Dilemma, Dilemma, Dilemma

dawnybabes

Now DH is getting his pension look into Attendance Allowance for him, the extra money could make everything a little easier for you all. 

Cancer is swings and roundabouts and I found I was permanently on alert - not good for your own well being ! 

Queen_of_the_Hive

dawnybabes said:

Now DH is getting his pension look into Attendance Allowance for him, the extra money could make everything a little easier for you all. 

Cancer is swings and roundabouts and I found I was permanently on alert - not good for your own well being ! 

Thanks @dawnybabes - keep pestering me, absolutely agree with you. The form looks daunting, think I may need to get some help from Macmillan at the hospital to complete it. 

You are absolutely right, it is swings and roundabouts. Am just thankful we are in a calmer period for now. It really is hard isn't it but trying my best to keep in a good place. 

dawnybabes

Macmillan can help or I can if you want to message me, fill in enough dla/ pip / uc stuff in my day job 🤣

LadyWithAPlan

Sending you positive energy and hope life gets easier and happier for you both.

Well done on consistently aiming for no late night eating- and keeping aiming for it even when life is difficult.

I use M*nzo - for travel its great, immediate approx fx rate, great rates and you can easily transfer money in/out  from your other banks

Queen_of_the_Hive

LadyWithAPlan said:

Sending you positive energy and hope life gets easier and happier for you both.

Well done on consistently aiming for no late night eating- and keeping aiming for it even when life is difficult.

I use M*nzo - for travel its great, immediate approx fx rate, great rates and you can easily transfer money in/out  from your other banks

Oh @LadyWithAPlan , this was a brilliant reminder. I already have a dormant current account with them so am going to get this back up and running. It will work perfectly for upcoming travels!

Queen_of_the_Hive

Oh my days am sat here in the warmth of a blanket, today feels cold. Brrrr!

So have survived so far my pretty tiring week, the day in the office was nice. We are a good team that gel together and our boss is impressed as most of us are relative long standing. I think we like the team dyamics, WFH and having a caring boss. We are very busy though and don't get to do so much small talk. 

The second trip to the city was busy and full on as it is but we have got ourselves into a routine that works. On thursday we went to the park after school with a couple of parents from my youngest son's class. The kids had a super kick around and we parents had a good natter, this used to be a more regular thing but this year its changed a bit and become less often. After we left friends we were a bit cold, one kid needed the loo and we were hungry. The journey to the hotel would have taken an hour so I closed my eyes, was a bit less MSE and treated us to some pub grub. This was the right call, we don't usually do this but everyone enjoyed their fill. Spent £42 but feel it was worth it.

My local doctors (still in the city) have been messaging me about a weight loss program. I do actually weigh more than I did when I was last weighed at the docs. Its a 12 week online zoom program with support from a dietician and some other health professionals. This seemed like a great opportunity to get a bit of help and support so I've signed myself up and committed to it. First session is this week with some pre-course homework to do mainly taking measurements and writing of smart goals. This will compllement well with some health book reading i'm doing and making a bit of a start on healthy eating.

On other MSE things - i've bought the next little investment as part of my investment ISA. This time it was £100 into a small accountancy practice in the north of England. It brings total current number of investments to 34. Will update signature to reflect this. Nearly have enough for next £10 gift voucher through THX. These are being squirrelled away for Christmas and S&S ISA is happily creaping up. It hasn't reached the pre-tariff saga levels yet.

This weekend the kids are here and we are going to enjoy flying our kite and seeing other kites flying as part of a festival happening close to us.

Hope everyone has a good Saturday!

Queen_of_the_Hive

Lovely day at the kite festival. We saw a flying snake, scuba diver and giant whale plus plenty of colourful smaller ones. Kids were quite tired so we didn't stay too long.

Enjoyed a stir fry for dinner. As OH is only eating small portions we had enough leftovers for two small meals during the week.

Had a little look at last months spends and had a shock £613 on trains . This credit card month am trying to do a "cards down" month. Basically avoiding unnecessary spends, spending cash & gift cards where we can. Wish me luck, will see how we get on!

Queen_of_the_Hive

Hello Tuesday,

I made it!

By that I mean I completed a silly week of 3x return trips to the city and was happy to walk through the door yesterday evening just before 9pm! Sadly boo boo'd on a couple of train tickets - rookie errors wrong date and wrong time so need to call the train ticket company to see if I can change the dates of the tickets and use the for some upcoming travel.

So frustrating with the mishaps with the train tickets, was doing really well on spending this month but hit myself on the foot on this one.

A little bit of good news, our team is one of the few teams that fully WFH. We go into the office every few months for a team day. This can be an expensive trip as I have to buy train and hotel accomodation. Well, we had the news that we have permission to claim these expenses so that will help.

Today is back to working at home. Have a good day everyone.

Queen_of_the_Hive

Hello Sunny Thursday!

Today is a calm day! After quite a busy spell am now on a bit of a break. The kids are with their dad & his family for the next 3 ish weeks and I have a little break from work. Monday is bank holiday so I have 5 non working days in a row with not much planned. OH is home and continuing his recovery. It is a bit strange as we haven't really had this quality time together in a long time. We are going for breakfast at our fav cafe, which is just around the corner from us. Am trying to get back to a bit of healthy eating so will have poached eggs on toast.

This weekend I need to catch up with cleaning the house, its taken a little back seat the past week or so. Last week I was contemplating getting in a cleaner but there isn't really the funds for it atm. Maybe if we sort out our finances a bit this could be a bit of a treat to ourselves.

This week I started a weight loss class run by my doctors, the sessions are run on zoom and the guy running it had seemed quite down to earth with it and I liked that he runs drop in sessions on a regular basis so I hope this can really help. We need to write smart goals and really for me this week I want and would benefit from getting a bit more organised by writing out meal plans that would work for me and OH as we both have differing calorie needs. So my task today is to find or design a meal plan template that works for us and make a start on it. I want to write one for tomorrow (Fri to Sun) and Monday to sunday next week. Yesterday I was a bit inspired and made us a shepherds pie but used turkey mince instead of beef mince and added plenty of veg. TBH I would normally add lots of veg, its was a change to swap to turkey mince and was nice to go back to making a planned meal rather than hunting in the freezer and grabbing what was there.

Money wise - last nights shop in T*sco was majoritily using a gift card via Sprive. This gave me a teeny tiny 38p toward end of year mortgage payment but am trying a bit hard this month to reduce spending on my cc's and use a bit more cash. We do need to do a bit of a food shop this week at Lidl but OH is covering this one and will be using our meal planner to be more focused on what we are going for rather than what we spot going round the shop.

Queen_of_the_Hive

Hello Bank holiday Monday!

I've been enjoying reading 'The Midnight Library' by Matt Haig for the past couple of weeks. At points it had to be rested as it was a bit too thought provking for a self diagnosed overthinker! Loved it though and will hunt in the charity shops (fav place to buy books) for more written by him.

Today there is a food market on in town and the moons have aligned so myself and OH are going as we have a tasting for some hot, spicy carribbean food. Its not something that is as popular around here so thats going to be our treat today. I also need to buy some weighting scales but going to used cash / gift cards and not the credit card. Seen the ones that measure body fat etc and will buy them for £25. 

Yesterday was quite a casual cleaning the home day. Did a good dejunking of the kitchen, we have an area under the breakfast bar which contains useful things most that would go in a shed (that we don't currently have) and instead is a bit of a dumping ground so had an idea to try stacking crates, so on our outing today will see if we pick some of these up too.

Making a bit of 'baby steps' on healthy eating journey.As said in a previous diary i've joined a program run by the doctors practice to get a group of us to lose some weight. It was a bit of a slow start but so far in the past week i'd made a shepherds pie with turkey mince and not beef mince, started fleshing out a meal plan for this week and went food shopping. Have downloaded a pedometer app for my phone and trying to say no. One of the days was a total disaster, ate terribly but felt rubbish the day after but got back on track.

Spending wise have been very good with the 'cards down' challenge, last transaction was on 21st, was for a supermarket top up shop. Had bought and paid for shopping using a gift card but didn't have enough so had to put the remainder on the CC but this came to less than £7. I breifly had a mental 'can't spend' wobble over the weekend but a good long walk on the beach sorted that out!

We did do a big food shop but OH paid for this.

This coming week its pay day and its all allocated for as is the usual case. Inner geek is looking forward to making the next mortgage payment and paying a bit of the cc'd. Wish I was in a much better position financially but trying to chip away penny by penny.