A lot of plumbers do have some electrical qualifications.  Mine does for showers & obviously central heating.  Always worth asking.

No response yet sadly, but I hoped he would, especially as the issue is an old thermostat. But we'll see.

Prolific money for December withdrawn - £8.72 added to savings 😊 I'm trying to fill two pots at the minute - one for a month's replacement income for me, and the other enough to visit our friends in Ireland in the spring 😊

Not sure there's much point with replacement income for me, given that I have a decent wodge of sick pay, and am very unlikely to be let go without a decent wodge of redundancy money. However, it does make me feel slightly more secure having a savings pot that isn't allocated specifically for a job (eg household emergency, new car etc). Just over £400 to go until I get to the desired amount. If all goes to plan we'll get there this month! 

No spend day today - pretty rare for me! And pretty rare not to have left the homestead too, it's been nice 😊😊

Jan will be busy. Back to work, 3 dentist trips for me, 3 hospital trips for Mr Cheery, plus an assortment of gigs and rehearsals for him, and social occasions for both of us. Trying to combine trips where we can, and plan to take meals with us - I'm good at doing this for work, but we often don't manage it for anything else.

rtandon27

You trumped me with Prolific Cheery - mine was a meager 5.73 and most of that was left over from November.  I'm going to have to remember to check over my morning coffee break starting next week or it will be just as pitiful this month!

OH on the other hand is gloating as it's been another good wodge for him last month!  64.48 - I'm well impressed with how much he's been bringing in from them, as it's a good wodge towards groceries every month.