Mortgage free in Forever Home :-)

KajiKita

skint_spice said:

I love the flowers! Wonderful colours 🌸 

Thank you 😊 
These were all absolutely swamped in bindweed - had to untwazzle them this morning as I was arranging them. But they are making me smile every time,I am walking past them to get to the kitchen 😊

KK

beanielou

Stove looks great.

SandyShores

I miss our log burner, nothing like it to warm the cockles.

KajiKita

We love our wood burner too. Had to persuade Mr KK early in our marriage to move from an open hearth to a wood burner, but once we got him there he was converted! 

Currently got three beetroot my gardening friend gave me yesterday, bubbling away on the hob. There is no way I will eat all those in salads on my own this week - can I freeze the rest? Also got wild rice on the go for my weekday salad lunches - I’m going to portion this up into teeny tiny freezer boxes like I do my farro wheat, as I wasted some last time I cooked wild rice and it is too expensive to be doing that with! 😳

KK

SandyShores

KajiKita said:

We love our wood burner too. Had to persuade Mr KK early in our marriage to move from an open hearth to a wood burner, but once we got him there he was converted! 

Currently got three beetroot my gardening friend gave me yesterday, bubbling away on the hob. There is no way I will eat all those in salads on my own this week - can I freeze the rest? Also got wild rice on the go for my weekday salad lunches - I’m going to portion this up into teeny tiny freezer boxes like I do my farro wheat, as I wasted some last time I cooked wild rice and it is too expensive to be doing that with! 😳

KK

So much better than an open fire, seems less work and more heat.

Apparently you can freeze beetroot https://www.freezeit.co.uk/can-you-freeze-beetroot/  I was going to suggest beetroot slaw but I think that would only last a few days.

Merlin's_Beard

You can pickle beetroot as well, if that takes your fancy.

redofromstart

Your comment about the book made me smile, in my 'drop out' years I worked in a second hand book shop and identifying books from half the info was a standard job description. If we couldn't work it out we used to advertise the description in the trade magazine. Happy days. 

Terrible pay (pre min wage) but paid to read all day = heaven. 

KajiKita

Payday has landed ….
As well as the first half of a substantial bill from the dentist today …. 🦷 🙄😳

I have deliberately shunted £300 over to savings to offset half of the cost of the tooth - the rest I will cover next month - and sent £400 off as an OP this evening 😊 Yaay! ❤️🎊🎉
In total, so far this month I have OP’d c. £430 (the rest is QM33 and TTs - I will do accurate numbers at the end of the month) - that’s roughly 27 days of interest, so without the tooth I would have been eating into the capital …. Ah well, it will come.

Savings overall are looking okay in spite of the work on the house thanks to Mr KK covering a lot of it with the sale of his trailer. Don’t have enough for a replacement car yet, but am well on the way to it. Atm I have c. 7 months of absolute bare minimum spends covered - that definitely makes me feel more secure 😊

Grocery bill was bad this month £674 v.  £600 budget …. (12% over)   Some of that was due to it being a five week month between paydays for me, but there also seemed to be a lot of my staples that I ran out of and needed restocking. I will continue to work on this, but it always seems to be a balance between eating healthily and eating cheaply …. 

KK

Merlin's_Beard

I think food is definitely one of the things where I've felt inflation hit the worst, and it's become harder and harder to stay in budget for.

Congrats on the savings!

MissRikkiC

I find the balance with grocery’s hard to strike too. Due to the amount that i spend exercising, I have (since my late teens) supplemented with protein powder. We eat well and generally I factor in a meal plan which incorporates whole foods protein but always tend to need the extra. 

The additional cost of that is certainly more than the cost of the equivalent amount of chicken or yogurt or whatever however the time/convenience aspect always weighs in. It’s challenging to be healthy, save money and not spend your life in the kitchen (although i often don’t mind it; I personally just don’t have enough hours to do it regularly). 

Congratulations on your savings and also the big OP. Blasted teeth getting in the way of more OPing 😭