Getting FIREd up 😀

South_coast

Oh, and in other news I'm pretty sure a domestic holiday doesn't count as "abroad" 🤣!

South_coast

OK, so "new month, new start" didn't go very well. Polished off the end of a bottle of Tia Maria on Weds (ie, the 1st 🤦‍♀️) and drank a bottle of rosé last night 🙁 Have decided this has to be IT now though - I might enjoy it at the time (I think largely because I know I shouldn't be doing it and it therefore feels a bit naughty - like a pot noodle), but it is no good for my health or wealth, and I'm sure it's contributing to my general gloom. I've been re-reading my 2021 diary again for inspiration, as I really nailed alcohol, UPF and weight loss that year. 

In other news, I've started plotting out how to use my 2025/26 ISA allowance (never let it be said I'm not a planner 🤣)! Mostly because I didn't want to forget to include the £12.59 that needs to go into my niece's account, but also to commit to myself that this is definitely the year when I start to significantly increase the payments into the S&S (even if I am still paying off the refurb). Too many things keep getting in the way of doing this, it's time I made it a priority 🩷!

South_coast

Significant financial pondering taking place this weekend (interspersed with A LOT of watching snooker - so tense 😬😬😬!) Upshot is, I have put together a recurring annual calendar to break down where savings need to go each month to ensure money is in the right place at the right time, which I just need to follow every payday and (hopefully) disengage my brain a bit - rather than put a schedule together and keep chopping and changing it, which is what I have been doing. This does though come at the expense of cutting back a lot of what was going towards "the other thing", which feels a bit risky. Only way I could make it work though, and it feels good to have the money going to me. I should be able to re-assess once I've got the refurb debt fully neutralised (feels slightly odd working out how I'm going to pay off a debt I don't even have yet, but once an MFW-er, always an MFW-er, I guess 🤣) - though we're some way off that yet!

On the alcohol front, 0 units Saturday, 1 unit Sunday, 1 unit Monday. Pretty happy with that for a Bank Holiday weekend 👍

themadvix

South_coast said:

On the alcohol front, 0 units Saturday, 1 unit Sunday, 1 unit Monday. Pretty happy with that for a Bank Holiday weekend 👍

Much better than me then - I was ‘I’ve never been this drunk before’ drunk on Sunday….!

South_coast

Oh dear, Vix! Hope you're fully recovered now. I find really bad hangovers last longer than a day these days - all the more reason to avoid them if at all possible!

South_coast

Schoolboy error of reading a recipe book immediately after eating dinner - had to make myself a bowl of muesli, as I was suddenly starving 🙄🤦‍♀️!

South_coast

OMG, Santander have ruined my banking app 😥 It's all jolly colours and circles, so I feel like I'm in a nursery school - which I could live with if they hadn't decided for some incomprehensible reason to include all my bank cards on the display as well. So there's now the current account at the top, then I have to scroll through the debit card (never used), 3 cashpoint cards for savings accounts (ditto, never used - never even knew I had them until I lost my purse a few months ago - later found 🤦‍♀️ - and the man on the phone spent about 10 minutes cancelling and re-issuing them all, without making it clear what he was actually doing or I would have told him not to bother), THEN finally I get to my other accounts (ie petrol/groceries/personal), which are the ones I actually use 🙁!

I downloaded this one as a trial a few months ago, as I was having issues logging in, then quickly abandoned it when I saw how rubbish it was. Can't believe they've now gone with it!

themadvix

South_coast said:

Oh dear, Vix! Hope you're fully recovered now. I find really bad hangovers last longer than a day these days - all the more reason to avoid them if at all possible!

Fortunately it was all spirits, so only a slight headache the following day. I don’t drink red wine at all because it’s not worth how I feel. If I’d drunk enough wine to be as drunk as I was, I would not have been a pretty sight the following day!

themadvix

The Santander app sounds horrendous - why do they have to fiddle with these things? That said, I only have Santander for my business account and they only upgraded recently and it has been a vast improvement on what was a very, very basic app.

South_coast

No idea why they felt they had to change 🙁 It seemed to me that the only thing it was missing was the ability to pay in cheques (although I think that had already been added - only ever receive a cheque about once every 18 months, so not something I had to test out very often, and in those circumstances it didn't seem a real hardship to go to a cashpoint and pay it in there). Oh well, I'll get used to it I suppose, in the way one does....🙄

Ah now red wine....😍 I can only ever drink that now when I know I absolutely have no plans for the following day. Once I get up in the night to use the loo, I'm then awake for the rest of the night. I think I feel worse for the lack of sleep than the hangover!