And now we go again...

LadyWithAPlan

Loved those bagels after a big night out when I was ignoring my gf issue 

that guardian freezer article was helpful 

EssexHebridean

Morning all! Thanks all for popping by - and GC, how lovely to see you about these parts again, hope all is going wonderfully with the house?! 

Wordle in 4 today, beating MrEH's 5 so I'm happy with that! 

I made my trip to Lincoln last week as planned, but unfortunately weather meant that the Reds didn't fly on Friday so I actually headed back home late morning. Had a lovely meal in the pub on Thursday evening though and a great catch-up with C so not a waste of time and diesel! 

greenbee said:

Re. Your roof … might it be worth you looking at either an in-roof system or getting it done at the same time as the roof repair to avoid two lots of scaffolding? 

The repairs thankfully are minor enough that they won't require scaffold - each one is just a small patch of damaged tiles for swapping out. As for the in-roof solar - this is exactly what we are looking at doing when the roof is finally replaced. We've seen those systems a lot in the Hebrides and allowing that one of my niggly (albeit probably totally unjustified!)  concerns is the wind getting under the panels and causing issues it seems to be a good solution, to us. The small uplift on cost for the in-roof "panels" is well and truly offset by the fact that obviously for a new roof we will be having scaffolding too, so no need for a second set later, a bit saving. 

RT how rude of your local squirrels to not take note of your allergy!

Well here we are at the start of another month, and talking of rude, it would appear that once again ERNIE is ignoring us.  Other than that though, MSE stuff looks like this:
- Last month's surplus was split between the mortgage and the joint fun account ready for paying the balance of our May trip with pals. We'll repeat that the next couple of months to ensure we have spending money covered off, too.
- The Council tax is now into the two "free" months so this month's payment got shuffled to the mortgage as well.
- The mortgage now stands at JUST over £101k -  I'm hopeful that this should see us dip into the 99's by the end of March...we'll see! 
- Grocery spends for January ended up at around £150 for the month - nowhere near as low as we used to be able to achieve on a low-spend month but actually in the current climate, not too terrible. I'm aiming for no more than that again this month which ought to be achievable, although I have activated my subscribe & save on my peanut butter as the current tin is now at a third full and there's no more in... 
- made use of a 15% off offer at Lil's for halloumi and stocked up with 4 blocks of it. 
- Cashed out £5 on the A's app and used that against this week's shop - earning another £2 in the process.
- Unsurprisingly energy costs were high last month - but this was expected with the time of year.
- We did end up just in pocket over SVR on Agile last month but it wasn't by much - and was in the end almost entirely down to a very good 1st January. So far February hasn't started well, either...traditionally we're coming into a couple of windy months so with luck that could start improving things a bit. 
- Pr1nc1pal1ty 6 month reg savers have matured - mine has stayed in one of their savings accounts ready to fund a new reg saver directly from there, and MrEH's has gone to the feeder account for the other reg savers we have on the go. 
- car account will take a hit with the excess for MrEH's car to get a new windscreen - no choice on it but still annoying! 
- Free exercise is being had with a good amount of walking, a bike ride on Saturday and keeping up with yoga most days as well. the aim with the bike is to gently increase the mileage each time I go out on it for a while. 

Food is under control - and we're still making a decent impact on the freezers. I will probably take some time on Friday to do a new inventory and put together a new meal master plan to act as a memory jog for the next few weeks. Last night was mince made into sort of flattened meatballs with a tub of HM tom sauce from the freezer (as I recall, made from £1.50 box toms!) and served with pasta, and this evening will of course be couscous, although MrEH's rugby training has apparently been cancelled so in fact we could as easily have something else...!)

lucielle

Shame the reds weren’t flying but great you got to meet your friends. 

Just done the last of the money shuffle as well. Roll on payday!
L

Sun_Addict

I'm glad you still enjoyed your trip away despite not being able to see the Reds.

You're doing amazingly well paying so much off the mortgage in a short space of time.

I love the Lil's 15% off and always stock up on the things I use regularly. It's always worth keeping an eye on their flavour of the week shelves as they often drastically reduce products from previous weeks. Yesterday I got 2 bottles of stir fry oil for 59p each. They don't advertise this. 

EssexHebridean

L you absolutely can't be saying roll on payday this early in the month - it's against the rules!  

SA I've had some excellent bargains off those shelves in the past, and as you say, they don't make anything of it! Definitely worth keeping a close eye on. 

I'm pleased with the progress on the mortgage I have to say - especially because as with the last one, we're managing to strike a balance too. That's key to me - we none of us know what the future holds, and so I'm blowed if we will cut everything back to bare basics to try to get the thing gone a year sooner only to then find that we can't enjoy the freedom from paying it! 

EssexHebridean

Doh - I know what I intended to mention. Quite by chance I spotted something on social media over the weekend that  made me stop and think - about the adjustment of window catches to suit the season. we have long noticed that the windows in the front room were letting in a draught, to be honest we just thought perhaps the seals were perishing a little, sighed a bit and figured it was something else to add to the list of jobs to be done at some stage. Well this- initially I assumed clickbaity thing - was all about the windows having an adjustable bit on the catch with a little notched marker on it. Sure enough I checked ours on Sunday I think it was, and would you believe it, there was the little notch, and on using an allen key to adjust the first one, I could actually see why it might make a difference... They are now adjusted and my goodness WHAT a difference! 

for anyone else who had no idea... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWj-QdfLL6k

rtandon27

Definitely keep and eye on Mr L's previous week's bargain shelves.  We discovered a lovely Turkish? ground coffee with cardamom over xmas and found it again yesterday at half the price, so picked up another bag. 

Also several types of gochujang in this week's specials that are not selling at all in our little shop, I do think it might be a touch too exotic for the middle of nowhereville so I'm hoping to score some reduced next week. 

Strangely though the dimsum frozen offerings were almost sold out - OH & I were joking that the Chinese restaurant across the street must have cleared them out as last time they had this offering it did not sell & we scored some reduced the following week.  I could have sworn that the gent who owns said restaurant entered the store as we left!

Makingabobor2

Wow, I will have to get DH to check ours. The doors certainly let in the draught. 

EssexHebridean

RT I did have a quick look at the frozen fortnightly special offerings section but ours was pretty much entirely cleared out which was a surprise!  I want to do some thinking about ways to pep up our meals a bit with some different choices, and that seems like a good place to start! 

MaB I was honestly astonished how much difference it made - MrEH said you could feel the added resistance in the handle on closing, too. 

Currently stuck on Wordle although I've partly scuppered myself through doing something silly at attempts 2 & 3. 

MSE Stuff:
- Banks checked and all OK, as expected.
- Had to take £115 out of the car account this morning to cover the excess for MrEH's car's windscreen replacement which is booked for next week. That excess level seems to have escalated a lot in recent years.
- Agile is NOT looking good this month - so far we have been over at least by a few pennies on each of the first three days. Overall though we are still up, so we will keep the faith right now. 
-  On the flip side, since the new SVR rate kicked in on the gas in January we are now making a substantial saving by being on our fix there, which is helping offset the Agile situation rather!
- A bit of CC money shuffling while passengering on the commute this morning - I'm just waiting for £33 from MrEH now and I think we are all squared off there. 
- There will be an expenses reclaim for us to make after a meeting in a couple of weeks - we have train travel booked too and from, and an overnight stay but the overnight will be at our cost and is already factored in. The meeting is being held at a meeting room in the venue for CAMRA's national winter beer festival so we'll get entry to the festival as a bonus, but cost of beer will be from personal spends, obviously. 
- when those travel expenses are paid back to us they need to be replaced in the account I borrowed the money from originally...might have been the holiday account but I need to double check. 
- Undecided where to shop this week but to be honest it might be back to Lil's as nobody else seems to be inventivising me massively to head there. At least there I will get something back as I hit the spend thresholds. 
- If I DO opt for Lil's, then I should make the effort to get there early to check for £1.50 boxes.
- Meals are planned in for tonight and tomorrow - but MrEH is out on Friday evening (A rugby match - I COULD go and take photos, and to be honest I still might...in fairness a lot is going to depend on the weather and temperature though) so I need to decide what I'm eating then - if I don't go to the club though it might be a cheeky takeaway to be honest. 
- I remembered to check the end date for the TV deal - I need to make a diary note to give them a call as it finishes this month, and I'm not willing to pay the amount they will want past that point. Note below on this for my own reminder purposes!
- I need a new freezer review and list ideally, that might be a job for Friday (I have a hunch I already said that). 



A quick browse on the relevant TV provider's website suggests that they will give new customers a decent package on their "stream" setup for £22 (2 year contract) which also includes the Flix on the Net people's standard offering - something we had talked about trying out instead, in fact. The compromise there would be that it would only be on a single TV, but that's not too  much of an issue as we tend to use the front room TV more for streaming anyway. Need to discuss with MrEH - the other alternative is that we switch to just using streaming for a bit and see how that works for us, either with or without the addition of the Flix of the Net people or similar...that was our original plan. 

redofromstart

Are they called trickle vents or something?  I wish mine had them but our UPVC is ancient and does not.  The drafts here are the dodgy seals, and I picked up some cheap weather strip at the weekend and have done some temporary fixes which has helped with the more obvious drafts.