MeandO's money-shuffling

foxgloves

You have been nicely productive there, @MeandO. Don't forget that you can avoid spending money on weedkiller at all by pouring a kettle of boiling water over them. That's what I do on weeds around our paved areas. Anything really persistent gets salt water. 
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MeandO

Thanks Foxgloves,  I'll give this a go. Much better than spraying chemicals on the ground too.

MeandO

It's been an up and down few weeks. We spent some time with family, but unfortunately my darling Mum was hospitalised and then transferred to a more specialist hospital an hour away as an emergency. She is now home, but the issues continue. It's heart breaking to see both my parents struggling so much with their health.  It's also brought back a lot of anxiety which I've brought home with me and I'm trying to deal.

Money continues to disappear like water and I'm really glad it's payday tomorrow. I'm re-thinking my whole way of budgeting and saving at the moment and am wondering whether I'm pushing myself too much to save money and then subsequently feeling like I've failed every month when I have to pull back some money from savings pots to cover expenses. I'm finding it harder and harder to build the savings pots up which frustrates me as I can't see much progress. 
For now, I've physically amalgamated my car/house pot and the Christmas/birthdays pot into my ISA but have kept it separated on YNAB. My ISA earns good interest and I can withdraw without penalty and it's in my bank account within minutes whereas those two point earned practically no interest. I'm extremely unlikely to be able to get anywhere near the £20K ISA savings allowance in a year either unless I win the lottery, so it doesn't matter that that goes towards using up my ISA limit for the year. I'm also still frustrated about not OPing the mortgage, but the idea was to build the savings up and then throw a lump at it at the end of the year. Not sure that will be happening though. 

There is a balance of £45.86 to pay off the credit card to clear it which I may take from one of the other pots so I can start the month with a clean slate. I also owe 'next month' £26.44 which I need to repay to the account. To explain, I've saved the UC, CB and another little income of £40 from this month so that I can cover everything immediately rather than wait on some income coming in late in the month which was proving difficult. I need to repay that pot somehow too or I will start the month short of money to pay for everything. 
I've tweaked the budget for the month ahead and have managed to shuffle £20 from the school dinners pot which can go towards the above. There is still plenty on DS's dinner money account so I should need to top up less than normal so that's around £50 I need to find or shuffle from somewhere else to cover the shortfall and credit card bill. I still feel like my budget's not working for me, I may sit and look at it again later and see if I can make any positive changes.

I listed quite a few things on Vinted yesterday so am hoping for some sales. One item sold immediately, only £3 but better than nothing. It's been posted this morning. I also started another charity bag to continue clearing bits we no longer need and to keep the house clutter free. That last one's going well anyway.

A friend called over for a cuppa yesterday and we sat an put the World to right for a couple of hours. She brought me a bunch of flowers which are bright and cheerful in the kitchen today and I repaid her kindness with the huge bar of her favourite chocolate I'd planned on popping through her letterbox later in the week. We laughed, we cried, we chatted and we hugged. I'm thankful I have such a lovely friend here.

DS has been at his Dad's for a few days and I need to get some groceries before he returns at the weekend. I was given a £30 Ald! gift card for my birthday by a kind relative so can use that to hopefully cover the next shop. I bought a few bags of the cheap easter veg and have been slowly using that up. Two bags of carrots have been chopped this morning ready to bulk cook carrot & coriander soup for lunches and for the freezer. I also picked up a few YS packs of chicken and some sausages which have gone in the freezer. 

I did splash out at the weekend and bought six packs of 9 x bedding plants, three perpetual climbing sweet peas and two bags of compost for a total cost of £25. I have lots of troughs in the garden and they were full of weeds as I didn't plant them up last year, they were looking awful and the garden gives me so much pleasure when it's looking lovely. I re-potted a pear tree into a larger pot which I was given, re-potted a palm into a larger pot (again, free) and filled seven troughs with Lobelia and Marigolds, plus a hanging basket from last year and four pots at the front of my house also got filled. The sweet pea climbers were planted in a trough each and put out the front to climb up the metal railing at the front of my garden wall. I weeded the beds and cut the grass at the weekend and since sprucing up the garden I've noticed so many different types of birds visiting the garden, I even had two goldfinches yesterday which brought me joy!

foxgloves

The goldfinches here have started getting braver. I think it's helped that we've moved our seed feeders halfway down the garden, so away from the house. I spotted a very brave magpie earlier this morning having a good squint through the cat flap, but luckily he did the sensible thing & hopped away before either of the cats saw him. Beautiful iridescent blue sheen on his feathers. Love sharing our garden with nature. rescued an orange-tip butterfly from the greenhouse yesterday - the first one I've seen this year.
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MeandO

That was one brave magpie, Foxgloves!

MeandO

A free spin offer has just netted me £30.01, so that has been withdrawn and will repay the pot of 'next month' with a little over towards the CC. £22.29 to find now to clear the balance off the CC.

twiggy86

Sorry to hear both your parents are having health issues. My bf is a similar situation with his parents and it's awful seeing him so stressed. So my thoughts are with you - big hugs x

badmemory

It comes as a shock when you realise how much extra you end up paying when things like family in hospital or care homes crop up.  As for the parking charges in hospital car parks well! & it isn't as if you can just go once a week, someone has to go every day really.  I don't want to have to do that again.

MeandO

twiggy86 said:

Sorry to hear both your parents are having health issues. My bf is a similar situation with his parents and it's awful seeing him so stressed. So my thoughts are with you - big hugs x

Thank you twiggy86, I hope your boyfriend is doing ok. It is such a difficult thing to cope with and one you can't switch off from. xx

MeandO

It was a really stressful weekend with some scary situations regarding my Mum's health and also another family member suffered a stroke. It's just one thing after another and I was struggling with massive anxiety at the weekend. Although still a serious situation with my Mum, things have calmed slightly for now. A long walk in the countryside with OH helped at the weekend, as is time spent pottering in my garden when I get chance. I am really understanding the benefit of being outside in nature at the moment.

I made £10 on a FB sale the other day which I've popped into an empty account alongside two £3 vinted sales. I'm going to see how much I can make in a month and then put it towards a mortgage OP if it's not needed elsewhere. Another marketplace collection has been arranged for £30 today, but we know how iffy those can be so I won't count that until it's in my hand. It's a slightly sad sale as the items belonged to my grandparents and I remember the items being in their house since I was a child. No-one else in the family wants them though and they mean nothing to DS as he, sadly, didn't know my grandparents, so I've decided to sell them and use the funds to pay down the mortgage. My grandparents would be happy with that. 
I have also dug out lots of jewellery that belonged to my Nan, I know a few pieces are valuable. Again, no-one in the family wants it, I don't/can't wear any of it and so it's been shoved in a box for years. I feel sad, but it's best off sold and used to pay for our home. 
I don't want to sell it myself on ebay etc for fear of being scammed, so I have contacted a local antiques dealer who has excellent reviews for fair prices and is known locally to be a nice guy. My other option is to contact an auction house about the valuable pieces, but the whole process seems very complicated. If anyone has any experience of selling at auction or can recommend any I'd appreciate it. I will see what the antiques guy says first and go from there.  My other way of thinking is that I don't want DS stuck with a load of stuff that means nothing to him and he won't use when I'm gone. It's better that we have a paid for home I can leave him.

DS is eating out at an event tonight so I won't need to cook for him tonight. I'll have a jacket potato or something easy.
£17.65 spent on a few top up groceries and toiletries this morning including some YS blueberries and raspberries which looked remarkably perfect and not the usual squishy/mouldy offerings. 
I had to send £15 for a contribution towards something at DS's club today too. For something I don't really agree with but DS will likely be the only one not contributing if I didn't and it would have been noted by others, so I couldn't really say no. I've taken it out of the uniform/school/sports pot. I'm hoping that's it for spends today!