Fix Up, Look Sharp

EssexHebridean

Sounds like lovely plans for what is going to be a really nice garden once you've had the time to get going on it GC! 

redofromstart

Sounds lovely.  The veg plots at the front make sense.  It might be worth digging your selves a nursery bed in the meantime, with the idea being that you have a prepped bed and you 'heel in' any bargains you see, splitting out overgrown etc, or growing on cuttings from friends so you have a head start when you do get to planting.  Two examples, my £4 Acers are the size of the £8 ones for a few months growth, and a single lavender (2.50 or so in B&M) made into cuttings and poked into the soil can give you enough plants to line a path without that much effort.  Doesnt want to be in early morning sun, or full shade though.   Most gardeners like to share I find.  

Working_Mum

On the garden inspiration front ....where we live there are several villages which host  "Open Gardens". They're great for getting ideas about what will thrive in the area and also for sourcing cheaper plants (as garden owners sell plants they've grown). I visit a couple near me every year with friends and whilst it costs a few pounds entry fee this is often for charity and it whiles away a Sunday in a lovely gentle way.
I have a six foot willow tree which cost me £4 in May - I planted it in my garden when it was a foot high and has thrived this summer :-)

GeorgianaCavendish

redofromstart said:

Sounds lovely.  The veg plots at the front make sense.  It might be worth digging your selves a nursery bed in the meantime, with the idea being that you have a prepped bed and you 'heel in' any bargains you see, splitting out overgrown etc, or growing on cuttings from friends so you have a head start when you do get to planting.  Two examples, my £4 Acers are the size of the £8 ones for a few months growth, and a single lavender (2.50 or so in B&M) made into cuttings and poked into the soil can give you enough plants to line a path without that much effort.  Doesnt want to be in early morning sun, or full shade though.   Most gardeners like to share I find.  

That's a really great idea! The tree surgeon is going to leave us a couple of bags of chippings that we can use for mulch to get a nursery bed started and we've got a potting bench in our shed (the shed is very ramshackle and nearly falling down, so it needs a bit of emergency work over the winter). 

I love lavender and would be happy to have it in as much of the garden as I can! I also love Acers - I'll keep looking out for bargains   

GeorgianaCavendish

Working_Mum said:

On the garden inspiration front ....where we live there are several villages which host  "Open Gardens". They're great for getting ideas about what will thrive in the area and also for sourcing cheaper plants (as garden owners sell plants they've grown). I visit a couple near me every year with friends and whilst it costs a few pounds entry fee this is often for charity and it whiles away a Sunday in a lovely gentle way.
I have a six foot willow tree which cost me £4 in May - I planted it in my garden when it was a foot high and has thrived this summer :-)

This is a great idea! I've joined a couple of local village Facebook groups so I can lurk and see when Open Garden events come up. I noticed that there is a house at the end of the road that often has plants for sale, I will pop down there when we move in  

Your willow tree sounds amazing - what fantastic growth over the summer!

GeorgianaCavendish

September 2022 Round Up 

Savings

House Repairs Fund - 47.5%

Extra Income 

Prolific Academic - £40.15
TopCashBack - £44.78
HuYu (supermarket receipt app) - £5.00 (Amazon voucher)
Credit card reward vouchers - £11.00 (M&S voucher)
Credit card cashback - £4.61
FocusGroup - £15.00 (virtual Mastercard)
Tax Refund - £1280.00
Interest on Savings - £38.57 (includes interest on 2 x savings accounts which are paid quarterly)

Freebies - Laundry detergent (worth £8.00) and soap (worth £2.00)

No Spend Days

16/15 for September
Target for October - 15

GeorgianaCavendish

A better month with rewards and extra income, mainly down to the tax refund coming in from HMRC. October is off to a good start though as I won £50 on the Premium Bonds - it's been automatically reinvested so has bumped up my emergency fund a little bit more. 

The electrician started last week and is about a third of the way through, and we received the quote from the tree surgeon. I think I mentioned earlier that I had really underestimated how long the work would take in my initial calculations and after showing him around and discussing what needed to be done, I was expecting the quote to be very high. I was pleasantly surprised that it came in at 60% of my second estimate. He's going to confirm dates with us in the next couple of weeks, I expect it will be done by the end of October. 

We've been in touch with a builder who is going to review the calculations from the structural engineer and then give us a guideline quote. If that's ok, he'll come out and do a proper quote in person. He's booked up until early next year, but as we are flexible and (hopefully) the job is small, he might be able to squeeze us in before year end. Once we have a timeline for the building work, we can book in the plumbing. 

Something that is worrying me is the cost of materials rising. The electrician had booked all of our materials back when he did our quote (in July) so we didn't have a revised quote, but he said that some of the prices have skyrocketed since then due to the difficulty in getting materials shipped into the UK. We've agreed on the quote from the plumber, but I don't know if that will go up with the increased price of materials. 

By the time I write my October round-up post, I will have redone the budget for the house repairs. (And probably our % to goal will be smaller as the additional costs are taken into account! ) I also hope that we'll have a few more jobs ticked off the list, or at least an idea of when they will take place. 

All the news about mortgage rates rising makes me a bit anxious about our mortgage, even though we are less than 6 months into our 5 year fix. I think it is very unlikely that we'll be able to secure another 2.49% at the end of this term so there is even more incentive to overpay and bring down the LTV as much as possible. It makes me feel a bit stressed about spending all our "extra" money on house repairs at the moment, but we really do need to get work done to make it liveable. I guess I'm just having a bit of a wobble, but need to remember that this phase won't last forever and we will be able to shift our focus to overpaying the mortgage by the middle of the fixed period (hopefully a bit before!). When I was posting in my DFW diary, one of my favourite mantras was to "focus on the teaspoon, not the lake" (shamelessly stolen from another DFW-er who said "Starting your debt-free journey can feel like someone has asked you to empty a lake with a teaspoon. Just focus on the teaspoon. You won’t notice the lake going down from one month to the next, but one day you will look up and see there’s just a pond left, then a puddle, and then suddenly nothing but dust.") The road to mortgage freedom is very long and I'm so early on in the journey that it feels crazy to think the lake will ever empty, but I've drained one lake already - I can do this one too  

GeorgianaCavendish

I've got my appraisal booked at the end of next week ... I'm working on my talking points and evidencing my achievements this year at the moment, but if anyone has come across a good article or podcast about pay rise conversations then please let me know!  

astrocytic_kitten

GeorgianaCavendish said:

I've got my appraisal booked at the end of next week ... I'm working on my talking points and evidencing my achievements this year at the moment, but if anyone has come across a good article or podcast about pay rise conversations then please let me know!  

Do you follow Ask A Manager? She’s American so not everything applies here, but I love her blog and she has some great advice on asking for pay rises.

I think it’s normal to be feeling wobbly about mortgages at the moment, but as  you say you need to be spending to make it liveable. And by doing that you’ll be increasing the value too. With your track history I’m sure that in 5 years you won’t be looking at a lake but a pond!

GeorgianaCavendish

October 2022 Round Up 

Savings

House Repairs Fund - 44% - budget updated this month

Extra Income 

Prolific Academic - £30.22
TopCashBack - £9.21
Storewards (receipt app) - £10.00
Ipsos Isay - £20.00 (Amazon voucher)
Premium Bonds win - £50.00
Interest on Savings - £3.28 



No Spend Days

16/15 for October
Target for November - 15