And now we go again...

skint_spice

I had an easy dunelm delivery too, I have few delivery complaints though so must be area specific.

I am slowly catching up with your diary EH!

milann

Interesting results with Dunelm. I’d had a message saying mine would be delivered a day later than the shop had told me (I wanted to buy from the shop but they didn’t stock the size I wanted so they were sent to me) I was a bit peeved by this as we’d planned everything around what the shop had told me. Then out of the blue I had a knock on the door and low and behold they’d turned up a day earlier than my message had stated and arrived as the shop had said 🤷🏻‍♀️ Suited me though as we got the curtains up there and then and slept in the room that night…….whispers quietly…….one pair of curtains are still waiting for me to turn them up a year on 😚😚😚😚

EssexHebridean

redofromstart said:

Similar feedback on D and couriers. Faulty rug was supposed to be collected months ago, chased twice, still in my dining room. I object to filling my bin with it! Bedding turned up in open bag with no delivery note and no dispatch  email. They did refund missing items without hassle though. Different couriers in each case. 

My parents said they had ordered curtains and curtain rails that got delivered somewhere else, much arguing for resolution. Don't they realise that people talk? 

It's interesting to see that others have had issues of various types too, and also that they use different couriers in different areas. Beanie - we used to dread Evri deliveries at the flat our the driver there was dreadful - yet Mum's never had any issues with them just the other side of town, and we've had one since we've been in the house which was a different driver to the flat and was seamless and efficient. The best one with the DHL one yesterday Redo was that they had left a nice little bright yellow "we tried to deliver your parcel" card stuck in the edge of the front door which also helpfully for any would-be thieves stated precisely where the parcel was to be found...this in spite of us having a perfectly functioning post box about a foot across from where he jammed the card. Thankfully the parcel was still there - and fair play, it WAS well concealed - but of course putting the card there made the concealment pretty pointless!

Skint_spice you are very brave reading all my ramblings!

Milann - turning up curtains is definitely optional in my world now...MrEH is taking more convincing, however, he will never get around to doing all the work needed to get them altered, so I figure I'm fairly likely to just be able to leave them in place now!

Morning diary dwellers - hopefully your Thursdays are all looking reasonable so far? Mine is looking likely to continue being moderately stressful, however right now it can't be helped. In some ways it is nice to be really properly busy at work again - but there are also a lot of issues around trying to manage other people's tendencies to create stress which are tricky! I am currently guarding my lunchtimes fiercely - if necessary I'll find a way of taking my break out of the office fully (I always go out for a walk anyway - come what may) but at the moment it's proving to be manageable sticking to my usual routines.

MSE Stuff:
- Still no changes on the financial front which is how we like it at this end of the month
- We've agreed MrEH will feed his Oyster £25 today - half the usual amount - so that will leave a small balance remaining in the joint account as surplus - I've not decided yet whether that will be added to the Household account to bolster that ahead of things like chimney sweeping and boiler servicing, or whether I'll use it against some of the items we still need to spend on. Most likely the former though. 
- The CC shuffle is mostly done - I'm seeing an odd £20 discrepancy there at the moment and want to work out whether that is something I've missed, something I have miss-added or what. There is also a small amount each for me & MrEH to transfer in from our personal fun accounts for some accommodation booked for an overnight stay next month.
- MrEH will get paid tomorrow - and I will also set aside some time tomorrow for money shuffling, I think. 
- I still need to sort out funding of the new N@tionw1de regular saver. Actually - scrub that, I don't - I've just made a transfer from our long term savings pot to it now, as I want to make sure it gets funded this month as it is a "13th payment possible" one. 
- I do need to rejig other savings to allow for that being funded ongoing though! 

The remaining living room curtains went up last night and they look fab - really pleased with them. We hope to get the panelled section of wall in there painted over the weekend, and then we'll really be able to get that room as we want it! I plan to relocate our London Underground roundel lightbox this evening as it's currently on a windowsill so out of sight in the evenings - transferring it to the coffee table in the corner should work well and add a splash of warmth to that corner too. The only thing remaining then is that we still need a large picture - probably a canvas - for the blank wall - we've had some discussions around what we might put there, but need to finalise that. I might try to get that sorted tonight actually as I can see the place I'd use for it currently has a 40% off deal which will be pretty useful! I've got a reminder set on my phone to take a look through the set of photos we were talking about using one of and see what looks like it will work in the size and format. 

I rather thing food this evening might get switched out to cheese and crackers - MrEH won't be back until later anyway, and I'm really not completely convinced I'll be bothered with cooking when I get in. It's nice to have the option - and if I do fancy cooking then I still can, but that option is there! 

savingholmes

Sounds like things are coming together well overall despite delivery issues.

I've had no issues with Dun or Ev - but I'm mostly in which helps.

dreaming

I've followed your threads intermittently but have recently subscribed as I find it interesting how other people manage their budgets. I'm both debt free and mortgage free and retired with state pension now plus a good company pension so I feel fairly comfortable but still find it hard to spend without a great deal of thought and research. I'm really glad I did subscribe as I had missed the new Nationwide 8% saver - despite being a long term customer and ex-employee, and scouring MSE regularly! I scooted over there pretty quick when I saw it on here and am now up and running. I still have a couple of hundred in their e-savings even though it is a low rate but I count that as my buffer just in case I need to transfer some money quickly. I also do the same with my other current account provider as it is cheaper than an overdraft although I can't remember the last time I was overdrawn. You seem very happy in the new place - it's lovely when you find your home.

EssexHebridean

Yep we're getting there SH!

Hello dreaming - thanks for popping by! I can't entirely take credit for the Nationwide saver news as I saw it on CheeryDaff's diary first! It's definitely a winner of an account though - I'm quite surprised it hasn't already been made unavailable to be honest as it must have been popular! 

I'm with you on having some money in less than best-buy accounts sometimes too - I still have quite a lot of our savings pots with Nationwide as it's convenient, the rates aren't the worst out there, and they also don't have too much of a habit of dropping the interest rates completely through the floor after a year either - unlike those little tinkers over at Sant-and-Er.  As for the thig about finding it hard to spend without a lot of thought - I think a lot of us find that after a while on here don't we - it definitely instils good habits! 


I've just shifted another £100 to the mortgage. Suddenly realised that there was over £100 in the Mortgage OP account, and our rule is that if there is £100 there, it can go across - so go across it has! I'm really quite pleased with how we've done there this moth - that's £610 "overpayments" this month - and OK, there is a degree of cheating there because we assumed that they were going to take a "normal" mortgage payment in month 1, and they haven't, but we made a conscious decision that we would use some of that mortgage money to pay for some of the things we needed for the house, and we've still managed to find enough to shift a good chunk over.  I confess I'm quite looking forward to seeing the first mortgage statement - with our previous mortgage we never had monthly statements at all - we used to get one annually - an eagerly anticipated event. There was no online access to that one either, and any overpayments had to either be made by adding to the contractual payment, or by calling them up! Different times, eh?! 

badmemory

It certainly was different times.  They even used to answer the phone!

PennysIntoPounds

That's fantastic you've been able to overpay so much on the mortgage so soon, well done

Re Olio etc; it is your home and as you can afford to, you should of course do what pleases you! I'm very much enjoying reading about your purchasing decisions 😁
I mention it though as there are lots of things on there that aren't 'making do'- people move or downsize or update their homes and lovely pieces can be found on there, particularly if, like me, one likes vintage items. And should you want to use it in future, don't feel that it's taking away from someone more in need, Olio in particular is a waste prevention app whose aim is to create a more environmentally friendly society, so we can feel virtuous and get free stuff!

EssexHebridean

badmemory said:

It certainly was different times.  They even used to answer the phone!

Yes - after a great long wait usually! I must prefer the current methods of being able to self-manage most financial transactions! 

PiP that’s a good point about Olio of course - I guess I was thinking more of the outlets like freecycle which although they perform a similar role do it from a quite different standpoint. I do get quite uncomfortable about folk using the “free” outlets when they can perfectly well afford to pay the going rate for their replacement articles, and not from the point of view of wanting a vintage item, or to upcycle, but purely and simply because it’s free. 😬 We’re certainly open to adding some second hand furniture places to our search, and I’ve already got one piece of furniture in the room that we may well repaint to match anything else we get now too. 

It’s a lovely sunny Friday here - having realised it was going to be (after quite a deluge overnight) I set the washing machine to run early so have the first load out on the line. I’m going to load it to run again with towels in a bit. The dishwasher is running currently too - it’s one of those days when I envy TMV’s solar panels! I’ve had a little tidy around, and will be popping out to Lil’s in a minute (free sourdough - hurrah!) Also have another errand to run later possibly - that annoyingly means going somewhere close to where we are going tomorrow - but the place I need to go today isn’t open tomorrow - and I can’t do tomorrows place today as MrEH needs to be with me for that one! 

MSE Stuff:
- free laundry drying thanks to ☀️ 
- MrEH has been paid and I’ve done the money shuffle - including a little sweep to the VSP. 

- Watery Cumbrian shop vouchers have arrived so we will finalise discussions about the multi-cooker later
- Money is in the VSP waiting for the multi cooker purchase. 

- I have reached the conclusion that the “missing” £20 on the CC must have been a miscalculation from last month when I last zeroed it back, and I didn’t notice because other transactions landed at the time. It’s certainly not that we have been charged for something we didn’t buy, so all good there, and I’ll just clear it I think. 
- free sourdough - hurrah!
- also got the advertising sheet through from F@rmf00ds and noticed that MrEH’s coffee is now a pound cheaper on special offer so we will probably stock up on that again next month. 

- meter readings done - for my own records rather than for submitting to the Octopods. 

Spendiness:
- I took a deep breath and ordered the large canvas for the living room wall last night after discussion with MrEH. I’d noticed that the company I used for photo printing etc had a special offer on for 40% off and so decided it was a “get it done” approach. We’re using one of my White Tailed Eagle shots from the Hebrides - and if it comes out looking half as good as the printing company website suggests it should I shall be delighted. I am quite nervous about it though as it is quite a large print from a photo that needed a degree of cropping from the original - so I’m now panicking that it won’t print clearly! (Although I know these guys are very good at telling you if the quality isn’t right!) It was just over £60 though so EEEEKKK! 😱
- only planned spending today is Lil’s. 

Food tonight will be sausages, egg and chips - so Yum! What a Friday night tea that is eh?! 

Once I have run the couple of errands I have to do today and pottered about getting the house straight I plan to fit in some proper relaxing time - and I think this evening will be a “cosy up in the front room” sort of night too with luck. Plenty of time over the weekend to get DIY stuff tackled. 

themadvix

EssexHebridean said:

PiP that’s a good point about Olio of course - I guess I was thinking more of the outlets like freecycle which although they perform a similar role do it from a quite different standpoint. I do get quite uncomfortable about folk using the “free” outlets when they can perfectly well afford to pay the going rate for their replacement articles, and not from the point of view of wanting a vintage item, or to upcycle, but purely and simply because it’s free. 😬 We’re certainly open to adding some second hand furniture places to our search, and I’ve already got one piece of furniture in the room that we may well repaint to match anything else we get now too.

It’s a lovely sunny Friday here - having realised it was going to be (after quite a deluge overnight) I set the washing machine to run early so have the first load out on the line. I’m going to load it to run again with towels in a bit. The dishwasher is running currently too - it’s one of those days when I envy TMV’s solar panels! 

I think I'd argue that Freecycle/Freegle were also set up for environmental reasons not to help people who can't afford things - they're primarily about keeping things out of landfill too. Totally get where you're coming from about wanting new in this case, but I don't think there's anything wrong with using these if what you want is available.

The solar is doing well today - and wind, for all of us: https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/homepage?&_k=6k3a29. Must get my washing on the line for some more basic solar power!