Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

Hello Sunbeams,

It's hot here, but with a nice breeze so I haven't done any heat-related moaning yet today! Decorator arrived bright & early & cracked on with papering the repaired area of wall where we had the complicated water ingress. Painting will be tomorrow then that should be job done & at last, the furniture & everything can go back in. Anyway, budget-friendly stuff as follows:

*Today's garden pickings: Basil, lettuce, spring onions.

*Did another triage of the tomatoes & made a batch of Carluccio's basic tomato pasta sauce with the ripest 1.5kg. Now in the freezer.

*Decorator mentioned that the work is probably not going to come to the amount he quoted so it may be that we get a little bit of a reduction on our expected payment tomorrow, I'll see.

*No need to cook tonight as I made a big enough quiche to provide 2 generous leftover portions to serve cold with a big salad.

*Made a sourdough for baking tomorrow.

*Made tomorrow's packed breakfast as Mr F has to work the morning for some or other happening.

*Transferred money from our Car Fund so that it's ready in our bank account for finally picking up our new car next week. Hands up anyone on here of a similar vintage to myself who can remember when if one chose a new car & got a part-ex value, one would generally be returning to pay for & collect said vehicle within the next couple of weeks? Things seemed to go iffy during the pandemic/chip shortage, but did they ever return to normal? We ordered our new car in February & were told there were none of that exact model/colour in the UK at the time so we'd be looking at June. Well, we'd heard nothing by late May so Mr F chivvied them & there was still a delay but Strait of Hormuz issues were now also mentioned & it would now be July. The next week, Mr F had a call from the sales rep who said that from the following week, they will no longer be a dealership for the brand of car we are buying but that all outstanding orders were being passed for fulfilment to a dealership in the city. We had a call from them shortly afterwards. Still none of this model/colour in the country, did we want to carry on with it, we would now be looking at late August/September. We said we would hold out for the car we had ordered in FEBRUARY but that our patience was starting to wear a bit thin. A week later, another call to say that a correct model but wrong colour car had been tracked down & did we want that one? We said we'd think about it as tbh, we were of the mind that we are paying a lot of money so why should we compromise? At this point, we also considered cancelling & starting again but we got a really good deal originally & would end up losing it. We were still pondering this red version, which was at least the right model when the salesperson phoned Mr F & said they had received one limited edition car of the correct model/spec into stock & because we had been waiting so long, she wanted to give us first refusal on it. Mr F really liked it straight away….what is it about men & fancypants alloys, I wonder? It's not the colour we ordered but it is quite a nice blue with black bits. Of course, as you can imagine, my overiding thought was the cost & importantly, the part-ex value as the valuation was done back in Feb & with Mr F's commute, there's a quite a bigger mileage on it now too. The original dealership promised that they'd hold to this valuation price because of the delay, but if the current one wouldn't, then we would face a bigger overall bill. I asked him to get back to her to procure a breakdown of costs including clear 'Balance to pay' figure as we only paid the deposit of £99 back in Feb. I number crunched the figures & they are thankfully about the same so we have said we will buy this car & hopefully we will be collecting it next week. I only bought 6 months of car tax for our current car as we knew we were changing it & of course with the delay, that is due to run out next Friday, so it would be less faff if we could sort everything out before then. So that's a bit of a tedious saga. The main concern was financial. When we ordered it, there was a special offer on of £4K off the price (from the brand) & a further £600 off from the dealership. We had very much factored these into the price from a budget point of view & it's one of the reasons we have been trying to avoid cancelling & starting again from scratch. I'm hoping this is it now, but there are still a few days to go! I keep expecting a call to say someone has accidentally sold the vehicle to somebody else! We have decided, as this was a little more expensive than we'd usually go for, that we will keep this car for at least 10 years & I know Mr F (who quite enjoys car care jobs) will look after it every bit as well as he has our current car. You know, there were months when I'm not going to lie, I'd have liked to use the Car Fund savings payment for something else, when allocating money on Big Budget Day, but I have stuck to those monthly payments like glue & that is why we don't need to use car finance or a loan. Cars are such a big purchase that the savings calculations for the next one really need to start the month after taking delivery of a new one & that is certainly what I intend to do. The more months one has to pay in, the less that monthly amount can be, it's the regularity which really makes the difference.

Well, that's the car saga & it's made a longer post than I intended. I'd better go & distribute cat treats now before Soot arrives at my side to tell me of his suffering.

Mr F has a well-deserved week off next week so we are really looking forward to getting a ton of stuff done.

Take care all,

F x

foxgloves

@Badmemory - Yes, you make an interesting point there. If our lower payments (from metering) do hold up over a full year, despite having quite a big garden (including fruit & veg) & a wildlife pond, it will just go to show how much people are being overcharged. Personally, I hope they have all been nationalised by then. No way should something as vitally important as water be in private hands making vast amounts for bosses & shareholders at the expense of a future fit-for-purpose infrastructure.

Baileys_Babe

We restarted our car replacement fund immediately, it will be awhile before we can replace the car but the monthly amount is smaller as we have time on our side.