Ding! Ding! All change, please... (now replaced with new diary on MFW)

beanielou

Zero is good 

Humdinger1

Groovy baby re the 0% card! And thanks for the update on moving; as ever, your reasons make perfect sense.   Love Humdinger 

Makingabobor2

Excellent on the 0% card

enthusiasticsaver

Just quickly caught up on your diary and exciting you have found  you like.  One careful owner sounds good. 

DD1 is buying a house after realising she does not want to live in a flat especially after Covid where we were all confined to barracks.  Obviously your plans have just rearranged to support your mum understandably.  Fingers crossed your offer is accepted and you get your flat on the market and sold quickly. 

EssexHebridean

Morning all - oh I am LOVING seeing so many familiar faces dropping in here! 

ES - there certainly was a degree of cabin fever during the lockdowns - we're fortunate in that despite being ground floor we have a well sized balcony (we actually have two - but the front room side one is the one we use) which was a godsend. We also have a small patch of garden area across the front of the flat, and look straight out onto a communal green area too which really helped - but I have to say that having a proper outdoor space of our own is a real incentive to getting this done now. We already live close to Mum, so we're not relocating, just changing the format of home we live in within the same area - or, in fact, moving to an area within the town that we prefer. (hopefully!) I can absolutely identify with your DD's approach! 

So - that's the 0% card done and dusted. It will be left open at the moment as it is in MrEH's name and we feel it won't harm his credit file to have it sitting there, once the mortgage is sorted we'll probably close it though. Thank you for all the celebrations on that - the real achievement for me is that although the money for what was on it was stashed aside into savings before the costs were even incurred, we've cleared it without needing to dip into savings at all.

We've had confirmation that the owners of the house we're after are discussing and considering. In the meantime another one in the same area has come on - on the fact of it slightly bigger and far more "done" - but in actual fact, a bit like "the one we didn't view" it's not entirely to our taste, and the things it offers are all things we have already got plans in mind for how we would add them to "One Careful Owner" (as the hoped-for one shall be known!). The new one is on at the same price though - and needs far less work done, so could be useful for bargaining power if the owners of OCO decided to try to squeeze us for a higher offer if we want it off the market. If they turn us down, we will probably view the new one to see how it feels to us. Fingers are remaining crossed anyway.

Today will not be a NSD - I ventured onto the nice toiletries site this morning (think Clinic, but with a Q...) as I need cleanser, and should probably also invest in a new mascara. While on I decided it made sense to buy a new tube of my BB cream too - and the three things took me over the threshold spend for both the free gift (bag, one full size product and three minis) AND the next level up which came with a free liquid facial soap cleanser. Mum helpfully gave me a £30 gift card as part of my christmas pressies, and for some reason the website decided to give me 10% off too. My full size freebie was selected as a 30ml tub of my usual favourite moisturiser, and the free cleanser is one I will very happily use. Total cost from my pocket was £26.70 which I'm extremely happy with. 

In less good news, the C0v3ntry have emailed to say that I have until the 19th to return the form to them for the new limited-access-good-interest-rate account we have applied for. As I haven't even got the form yet, and we got post yesterday (post that was sent before Christmas!) I can't imagine we'll get any more this week, so I'll have to contact them and see if they can email the form to MrEH instead, or simply give us an extension of time to allow the form to arrive. My suspicion is that they'll say no on all counts and we'll lose the account - we'll see. 

Yet more jobs done at home last night - the bathroom window is now re-sealed round and looks a ridiculous amount better, once that has fully cured we have a couple of areas on it that need some additional work, but to be honest it would pretty much pass muster as it is for valuation purposes anyway. MrEH also did a sterling job on cleaning the little drawer unit we have in there which gathers dust like you wouldn't believe, I sorted out cleaning of some fittings and niggling corners, and we've also cleaned off the top of freezer two which is where the coffee machine lives - it gets marked from splashes from that so needed doing. Tonight MrEH has rugby training and I'll be taking a night off from doing house related stuff I think! 

milann

I think you deserve a night off from house duties. It sounds ready for the valuation.Fingers and everything else crossed for you on your house purchase 🤞

lucielle

That’s so good they’re considering it. Everything crossed. 

L

EssexHebridean

Morning all, and thank you for the crossed fingers!

Interest day on one of our fixed rate savings accounts today - I love seeing it arrive, as it's such an incentive to carry on saving! There will be a few more trickling in over the next few days too, it's all good! 

No word back from the sellers of One Careful Owner yet. If they're not willing to take it off the market (which would be unsurprising bearing in mind how far back, relatively speaking, we are) then we'll probably say that we'll withdraw the offer for the time being as it will obviously serve us better to see what the market does by the time we are ready to go again - we can always ask that the agents keep us in the loop with other people showing interest as well. We're still watching RM like hawks - right now there are two other properties on there which we would definitely consider viewing - one round the corner from OCO, and the other ("the one with the beams" ) literally just along the road from where we are now, in a location we really like, so there are definitely options, and if we're not in a safe position with OCO we'd sooner keep our own options open! 

I didn't end up going completely "house task" free in the end last night as I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't settle back to sleep again - too many little niggly thoughts whizzing round. Got up for a while, read a bit of my magazine but couldn't even concentrate on that, so instead dealt with transferring the bird food fat-balls to the tin we've earmarked for them (a large lidded one which says "cat food" on the side - the irony is breathtaking!) they all fitted - just! Also measured my lovely dining table to see whether one of the niggly thoughts (that there wouldn't be room for it in the dining room at OCO) had foundation - it doesn't - the table measures FAR smaller than it looks, so that's a hurrah!  unsurprisingly I went back to bed and fell asleep again quite fast after that. 

MSE Stuff:
- Interest, as mentioned
- Today *should* be a NSD - except, hang on, no, it's not, MrEH has topped up his Oyster! 
- Food is organised - I got the pack of YS'd chicken chipolatas out of the freezer last night to defrost in the fridge - they'll do tea tonight with jacket tatties and baked beans and then I'll use them as the protein element in a risotto tomorrow I think, rather than re-freezing the balance once cooked. 
- We'll be getting a veg box this week as I checked the contents earlier in the week and it looks like a good one. 

Other stuff:
- Planning to run tonight - that will be week 1 of C25K ticked off assuming I do get out. Might try to squeeze the first run of week 2 in over the weekend too as that will mean I'll have run three times this week which I know is my ideal for getting back into it.
- Tonight will be a focus on voluntary role stuff as we need to progress to our next stage - handing stuff over to others for a while.
- we'll also try to find the time to do that bit of touching up on the bathroom window sealing. 

Cheery_Daff

Fingers crossed for the house! You never know what will happen - you might remember we had a lot of interest in ours, and we still took it off the market for someone whose house wasn't even on the market yet 😂 (they did offer £17k over the asking price though 😂 although we kept a few more viewings before we accepted that, so they dropped it to £15k). It worked out - they sold within a fortnight, and then we made them wait while we ditched our original house and bought a new one 🙄😂 So you just never know - it all worked out in the end!

beanielou

Hope things move as you want