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

redofromstart

Happy new diary! I look forward to watching your new plans develop. 

redofromstart

I also remember MFW being a bit Hairy Shirt suffering at one time, as was old style.  Haven't been on old style in a long time but MFW is a much more positive space now I think. Reminded me of the 'gloomy and purposeless trousers of uncle vanya' sometimes.

Blackcats

Will be following your revised plans and new diary.
I live where I live so that I can be close at hand for my elderly dad.  My brothers live on the other side of the world and although there are times when I feel a bit overwhelmed by the weight of responsibility I think I'm lucky to be able to spend time with my dad.
I do have future plans and aspirations but for now I'm here for dad just like he has always been there for me.

savingholmes

Waves 

Plans changing is about the only certainty these days

Loved the food show story too

Staffordia

I understand your concerns regarding your mother. We were on holiday in Shetland this year when my OH's mother telephoned her in a complete state as she was feeling very ill. Fortunately a friend stepped in and took her to hospital but it took us a few days to reschedule flights. I imagine Shetland and the Hebrides are similar with their remoteness, which is why we both love them of course. 

EssexHebridean

Ooh - what a lovely lot of visitors, that was quite the housewarming party, there! 

Yes - MFW has changed a LOT. Back in the day the expectation was that if you were "serious about it" you would sacrifice pretty much all fun stuff in order to OP every spare penny - there was also a bit of an attitude for a while that if you didn't have an offset mortgage you weren't "doing it right" - Hairy Shirt Suffering is right, as Redo so perfectly put it! (A bit like the "is your heating on yet" threads which inevitably turn into a p***ing contest and would be better named "who can claim to have their thermostat set the lowest!") I follow quite a few diaries on MFW these days and as Cheery & TMV say it is indeed an entirely different place to way-back-when!

Staffordia yep - I've not been to Shetland (It's on the list!) but suspect there are definitely some parallels there on the travel front. We *could* be lucky, and get straight on a flight to Glasgow, straight on a second flight to Stansted, and theoretically if everything ran smoothly we could be down in Essex again inside 5 hours tops - but if "the call" came at the wrong time of day, or in a period of poor weather, the best case scenario could well turn into 24 hours, and possibly worse than that if flights were full because ferries were cancelled.  

Paspatur yep to changing circumstances needing to mean changing plans - and also to changing situations in the desired future location, too. Covid changed things a LOT in the Hebrides - there was a sudden rush of people from off-island buying property up there - in a lot of cases without ever having visited or seen the place at all. People had heard on the news that there was no positive cases there at all (there wasn't for literally months as the locals were SO aware of the need to avoid it because of limited medical facilities) and so it was seen as a desirable place to have a bolt-hole. As a result, now a lot of properties that come up for sale never even hit the open market - they simply get sold privately to locals, which is completely understandable. It definitely slightly changes how we might be considered if we bought as a second home though, there's no question about that, and also means that prices tend to be higher for those that DO hit the open market. Ironically, a lot of those rush-purchases are now coming up for sale again, unsurprisingly! 

Apologies - there were too many folk to name-check everyone who popped in to wish me a happy new diary - all comments and visitors as ever are much appreciated though! 

MSE Stuff: Today started with a cash-out of a modest sum from Prolific - it ended up at £15.25 and that has already been bounced from PayPal to my "Gym Neutral fund" - and my signature updated to reflect that I am now a third of the way to target. I'm not under any real illusion that I'll hit target on that one - but then I never was. It as really about offsetting the cost as much as possible. There is still £3.31 sitting pending over at Prolific too so that's a nice little boost to December. 
Hopefully MrBoss will pay me a bit later and I'll be able to money shuffle and get my personal accounts surplus reallocated.
FD Reg Saver still not showing open - not too concerned though, I guess they've had a lot applied for in the last few days! 

Sunshine_girl2

Re the First Direct Saver, when I opened mine is said it would be open within 3 working days . As you say I guess a lot have been opened . 

EssexHebridean

Sunshine_girl2 said:

Re the First Direct Saver, when I opened mine is said it would be open within 3 working days . As you say I guess a lot have been opened . 

Yes - mine said 3 - 5 working days I think. It's all set up anyway, just means if anything the date for the monthly payment will work slightly better for us if it's the beginning of a month. 

badmemory

I don't know if first direct is like the halifax but I moved the DD date from the 20th to 1st a few years ago when I was late opening it.  But I couldn't move it into the previous month even though I had made no contribution in that month.

EssexHebridean

 Well hopefully either the account opening date will be in December, with the contribution also made in December, or both things will occur in November. If they’ve opened the account in November and credited the payment in December then I should hopefully just be able to “catch up” the missing payment anyway as unusually this account allows that I believe. We’ll see! (In fact, just looked - the deposit shows as yesterday so I’ll see if that matches the account opening date when I get the first statement)

A pottering type morning here today ahead of going out a little later to visit a beer festival and meet up with some pals. Just booked train tickets (through TCB of course!) and other spendiness will be a small entry fee to the festival, and the cost of beers of course, plus a pizza lunch with a friend when we get there, we may want a snack of some sort later on as well but we’ll see. 

I’ve mostly been concentrating on basic tidying up and small life admin tasks this morning - the newspaper mountain has been removed to the recycling, a small amount of washing up done, water filter cartridge changed, washing from the machine to the airer and some of a previous load put away, the pin no for new current account disguised and noted ready for activating. Rubbish collected up and ready to go out too - although I’ll probably actually take it to the bins tomorrow now.

Banking checked and all good - the new FD Reg Saver opened as above, I’ve done the manual transfer from the feeder account for the Sant Reg Savers, need to nudge MrEH to transfer his Principality money, and the monthly payment went to the Sant 0% card in spite of us making a payment to it a few days ago - that should give me the timescale where that works then, although that may not hold true for next month of course. 

Electricity meter is read - I’m trying to do that weekly on a Friday now for better record keeping. Delighted to find that over 80% of our use this week has been on the night rate, too. The Octopods are showing our monthly payment as pending - it’s left the bank - but no sign of the EBSS payment hitting yet. It’ll appear I’m sure, I’m not worried! The £15 difference between what I expected to be paying and what the DD was set at has been transferred to the buffer fund.

Other spendiness: £2 on books in the charity shop today - MrEH will be returning some to a different charity shop tomorrow morning I think as he has to go that way anyway. 

Reckon that’s about it - the train fare for today will come from our joint fun account as we’ve taken nothing from there recently so it’s reasonably well funded. Everything else will be from personal spends though.