Mortgage free in Forever Home :-)

KajiKita

Windscreen cleaned with kitchen fish slice, wiper blades changed (thank you Mr KK 😊), cleaning done and I have managed a couple of hours in the garden and potting shed doing various jobs. Done a lot and I still have a day tomorrow in which to do more 😊👏💪👍

KK

KajiKita

Having quite a lazy day here but did manage an hour in the garden, clearing an extremely lurid, electric-yellow flowered lupin from the Border of Doom and setting out where I want the step from the patio, down into the BoD - it will have a nice sight / walk line from the house down to the pond once it is done  This break in the patio wall / step down, might get done over Christmas if the weather is kind. We have a spare stone slab from when we made the base for the arbour which I hope can be repurposed for the step - I'd like it quite deep front to back, so it is big enough to sit on comfortably, within the flower border (I will put scented things like NS Stocks here) and looking down to the pond .... <happy dreams> 

Had to order some new gardening shoes as my old ones are starting crack and let water in - a bit mis getting cold wet feet every time you go outside. I avoided buying a new pair of P&Bs at £80 and instead settled on a pair of Sl0ggers - couldn't get then through TBC but did manage to get £20 off them on a BF deal. Mr KK ordered my Christmas present (a mechanical compost riddler this morning - couldn't before because the website was down) and he got a BF discount too   
Did a bit more Christmas shopping this morning when I went out for fuel - I think all of my team are sorted now and picked up some undercoat and white spirit for hubby who is painting all the downstairs doors the same off-white we have used to refurbish the kitchen cupboards. I have treated myself to some seeds for next season .... cucumber, turnip, sweet peas, mixed colour carrots and parsley. I am seeing this as spend-ahead for the seed buying I normally do over Christmas for the next growing season and also part of 'spend locally' which I try to support when I can. Resisted the very lovely LED garland fairy lights for £30 though!  Both the new footwear and the seeds will come out of the gardening pot. 

Now time to do some more of the fabric house with my new LED magnifier, which is brilliant btw - worth every penny    

KK

redofromstart

Ooh I like the sound of the mechanical riddler. I have a rotary one as our soil is full of stones.

KajiKita

Qm33 has been hard going again this week - OP’d £6.18. And then got to £1.56 in half an hour this morning! 🤷‍♀️

Christmas present wrapping and packing to ship to my parents this morning and a Christmas tree hunt this afternoon 😊🎄

Had a really hard week in work so I think this will be a quiet weekend, but after I have tidied my ‘desk’ (absolutely covered in fabric and embroidery thread scraps etc.) I want to do my finances update and work out my percentages of my wants / have to’s and savings spends to see how far off I am from the targets recommended in my latest finance book I have.

KK

KajiKita

Presents wrapped, packed and posted! Desk is tidy! 😊

Done the ‘All Your Worth’ calculations and it isn’t quite as bad as I feared:
Must haves = 61%
Savings = 15%
Wants = 24%

I suspect if I had done this at the beginning of this year, before I started following the ideas and advice here, it would have been waaaay worse! 😉

I shall read on and see what further tips I can glean for reducing my spends ….

KK

KajiKita

Had a grim week - went down with a water infection so had some very bad nights and have been getting paler and paler all week (according to colleagues in work). I gave in yesterday and asked the doctor for some ABs - they seem to be helping. Actually sleeping something like the right amount of hours last night for the first time in a week has definitely helped. 

Very cold and frosty here so better to keep off the garden; I am staying indoors and doing gentle pottering tasks, such as filtering the towering piles of magazines into ‘keep or recycle’, updating my spreadsheets and some TTs:

- OPd £8.41 to mortgage from QM33 this week
- TTd £9.70 from food and my current account to my savings account 
- ‘Found’ a further £79 in the linked savings account to our joint current account, so have added that to my savings tracker. 

Still not at £5K savings - the work on the car I had to have done and Christmas spend have knocked that back by a couple of months I think …. Sigh. 

Can’t seem to update my signature for some reason. I tried last weekend and it gave me a ‘computer says no’ response. 

Booked Sainsbury’s for next weekend’s groceries with a £12.50 voucher which is pleasing 😊

Currently sat on the sofa, warm and drowsy, with my cat snoring next to me, trying not to fall asleep! 😉

KK

badmemory

Sorry to hear about the water infection.  They are both a literal & metaphorical pain.  I used to get them all the time.  The sooner you get a prescription the better, don't wait next time as they can turn quite nasty.  I had a much older male friend who had one & was in hospital on a drip for a fortnight.  The worst bit was he didn't even remember being in hospital at all.  You don't seem to get a very high temp with them but they act like you have been over 104.  Take care.

KajiKita

@badmemory, I decided to go to the quack when I could feel the pain moving back through my torso to my back. The GP said that wasn’t my kidneys (they are more on the side according to him) but I wasn’t convinced so decided to act before it became entrenched. 

KK 

KajiKita

I’m feeling a bit better - the ABs worked and I finally slept through for the first time in two weeks last night which was huge relief. I’ve cut my working hours back a little bit, just so my commute is calmer. 

It’s forecast to be minus 8 here tonight! 🥶😳 Hubby and I realised we had a huge wash of cold air running over us on the sofa in the living room. We were both freezing. We’ve partially closed down the open plan opening between the living room and the snug with a bookcase we made double sided and tonight we’ve added a bodged up curtain to close the other side of the gap - OMG the difference between one side of the curtain and the other! 😳🔥

I have been digging out thermals and a woolly jumper and cardigan for work tomorrow, both for the commute and for being in work itself, as I was cold all day today! 

KK

KajiKita

Mr KK is cooking up a plan to buy a whole heap of disassembled FJ motorbikes (5 of them), rebuild them and then sell them for a profit or as spares … He’s planning to turn this into *savings* or OPs to the mortgage!!!
OMG …. even if this plan doesn’t come off, my recent financial focus seems to be rubbing off on him! So very, very chuffed as it’s been feeling like I have been the heavy lifting in this on my own for a long time … 😊❤️👏

KK