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

MrsPorridge

Another one doing money shuffling today.
For once its lovely and sunny in our part of Cornwall, but extremely cold with a really cutting wind - but nice to see the sun shining and clear blue skies.

Elisheba

Oh, your meal planning is making me feel hungry, EH!  And inspired - I'll have to get a plan written down and do some shopping tonight 

EssexHebridean

Thanks for popping by MaB, Mrs P & Elisheba - and glad to have inspired anyone on the meal planning front after how much I've been winging it for the past few weeks! It does make such a difference having things planned out though - and I'm feeling quite inspired myself by my efforts at getting things used up over the past few weeks! 

I did get out for my usual walk at lunchtime but it was very grey and chilly - I'm slightly wishing I'd gone and collected the car at lunchtime to be honest but hey ho - it's only 10 minutes away on the bike and better that I got the walk in really! 

I am very much hoping that by the time I get home this evening MrEH will have found time to do the washing up. He'll be off to rugby training (taking my car for our mechanic to collect from the club  for its MoT test) and I'm planning a yoga session and then curling up on the sofa in front of the TV I think! I could just do with it warming up, now - I've had enough of grey, and cold, and wintery!

EssexHebridean

Oh hurrah - I've been paid! Surplus in my "budget" account now transferred to savings, and I'll do the rest of the money shuffling probably tomorrow morning. 

I have also just cashed out Prolific for the end of the month - with some trepidation as they seem to have been talking about p@ypal problems for days - but all good and it arrived straight away so that has now been transferred to the gym neutral fund and my signature updated. I cashed out at £15.92 in the end so still £3 there pending.

Ipsos has done well today - I'm now at 550 points. Oh - and I'm finally past the halfway point with YouGov, too! that one is most definitely getting knocked on the head next time I cash out - although I have said this before! 

themadvix

You're also inspiring on the exercise front EH - I'm pinching your idea of 3/4 lots of activity a day - I've cycled, walked and will be doing some yoga too shortly. It is so grey and dark here now - sunset isn't until 17.38, but it's definitely time to put the lights on!

EssexHebridean

themadvix said:

You're also inspiring on the exercise front EH - I'm pinching your idea of 3/4 lots of activity a day - I've cycled, walked and will be doing some yoga too shortly. It is so grey and dark here now - sunset isn't until 17.38, but it's definitely time to put the lights on!

Ha - well I'm very pleased if I can encourage anyone to keep me company on the movement front!  I ended up with three walks and a yoga session last night - today is currently looking like being either 2 cycles and 2 walks or possibly 2 cycles, 1 walk and a run - we'll see. Either way, it's all movement, and it's all forms of movement I enjoy (well, not always at the time I'm actually doing them, but you know what I mean!) and that is absolutely key for me - if it feels like a chore I won't do it. 

Payday money shuffling is now done - I just need to decide what to do with the surplus from last month in my spends account - although I'm leaning towards just shoving it into my limited edition e-saver at 2.75% until I can be bothered to move it to At0m. The easiest option and it's still earning a pretty decent rate, plus it gives me an easily accessible small savings pot in Sant if needed. other than that the other personal pots are all looking decent enough - indeed I opted not to feed my clothing pot this month as it's actually looking healthy enough at the moment - I might regret that when I FINALLY get round to sorting out the wretched opticians appointment mind you! I might need to budget for some maintenance to the foldy bike at some stage as the gear shift is getting increasingly tetchy - I had to cycle most of the way from the car this morning without my top gear (it's only a 6 speed, so this is significant). I'll set aside some time on Friday to have a look at it and adjust, clean and lubricate it a bit and see if that helps. If not it will  need a trip to the bike hospital! 

I've moved the CT and WR money across into savings although at the moment only to a "halfway house" account - once the regular monthly payment into there hits tomorrow then I'll shift the lot in one go across to the NHF. 

My car won't be being MoT'd until next week now - we need to remember to drop it to Neil over the weekend, so that will be Sunday as we're out all day on Saturday. He'll likely let MrEH have it back at the rugby club on Tuesday evening, as long as it passes OK obviously. 

Food wise we're doing OK - I made the most of putting the oven on last night and roasted two full trays of various veggies so that has also given us two tubs of roasted salad tomatoes and one of roasted courgette to go in the freezer. Tonight will involve using another courgette, and also one of the leeks that is in the fridge, plus the final two sausages that were cooked on Monday evening. MrEH was successful in buying smoked mackerel yesterday too so that means tomorrow night is on to be the radicchio salad I was hoping to try, or at least a form of it.  I've spotted that  my C0-0p app has offers for both 50p off any purchase of milk and also £1 off any shop at the moment so have suggested to MrEH we swing round via one of their stores when we're out walking on Friday to see if we can combine these two things and gain him some very cheap milk for the week - it's worth a try! 

That's about it I think - all feeling relatively calm and (dare I say it) organised at the moment! I will take some time at some stage to go through our budget again with the new savings outgoings in place I think, I can pop the new figures for both water and CT in there too when I do it. 

EssexHebridean

Morning all!  End of my working week today - it's felt like it's flown by this week for some reason, not complaining! Today is cold but bright so that's making me feel at least a bit more spring-like too I think - although having to scrape the car windscreen this morning went down like a bag of cold sick, I confess! 

MSE Stuff - 
- £25 on premium bonds - don't get me wrong, their days are still numbered, but that at least helps a bit! 
- Banking checked and all good - most of the early month stuff has now gone out. 
- Payment across to FD reg saver has landed, and that is now into 4 figures which looks nice! 
- Final EBSS payment has now arrived with the Octopods - we'll be a little further in credit once the monthly payment has landed. I'm still minded to leave the DD where it is, and will continue to drop the small extra amount into the buffer fund each month for the forseeable. 
- Meals continue to be on-plan
- Did a first pass tweak of the budget last night ahead of the new tax year and revised bills for things like CT and water, plus the changes to our savings with the finishing of some regular saver accounts etc. 

On the subject of the energy bills, our electricity last month was £10 above the amount of our monthly payment, and I'm still waiting for MrEH to read the gas meter but that will come within the £15 I assume for that each month anyway. So assuming £140 costs, that is just over £40 added to our credit this month with the EBSS as well. Having now reached the final EBSS payment it's interesting that our account credit once our monthly payment this month advances from pending will be £350 - meaning that actually we've barely used those extra payments at all - a far better picture than I was expecting. My expectation for this month is that we'll hopefully see our electricity use drop back to a little below our monthly payment, but possibly not much, although a lot depends on what the weather forecast does I guess - the next week is certainly not looking any warmer!  

Last night's spaghetti with leek, courgette, pesto and sausage was pronounced "really tasty" by MrEH so a win there. My suspicion is that he may well be less enthusiastic about tonight's planned radicchio, smoked mackerel, roasted beetroot and lentil offering, but we'll see - the horseradish dressing may yet win him over! I need to finalise next week's meal plan (I have a feeling I posted it on here so will trundle back and look in a minute) and then sort out the shopping list too - that will most likely be done on Sunday morning I think. 

What should have been an hour of voluntary role stuff last night turned into 30 minutes faffing with a computer problem and then 45 minutes actual work done - but we did make a step forwards so all good really - we're at the stage now where each hour of work done represents big steps ahead as well which is always encouraging. Also made some notes of discussion points we need to raise ahead of Saturday's meeting, and will probably have a chat on the bus on the way there about a plan for the jobs to get done next week. 

Oh and movement yesterday was x 4 again - although I did opt out of a run as it just felt too flipping cold! Opted for a bit of extra distance on the bike instead followed by a walk afterwards, so that was 2 x cycles and 2 x walks in the day. Today is likely to be 2 x cycles, 1 x walk and a yoga session tonight while MrEH is at rugby training. 

Jobs for tomorrow:
- Load of washing overnight
- walk first thing - via the co-0p to see if we can abuse the system for cheap milk!
- go to the gym
- blast round with Jaws
- Do any washing up that needs done
- Clean the top of the cooker
- quick tidy and S&S of the kitchen to return it to "viewing friendly" status - not though there are any sign of any viewings! 

lucielle

Still as busy as ever!  Any joy with the leaflets?
L

EssexHebridean

Nothing back from the leaflets as yet L - we do have another batch to go though - that will likely be a Sunday job! 

Jwil has just inspired me to think about adding some small amounts to my pension - I'm pretty sure I can just doing by logging in to the pension company's dashboard so I'll try to remember to have a look at that this evening/tomorrow.

And having seen yet another person I know who looks to have been the victim of an account hack on insta I have also changed my password and activated 2FA on there too. it's depressing how often it's happening at the moment - and while follower numbers don't bother me in themselves it does bother me that my insta account has a lot of people who would then likely be spammed with messages etc if mine did get hacked, so adding the extra layer of security seems sensible. I'd be sad to lose all the history on the account too in honesty - I've been posting regularly since 2014 so that's a fair amount of stuff and memories! 

EssexHebridean

Good morning all - happy Monday, albeit down here it's actually a rather chilly, grey one! 

The pension contribution got made on Thursday evening - only a small one but regardless I am patting myself on the back and considering myself at least in the short term a fully-functioning adult. Discussion had with MrEH on the subject too, and we've agreed that trying to add a small additional amount to each pension monthly would be a good plan, and that this will be a joint expense. 

What else then - shopping done over the weekend - first off Friday morning we dived into the C0-0p to try out "operation cheap milk" - and sure enough, using the two offers together we got 4 pints for 35p - bargain! Having just checked, we have a £1 off the shop one again this week so we will probably repeat the exercise again albeit it this time it will cost us 85p instead! Yesterday was a quick call in at F@rmf00ds for their cheap butter - 3 x packs of salted and 1 of unsalted now squirreled away in the fridge. I also bought 4-for-£1 passata too - it's the nice N@p0l1na one with garlic and basil so will do nicely as the base for spag bol and at that price you can't really go wrong. I also like that it is in glass bottles rather that the cartons that most of them come in. Just over £6 spent there. Then T's for the main weekly shop - just over £10 there partially assisted by the fact that the checkout assistant managed to key in the wrong amount for MrEH's newspaper subscription voucher. I half realised on the way out, but didn't work out what the discrepancy was until we were back in the car - so am taking that as a win for us, I think T's can afford it! I possibly would have noticed it at the checkout but was somewhat distracted by the positively belligerent attitude of the checkout operator who decided to take issue with me asking her politely to not throw people's shopping on top of their crisps that she's already scanned through... 

Saturday we headed off to St Albans for our voluntary role meeting - excellent value bus travel thanks to the £2 fares initiative - I'd be tempted to make better use of buses if that one continues past the current June end date! We nipped into Mozzas on arrive for salads for lunch, and then headed off with some of the rest of the group to a few pubs once the meeting finished in the late afternoon. there were a couple of other meetings from different parts of the same organisation going on too so it was fab to catch up with a few folk we don't see often! There was spendiness - but it was certainly very well worth it! The lunch money has been transferred over from our expenses pot too as there was still some money lurking in thee - we're not bothering to claim the bus fares! 

My car was dropped off to our friendly mechanic yesterday afternoon ready for him to MOT her today or tomorrow - I'm not going with the service this time as I think I mentioned before but he will cast an eye over her and make sure all looks OK. We had a nice walk home along the river and through the old part of the town too  - just under 5 miles and in spite of the weather being grey and a bit cold it was really nice! The money is standing by in the car account and I'm hopeful that there won't be anything much needing done. 

Other than that, things are ticking over. We started a stew in the slow cooker overnight - it would have gone better if I'd remembered that the smart plug schedule needed the day changed - thankfully I realised when I got up in the night that it hadn't switched on so got it going then, and it will finish off on the low setting for a while later so should be ready when we get home. that will then feed us another night later in the week too. I lubricated both bikes on Friday morning and gave the gears and chain a bit of a clean on the foldy one as well - the big one also got a thorough greasing and I thought I'd made headway on the problem with the gear change until it promptly dumped the chain half a mile out from getting back home on the test-ride. It will need to go in to be looked at I think so I need to get that sorted. The other thing I need to get sorted which will be spendy is that opticians appointment I've been talking about for ages - I have to stop putting it off!  

Oh - one final MSE thing was that we had an email from the water company a few weeks ago telling us we'd be getting compensation for the issues we had with water pressure before Christmas - and when I checked the bank last night they had paid us £25 so that was a nice surprise! I assume it must be just a standard amount per household but we weren't expecting it to be that much! It's been transferred over to the New House Fund.