And now we go again...

rtandon27

Well done on being under 100K!!!

Good tip for MrL and the veg boxes!  We tend to go at the other end of the day & have found lots of meat/fish/poultry/dairy bargains at that time, most of which we have stored in the freezer.  Helps keep costs down & our protein intake up!

Greying_Pilgrim

Oh EH (and MrEH), how wonderful to be under 6 figures and on into 5!  I know you've done this all before, but those targets/milestones are brilliant to conquer aren't they 😁  Bravo!  What type of takeaway does this wonderful achievement warrant?  😁

Greying X

EssexHebridean

It is ALL about the milestones - no question!  The nature of the takeaway is currently the subject of much discussion- we seem to be heading towards either Chinese or Indian, at the moment though! 

Great tip about the chickpeas SA - thanks, I’ll keep an eye out as they certainly seemed to have a lot of them on the floor so with luck there will be enough left that they feel the need to make reductions! 

Thanks for all the applause over the mortgage - it really is hugely appreciated, knowing the MSE cheer squad is behind you all the way is such a boost! 

Lots of garden stuff starting to kick in here - after getting various chillies and some aubergines sown last weekend, plus sunflowers, today we’ve added sweet peppers, parsley, chervil and American Land Cress. The sunflowers are already through and racing for the sky - we’ve shifted those outside during the day in the mini greenhouse and back indoors overnight because we keep getting frosts here still. I need the check when the miniature sunflowers can be sewn as well - we want some of those for the front.  The other thing we spotted this morning is that almost our full row of peas are already poking their heads through too - now we just have to stop them getting eaten by the slugs! 

Got out on the bike this afternoon - 13.6 miles round the lanes, including 5 miles back towards home with a filthy headwind. Really pleased with that distance though - and the time I did it in as well. 

Now we’re gearing up for a nice cheap night and tomorrow on electricity as Agile is paying nicely for us, and all being well we should wake up tomorrow morning having been paid to wash MrEH’s rugby kit from today, run the dishwasher through empty for a clean, and  heat the place too. The only thing we don’t know is how the Tapo plugs work when it comes to clock changing, so that might screw things over a bit, although actually even if it does I don’t think it will have that much of an effect. 🤞🏼

EssexHebridean

Electricity update - so far 19kWh used (ALLLL the underfloor heating on!) and a net gain of 39p so far. Bedding will be being shoved into the WM once MrEH gets up, we’ve a fresh baked loaf straight out of the machine ready for breakfast, and that cauli from the green box will be being turned into pasta cheese bakes a bit later on, plus a pan of ragu will be made. 

Right now though - cup of tea, Keane playing, blue sky and sunshine outside, and the promise of it still being daylight well into the evening tonight is making me feel very content with life indeed! 

teaselMay

I was wondering whether Agile prices were back to previous norms as I lay with the wind battering the leaky bedroom window. Since I left agile my consumption has stayed at the low of the month when it was silly expensive, but I'm not thinking about it now just using what's needed, I'm not sure how that's worked!

greenbee

I've had the electric heating on (after a battle with the heatmiser plugs to get them to retain the programmes and having to do them individually rather than using shared profiles), so with that and the battery charging (the programming issues drained it last night) I'm 45p in profit so far. If the sun keeps shining I may not see much benefit for the rest of the day though... while the heating will be on, I'm up to date on laundry and dishwashing and everything is charged, and I won't have the chance to do any batch cooking (I should have soaked pulses last night and then I could at least have left the slow cookers on!). 

lucielle

Great use of electricity!
L

EssexHebridean

This week on Agile seems mostly to have been cheap stuff when we can't make much use of it and more expensive when we can! Can't be helped though, and we're still up just on the basis of the house background running during those cheaper times. DW is set to run this afternoon in the super-cheap slots anyway, it wasn't chock-full, but there was certainly enough in there to  make running it worthwhile. 

Not too bad a week - work has been better thanks in part to our colleague being back - Madam doesn't feel the need to grandstand quite as much with him present as she knows there is a decent chance if she's really obnoxious he will step in, at a guess. That and the rush running up to the Stamp Duty change that was making stress levels run high having now passed too. So all in all, things have levelled out again which is a relief - I've stopped counting up holiday days accrued etc with a view to when the best time to resign would be, anyway!

Garden stuff:
- we managed to nab 4 of the metal trellis panels that Al's have been selling - total spend £32 but they are reasonably solid and work well as additional supports in various areas - so far two are in place ready to be covered with clematis and the other two are stuck in the grass waiting to be positioned - but possibly they might go alongside the arches we bought previously to make more of a tunnel arrangement.
-Mini sunflowers are now sown, some of our chillies (and Aubergines!) are poking their heads through, more peas have appeared, kale has been sown (and protected with a row of angled canes to stop next door's cat digging them back up again!)... 
- Garden centre trip on Sunday netted a couple of half price troughs and matching trays, plus 2 packets of seeds we were after
- Nursery trip on Sunday was a bag of manure, the Clematis we wanted and 6 strawberry plants (which have now been planted into the cheap troughs)
- Must get our heads around what else we can get sown now allowing for needing to juggle around being away. 

General MSE Stuff:
- Ended the day on Sunday 13p in credit on electric, plus of course no gas spend on heating so that was a massive win for Agile.
- Transferred £100 out of the fuel fund which was over-filled into the garden fund which was not
- All garden spends above covered from the garden pot
- Have transferred £200 out of the groceries fund across to the holiday pot ready for our Hebrides trip
- Holiday cottage also now booked for next year's trip - the deposit on that will hopefully not need to be paid for a while!
- CC 1 is almost up to date - just a beery purchase to be sorted out on that one (will be split between our personal spends)
- CC2 is sitting at zero with £5 pending from a small spend in the land of £s yesterday (snacks for the drive up to Scotland)
- Still waiting for the £20 cashback to land from opening the A's CC - that should be any day now though hopefully.
- Decisions made about savings for next year - including that we are not going to open a new Reg saver with the C0v3ntry - their rate is just not good enough to make it worthwhile at the moment, so that £250 a month will be squirrelled away into an ISA. 
- 2025 will on that basis be the Year of the ISA we think - we plan to open and start funding S&S versions for the first time, and will switch our EF pot into an EA ISA as there is little point in that staying in a taxable pot when we can use one with the same interest rate that's not! 
- Food under control and I already have half a meal plan for next week - I'll be adding to that and ensuring that it uses as much as possible out of those pesky freezers - the batch cooking last week rather derailed efforts on that score but it was very much worth it!
- Planning to shop at M's this week and have loaded up my boosters accordingly
- Had a spec sales call from H0m3f1re yesterday offering us some good prices on logs and coal so I'm going to call at lunchtime to place an order which will probably then see us through next winter.
- No joy on PBs this month but that's hardly surprising bearing in mind we didn't really deserve last month's win!
- Prolific is still doing well - thanks to my early cash-out last month this one is already up to £28.18 with £3.35 pending!

Plans:
- we need to get our act together on getting sorted for holiday now as that's creeping up.
- Pub after work tonight - the one round the corner to my work which we've both developed a real liking for
- We have a day out on Saturday at a fruity-sounding pub well known to PiP - a meeting to discuss technical aspects of the beer festival which our role means we get an invitation to, but it will no doubt degenerate into just being beers with good mates later in the day.

lucielle

Pleased to read that work has settled down. Our Hebrides trip is fast approaching as well, looking forward to that, even though it’s only 3 nights away. 

Envious of garden shenanigans. 

L

EssexHebridean

Morning all - L, have an amazing time in the Islands - I just bet you'll return! 

Well, nearly at the end of another working week, and thank goodness another not too bad one! 

Just sent MrEH a quick email about CC money - some spending while we were out on Saturday plus the beer we bought a few weeks back both on CC1. I'm working on clearing CC2 a transaction at a time via the open banking connection which is the quickest way of doing it - should be able to clear back last week's shopping money tomorrow and that will be everything cleared off there too. Plan is to settle both at zero before we head away to make seeing where we stand easier. 

Calcack (new nickname) have messed about with our ferries AGAIN - which is a pain, but entirely not unexpected. We'd booked to come back to Mallaig which is the usual route, but are now being diverted to Oban (alright in theory as it's less miles, and we will be able to claim the difference in mileage back anyway as they don't know it's easier for us!) but on a ferry a full 5 hours earlier than the one we'd actually  booked - this now means having to get up at around 5am on our final day, and frankly that is NOT the end to a holiday anyone wants. We also have a suspicion it might all change again yet as they are still in chaos over there. Sigh. Sadly we're noticing things being a lot less busy in terms of bookings too - not surprising as people are just getting fed up with being messed about and the risk of their holiday being cut short or worse, being stranded unable to get back when they have jobs to return to. I was astonished when I booked our cottage for next year a couple of weeks ago that Anne said that she currently has no other bookings for 2026 at all - very unusual indeed for this point in the year. 

The £20 cashback for opening CC2 has hit the account there - it has to be transferred into A's credit through their rewards app, and then spent there, but that's easy enough to manage and will probably give us a cheap weekly shop in May at some stage. As things stand I will have another £100 "spare" in the grocery account which can be used for spending while we are away, if needed.

I've taken a deep breath and opened a S&S ISA as we are now in a new financial year - no clear idea what I'm doing yet and I've just gone for a very simple option as things stand, so I imagine we will learn more as we go along! The key idea on that at the moment is that we will divert money in there that would otherwise have gone to regular savers where we are not opening straight replacements for maturing accounts. We've agreed a level of interest below which we don't see the reg savers as worthwhile, so this tax year will be about choosing our options there a little more simply and aiming to get as much into ISAs as we can, really. 

Food seems to be both under control AND making decent headway into using stuff up. Tonight's tea will be jacket tatties with home made ragu and cheese - with some salad alongside mostly to use up the last of it.  MrEH tells me he is out tomorrow evening, so I'll have a scour of the freezers to see what I might be able to put together for myself, I'm sure there will be something! Saturday lunch will be HM soup I think, as that will then get another couple of bits out of the freezers - and just MAYBE after all that I may be able to get freezer 2 turned off and defrosted on Sunday... if I go ahead and cook the ham joint that is in freezer 1 then that will be all the more likely.