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

lucielle

Sorry to hear about the house. Have you tried any more leaflets?  Would you consider putting it on Facebook?  

L

Humdinger1

@EssexHebridean disappointing news but may I say how impressive your calm, positive attitude is.  Selling property is a long job I find, even in red-hot markets.   You will get there.  Onwards and upwards love Humdinger xx 

EssexHebridean

Hi All - thanks for popping in!  L - FB is  definite hard no - allowing for the fact that I share my photography stuff on social media, effectively putting our home address on thee (or indeed elsewhere in that line!) is an absolute no as it would almost certainly invalidate our home insurance! It has been mentioned on twitter by my Mum as "a family friend is selling..." and I've retweeted those a couple of times. We do have more leaflets to go out so we must try to find time to shove those through some doors over the weekend - thanks for the reminder! 

Foxgloves I think you're right about the FTB market being a particular problem at the moment as a lot have been scared by interest rates being "high" (As they see it - let's face it we know that this is anything BUT high!) and so have backed off buying right now. It IS the market locally that is the significant issue - at least we know that - and allowing that the flat was right for us when we looked, it will be right for someone else in due course too. Humdinger I think there is little choice other than just to stay as calm as possible at the moment - to some extent it almost feels a relief that the pressure is off for the time being anyway. Onwards and upwards nails it! 

SH thank you for your kind comment about my photos - I'm really looking forward to the new camera arriving and getting to grips with it! 

All quiet on the end-of-month-nothing-exciting-happening front here - nothing much to do on the money front, banks checked and all good. MrEH informs me that he will need to top up his Oyster tomorrow, I'll need to stick £10 on mine when we head out on Saturday and also need to book train tickets into London for that too - we have a voluntary roe related meeting to go to.  His car will need more diesel at some stage too as of course we used lots of what we put in on the way home from Devon getting back! It'll go to the weekend OK though. Confirmation from Marcus that the interest rate on our accounts there has gone to 3% as well which is nice and somewhat unexpected. 

Lovely to finally have the heating turned down a bit for a while now - and our electricity use has dropped accordingly too - we're now sitting at just under 20kWh/day most days which represents a good saving. Hoping that the long term forecast shows that we'll be able to tweak down a bit further in due course - it would be lovely to think it might be off altogether by April but I can't quite see us achieving that.

Food is under control still - the bargainous rice and grains mix did tea last night instead of couscous - added the usual veg plus some halloumi and toasted seeds - very tasty, and very quick and easy. Planning stir fry for tonight - it might be a bit of a mish-mash though as by some fluke I'm almost clear of veg in the fridge! It'll use half of the chinese leaves I got YS'd though. Handily there was one final tub of turkey from Christmas in the freezer too so I will use that rather than needing to use the last of the tiger prawns. 

And that's about it I think - Waiting to hear from the supplier about the camera - I was hoping it might get sent in time to arrive on Friday but I'm thinking that is slightly less likely now which will be a pain as if it's Monday I'll need to rearrange. We'll see - if I remember rightly the next contact from them will be after it has actually been dispatched, so it's still possible. 

milann

Hope the camera arrives in time. 

Trago is my go to place when we go away. I remember staying at a caravan site by the side of the one in Devon when my 2 were younger and there was a notice in the loos asking that you only use 2 squares of loo paper…..we still chuckle at that request. We usually go to the smaller outlet by the sea when away and had some great bargains there last year.
Sorry to hear about the house. That happened to a friend of mines and the estate agent contacted about 6 months later and they got it at a reduced price 🤞 you never know 🤞

Makingabobor2

Onwards and upwards with the house hunting and selling. Our neighbour still not had any more viewers that we've noticed and his house has been on market 6 months now. But TBH, nobody with any sense would want to live in our road...lol. 

Jellytotts

The market is picking up slowly.  We went live on RM on Wednesday and we sold on Saturday and sale is agreed on the next.  DD has put an offer in on something too and just waiting to hear back.  Our agents said it’s almost like the clocks have gone forwards and everything is springing into life.  It all happens at the right time, we’ve lost houses in the past that we’ve felt were the ones but something better has always come along.  Frustrating whilst you’re in the limbo lane though.  

I’m pleased you’ve managed to find the camera you wanted.  I’ve not had a camera for years and just stuck with my phone but really considering something a little more advanced now.  My dad, DH and DD1 are all super high techy and knowledgeable about their cameras so I feel lost and overwhelmed when I hear them going on about it.  I’m going to have to do some research into a nice basic entry level camera I can learn with. Any advice welcome 

EssexHebridean

Hi All - hope everyone is enjoying their additional hour of useable daylight now! 

Jellytotts pretty much all the main manufacturers now make at least one entry level model - often these come with a basic kit lens as well and can be a pretty decent deal. My advice on buying cameras is always the same though - find your local high street store (or branch of one of the bigger outlets) and go and actually handle the cameras you might be interested in - with the best will in the world you will end up not using a camera that doesn't feel comfortable and intuitive to use - particularly as a new user. when I originally bought my first brand new DSLR (a lot of years ago now!) I had seen a Nikon branded one that I really lied the look of and came well recommended too - when I actually picked it up in store though it proved to be really uncomfortable for me to hold and use - the shutter button was actually a slight stretch for my finger. I picked up the second option I'd picked out - a Canon one - and it was just immediately right - it felt at home in my hands. I still shoot with Canon gear now. 

In other camera related news - mine has arrived! I have made a formal complaint to the supplier though after being told yesterday that it had been delivered to - and signed for by - me. Allowing that I wasn't at home at the time, I was fairly sure it hadn't been. I'd paid extra for a courier service as I expected that this would give me more security over the delivery of a high value item - in the end I got no correspondence from the courier at all and no tracking - so I feel I should get that extra payment refunded - we'll see what they say. I'm disappointed though as I'd bought from them before and they've been excellent. Thank goodness after a rather nervous few hours I discovered on getting home that it had been left with a random neighbour - not ideal! Looking forward to having a bit of a play with mine now anyway - I've actually got it at work with me but whether I'll have time to play - or the weather will relent and let me out there without getting soaked - we'll see! I might take a trip up to Lincolnshire on Friday to see if I can give it some proper use too - again, will see how the weather looks I think, and what might be happening. 

Nothing much to report here on the financial side - the food account took a hit over the weekend as we did a decent stock-up shop in Al's on Friday evening, then both T's and FF's on Sunday. Personal spending accounts also got a bashing on Saturday as we were out all day at a meeting to do with our voluntary role - we stayed on in the original pub that the meeting was in for a while after it had finished, then moved on elsewhere afterwards. A good day, and feels like we achieved a reasonable amount too. I'll have a spendy day on Saturday coming all being well too as I have an opticians appointment and am going to need new glasses - that, let's face it, is NEVER a cheap day, is it! 

Other MSE stuff - the electricity use should start to reduce a bit from now with luck - not least as the change in Economy 7 hours with the clock change means that I can just manually put the hot water on in the mornings on weekdays at least. Also gives us a far better chance of getting into the shower on weekend mornings before it clicks over into expensive rate hours as well! I even remembered to reprogramme the scheduling on the smartplugs as well to make sure that the things that need to run at set times do so. 

Food is sort of planned this week - I know roughly what I'm planning for us to eat through the week but not specific days for some of it yet - we had stir fry last night though using half a bag of FF's garlic and herb king prawns which were very nice. That also used up the last of the chinese leaf bought YS'd previously too. Tonight is - as standard - couscous night. This week it will be involving lots of mushrooms (cos I bought extra - yum!) probably some chick peas and some roasted baby plum toms as I accidentally bought an extra pack (not complaining!), plus some of the leftover roast mutton shoulder from Sunday. I basically seasoned it well but plainly just with salt & pepper, wrapped it up thoroughly in foil and shoved it in a very low oven for about 4.5 hours - tender doesn't even begin to describe it - it was absolutely delicious! There were three tubs of leftovers once we'd had our Sunday dinner from it too - two of them have gone in the freezer.  I'm thinking I'll do a risotto for tomorrow evening - probably bacon, pea & mushroom, and Thursday when I should have a bit more time might be an old favourite of ours in the form of a thai inspired fish stew - we've not had that for ages and we're currently nicely stocked up for fish. Friday is planned to be a fry up I think. 

EssexHebridean

Savings thoughts...

So having just posted on Foxgloves diary on the subject of savings, it reminded me that I've been doing a fair bit of musing and thinking on this very subject for our own side of things, recently, and particularly in relation to our long term savings pots. (There will follow a ramble, most likely, so do feel free to scroll on by if less than interested in my financial wrangling!) 

We're shortly coming to the end of the current batch of maturing Regular Saver accounts - with both of our Sant-And-Er ones due to finish in just a few weeks - and the money from those will be going off to the "Deposit pot" over with the C0ventry - that is "as good as" easy access for us, and is paying decent interest without us risking locking the dosh away so we can't get at it when needed. Those have for the past few months been being funded from surplus since some previous reg savers ended - so we'll need to decide where the excess will be headed now. Prior to that they came from "feeder accounts" funded by previous savings. 

We're reluctant to start too many more regular saver accounts at the moment as clearly once we move our financial commitments are going to change and we don't really want to start paying out money now that we won't be able to maintain further along the line - at the moment most of what we have is in my name - FD, a single Cov option, I have a personal N@t'wide Start to Save and we both have Pr1nc1pal1ty offerings too which are "joint funds". Any "spare" money being saved just in MrEH's name now is best off being squirrelled into an ISA, to be honest, so that will be in hand from the new tax year. (he's already got one for this year).  

We have also got some fixed rate pots which will mature over the remainder of the year too - my personal 6 month fix is first in a couple of months - I will almost certainly move that straight to another fix, as it's longer term money that may as well earn a little more interest than it could in an ISA. Then we have two joint pots - one finishing in August, the other in November - it's too far ahead to decide what we ought to do with those at the moment I think as all sorts of things might have changed by that time - at the moment, on the face of it, I'd probably assume that the first one will be rolled into another fix though, with the second possibly reserved for any work that we needed to do on a new home at that time - or the two might reverse allowing for when things need doing/paying for. 

In addition to these is the main Emergency Fund - currently in M@rcus as that allows joint accounts - essential for the EF - and is paying OK-ish interest. I am going to give some thought to shrinking that at some stage I think - there is currently enough to cover our outgoings for at least 6 months there - and we simply don't need "that" much sitting there. the quandary though is how much is "enough" for those purposes, and that is what needs thought...(As is where that money will go at that point...

Any surplus going forwards will be going initially to the new house fund - the aim for that is to have enough in it by the time we move to pay for most of the fees, the SDLT, removal costs etc - BUT it is only paying 2.25% which isn't wonderful. Again though - it needs to be easily accessible by both of us, and due to the nature of it also to be genuine easy access, so right now this might be the best option. I do need to come up with an estimate of what we might need there though, and realistically we are fairly unlikely to get anywhere close to covering the lot - but there are other fund available as needed! Option 2 on this one is to open a further joint M@rcus account which would at least pay a little more...

Lots to think about there - but it occurs to me that it's some thinking that might prove interesting for others as well, so probably worth noting out like this!  I'll be back a little later with some general stuff! 

EssexHebridean

Right then - general update. The end of the month hoves into view, and the cashback on the bank account has turned up - a teeny 76p this month thanks to no council tax and water rates payments - but that is after the fee, so it's still 76p in my pocket for doing precisely nothing that I wouldn't have done anyway - which is a win. There will be a surplus in the joint account this month - how much it will be will depend on whether I can get away with putting off one or other car for refuelling until the weekend though. Current gut feeling is that if I use my own car for the commute tomorrow, as it will need filling up before Friday in any event, then that means MrEH's car doesn't need fuel until probably Sunday - and we should then have in the region of £150 surplus left - that will get shuffled across to the New House Fund. 

There is shortly going to be some more spendiness (don't throw me out for being a bad MSE'er please!)  - as I've been saying for a while that I wanted to use some of my Great Aunt's money to replace our current jointly owned laptop with a personal one specced up for photo processing. Frustratingly the existing one - which we only bought at the  beginning of lockdown - has never really performed as it should have done, and has been getting progressively slower and slower - it's now close to impossible to use for my stuff! I've had a good comparison of a few different D3ll models - and have now found what looks like it will be a decent option for me, so that will be being ordered. I'll be going through TCB of course, and the one I've chosen also happens to currently be on special offer as well. A good friend already has a very similar machine and has been pleased with it, so I'm hopeful that this time round might be the right one! MrEH is of the view that this should be a joint expense - as he will gain the earlier purchase for sole use. My current feeling is that I'll probably go 50/50 on it - but will need to work out where the balance of the joint funds are coming from. I'll also need to add another external Hard Drive ahead of the start of the airshow season too - I need to check whether my current ones are 2tb or 4. At some stage I will also need to go through the pain of ensuring that everything on the old laptop is saved back - that probably won't be much fun!  

I've had a bit more of a play with the new camera at lunchtime - a few teething issues currently but I've been doing some reading and discovered some tweaks I will make later before having another go after work. I'm going to have a go at getting some shots of the goslings over at the lake this evening - so the silent shutter will potentially come in handy! (I've only got a 50mm lens with me so I'm not expecting any particularly spectacular results, mind - it's really just familiarisation at the moment).

I need to set aside some time at the weekend for cooking I think - I want to soak and batch cook some more chickpeas as I used the last tub of frozen ones last night. I've got plans to make a loaded cauli mac & cheese for sunday dinner I think - and might make a second one for a dinner in the week too - I think the cauli I have is large enough. I'll be cooking up some chunks of black pudding to add to that along with bacon and probably a little chorizo more for flavour than anything else, and might grab a ball of mozzarella to thinly slice on the top too. I can probably cook the black pudding at the same time as I cook the slices for tea on Friday - that means I can cool it so it is easier to chop up and won't crumble as much. Must have a think about anything else I want to add to the list for a mammoth cook-off as well.  The plan is to keep shopping to a minimum again this weekend after an expensive one last week, too!  should be doable as we are now pretty well stocked...but I've said that before! 

DawnW

I have a Santand*r regular saver about to mature, and the 'new' interest rate looks pretty shabby, so I shan't be starting another.