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.

foxgloves

@Baileys_Babe - That's exactly how to do it. We looked at used car prices to get a feel for a general ballpark figure for what we might get on our current car as part-ex, decided on a realistic figure to aim at, agreed we would keep it for an absolute minimum of 6 years, then calculated how much we would need to pay into Car Fund savings each month. We did start off the fund with the last little bit left over from my share of selling our old family home, which meant we got off to a good start. I think the regular discipline of paying the required amount in every month has been good for me tbh. I sometimes forget that I am still a relative newcomer to any kind of saving.

Moorviews

@foxgloves and @badmemory I agree with you both completely regarding water companies, income, privatisation and mismanagement. The rateable value payers, as far as I understand it, represented a separate source of income, which brought in more money than the costs of water supplied. The less the water companies get from that will eventually have an impact on meter prices. It has not been the case that those on meters have been subsidising people who are not on water meters. I suspect that water usage will be controlled by cost in the future. It isn’t a political comment to say that everyone should have equal access to fresh potable water and sanitation. I will get off my soapbox now!
I have everything firmly crossed for the safe arrival of the new car 🤞

Cheery_Daff

Fingers crossed your new car goes though OK! I thought we were having af faff with our new car (bought second hand from a private seller last Sunday and it broke down on the way home 😂) but we did at least get it back within 5 days - considerably more quickly than you! What are they doing selling something when they won't get good of it for that long?!

kayannie

What a saga with your new car! Fingers crossed that you have no more problems with the purchase.

Our worst delay on a new vehicle was about 30 years ago. We ordered a new camper van from a reputable dealer at a caravan show at Birmingham NEC in the February with a promised delivery of a month. There was delay after delay & it was so long ago that I can't recall all of their excuses. We eventually got the van 9 months later in November! It was getting chilly at nights by then, so weekends away were on hold until the spring.

I will add that camper vans were affordable in those days, there's no way we'd be able to buy a brand new one today!

KA

foxgloves

@Moorviews - Yes, I share your views on water companies & would like to see them nationalised with water prices set at what it costs to provide to consumers. We were put on compulsory water metering because we are in a 'water stressed area'. That is certainly true during heatwave summers, but the other side of the situation is that we live in a flood-risk area with most surrounding countryside & also key roads underwater every time there is a lot of autumn or winter rain. I do feel that is a completely wasted resource when just a few months later, we are in drought conditions. I think everyone will be on metered water within the next 5 or 10 years or so.

foxgloves

@kayannie & @Cheery_Daff - Thanks, yes it certainly turned into much more of a big faff than we anticipated. We have our fingers crossed too. Collection day supposed to be Thursday so lwt's see what happens.

foxgloves

A useful morning here. Mr F had to work but is on his way home now - the event went well & he will be given TOIL back at 1.5 for weekend working.

On the home front, the decorator finished the quoted-for work but is going to call back in a week or two when the square of ceiling has completely dried as he thinks it will need sealing. He says it's a 10 quid job so that's fine by me. When it came to payment time for this morning, he said his costs had turned out to be below the quoted amount so it was £85 less than I expected. Even popping aside the tenner to pay for him popping back to do that bit of sealing, that's £75 which can go back in the House & Garden Pot which will be useful as we intend to cost up gravel & edging for Mr F's big garden project next week while he's on leave.

Other stuff....Baked the sourdough I made yesterday & progressed constructing door curtain until it became too hot to work at the dining table without sunburn through the open french doors.

I budgeted for a take-away curry tonight to kick off Mr F's week off. We have lots of jobs planned so we can think about which ones to prioritise as I already have Doingstuffitis & he is raring to go. 2 of the smaller tasks on his list were to paint a scraped section of door frame (paint 'helped off' by Soot) & the newel post at the top of the stairs. Well, he can cross those off as our decorator spotted them this morning & repainted them while waiting for some filler to dry upstairs!

Right, a teeny tidy then out to the reading bench with my book.

Have a lovely weekend all,

F x