Five Year Fix, Five Year Plan

WelshmansDaughter

I use Sarah beth yoga, she has some great short videos for specific areas

Merlin's_Beard

Very quiet on the financial and life updates at the minute. Waiting on this month's payday, then hopefully I will have enough in the Sort My Home Out fund to pay a deposit for a patio/garden path, and I can get some quotes in.

Got some money gifted to me by parents, for my birthday, so that went in the SMHO fund as well.

Skipped 4 days of yoga this week for various reasons, mainly work and today because I feel meh. (I am aware that doing yoga might make the meh better, but I struggle at this time of year at the best of times and it's been a tough week. Today has been pjs and loafing.)

Book update: Books read: 1 (a reread of the Amber Spyglass while His Dark Materials is on tv). Books bought: 6 (£5.94 spent)

Oops? Also when my brother dropped off my birthday present (the collins diy manual that many people suggested, thank you all), he also lent me the first four books of a series I've been wanting to read for a while, so there's four more on the list as well.

astrocytic_kitten

It’s a tough time of year, sometimes you just need a sofa day.

You’ve inspired me to check my stats and this month I have bought 7 books and read 8. Though the 8 books were all free via the library and the 7 I’ve paid for remain untouched, so it’s not quite as good as it sounds 🤦‍♀️ Also I’ve been reading my way through a series of very short books so the 8 isn’t particularly impressive either 🤣

Merlin's_Beard

astrocytic_kitten said:

It’s a tough time of year, sometimes you just need a sofa day.

You’ve inspired me to check my stats and this month I have bought 7 books and read 8. Though the 8 books were all free via the library and the 7 I’ve paid for remain untouched, so it’s not quite as good as it sounds 🤦‍♀️ Also I’ve been reading my way through a series of very short books so the 8 isn’t particularly impressive either 🤣

Make that 7 bought and 2 read, now. Nothing I've read or I'm reading is a book I've bought within the last six months.

And my goodreads total from last year looks impressive because I worked my way through a massive series of very short books because I just needed something easy and bitesize, so I'm saying a book's a book!

savingholmes

A book is a book. Sounds like fun progress to me.

WelshmansDaughter

I managed to read a (single) fiction book and was dancing 😀

Merlin's_Beard

Spent a day at the weekend doing training for motorsport volunteering and it was very, very good to be out the house. Also good fun getting to wave a fire extinguisher about  : Some progress towards being more social, tomorrow's job is looking through the calendar and volunteering for events.

January round up though:

Surveys: £50.77 - mostly prolific again.
Competition: £25 from a crossword! This is something I mainly do because I like doing it, but the bonus amazon giftcard is a pretty nice bonus for taking a photo and emailing it in.
Cashback: £67 from the energy company, £5.54 from my 123.

Also some cash as a birthday present.

Food spending was pretty good this month: target plus £26 on takeaway for myself (made two nights of meals, was my birthday treat)

£5.94 on kindle books (still at 7 bought, 2 read)

Sort my home out fund stands at £1319.88 at the end of January. When I peek at Feb's budget it looks closer to £2,200 so I'm hoping that's enough to be a deposit for someone to do the garden, so February's job is getting quotes.

On a more macro level, liquid net worth now at £-195,000 which is mainly fuelled by pension bouncing back a lot. Student loan interest rate has gone back up to 4% but still not enough to do anything about (getting better interest in regular savers, need the cash to spend!) but will have to keep an eye on that.

savingholmes

Glad pension funds are improving. Mine have been too but home equity dropping. Seems to be constant swings and roundabouts.

Well done on the saving for the garden. Scary that that money is just a deposit... How much work are you planning and is there a cheaper way of doing it?

astrocytic_kitten

That all sounds brilliant! I’m so impressed by the crossword, I’d love to be a crossword person but even after the cryptic ones have been explained to me I never seem to get it 😂

Merlin's_Beard

astrocytic_kitten said:

That all sounds brilliant! I’m so impressed by the crossword, I’d love to be a crossword person but even after the cryptic ones have been explained to me I never seem to get it 😂

It's a profession-newspaper-related one so a pretty small circulation. Sometimes my trick with the cryptics is to work out what the word is and then try and retrofit it to the clues, because they're not my strong point either.

@savingholmes - I don't know really what everything is going to cost, but I do know how much my parents paid to have their drive paved over 10 years ago so I'm guessing it's going to be hefty. I could try and diy it myself, but... my garden is small and I  want to make sure it's going to have the right drainage in it to save myself problems later on.