And now we go again...

Sun_Addict

Happy birthday to Mr EH 🥳🎂

EssexHebridean

Ooh - you've given me a further thought Redo - smoked mackerel with horseradish potato salad....there's another possibility then! Might even work better than the salmon option as we've got salmon tonight. 

Thanks SA! 

MSE Stuff:
- All quiet on the banking front, which is good. Surplus this month is higher than usual due to less travel costs, so I will be divvying that up tomorrow, I think between the mortgage, PB's and Main joint savings account. 
- Thanks to the higher than usual surplus we will both be making additional top-ups to our oyster cards today. This will offset what would otherwise have been a more heavy-cost month in July.
- Garden is definitely starting to contribute to meals now - tonight will see us use another courgette - although a quick squint at the other two plants last night suggests that they appear to have "stalled" on any further growth on the fruits - that might need investigation. Last night was some more of the lettuce (this was the pack of plants we got for £1 from the garden centre - looking very sorry for themselves indeed, but a bit of TLC and re-planting and they have been producing marvellously for weeks!  I just wish the herbs would get themselves sorted now! 
- CC is now zeroed back - with just a small amount ending up coming from the joint account in the end. 
- I need to do a proper trawl through the freezer to come up with a meal plan - that is a job for this evening, or possibly tomorrow. 

A bit of spendiness has occurred this morning. I have booked the L T Museum Depot Open day coming up - we get a reduced price for admission as we are friends of the museum, and have been wanting to get to one for a while.This is coming from  a combination of my personal fun budget, and my personal present account as I am paying for MrEH's ticket as a further part of his birthday present.
I have also booked an airshow ticket for myself for next friday for Headcorn - always a nice lot of show with some great warbird flying, plus this one is due to have the Reds, and my pals Strikemaster jets displaying too - that was the clincher on me wanting to go, in fact. In theory the BBMF Lancaster will also be there but I have my suspicions it may not be ready in time!  Of course the cost for that will come from my airshow account. 

We intend to make our usual Thursday evening pub visit tonight, and I am at an airshow on Sunday, but aside from that and the usual housework/shopping type obligations, we have a fairly free weekend - planned so quite deliberately on my part as last weekend was quite full on with lots of social stuff. Good, but this one needs to be a counterpoint to that! 

PennysIntoPounds

Enjoy your Thursday drinks, don't forget yer vouchers 😁

Blackcats

Belated happy birthday to MrEH.  Friday night dinner options sound yummy.  We also decided against an end of month curry treat and have opted for a home made summer fish stew tomorrow served with home made crusty bread.  It's a similar dish to one we occasionally have at our favourite seaside fish restaurant so it feels like a nice treat. MrBC will be the chef so an even better treat for me (apart from the carnage he will create in the kitchen 🙃

beanielou

Will Glen Sannox ever go into service!!  Delayed again!!

EssexHebridean

Haha PiP funny you should say that - I just had two left in my bag, so one used against my pint when I arrived, and gave the other one to MrEH when he arrived, so he got the rough end of the deal there! I now have a note to re-stock my bag before Thursday! 

BC ironically enough as it turned a bit cooler on Friday we did end up with an indian after all, as MrEH decided he fancied that after all. (And as it is his birthday treat, he gets to make the call!)

Beanie - the whole ferry debacle is just going to roll on and on I think. Even we have now reached the point of saying one more massively disrupted trip will be the tipping point at which we say "no more" - and I know of many folk who were originally planning tips to the Islands and have now decided that the risk of disruption is just too high, so they will go elsewhere.  It's sad - the people actually on the ground for Calmac at the ports are superb, but their head office and management are just woefully lacking in care. 

I seem to be spending much of my spare time in the evenings sorting out photos at the moment - another airshow this weekend just gone, at Shuttleworth this time, and a further one to come on Friday at Headcorn before a short break and then into the big event of the season at Airtattoo. All great fun, but I am slightly feeling that I am doing a LOT of staring at a screen at the minute! highlights on Sunday were the excellent RAF Typhoon Display with their beautifully painted jet, and some lovely old vintage aircraft too! 

MSE Stuff:
- The payday shuffle got sorted in the usual timescale so all money is where it should be. 
- £50 paid across to my little personal regular saver yesterday - all the others are done automatically. 
- the money for MrEH's Celebratory Birthday Indian will come from our Joint Fun account - although I am also keen to allow that to build up as we will have an additional holiday expense to cover next year and that would be a good way of ensuring we have funds for that when the time comes. 
- MrEH placed an order with the Swedish shop for our two new B1lly Bookcases for the spare room last night - they're on a click & collect basis so we will get those on Saturday and only have to get them from the T's store nearest home which is doable in the car we hope! Intention is to get those built as soon as we get them back, then spend several happy hours sorting out our books properly! (fellow bookworms will understand quite how much we are looking forward to this!)
- Call placed to the Octopods on Friday morning about our annoyingly uncommunicative Smart Meter comms hub. They confirm that they have indeed lost contact with it, and we are now on the waiting list for an engineer visit which apparently (we'll see!) should be 3 weeks or so. My suspicion is that it won't be, and I will have to call them again, but you never know. I took the opportunity to give meter readings at the same time, and will have to accept that we will have some erratic billing over the next few months as I'll need to continue with manual readings. 
- The final June shopping took account of a bit of stocking up on various odds and ends, and I feel confident that we ought to be on for a pretty frugal July. I made sure I grabbed the free bakery item from Lils of course - and had the wit to take it through the till with everything else just as a separate transaction along with a couple of personal bits I'd bought - far better than having to rejoin a queue afterwards! 
- Spending on Sunday was from personal spends - a pint from the very nice brewery who have a little stand at the Shuttleworth shows, and a delicious cheese and ham toastie which was £7 and worth every penny! 
- I divided the surplus from last month's income between joint savings, the mortgage and PBs as planned - and was delighted to see that the transfer to the PBs was applied immediately to the account so those will be in the draw from next month! 
- Mortgage interest has landed, the monthly payment went yesterday, and I will have a further £100 OP to send across later on. That *might* mean that I can knock it down to a nice round figure again at the end of this month, using surplus, although that will depend on this month's travel costs...would be exciting if so, though! 
- Spent some time on Friday afternoon reviewing the budget for July and also updating our savings list so we know exactly what we have where in terms of the long term savings and regular savers. That's now all noted in the usual places, and I've made a mental note to review saving again in a couple of months when the next regular saver comes out. 
- we have the nod to transfer the deposit for next year's holiday cottage letting over now - but have agreed with the cottage owner that we will send it next month as obviously having only just got back from the last trip, funds are a bit limited right now! 
- Free garden gains in the shape of two more large ceramic pots from over the road neighbour...one is already planted up with stuff we already had and is out the front looking pretty. The other will almost certainly stay out the back, and I plan to use more stuff we already have in that too, which will also free up some pots for use for veggie stuff. 

Stuff to think about:
- MrEH needs to book his car for its service and MoT - and I suspect that is likely to cost us some money but we'll see.
- Car insurances are due next month - I will need to start thinking about looking at quotes towards the end of this month. Again, I suspect mine in particular will increase thanks to that imbecile in the van rolling back into me! Unless those costs all escalate massively, the money is in our car pot ready to go.
- Home insurance needs looking at for the very beginning of September - so will need some research done in August. That will be covered from our household pot though. 
- We have a few bits planned through the month - the big airshow I have already mentioned for me, then we are off to the LT Museum Depot at Acton on Sunday for their open day which should be fun. We've also got a weekend away at the end of the month doing beer festival related stuff - ostensibly a two day meeting but there will be some social stuff in there as well - I will need to book train tickets for that, but those are expensable, and the hotel for the overnight is being covered for us. There will be costs related to it and those will be from personal spends.

Phew - got to love a big start-of-month update, no?! 

PennysIntoPounds

Why do you need to put the Lils freebies through separately? If you have the app it just takes the cost off, no?

EssexHebridean

You have to claim the offer for the spend threshold freebies - it doesn't just get added normally once your spend hits the threshold, I guess because until the relevant spend to take you over the £50 or whatever level actually goes through the checkout, it wouldn't show to them in the app? Normally I would nab it the following week, but this time round I won't be shopping next Friday, it will be Saturday, by which time it would have expired. It might only be a couple of £ worth, but it's MY couple of £ worth, I'm not letting it lapse!

lucielle

Well done on the lidl bakery freebie. You certainly have a busy month ahead of you. Enjoy the book sorting, especially after the shelf building!
L

PennysIntoPounds

Ah, I getcha. In that case, excellent Lils freebieing!