And now we go again...

EssexHebridean

Morning all! SSG - lovely to see you, welcome back! 
Badmemory - we were discussing the possibility of a chimney cowl the other day but frankly I'd be slightly unnerved by the possibility of that taking off in winds like we had yesterday. Up in the Islands they are used to high winds of course and fix them accordingly - we rarely get the 60mph+ blasts we were getting yesterday and I fear that it may well not quite be fixed in a way that would be up to that particular task! 
Blackcats - one has to keep a careful eye out for the Wombles when anywhere near Wimbledon Common - it's the law. I'm disappointed that  with your previous local history you've never managed to spot one though - sneaky little devils! 
amber the weather has been DIRE hasn't it - I'd sooner we just had proper winter cold (although there is a tone of "be careful what you wish for" there too of course) than all this rain and unseasonably warm temperatures. The motorway was "interesting" last night, but not too bad thankfully - most folk did seem to be taking notice of the weather and traffic is still light from the post christmas period too. The flooding alongside the motorway was even more notable this afternoon - that's the highest I've seen that water level in a good many years.

More light traffic this morning which gave me time for a 40 minute brisk walk before getting to the office - I suspect it may not last right through the week but it would be lovely if it did - makes such a lovely change to not spend the last few miles of the journey crawling along.  

MSE Stuff:
- A large "goody bag" of chocolate passed to us by a pal will provide treats for a while to come. She cannot eat Dairy at all, and constantly finds that people gift her chocolate which although free of "milk" still contains lactose so this is not an infrequent occurrence! At some stage we will buy her a couple of bars of good quality and genuinely "free from" chocolate as a thank you.
- A double batch of bolognese sauce was cooked last night and half has gone into the freezer ready for use probably on next week's meal plan. 
- £100 sent to the mortgage this morning
- MrEH informs me that so far the OPs to the mortgage have saved us £1500 in interest and knocked three months off the term which feels rather productive bearing in mind we are only 4 months in! 
- Tonight's food will be a stir fry which will see off the last bits of ham, the remainder of the cheap mushrooms, some of the sprouts and possibly most of the remaining red cabbage. Sauce will be a large blob of our home made gooseberry ketchup, although I'm trying not to work through that too fast on the basis that our gooseberry bush cuttings are unlikely to give us much of a crop for a few years yet! 
- Transfer done to the CC to clear off both the small holiday spend and last week's (also quite small) food spend.
- Two other amounts on the CC still need clearing and I just need to agree those with MrEH as he needs to transfer most of the money to cover those
- I see that Lil's have slightly rejigged the offers relating to the spend thresholds
- banks all checked and fine. 

Spendiness:
- the expected £50 feeding of MrEH's Oyster this morning should keep it happy for another couple of weeks.
- I've realised that toilet rolls need purchasing this week, so will probably take this as an opportunity to try out something like the "L1ttle Quack" brand which is highly spoken of - we have to go into F@rmf00ds at some stage and I know they do it in there. 

Mission for the month:
I've decided that as suggested previously, January's mission is going to be a "how low can we go" challenge on food spending. We have lots of components for main meals, a reasonable amount of veg, lots of bread (all bought YS'd and frozen) and similar makings for breakfasts at weekends, the storecupboard is decently stocked with tins etc, and we also have a decent level of treats both savoury and sweet which should keep us going.  We DO need to stock up on tinned Tuna (£8.50 for 12 tins in !!!!!! still, I hope) and we will of course need the usual fresh milk, fruit and veg, and we will be heading to the Farmers market (but probably not buying that much) but other than that, we really should be able to keep the spending right down. It will be interesting to see how little it is possible to spend, and how easy we find it to resist treatiness! My first port of call on this one will be to shop alone rather than with MrEH I suspect - I'll probably continue to do the "main shop" in Lil's too so as to at least get the free bakery item in the month, although I'd hope not to hit the next threshold!  Also if we see spectacularly good YS'd offers we will probably buy them - although my watchword on this will be only where it would be a false economy not to. 
My grocery budget for the month is set at the usual £225 - but I would very much like to retain as much of that as possible to start bolstering our holiday spending money - as that may currently be a little low. Savings on groceries and then using that money for our grocery spend while we are away though is a good way of freeing more money up for other things. 
Let the games commence! 

Makingabobor2

Good luck with your challenge. Excellent idea

badmemory

Re the chimney cowl.  This was on the side of a wall not even very high about the same height as the top of the door & slightly sheltered.  The daft thing is that my aerial (we need very tall ones round here to get a signal) which is fixed near the actual chimney & I have been expecting to take off for years is still there.  I had to have a new one when we went digital as there was no way the old one was going to get the new signal.  The norm round here is 8-12 feet.  A lot of my naeighbours caved & got sky.  I have an old one that I own & don't pay for any channels but even that gives up in some weathers.  You would think I lived in the middle of nowhere but I don't.

Sun_Addict

That’s a great idea to have a mission of the month. I do love a mission 🙂

Cheery_Daff

Ooh, that's an excellent mission for the month! We are, as you know, working through uber frugal month in January (ish), and one of the areas we'll be tackling is food - apparently our average spend last year was £362 a month 😱😱 I'm now separating actual food from household supplies and booze (as opposed to a single category for 'everything from a supermarket') to try and get a more accurate breakdown 🙄😂

jwil

Good luck with the challenge, and great result with the mortgage OPs!

EssexHebridean

Morning all - I'm not promising that "mission for the month" will be an ongoing thing, but it does have a nice ring to it doesn't it! 

Cheery - your uber frugal month was one of my prompts for thinking what challenge I could set myself I have to say, it's somehow easier setting yourself something to work on knowing that others are doing similar, isn't it!

So I have the bones of a meal plan for next week roughed out already, which will in turn inform my shopping list too. I plan to go to Lil's tomorrow morning for the shopping I think - although it's a little further to drive, it should mean I can start the month on a fairly low spend and the difference in distance is fairly negligible when it comes to it. we may need to pop into T's over the weekend as well for odds and ends - notably bananas as they won't last the week if bought tomorrow, but I should be able to keep a lid on MrEH's tendency towards temptation with any luck!  I also have the start of the following week's list too, AND a note of anything that needs using up, although I do need to add eggs to that - I'll almost certainly use some of those at the weekend though. 

In non-MSE stuff I had to dash off to deal with something while in the middle of cooking stir fry last night, and MrEH didn't realise the pan was still on a high heat so everything caught on the bottom of the wok, It's a non-stick one (not my preference) and I rather think might have had it, as the burnt area just isn't coming off. I might give it a try with soda crystals and hot water and see what that does, and alternately a DW tablet left to sit *might* do the trick, but if not, I think we're going to cut our losses and try and find a decent straight carbon steel one again. 

Also in non MSE stuff, my car goes for its long awaited repair tomorrow which will be good, but will come with a £300 bill - although I hope I will get this back once the claim is sorted as it's the insurance excess. Means we will be car sharing for the next few weeks too - I'm really hoping they don't take too long about it! Money is in the car account ready for the bill anyway.

MSE Stuff: 
- Banks checked and all fine
- The stir fry was still edible although I did have to finish it off in the frying pan which really isn't quite large enough. It was pronounced tasty though, so all good! 
- MrEH will run both the WM & DW after 4pm this evening thus hopefully starting to increase our use in that period ahead of future savings sessions - of course there won't be another one for a fortnight now which will make it pointless, you just wait and see! 
- Remembered to check energy use for December now that the bill has landed - a pretty respectable £157.78 combined - actually slightly cheaper than the same period last year in the (much smaller) flat. Looking back at past history, it also means we used half the electricity and 200kWh of gas LESS than our vendors did in December '22 which I'm pretty pleased about. 
- Still resisting the temptation to replace the slightly knackered kettle, although I'm pretty sure my resistance will crumble the next time the steam comes and gets me when I'm tying to flip the lid open to refill it right after it's boiled! (It's the button that pops the lid up for filling that's failed!)
- I should get my car home this evening still with sufficient fuel in it for the garage to get it there and back - it may even be it will be coming and going on a recovery truck, I have no idea!

Spendiness:
- ordered my repeat prescriptions today so they just might be collectable on Saturday - I'll wait to buy my 3-month prepay certificate until I know when I'll be collecting to extract maximum value out of it, and will get another order for at least some of the items on that too before it expires. 

pippilongstocking123

Hello just catching up on life and here. We're on a use it up kinda month too, I've just handed notice in and it will be a bit squeaky until the new job salary kicks in. All good things but as I've utterly destroyed my savings (in a good cause) I am mindful of my lack of cushion. ALTHOUGH MY JEANS ARE VERY TIGHT.......POST XMAS NOSH SO I HAVE ONE AMPLE CUSHION.

Goodluck with it all. I need to do a meal plan, yes I hate them, yes they work. Well reminded. Be good to under spend on the groceries here too as its is my aciles heel.

Onwards! Waves to all. 

Seasidegal58

Finally got through your diary from September EH!  Phew!  Rather late in the day to comment, but I thought your Christmas tree looked gorgeous!🎄😀

EssexHebridean

SSG - it did look rather lovely, I confess! 

Pippi it is truly gorgeous to have you back on here again - and you know it with the meal planning, tedious it is, but effective too! Please do join me in the reducing grocery spends challenge too - there more people get on board with this the more accountable we all are to each other, after all!