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

EssexHebridean

Morning all - eek badmemory thank you for the heads-up on the car insurance - here's hoping we don't see anything like that level of increase! There seems to be a real variation in what people are seeing as I was reading elsewhere on here someone mentioning that their premium had actually dropped 40% this year, which I (and they) definitely wouldn't have expected! I'm having to stop myself starting to look now as I'm still a full month away and want to wait at least into next week to hopefully tap into that sweet spot on pricing. 

Foxgloves there is definitely nothing in the survey that has made us think that we should be reviewing what we are offering - it would have had to have been pretty grim for that to be the case to be honest, as we both feel that although there can be circumstances where a revised offer is the right thing to do, all too often now people seem to just use any small thing to reduce what they are willing to pay, without any thought for the knock-on effect on their sellers! 

Starnac - yep, we certainly feel that the ticket decision was a good one, especially allowing for the weather! (Or in fact perhaps "in spite of" as we certainly saw less flying than we otherwise would have!) 

Thanks everyone else for popping by too - always lovely to have visitors! 

Still in the financial dead zone - although small bits of MSE-ness are happening as ever:
- I've started building next week's shopping list and a meal plan will be a job for tomorrow
- we will drop MrEH's car off this evening ready for Neil to service & MoT it tomorrow
- remembered to turn the hot water off overnight - MrEH turned it on first thing and I turned it off again just before I left home. This will reduce energy use as its 45 minutes of heating time will be plenty and it won't have spent lots of time "topping up" the temperature as it does overnight. We've been slack on this over the past few weeks so getting back to it is a small win.
- I'd like to do a freezer audit in the next few days and start fully planning for getting some stuff used up from it - although we will be able to shift stuff straight from one freezer to the other I think I'd prefer that there isn't too much to do that with. Anything that "must" stay fully frozen will go into the cold box to transport, and shouldn't be out that long, but it makes sense to minimise that side of things.
- I've balanced off a few bits on the CC this morning - spending from when we were in Dorset, and the food account has been balanced up as well. I'll just need to keep an eye once those have cleared through to see what else still needs to be cleared. The couple of bits I spent over the weekend got cleared back as I went along. 

We have our second viewing for the house on Saturday so need to sit down and brainstorm all the stuff we want to check/ask/learn. I plan to ask Julie (seller) what things they particularly love about the house and particularly the kitchen as I think that will give some interesting insight into how it works for them. I know that in our kitchen there are a number of things I'd point straight at and say "this is ace - we're so glad we did it this way!). We also want to check on how things like the sensor-lighting in the kitchen work and that sort of thing. There is also going to be some measuring up to do - I have just printed an A3 copy of the floorplan so we can mark up things like real-life wall lengths either side of doors and that sort of thing. I want to check that the drop on the windows means that we will be able to use existing curtains in a few rooms in the first instance too. I had a chat with a pal yesterday about the boiler - he's a heating engineer (albeit sadly not local to me!) and I wanted to double check if there was anything we needed to be aware of with the boiler being in the roof - and he's set my mind at rest there so that was excellent. 

Spendiness (or actually, not!)
Sounds like MrEH has gone into Al's this morning although I'm not sure what for. So far nothing has appeared as pending on the CC though so he may just have accounted for that himself.
I have enough fuel in my car that it will see me out through the month and more. MrEH's should be OK as well as it's still got north of three quarters of a tank. Worst case there is that it will need a top up when we return from the beer festival week but that will be a whole new month! 
I'm anticipating a relatively low food spend this week although we will see when it comes to it. I am intending to make the freezer work well for us as above, but I also know that I need to top up levels of frozen veg and that sort of thing. I think MrEH suggested that buying more bread flour might be a plan too. 

EssexHebridean

A few quick thoughts that have occurred to me:

I need to refocus on sleep & general wellbeing a bit. In between juggling the voluntary role stuff and trying to get my photos from last weekend sorted I have been well and truly burning the candle at both ends this week. I know from experience that stress levels through the beer festival week will be sky high, and sleep poor quality, so I want to take the next week ahead of that to really work on slowing things down as much as I can, and recharging a bit after a few busy weekends.

Movement tomorrow will be a walk in the morning and then possibly a bike ride (on the big bike) later in the day, although I'll see what the weather is like and how I feel before committing to that last. I'm skipping the gym as it's just more intensive than I feel my body wants right now. 

Food wise
- tonight's risotto will be butternut squash, red pepper & mushroom (frozen mush from the freezer) with possibly the last of the frozen peas if I have any at all left - I suspect I may not have though. I may have more squash left than I need for it - if so I think I may set the rest aside to go into some form of pasta bake over the weekend as that's a relatively easy-win meal. (butternut squash & black pudding maybe?)
- there is soup in the freezer so that sorts saturday lunch - along with a remaining part baked baguette.
- Three eggs left in the box can either be used for egg mayo rolls tomorrow lunchtime OR for breakfast over the weekend (eggy bread - almost certainly!)

Edit - bargain had. MrEH put the last water filter cartridge into the jug at the weekend so I had a look with a view to ordering more - because our water is so hard I do tend to find that the Br"ight"a ones are the best value as they actually last about 6 weeks before tea starts gaining a scum again.... As usual, a browse of the Big River site resulted in a fair bit of muttering of "How much?" "I'm not paying THAT!" etc until I spotted the deal for the box containing a filter jug and 12 cartridges for under £43...now we don't need a new jug, but I'm quite content to have one if that means getting the cartridges for £3.50 each. Arriving tomorrow - hurrah for Pr1me... 

Sun_Addict

That’s a great bargain with the filter cartridges. I love butternut squash risotto. 

savingholmes

Glad that you enjoyed your time at the airshow despite the weather. 

Your moving plans sound like things are progressing well. 

Hope you manage to relax a bit and recoup some energy before the festival.

lucielle

Hope you manage to put your feet up. Remember to be kind to yourself. 

L

Blackcats

That's a good price for the jug and cartridges.  Whilst I try to support local businesses sometimes the big river company is a good option for choice, price and convenience.  My electric toothbrush broke whilst I was on holiday.  I ordered a replacement the day before we flew home and it was here before we were!  And I had the money available from my "replacement tech and gadgets pot" which I was very pleased about (even though I struggle to spend money from the pots)

Your house move is progressing well - so exciting.  

starnac

A good night's sleep does wonders EH. Please make sure you are getting enough especially as the festival is coming up. 

Ooh you must be excited to have another look at the house. Do you know which way the house faces and which rooms get the most/least amount of light? Keep your furniture in mind as you look at the rooms again. Obviously you can have a play around when you move in but having a rough idea of where everything will go will be less stressful than realising that unit doesn't fit there on moving day. 

milann

Enjoy looking at the new house and visualising where your things will go 👍

beanielou

Happy second view 

EssexHebridean

Hey all - hope everyone had a lovely weekend?! Ours was quite busy but also fairly chilled - yes, I know that sounds like a contradiction! we did manage to get everything we needed to get sorted done, and also managed to get a few small jobs done towards the move etc - while balancing it with downtime as well, so I'm calling that a win! 

The second viewing was great - we still absolutely love the house, in fact even more so now if anything! Best of all is that there are various bits of furniture that they don't have room for in their new house that they have asked it we would like left (yes please to almost all of them!) and also a leather suite in the front room that they want a small amount of money for but we think we will go for too - that in itself will save us a fair bit as of course with only ever having had a single living area before we were going to need to buy additional seating for the extra room. Actually being properly shown round by them also meant we discovered all sorts of odd features that we weren't aware of before, and we've been able to answer a lot of questions we had as well. All very exciting! They are apparently ready to go on their onward purchase, MrBoss has agreed this morning that we are now pretty much likewise on that side so it is now just our sale that is delaying things (annoying as that really ought to have been the quick bit!) and he's changed the council for what we are waiting for from them this morning so fingers crossed that will turn up today. we are currently hoping for a moving date in very early September...fingers crossed. That would also have the advantage of us having an extra month to save money into the New House Fund for offsetting various costs. 

MSE stuff:
I had a super-productive morning in the kitchen yesterday - a large pack of mushrooms, several chopped peppers, most of the remaining onions finely chopped and a big pot of chick peas all cooked up and divided out for freezing/some to use yesterday or through this week.
Pasta bake made to use up the last of the soft cheese, the roasted butternut squash from last week, some of the cooked veg and a couple of random freezer oddments too - a small amount of passata and the end of the oldest piece of black pudding that was in there.  it was ridiculously tasty as is always the way with things that you know you'll never be able to reproduce! 
Bolognese sauce got out to defrost ready for tea tonight - that will make an easy quick meal as it will just need reheating/the spaghetti cooking.
Meal plan all done for this week, and the shopping list sorted from that. 
Shopped in Lil's as the app told me I had a £5 off £25 spend coupon to use. First time I've done a proper shop in our big new store and we were both agreed we'd happily use it again as there was relatively little we couldn't get, and the app is a bit of a game-changer. 
MrEH fixed the curtain rail which had decided it wanted to start to pull out of the wall by packing around the rawl plug with some cut-down matches. Everything is now screwed back into place and fingers crossed so far seems to be all fine.
Called EE on Friday about my mobile - not least as I am bouncing against my data limit for this month which isn't wonderfully helpful with the beer festival coming up! They were unable to offer me anything particularly competitive and so I have requested my PAC code and am in the process of transferring to a new SIM only deal with Talkmobile (So Vodafone) - jut hoping the new SIM from them arrives in the next few days otherwise I will have to top up my data at some stage. quite disappointed in many ways as I've always been really pleased with EE - the change will definitely save me money though. 

Spendiness:
- MrEH's car now MoT tested and serviced for another year - all good, nothing to be unduly concerned about (suspension knocking a bit which I knew about but Neil reckons it will be OK for a while yet) and the bill was £210 which was about what I expected/hoped. Money transferred to Neil from the car account. 
- Shopping came in about where we would expect for the week although we did have to get a couple of extra bits on T's to top up the Lil's shop. Just over £40 spent in total.
- In less good news our water pump that takes the water from the tank to the bathroom and hot tap in the kitchen has decided that now is just a superb time to keel over and die. Sigh. In fairness we do know that they have a lifespan of around 3 years (wretched hard water!) and this one had pretty much reached that timescale. I have ordered a new one this morning, we have agreed that it will be the other side of the beer festival now before MrEH can fit it, so we've opted for a slightly slower, but free delivery option on that. A shade under £100 though which isn't ideal right at the moment! I've paid on the CC so won't have to worry about actually paying the money until next month - it will probably come from next month's surplus.
- We both have our car tax renewal quotes, and both have increased by around £30 - £40 so roughly where I was expecting. I've opted to stay where I am although with a slight downwards tweak on mileage (which actually saved me a little over £10 on the price too) and that was paid this morning - I did a quick comparison and everyone else was coming up more expensive than my renewal quote. £284 there. (Cars are expensive - boo!) Mr EH will sort his out in the next few days. We'll make a small saving by leaving Mr EH's mileage where it is and me using my car more for commutes on days where it's just me travelling in.

Home contents insurance comes up for renewal next month too - I am currently thinking that the way forward with that one is to just go for whatever comes up the cheapest, at the very last minute on the renewal date - then hopefully we will just be able to cancel that policy under the cooling off period when we move (as long as we haven't claimed obviously!) otherwise we are going to get hit with an admin fee for changing the address I suspect. I'm hopeful that AXA won't charge much of a fee for changing the car insurance - they are usually pretty good on such things but we'll see. 

August is going to be a painfully expensive month - that I can see! (but then it always is - and at least the move will bump one set of insurances by a month!)