Simple living in the country - back to basics

Cheery_Daff

Wow, that's very impressive! Mr Cheery managed £30+ for a couple of months, but his December was as pitiful as mine 🙄 Hoping mine will improve when I get my laptop back, and hopefully that will nudge him too! 

Elisheba

Almost £30 from Prolific for me this month.  Some of that was left over from the month before, and there were a couple of £5 odd ones over Xmas which only took 10 minutes so I was able to do them.  I must remember to open it and do them on coffee and lunch breaks!

rtandon27

Managed to get a whole 60p in Prolific Surveys today - OH is up to a few pounds, I think they might 'need' his demographic more than mine 🤣

I did check back and realized that Pinecone had granted me 3gbp in Nov and 3gbp in Dec - it's such a faff to cash out through the third party, but 6 in my account is better than sitting on the account as 'points' 😁

Cheery_Daff

Pinecone ditched me ages ago, didn't let me know, just not had anything from there for years 🙄

EssexHebridean

FD regular savers are a bit odd in that they set up the standing order for the regular monthly payment - you can't physically transfer from a current account to that Reg Saver - it's just a case of making sure the money is there in time for it to transfer out.

Liking the idea of having a specific replacement of income savings pot. I've been toying with the idea of tweaking mine a bit to be honest, and I sort of feel as though perhaps having a specific savings target might be a good goal for us - currently aside from the regular monthly pots everything else just goes to the big pot labelled "long term savings". Hmmm....food for thought! 

Cheery_Daff

Food for thought indeed. I felt like everything was going into specific pots and we didn't have a more general one. This gives a specific target and a bit of peace of mind, and also we can, in the future, make it 2 months, or 3 months, or 6 months.

I had thought my NW regular savers did it automatically, but actually I may have set up those as standing orders myself. We've definitely got the monthly amounts going into the NW current account and then being transferred to the regular saver from there.

Cheery_Daff

Evening MSE chums 😊 Going to try a more structured update to keep me on track with my goals! 

HOME

* Plumber is happy to have a look at the electrical issue - he's coming on Friday afternoon. Will hopefully have time for a boiler service too but if not, he'll come back after his holiday.
* Tidied up yesterday it was nice to come back to a clean and tidy kitchen & dining room! 😊
* Made a list in my notebook to track decluttered things - just two so far (an old magazine and a small broken plate which has been sat in the cupboard for months)

GARDEN & LAND

* yellow rattle seeds arrived today - I'll need to get them sown in the hay field as they need a period of cold weather to germinate. Might be a job for tomorrow. I think it's meant to be dry (!) So I can rake off the remaining cut grass, get these seeds sown, and maybe even do a bit more scything (although probably not)

FINANCES

* HW done, and another couple of OnePoll surveys - up to £8.35 in there now.
* Met a friend in a free museum today, but we did end up having a cuppa in a nearby cafe - spent £8.90 on 4 drinks and a packet of crisps, not too bad. We took some homemade flapjack with us so avoided buying cake or lunch.
* Bought 4 pints of milk, but no other spends today.

HEALTH

* Did a 30 min Joe Wicks workout this morning
* The moroccan stew I made yesterday in the hay box was waiting for us, so we had a lovely home made wholesome tea when we got in - much better than just immediately jumping to toast/porridge 😊😊

CAREER

* had a chat with Mr Cheery about job interview prep. Mentally preparing myself to do a decent chunk on that tomorrow.

OTHER THINGS

* Met up with a friend who lives quite far away which was lovely, don't see her very often. And while we were in the city dropped in to see one of Mr Cheery's friend, also the wife of one of his friends who died a couple of years ago. Lovely to see her, although she's still struggling to deal with it, it was so unexpected and quick 😕

No plans for the rest of the night except sitting on the sofa with Mr Cheery and a little tipple 😊

Some plans for tomorrow...

* sort out transfer for regular saver
* next bank switch
* flylady home blessing
* take compost out 
* get the hay field sorted and these seeds sown
* make a start on properly preparing for job interview
* make a shopping list and maybe nip to Mr A 

Cheery_Daff

Oh, I forgot to tell you a small vexing thing! 

Mr Cheery had a card in the post from Royal Mail - we have an item with not enough postage, you need to pay £2.50 🙄 There's no way of finding out what it is, or who it's from, and with a lot of hospital referral letters etc flying round at the minute, it seemed wise to pay up.

Well, today the offending item arrived, and do you know what it was??

A Christmas card, from a friend he sees quite regularly - a friend who clearly missed the memo about not using stamps without bar codes 🙄 

I wonder how many cards he sent that people have now had to pay to receive?? 😮

So if you were wondering what happens if you use an old stamp, now you know 🙄

Humdinger1

Cheery_Daff said:

Oh, I forgot to tell you a small vexing thing! 

Mr Cheery had a card in the post from Royal Mail - we have an item with not enough postage, you need to pay £2.50 🙄 There's no way of finding out what it is, or who it's from, and with a lot of hospital referral letters etc flying round at the minute, it seemed wise to pay up.

Well, today the offending item arrived, and do you know what it was??

A Christmas card, from a friend he sees quite regularly - a friend who clearly missed the memo about not using stamps without bar codes 🙄 

I wonder how many cards he sent that people have now had to pay to receive?? 😮

So if you were wondering what happens if you use an old stamp, now you know 🙄

Infuriating! Are you going to let the friend know, or just descend on his house with flaming torches? Love Humdinger xx 

rtandon27

Humdinger1 said:
...Infuriating! Are you going to let the friend know, or just descend on his house with flaming torches? Love Humdinger xx 

🤣🤣🤣 - I vote for the flaming torch, or if that is too extreme, send him a bill for the cost of postage via the post & don't put a stamp on it! 😉