And now we go again...

lucielle

Good luck on the using up. I’m trying to empty/eat the contents of the fridge before we go away. 

L

EssexHebridean

And here we are at another month! Not sure where June went - at just before the half way point it felt like we'd been in it forever, but the last two weeks have whizzed by! 

The switch on the bank accounts went wonderfully smoothly - in fact even more so than when we switched the opposite way a few years back - so that was a win. Nothing on the potential switch bonus though so whether there was something that means we didn't qualify, I'm not sure. I've already remembered to cancel a few standing orders which are no longer relevant (transfers to "holding accounts" in Sant & Errr which are no longer going to be needed) and set up replacement direct ones to the "proper" accounts in N@t10nw1de instead.  Also remembered that the account elsewhere with our basic level EF needed a change of linked account - turned out that could be dealt with as easily as sending a small payment to the old one - the now switched account - though and the rest happens automatically - another win! 

Grocery spending for June was definitely over budget. The extra was there thanks to surplus in the account, but that still doesn't mean I like it! I'm blaming the hot weather meaning we are tending to pop back to the shops for oddments - ice creams, fresh salad items etc - as of course we all know how top-up shops work out, don't we! One to be aware of and pull back for this month I think. Of course with the ongoing freezer fullness situation, that shouldn't be much of a challenge! (Although could do with the temperatures dropping a bit to make cooking some of the stuff that is in there a more attractive option!) Once the garden starts properly producing that will help. 

Cashed out just over £29 from Prolific at the end of June, but I'm already seeing the usual tail-off of stuff there which always seems to happen through the summer, so I guess it will be September before that picks up notably again. That has been transferred out to my tech replacement pot anyway. I may have to get back into the habit of keeping an eye on OnePoll again for a while...

The start of month money-shuffle has been done, and thanks to some decent OPs last month (thank you N@t10nw1de!) we are now JUST sub-£97k! We do seem to be making good progress this time round - and that in turn really helps to keep up motivation, of course. 

I need to sit down and do a savings round-up again as I think I have a couple of regular savers approaching the end. The decision has already been made that we'll be taking another Pr1nc1p@lity 6 month one as the rate there is still very good, and I will almost certainly do the same as last time and reinvest the funds from the previous one a month at a time once the new one is open. I've got a sneaky feeling that the V1rg1n M0ney 10% one  must be heading for the end as well - that will probably be a swift shift to the cash ISA while we still can!

KajiKita

Oooh, well done on being sub £97K. 😊👏 Being below £100K must feel amazing! 🤩 

What do you do with the interest earnings when your savings mature? Keep it all together as a lump or move some of it to income flow or OPs?

KK

EssexHebridean

Interest tends to stay put in the account or in the case of regular savers, head off with the rest of the balance to wherever that is allocated. With our mortgage rate at 4.03%, currently we're still limiting OPs a bit as we can get better returns in savings, but that will probably gradually start to drop away, I mean it already has to an extent!  Currently with regular savers we've set ourselves minimum level of interest that they need to be paying before we decide it's not worth it, as there is a degree of hassle involved. Pr1nc1pality's 6 month offerings are decent though, and with those I just leave the money from the previous one in the account it has matured into and do a manual transfer each month which works well enough. 

It does feel really great having already got the mortgage down below the £100k - that felt like a long time coming but it wasn't really - we've not even at the 2 year point yet after all! The next real breakthrough level for us will be £93.5k I think, which is the point at which we will have less outstanding on the house mortgage than the flat cost us when we bought that - a bit of a convoluted one but we've both agreed that it feels "big" mentally, for us. 

I think once the savings rates fall a bit more we will look to funnel a higher amount straight to the mortgage as after all it's effectively a tax-free way of saving, isn't it! 

Cheery_Daff

That's a nice goal to aim for!

lucielle

Well done on the mortgage payments and looking forward to seeing the next goal busted!
L

EssexHebridean

You know that thing when we write an entire post, and then the forum reloads the page so you lose it? Yeah, that! Grrr! 

So - a productive but also slightly spendy weekend.planned and considered spendy though - so sticking with the MSE principles!

First up, for a while we’ve been considering buying a carpet cleaner. Indeed, specifically since SA got hers, a 🦈 one. I’ve been keeping an eye on prices on their website for a while, so I knew the one we wanted usually went for around £249, down from an RRP £50 above that. Yesterday morning I decided to check on the big river site, and there it was for £175, so a decision was taken and “Jaws 2 - the sequel” is now part of the family! We’ve done half the front room carpet this afternoon, and frankly the colour of the water that came out if it was 🤢!  About a third of the living room carpet also done, and it’s got out a couple of light stains that had been here longer than we have, so all considered were pretty impressed so far! 

A visit to the outlet village was also on the cards yesterday - I was desperate for some new summer clothes,  and there’s a Weird🐠 there, I love their summer clothes! Two dresses, one of which will do for work, and the most gorgeous pair of loose floaty wide legged trousers. I tried on a couple of other bits too, but they didn’t make my heart sing, so they stayed in the shop. Also grabbed a couple of white tops from 🏔️ Warehouse  - UV resistant ones - plus a lovely floppy sun hat which will be ideal for the big airshow at Fairford later this month.

Finally the garden has seen some spending too - we called in at the garden centre near the outlet village which turns out to have a rather wonderful clearance section. We came out with some bits for the front - a beautiful frothy mauve delphinium, a couple of small dianthus, and a tiarella - a good sized geranium in a sort of salmon pinky colour (we had to buy it, it literally launched itself off the racking in front of us!) and herbs to fill the second of my salvaged wine boxes - a golden marjoram, variegated sage, an upright thyme and a blue Hyssop, which is something I’d been searching for. Also a Mexican Tarragon (which I’d never even heard of) with pretty little orange flowers. Oh and 2 packets of seeds - sweet peas and giant sunflowers, both needed as we’d sown the last of what we had this year. The grand total for that little lot was an impressive £23 - so we’ll be heading back there at some stage! 

(Yes, you can also see a rescued supermarket basil in a thriftily repurposed peanut butter tin in that photo!) 

Other small MSE wins for the weekend 
- claimed my free Baresa item from my June spending in Lil’s - a jar of sun dried tomatoes
- did the savings review, and planned out what we intend to do going forward as regular savers mature
- opened a new ISA with a better interest rate - I need to fill in a form to deal with the transfer in so that’s a job for this week.
- made scotch eggs in the air fryer!  I absolutely LOVE a scotch egg, but the good ones are increasingly expensive, so armed with hard boiled eggs, a pack of Lil’s chorizo style sausages, some finely chopped streaky bacon, and some breadcrumbs from the freezer, I decided to make my own! They needed a little more moulding of the meat round the eggs, as three of them did split apart slightly, but they still tasted great, so they will be on the repertoire to make again! 

EssexHebridean

Both carpets looking good - and most importantly, bone dry - this morning, so we'll probably aim to finish off the front room this evening I think - I'll probably need to order more solution before I can do any more. 

Just had an email from C0nu53ed dot com offering a free Gr3gg5 hot drink so  have just done the necessary to get the code for that - whether I'll use it is another question, but I may do. 

Some lush food over the weekend, as well as those Scotch eggs of course! I made potato salad using some home grown tatties, and also did a fab salsa yesterday with a small red pepper, a "flank" of a mango, half a tin of sweetcorn and some chopped up tomatoes, plus lots of chopped parsley. I've earmarked SA's chickpea salad recipe for some point this week too as that sounds lovely!  There's more potato salad for this evening, and I've got some falafels to go with that, plus will throw together a salad I think. 

I need to add some Italian hard cheese to this week's shopping list so I can make a first batch of pesto I think, as we seem to have a decent amount of basil all of a sudden. In my usual style that will have sunflower seeds instead of pinenuts, and I'll freeze it into icecube trays for easy use. 

Sun_Addict

The carpet cleaner is brilliant isn't it. I love your herb boxes.-

EssexHebridean

Thanks SA - and yes, it really is your "review" that I have to thank for me being brave enough to spend the money, and so far I'm seriously impressed! The bit of the front room carpet I'll do next is the main "traffic" area and I dread to think what colour the water will be! There's something fascinating about realising quite how grubby carpets get even in spite of regular vacuuming!