Cheery's path to fulfilment - finishing the DIY, looking after myself, appreciating the garden 🌻

KajiKita

Hugs and safe travel vibes to both of you x

KK

Baileys_Babe

Sorry to hear about Mr C Snr, I hope he is now on a ward and receiving treatment.

I hope the worrying about Mr C Snr has not set back your and Mr C's recuperation.

Cheery_Daff

Thank you all xxx 

All packed and ready, except for the temporary mattress, which I think is in the loft - don't want to wrangle that out while I'm here on my own. 

And now finally on to something financial - just set up next year's budget on YNAB. I want to go through all the accounts for a proper starting balance - there are several ones that got set up for bank switches and I've lost track a little (they've all only got less than £50 in, but I'd rather check exactly for the start of the new year). 

Might as well have a round up of the year while I'm sat here...

Cheery_Daff

2024 Financial Review

First of all, the boring, mostly unchangeable stuff: 

£18,338 = Monthly Direct Debits (mortgage, council tax, LPG, electric, phones, internet, union, water, life insurance) 
£1,121 = Annual bills (house insurance, TV licence, web hosting, YNAB etc)
£2,176 = Annual bills for the cars (insurance, MOT, tax, breakdown, maintenance) 
£2995 = true expenses (home maintenance, replacement appliances, dentist, garden, home improvements, medical stuff)

Then some more discretionary stuff

£3,818 = groceries
£490 = household supplies (this gets mixed up with groceries sometimes)
£3231 = diesel
£245 = parking

£2171 = my spends (although this includes our joint gym membership, which I'll separate out next year)
£1000 ish = Mr Cheery's spends (I don't track his cash though, so probably caught me up a bit!)
£2858 = joint treats (£2150 in cafes, plus occasional eating out, gig tickets etc)
£1226 = presents/donations (Christmas, birthday, donations, postage etc)
£481 = group memberships (professional membership, English Heritage, various other charity things)

Overall annual spend = £43,527

Overall annual income = £44,288 so not much difference
Although from my notebook I can see we had £2379 of extra cash (mostly bank switching etc), but that doesn't seem to have made it into my YNAB calculations... I think that might come to light with the checking of all the switching accounts... 

Anyway, I'm not that bothered about chasing exact amounts in that sense, more the overall awareness that we are doing ok, and saving for specific things (like work on the house) but not really building longer term savings. 

Also marginally concerning that the mortgage has gone up now. But there's plenty there that could be cut. More pondering to be done, but not tonight. 

Elisheba

Great to see everything written down like that, Cheery, and must be really useful for you. I always find looking at annual figures is very motivating. You have inspired me to take a look at my own annual figures and my s/s and see what I can do with them 😁

Humdinger1

@Cheery_Daff sending hugs.  Your mention of the down-to-earth blog on another diary has had me looking but I can't find it.   Please could you confirm the author? Love to all Humdinger xx 

Greying_Pilgrim

Humdinger  - if it helps, the author of Down to Earth is Rhonda Hetzl.  Her blog is;   https://down---to---earth.blogspot.com/

HTH Greying X

Humdinger1

Thank you @Greying_Pilgrim! Love Humdinger xx 

Cheery_Daff

Hi all, and thanks Greying for passing on the blog link 😊 Elisheba, I shall look out for your pondering! 

Gosh, what a long and tiring day! Woke at 4.30 with period pain, ended up having a very inadequate bath to try to ease it, upshot being I had less than 5 hours sleep 😴 then drove 2.5 hours, spent a lot of time cleaning and driving around on errands and pondering the future with Mr C and his sister. All quite depressing.

Then a hospital visit, Mr C Snr has various ailments but they are looking after him well and he was tucking into apple crumble and custard while we were there. They were so busy though, people lined up on beds in the corridor with ambulance staff waiting with them 😕 hopefully they'll keep him a few days until he's properly better.

Mr C himself now isn't feeling well - recurrence of the old trouble that landed him in hospital last year 😕 I'm hoping it's just the long day and stress of his dad being ill, rather than anything that'll culminate in a new year's even A&E trip 🙄

Still, looking on the positive side. I have run myself a nice deep hot bath so he can have a restful snooze while I am out of the bedroom, and we have a decent hotel picnic 😊 The car is close, as is the hospital (much closer than at home), as is his sister. We have breakfast booked, and don't need to check out til 12. Going to have a nice hot bath, do the last happy wheel of the year (it's not going to be a pretty end of year tally unless there's some kind of miracle today...). Then I'm going to have a cuppa and a mince pie, and get some rest in case there are shenanigans later.

Wish me luck! Happy New year everyone 🙄😂🥳

Cheery_Daff

Happy new year lovely MSE pals! 😊

Well, Mr C nodded off soon after I got out of the bath, so I took the opportunity it to go straight to sleep 😂 He woke me for 5 minutes of fireworks, then I slept through til almost 9am, fantastic.

Lots more work in the house today, then a hospital visit. Mr C Snr was sitting up and eating and looking better than yesterday, although there's still a way to go. 

We got half way home, and driving through our old city, decided to see if our friends who'd offered us a bed the night before (for after the party we were meant to be at) were willing to extend their offer... sadly they didn't answer the phone. We tried a few other people for an impromptu cuppa and a loo stop, but no look (understandable, it being new year's day). 

Mr C has a dentist appointment (in the same city) tomorrow morning, so eventually we decided we'd stay anyway, and save ourselves 2 hours of driving, so we are now ensconced in a different Premier inn.

Of course, within 30 mins of checking in, ALL the people we'd rung contacted us saying they were actually in, and we should definitely pop round for a cuppa, and two offered us a bed! Hey ho, it wasn't to be, and we will at least get a good kip here (fingers crossed). 

So not a cheap weekend really. Two hotel stays (totalling £179, including breakfast today but not tomorrow). And a load of household things for Mr C Snr, and parking in various places. 

But, as ever, we are grateful for the NHS, and for enough cash that a weekend like this isn't a crisis financially. 

Friends are making us lunch tomorrow, and then hopefully we'll get home before the snow arrives on Saturday!