Pay off mortgage and start having even more fun 😁

newgirly

Hi Al it’s for four adults, ds1 has moved out along with his girlfriend, dd is married and moved out three years ago and ds2 is married but moved his wife in 😆 so them and dh and I. They were buying their own food but are currently going hardcore saving and getting three months payslips together so I’m feeding them again. It’s no alcohol and we don’t get takeaways or eat out (apart from me having breakfast out sometimes). I’m veggie, the kids eat just chicken so just dh with meat. 

No I didn’t daisy, we shifted everything around for Xmas and the table is going through the dining room and conservatory still, I could look at curtains now I’ve moved the cats upstairs , we couldn’t before as their tray was in there. 

Hi Vix, I’ve just moved to eon, we don’t have the correct charger to be able to have vehicle tariffs and would have to have a new charger fitted which think was £1k, our one is quite old now as dh had an electric work can from very early on. So it’s a normal price comparison and eon was the cheapest a couple of months ago. I do go to neros a lot actually , currently using the meerkat codes you get daily for 25% off but free would have been much better 😩

Off to the gym this morning, then a birthday brunch straight after at the healthy cafe, best friend is 50 on Friday but will be in Finland by then the lucky thing so this is a pre birthday treat 😊 

LadyWithAPlan

Sorry to hear re the workshop/job changes but sounds like it’s all a bit up in the air anyway

maybe indeed it’s the universe forcing you to move forward  

glad the mortgage nearly paid off though that’s a huge weight off your shoulders 

daisy_1571

The benefit of the curtains compared to a door would be that the cats can go through/under and on the occasions when you need the table out that way they can be pulled right back or taken down.  Even if you only pull them overnight it would save you losing some heat, but always best to get curtains pulled at or before dusk.

Dxxx

Alchemilla

Such an impressive grocery spend!

Alchemilla

Tips please?!

newgirly

Hi lady, perhaps it is all meant to be who knows 🙂

Hi daisy, not sure about the curtains still as the table is rather large and goes right through the gap where the curtains would be, I need to give some thought to it 🤔

Hi Al, I’m just tight with buying food really 😂 As an example dh is having today (and last night) a pack of meatballs bought 50% off in lid! after Xmas with red onion, garlic in a jar, yellow pepper and a stock cube and passata, all cooked in the sc then pasta chucked in half hour before it’s done. I think dil was having salmon and mash and green beans, I had a value frozen macaroni cheese with carrots and frozen green beans as ds2 stole my dinner for his lunch which was lentil dhal 😆 I’m still cross about that as it was way nicer than the frozen emergency macaroni.  I don’t buy crisps or biscuits really just fruit and usually some of those fibre bar cake thingys, ice cream sometimes, as I said no booze and fairly simple meals. Other dinners this week were homemade veggie lasagne, left over turkey and goose curry, big batch of coconut lentil dhal, I’ll have a few Greek salads and dh will have spag Bol, a shop bought pie with mash and maybe a chilli. It’s really plain cheap food but I try and make sure there’s always lots of salad veg and fruit, eggs and avocados for nice breakfasts 🙂

newgirly

Oops another food shop done yesterday, I’m now never going to hit the budget after all that chat yesterday about how we manage it 😆 I’ve £45 and change left for the month, I need to put the work in cooking and planning to get through 😩

 Not much news on the work front for dh still, I might go and visit the guys this morning and see how they are going, I’ve not popped in since before Xmas. No gym today as I’m being lazy not going while best friend is away for her 50th in Lapland with the family doing lots of snowy exciting things, I’m very jealous 😆 I might go for a long walk instead, been a bit dizzy again so don’t fancy the gym on my own really. 

Had a friend round last night on her way home from work so had to quickly krank the heating up (on!) and put the fire on, it’s so cosy when it’s like that I wish we could have the house warm all the time! She brought some posh mini cakes with her as I was restrained enough to just have one, im currently counting calories trying to lose weight slowly, I lost a pound last week but got on the scales today and have put it back on after sticking to it although it’s not actually weigh in day so I shouldn’t have checked 😆 I don’t think it’s going to be that easy but will persevere for a while though, I don’t want to do any extreme diets or struggle with it. 

newgirly

Well I ended up visiting the guys at work yesterday, morale is low but it was great to have a catch up and you always have a laugh there. Apparently the so called off site “manager” (loosest sense of the word) dropped in a comment when one of them was delivering that they would only pay a fraction of the travel costs to the new place when people move 😱 like £2.5k towards one of their costs that would be £7k! He will also be on minimum wage when the rate goes up in April, shocking! Plus with an extra 20 odd hours on his commute as he couldn’t drive there a week. So it’s feeling more and more like a get rid type situation. 

My gut says they wouldn’t hesitate to fold the company to wiggle out of this, so it could be government redundancy. The contracts say they have to move anywhere in the uk which is possibly going to be seen as unreasonable so further investigations will be happening regarding this. Dh himself would only get very minimal redundancy as when they took over they made him start a new contract saying he was basically setting his own contract ( and mine at the time) back to zero with a new company, it was legal as we checked. I think the biggest stress for everyone is the will they won’t they and no official information, just someone popping in and saying yeah we will probably shut and move you….

Anyway, today is the weekend and dh is working tomorrow as that’s the only day the client can come in, so today he’s home 😊 as we are both a bit broke we won’t be going out for a nice lunch or doing anything really, we will probably go and visit his parents though.  I might make a veggie lasagne like last week and have it later in front of a film with some candles lit and maybe even the fire on 😬

newgirly

Back from a quick visit to see dd, after an old style visit to the in-laws, by old style I mean they seem to be got less rude in recent years, but we seem to have returned to the good old ways 😆

Greeted with “you’ve put on a lot of weight” by mil even though I’m the same as at Xmas and it’s only a stone and a bit after a difficult year. To repeatedly asking about how the boys are, wish the boys well etc. which every time I corrected with “and dd “ 😡 

Then a couple of hours of how ill fil is and how useless doctors/nhs/hospitals are, he’s not going to see a Dr and paramedics are useless. Apparently he hasn’t seen a Dr for a year and won’t go, worse still mil didn’t show up to an mri scan and got told off by the hospital and had to rebook as fil told her to not bother going! What. on. earth. Grrrr. As my Dil would say they were grinding my gears 🤣

Still, duty done and I remained of course pretty polite aside from telling her the cost of the wasted mri (recent experience of a bill)  and am now back home and calm, I’ve had a nice bath and am going to light some candles and eat dinner in front of the tv 😁

LadyWithAPlan

newgirly said:

Oops another food shop done yesterday, I’m now never going to hit the budget after all that chat yesterday about how we manage it 😆 I’ve £45 and change left for the month, I need to put the work in cooking and planning to get through 😩

 Not much news on the work front for dh still, I might go and visit the guys this morning and see how they are going, I’ve not popped in since before Xmas. No gym today as I’m being lazy not going while best friend is away for her 50th in Lapland with the family doing lots of snowy exciting things, I’m very jealous 😆 I might go for a long walk instead, been a bit dizzy again so don’t fancy the gym on my own really. 

Had a friend round last night on her way home from work so had to quickly krank the heating up (on!) and put the fire on, it’s so cosy when it’s like that I wish we could have the house warm all the time! She brought some posh mini cakes with her as I was restrained enough to just have one, im currently counting calories trying to lose weight slowly, I lost a pound last week but got on the scales today and have put it back on after sticking to it although it’s not actually weigh in day so I shouldn’t have checked 😆 I don’t think it’s going to be that easy but will persevere for a while though, I don’t want to do any extreme diets or struggle with it. 

May I suggest adding more beans and lentils daily into your diet and somedays use them to replace potatoes/bread/rice/pasta - very easy way to lose some llbs. Its part of the Tim Ferriss slow carb from the 4 hr body (can send you more deets if you want). However just adding  daily pulses into every meal will help -  nutritious, full of fibre and protein, makes you feel full and stops blood sugar levels soaring as much as white bread etc.  I know you love making lentil dhal so just making dhal a side with every meal helps.

Lapland sounds lovely!
Sorry re the work stress - nightmare for those facing forced redundancy.