Money-shuffling towards mortgage freedom

MeandO

I cancelled the auto renewal of the home insurance today and although I couldn’t seem to get the price down at all (except for one with a company I’d not heard of which had gleaming reviews until people had tried to make a claim = best avoided) I did manage to find a good policy with a £20 Lidl voucher back as a reward through confused . com so have gone with that one. The money has come out of the house insurance & car maintenance pot so I need to build that back up as soon as I can. 

I didn’t receive a reply from the builder today which I’m a bit annoyed at, so I don’t know how much I owe him or if he’s coming tomorrow. This last bit of work needed is getting me down now as it is blatantly obvious ‘work in progress’ which can be seen as soon as we walk in or out of the house and looks a right mess. Plus we’ve been living with a massive sheet of plasterboard and plastic trim on the floor spread across two rooms for months, so enough is enough now. 

I’ve taken mince out of the freezer for tea tomorrow but need to pop to the supermarket for some veggies and to ‘bargains of the home variety’ for loo roll and hair dye - I’m starting to resemble a badger now with my grey stripes and there’s no question of affording a professional colour!

I’ve just seen the report on the news about the ‘apocalyptic’ situation with the increase in the price of grain and the knock on effect of food price increases. Not great news to go to bed on but always eternally grateful to have a bed and a home of our own and to be able to put food on the table. 

MeandO

Morning all, 

I didn't have a very restful night, I had lots of weird but troubling dreams which I often get when I'm stressed.
This morning I popped to HB's to pick up a big pack of loo roll, hair dye and a few bits we were running low on that I can get there, although I'm not sure I'll bother again as the prices in there seems to have gone up massively too. They seem no cheaper than getting these things from the supermarket now, sometimes more expensive I think.

OH popped over last night with a couple of yellow sticker items he'd picked up from Aldi for us - a lovely quiche, some chicken and avocados all @ 75% off. The quiche and chicken are in the freezer, I'll have an avocado for my lunch today.  

I have put a big bag of stuff for charity in the car, the charity shop wasn't open this morning but will drop that off over the next few days. DS sorted out a few toys to get rid of last week too, I may keep hold of those with the view of doing a car boot sale at some point to make a few extra £'s, I'm sure I can sort out some more stuff.

savingholmes

Can you do any exercise or art classes / activities? I find art very therapeutic and distracting. I find in the balance exercise class I do that it requires so much focus it's a reprieve from my problems

MeandO

I’d love to savingholmes and did start open water swimming with a group last year but it got a bit cold! I’m aiming to start again soon so am looking forward to that. OH and I also go cycling every weekend which is definitely doing me good. I don’t have childcare options though so it’s tricky when DS is with me unless it’s something he can join in too. Xx

MeandO

The builder came today and finished his part of the work, I just need to paint and replace the skirting board and some plastic trim when the plaster is dry. He charged me a lot less than I anticipated, in fact I thought he was way too cheap considering the amount of time he’s spent on this for me, so I gave him a little extra to say thank you. He is a great contact to have found and has said to call him if ever I have any sort of emergencies in the house - plumbing or electrical wise etc - and he will come straight over. He is also going to do some more work for me next year when I have hopefully been able to save some money, but did give me a rough figure of what I’d need to save which was a lot less than I thought, so I’m pleased about that.

I downloaded the toogoodtogo app again today and found that a lot more places are now participating around here so I will start to use it. I could have had a carvery bag or harvesters chicken and salad bag for tomorrow but pick up was at 9pm, so too late to drag DS out. I’ll keep looking though. 

MeandO

The child tax credits appeared today so I've allocated that in YNAB and covered some of the smaller bills for next month with it, as well as topping up the car/house insurance pot a bit. I've also sent £400 back to my premium bonds account which I'd withdrawn to pay the builder but have left £100 in the main account to buy the cupboard I've been hoping to get for our front room. I've had no luck finding anything cheaper that fits. I also ordered a runner for the hallway and a small rug from Argos with their 25% off code online at the moment. I'd been looking at these for a while so went for it whilst they were discounted.
I need to focus on building the savings back up now so the mortgage will get it's regular monthly £80ish overpayment and any spare will go to the savings.
I've taken some sausages out of the freezer to cook with eggs, hash browns and beans for DS for tea tonight (his request this morning!) and I'm having leftover enchiladas, previously made and frozen - they were a bit too spicy for DS when we had them last. I'm going to keep an eye on the TGTG app today to see if anything becomes available in our area.

MeandO

£20 skimmed off the budget and transferred to savings. Every little bit counts...

savingholmes

Glad the builders costs 
Were less than expected

MeandO

Hello all, 
Monday again, the weekend seemed to pass in a flash as always.  

I managed to bag a TGTG veg carvery bag for OH and I on Friday; we also had a chicken one from Harvester booked but they cancelled it 5 minutes before when we'd already driven there so I wasn't very impressed with that. We wouldn't buy the carvery one again as it was all quite stodgy, but glad we tried it out, it was a new experience for us! We also picked up 2 x m0rrisons magic bags on Saturday and we were shocked by the amount of food in them. It wasn't even a bag, but two massive fruit and veg boxes full of bread & bakery products, veg, fruit and a couple of herb plants, a couple of bits were too far gone to use so went straight in the bin, but the rest was fine. We've shared the produce with OH's mum (we weren't going to be able to eat 54 crumpets between us!   ) and have frozen a lot of it. We'll maybe try and get one of these a month, anything more is just too much for us and we don't want to be greedy.

DS and I went shopping yesterday as he'd grown out of all his jeans and really needed a few new things. We bought two pairs of jeans, two t-shirts, two long sleeve shirts, 6 pairs of boxers, 7 pairs of socks, two metal water bottles for school and a pair of casual trainer type shoes for under £70 which I thought was good value. All was from pr!mark and M&talan - he's not brand conscious yet so he was more than happy with his haul! We also got his hair cut which was £10. I had just under £70 in the budget set aside for his clothes, so only needed to transfer a few £'s in YNAB to cover it.

I've got a load of washing on but it's just started to pour down so I will have to use the TD today. I also need to update the tax credits as the renewal arrived over the weekend. I have DS's medication to pick up later and forms to print out to change our GP to one more local - not looking forward to that frog, but has to be done. 

savingholmes

Glad you are enjoying TGTG