From Frugal Foundations to Fortified Family Future

MatyMoo

OK, I need to read properly the first time……..brandied oranges, you gave LG brandied oranges for breakfast 😱

of course you didn’t, I just need to read and not skim 😂

I know you had a disturbed night but that is part of the Christmas Magic with a little one 😉 So glad the main present has absorbed him and others have made him happy. Christmas is all about the little ones 🌲🎅🏻🌲

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning MFW'rs

MatyMoo said:

I know you had a disturbed night but that is part of the Christmas Magic with a little one 😉........... Christmas is all about the little ones 🌲🎅🏻🌲

Ha ha - agreed MatyMoo - we have got off lightly in previous years, LG has gone to sleep and stayed asleep (i blame DH for not taking LG out for enough of a fresh air 'run around' this year 😉).  And after all, apples don't fall too far from the tree, I remember doing exactly the same at a similar age.... 🤭 

Well, Christmas chez Greying was OK.  All my fears about LG being disappointed at their present haul were unfounded, as LG was delighted by some of their presents, surprised by several more and overall, they know that they are loved and thought of by their 'family' (using the broadest definition to of course, include our 'chosen family' of friends...... 🥰).  We had food on our table, were warm enough and had each other's company.  LG remains delighted by the Christmas tree and strings of fairy lights, and they have enjoyed Christmas 'events' at both school and the clubs they attend.  From our perspective, DH and I haven't battered the credit cards for Christmas, and the DIY expenditure is within budget (currently). Over the festive season we have heard from both a friend and a relative who have undergone treatments for cancer this year - and they are making good progress, and ultimately are still with us, which is just .............

I didn't catch much TV, but did enjoy the Storyville programme on bB-see4  which was a film makers homage to their mum & dad who live in Norway.  The scenes of the glacier and the wildlife - oh my goodness, just my cup of tea.  If such documentaries are your cup of tea too, seek out 'Songs of Earth' on eye-player. it started at 7pm on Christmas Day.

We had rice and lentil soup (Makhlouta) from an Arto der Haroutunian recipe for lunch and a 'picky' tea featuring l/o pizza, cheese, crackers and fruit yesterday.  More soup will feature for lunch today and I have not thought about tea yet - but we have everything we need here to rustle up 'something'.  

Right, I had already set a wash on, so must go and peg that out to get it as dry as poss, towels and sheets today 🤞.  Not too sure the weather for the forseeable will be conducive to line drying, so trying to make hay and stay on top of the laundry, without having to feed the launderette's tumble drier piggy bank.  

I'm looking forward to setting some targets and formulating some plans for 2024 during twixmas.  Anything we can achieve will directly help family Greying.  Such a difference to previous years where margins were so tight that there was never any 'spare' to allocate to events or future plans.  We spent 2023 living in fear of a rent rise (which to be fair didn't materialise), as it would have pushed us over the line from managing to struggling. 

 Thanks for popping by.  I am grateful.

Greying X

SandyShores

Great to see you back Greying.  From another one who sold, rented for a time (which turned out to be longer than anticipated) and then struggled to get back on the housing ladder I can understand and celebrate your joy and relief and being able to plan again   Looking forward to following along.

Greying_Pilgrim

Hey SandyShores - thank you for your lovely, positive message.  Renting has it's place, hasn't it? But with changing external conditions, it just made saving for our own home impossible.  

I went out for a walk earlier, and according to an online mapping tool, I walked some 4.16 miles (all urban walking) and according to my phone I was out for 1hr 5 mins, so even I was impressed that I managed to sustain a good pace.  There were few people about but the birdlife was active and loud! DH & LG went out cycling whilst I prepped lunch - which was soup made out of odd and ends of baked beans, yesterday's soup, a puree made out of onions, carrots, parsnips and swede, and a splodge of jarred pasta sauce which I had opened for the pasta meal on Christmas Eve, but hadn't liked as much as the HM tomato, pepper and vegetable sauce i used as well.  The recipe wouldn't trouble any of the major branded soup manufacturers 🤣 but actually was quite tasty.  

I have got the washing in off the line, no, it wasn't bone dry, but certainly it benefitted from being out for a morning.  

We have no plans to go out anywhere this afternoon, nor spend any money, so I think I can legitimately claim a nsd.  

I'm enjoying having a think and a plot as to what we need to achieve next year and how we might go about it - given our available resources and the prevailing financial climate etc.  There are a couple of non-house related expenditure items that I need to factor in - both are for LG, so I might try to see how I can get them involved without expecting them to provide the money.  It might be a good opportunity to demonstrate that money doesn't just appear from thin air and that we usually need to save for what we want.  Bearing in mind January is a 5 week month, and we haven't got cupboards stuffed to the gills with Christmas tucker, I'm wondering whether I can try to keep my groceries budget to £200 for the 3 of us.  It's increasingly been impossible to stick to, but I am wondering with the stability we have now, and the added incentive of trying to save as much as we can, whether I could make it work again.  I'm minded to give it a go for January, and depending on whether I manage or whether I fail spectacularly - seek to perhaps have it as a monthly target for the first quarter of 2024?  Much still to ponder and plot.

My cup literally has over-flowed with gratefulness in the past couple of days, but in summary, I am grateful for;

- my health
- stocked cupboards
- the fellow members of Team Greying...... I think.... 😉🤣

Ta for popping by.  Appreciated.  Greatly.

Greying X

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning MFW'rs

Back to 'normal' today, although DH is still on hols, so 'normal-ish' perhaps.  Although he's cracking on with DIY, so 'normal-ish' is leaning more towards chaotic as rooms are emptied for painting......

I've done the number crunching this morning and tried to determine our budgets going forward, and how much we "might" be able to save towards replacement glazing. Naturally I can only use today's figures, and it is difficult to know how we may be impacted by energy costs rising (we only have 1 full month of energy use costs to base figures on at this house) and Council Tax increases in the new financial year etc.  But at the moment, with everything else budgeted for, we "should" be in a position to allocate £800 to the windows saving pot.  That seems an awful lot of money to me, and will be dependent on us keeping a tight reign on all other expenditure.  Any 'additional' income, could also be thrown in the pot, but is too variable/inconsistent to consider/count, so I have stuck to using baseline figures only.  

Needless to say, if we COULD save £800 every month in 2024, we would have £9600, by the end of the year, which could certainly glaze the house.  So again, the incentive to achieve is high. 

And if you don't set a target and try your best, well then you certainly won't get anywhere, will you?  I want to believe we can do this - but am prone to be a natural worrier, so the aim is there, but I need to employ the caveat that targets may need to be downgraded if I've got me sums wrong.........😕🤞And of course, none of us has a crystal ball, so we can only plan for the future based on how our lives are at this moment in time.

Lunch today will be soup again.  Tea will either have to be something quick and simple, or a PC or SC meal as we have a phone engineer booked to install our line/BB this afternoon.  Don't get me started on the phone saga, and don't ask my opinion of beetee or any company that works for them.......

Right, best shift-a-tail-feather.

Greying X

MatyMoo

That would be a princely sum to save in a year!

When I moved here 7 years ago I had a local company quote for replacing windows and doors, it isn’t a mansion by any means - 11 windows and 2 doors - and they quoted an eye watering £18.5k 😱 I had a different company out who quoted £12k so I picked and chose the 2 most pressing windows and doors (£3k but I did choose an expensive front door that I love). Last year I had spotted a company o r estate several times, not a fancy van or website but very nice, down to earth people, that came highly recommended by all who have used them. They came earlier this year and replaced the rest of the windows for an amazing £4.5k so an incredible £11k saved over the original quote! A neighbour down the road paid double and went with a nationwide company with the posh vans and website……..they went bust 6 months later ☹️

Greying_Pilgrim

Thanks Matymoo.  Yes, there certainly seems to be much of a differential in pricing for windows.  I have an idea of several local firms that I might approach.  I wasn't minded to approach a nationwide firm - I mean, never say never, but I would be looking for firms that have satisfied customers and who provide quality products - and I'm not usually swayed by glitzy advertising....  The 'going bust' issue is not limited to small or large firms - and is a concern.  Certainly it may be one feature that pushes us to having incremental installation, rather than an 'all in one' job.  A local firm that we used for partial installation at Greying Towers (and they were OK and installed good products), has recently gone bust, so although we weren't directly affected, it certainly is worth bearing in mind.  

I'm currently trying to get my head around the differences in F3NSA and CeRTASS.  I've always had fensa installers and although I have heard of certass, all certification to do with our windows has been under fensa - so I am left pondering whether we would shoot ourselves in the foot if we used a certass installer - not with regards to the individual installation standard, but with regards to people knowing that the installation was of correct standard when we want to sell the property.  One installer we know/might consider asking to quote, is a certass rather than fensa member.  I need to educate myself on the differences and commonalities of each scheme.

We ended up having a sandwich for lunch rather than soup, although it certainly is soup weather 🙁 We will definitely have something warming for tea.  

Greying X

greenbee

So good to see you again! Congrats on the house… and while not getting a mortgage may have felt like a blow at the time, you may find it’s been a good thing as you have so much more control. And having just moved to a house where apparently ‘nothing needs doing’ and I could just move in and get on with living in it, any alternative would probably have involved you spending unplanned money.

The loft insulation probably will have made a noticeable difference. Particularly if you’ve draught-proofed the loft hatch. Windows will make a huge difference too - I was going to do them a few at a time at the last house, but ended up doing the whole lot in one go as the were all threatening to disintegrate every time I opened them. (My brother had a first floor window fall out in his latest house not long after moving in). It sounds like, as ever, you and team Greying have a plan, and are continuing to build a very happy and contented life for yourselves. 

Greying_Pilgrim

Morning MFW'rs

*Waves* to greenbee - how lovely to see you 😁 Yes, not having a mortgage is something of a double-edged sword, there are pros and cons.  And yes - having a 'reverse mortgage' (aka a savings plan) is somewhat easier to 'control' versus a mortgage product.  I must admit, of the houses that we saw in the bracket above ours - so say up to an extra £30k/£40K - most of them would still have needed some sort of work doing.  OK, maybe not immediately as you moved in, but certainly in the short-medium term.  Blown glazing units, shonky soffits, a wholly glazed conservatory, useable for about 1 day a year.....

We too already have one window that is now unuseable and is bracketed shut 🙁 We found out the hard way how rotten the frame really was 🙁

I hope everyone is safe and sound. 

Normally I would do the grocery shop on a Thursday, but I don't think I will venture out into traffic today.  We have everything we need.  Milk is getting a bit low, but if all else fails, I could walk around to the c0-0p.  

DH is getting on with painting ceilings.  

I need to cook up a batch of black eyed beans.  I put a kilo brick pack  on to soak last night and will cook them in the PC, then freeze in batches.  One portion will go for our 'Hoppin John' (veggie version) on New Year's day.

Can't think of much else money/mortgage/house related so I'd better shuffle orf.

Greying X 

Greying_Pilgrim

Sooooooooo..... bearing in mind that the weather is horrendous at the moment, and although the wind isn't necessarily coming from an unexpected direction, it is blowing hard and when combined with the heavy rain, has had the effect of...... showing that one of the window panes at the front is leaking 🙁  The leak isn't (currently) massive, and taking into account what volume of rain we have had, it's manageable, but I'm disappointed that we are now battling water ingress alongside heatloss/condensation build up. 

Again, this may prove something that is fixable for the short-term - for example if the putty has hardened/cracked and just needs replacing or if the wooden joint has expanded, and just needs filling.  We've not had chance to view it from both sides in clement weather yet, so no point in panicking.  Just could have done without it is all.  But the weather has been extreme, and I know that we have still got off relatively lightly here - so I am counting my blessings.  

If push comes to shove we might have to consider applying for a home loan to replace windows.  I would prefer to go down the saving 'up' route, but water ingress and excess condensation can lead to other more serious issues with property, so we've got to be pragmatic.

In other news, I have cooked the soaked black-eyed beans.  The 1kg brick yielded 2.245kg of cooked beans, so I think if we took an overage tin size (drained) of cooked beans to be 250g, then I've got very nearly 9 'tins' of beans for the approximate price of 4.  I'm pretty sure I picked the beans up in either Mr M or Mr S earlier on in the year and I'm sure I paid £1.80 or £2 for them, on special offer.

Lunch was a 'picky' affair, finishing off the last of the Christmas cheese, some of the crackers, and other bits - including some lovely clementine segments - which were a refreshing change.  

beetee have wasted no time is issuing their bill - albeit pro-rata, but interesting that they charge you a full day, even though they didn't get you online and live until the day was over half done 🙄

It looks as though the milk will just last so I will not go shopping until tomorrow.  Today has been another nsd.

Greying X