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

Cheery_Daff

Well, I did have a third and final exciting thing happen - I was sat in the greenhouse drinking a cuppa and watching a little robin on a fence post, when the cheeky thing hopped inside the greenhouse with me! No treats, so it hopped swiftly back out, but between that, the old couple, and finding £10 in the veg patch it's felt rather like a fairy story today 😂

We have had Christmas Dinner 2 - all cooked nicely to our liking and with all relevant constituents 😊 Family dinner yesterday was lovely and we are always cheerful about being invited, of course, but the veggie main was a roasted cauliflower (decorated to look like a Christmas pudding 😂) Very decorative, and tasty, but as the stuffing was cooked with the turkey it did mean that veggie dinner consisted of veg accompanied by veg. Tasty, but very veg-heavy! 

Today we've had roast spuds and parsnips, plenty of sprouts, carrots, green beans, a tiny bit of broccoli, a quorn roast, and Mr C made a giant tin of stuffing from mushrooms, chickpeas, peanut butter, egg, breadcrumbs and all manner of other things (i think there may have been a sprinkling of stuffing mix in there too). I stewed an apple (I'm the only one who likes a bit of apple sauce with a roast dinner round here) and we had plenty of gravy. 

Very tasty and we are now replete. Quite a bit of the veg came from the waste not want not project the other day - Mr C went 10 mins before the end and they were on the verge of chucking everything, so that's why we ended up with green beans and broccoli for Christmas Dinner 😂

We're off to see my family (or some of them, anyway) tomorrow, so a bit of a list is needed!

Cheery_Daff

6.30 - shower, wash and dry hair
7.00 - video call with pal in Germany
8.00 - wrap presents and do technical things with mum's 

Er, that's it I think 😂 a realistic list for once! Mr C's going to do the washing up once I'm out of the shower.

In the morning:

6.30 candlelit yoga
7.15 dressed and ready
7.45 - drive to slimming world meeting (eat breakfast AFTER going on the scales 😂)
9.00 - leave meeting to come home
9.30 - leave to drive to family

Don't want to skip yoga (I'm 26 days in now!!) and I'd rather not skip slimming world. I could do a detour to just go and weigh at the second meeting on the way to family... but I think I need an actual sit down meeting at this point 😂

I'll need one more family visit before I'm done, but I can't face doing three separate houses in one day so we'll have to go back another day, might be in the new year.

Right, hair! 

badmemory

We are about to have apricot stuffing & chestnut stuffing butties for tea & definitely NO sprouts.  It makes cooking Xmas dinner worthwhile.

Cheery_Daff

Ooh, apricots and chestnuts sound like perfect stuffing material! 

Candlelit yoga in front of the tree this morning, then the final slimming world meeting of the year. My weight reflected what I'd eaten 🤭 focused now aside from special meals (eg lunch at my sister's today).

Second of three family visits today. Not sure when the final one will be - might save for the new year, we'll see.

LPG delivery happened the day after I ordered it again - very unusual! So we are all topped up. Invoice to be paid in January, which is fine - there's plenty in the pot. And depending on the weather, we might not need another top up til about March/April now.

Cheery_Daff

Evening MSE chums 😊

Candlelit yoga by the tree again today, and I lazed around in my dressing gown watching homesteading videos until our farmer neighbour turned up to say merry Christmas at half ten 🙈😱😂 He initially wouldn't come in (he was covered in cow muck) but I wasn't standing in the garden in my dressing gown 😂 I wanted to get dressed but he said he wasn't staying long and refused a cuppa, but then ended up staying about half an hour, with us both just standing in the kitchen, me in dressing gown and woolly Christmas socks, him in full muddy waterproofs 🙈😂 

I'm not generally one for lazing around in my dressing gown in the morning so it's sod's law that he'd just turn up on the one day I was 😂

Mr C and I have been out, and now he's having a nap and I'm curled up by the Christmas tree with the cash book, about to assess the level of damage to the budget 😬 I know my personal treats budget has gone over, but I confess I'm not sure about anything else. I've not updated the cash book since 18th Dec (because then we went into present-buying mode and I didn't want to accidentally get a peek at where one of my presents might have come from!)

Anyway, I am diving in, wish me luck 😬

And then we may need to have a conversation about Uber Frugal January 😂

rtandon27

lol - happy to converse about January, Frugal or otherwise! - I'm plotting and planning as much as I can, with my last pay day of the year due on Wednesday!

Cheery_Daff

Hmm. Current remaining totals, with three days of the month to go. 

Food & household: £74.45/£350
Diesel & parking: minus £123.67/£300
Joint treats: minus £28.35/£200
My treats: minus £55.96/£150
Mr C treats: £72.34/£150

So overall the discretionary spends fund is at minus £61.19 😬

Food isn't too bad - includes things like draught insulation tape, snoring strips, toiletries etc. Looks like we've had three biggish shops (£35 + £54 in Mr A, £37 in Mr M) and an assortment of mini shops, mostly around £5-6, although five of those were in the decidedly non-budget Mr W (conveniently cited in the middle of town, but still). So there are, as always, improvements to be made there.

Joint treats was doing well til last week, then it's taken a bit of a battering. Does include one curry with friends (£33), one cafe lunch, which we very rarely do (£31), and £22 taking Mr C Snr out for lunch, which I'm pretty sure he gave us cash for.

Mr C is abstemious with his treats budget, as usual. I am not, as usual 😬 Mine included a new goals planning book for the new year (£19), a fancy pants hair cut (£60 including tip 😱), £20 in cafes with a work colleague trying to meet a deadline, £12 on dinner with a friend, and it looks like 9 solo cafe trips 😱 some while Christmas shopping, two on a national trust day out, but again, room for improvement. 

Diesel & parking is all over the place. I parked at work 7 times in December total £42) - I only worked 16 days and some of the others were at home. We've only paid £5.50 for parking other than that. Filled the cars up 7 times in December though, lots of traipsing about to work and family visiting. Not much to be done about that really. 

So yes, I think we could do some thinking about a more frugal January...

Off to top up spending on presents and do the requisite bank transfers etc, will report back after that too...

KajiKita

I’m in awe of your MSE bravery … I have been rather spendthrift over Christmas and have ordered things I want! Ooops … I have some totting up to do … 😳😂

KK

rtandon27

Totting up at my end revels that work owes me the equivalent of a mortgage payment!  Could not submit expenses prior to hols as somehow had been locked out of my finance account & madam had not signed the chit to reinstate it - her fill in did so late on the 23rd (as soon as we discovered issue), so still waiting for password to arrive this week as it seems all of finance were on leave!

Cheery_Daff

Well it wasn't going to get any better by me not looking at it, so I figured I might as well dive straight in! Good luck for when you do the same!! 

Also braved the pots. A minor bit if shuffling needed (presents pot was a bit overspent, so I switched some from the car fund - we'd been expecting to pay more when the bumper was fixed but it was only £40). Current totals: 

SAVINGS POTS
Holidays: £512.60
Home & garden: £803.66
Dentist & medical: £259.30
Presents: £0

ANNUAL BILLS
Cars: £985.77
LPG: £698.95
Web hosting: £0
House insurance: £810
TV licence: £175

LONGER TERM SAVINGS: £2243.92

Some notes...

Holidays (we aim to add £200 a month)
I'd really like for us to have a proper holiday this year. We've not been away for a fortnight since 2014. Just a cottage somewhere, perhaps Orkney again. UK cottages have got wildly expensive though so we'll have to see if we can justify, or if we'd actually rather a few weekends away instead. 

Home & garden (£150 a month)
We discussed this today. We really want to finish the kitchen - so that's paying a friend to do the windowsills and skirting, which this should cover. We also want to decorate the living room - you may remember we had a leak through the electric cable almost 2 years ago now - the electric on that side of the room was disconnected, quite a bit of plaster ripped off, and there have been cloths pinned over the gaping wound ever since. The whole room including the ceiling is ancient yellowing woodchip, with a hideous stuck on border round the top of the walls. We'll likely do most of this ourselves except the electrics (although we may well just accept there are no plug sockets on that wall!). There's an old gas fire & chimney which was disconnected years ago - we could potentially add a solid fuel stove which would help considerably if the power goes out... We'd likely have to top this up more though.

Dentist & medical (£100 a month)
Both of us have crap teeth, so I'm aiming to have enough for a crown each in here 🙄

Presents (£50 a month)
One January birthday is already bought for, the other can be bought in January. We did just spend just over £500 on Christmas (we buy for 8 on Mr C's side, 10 on my side, plus each other, and a couple of friends and add-on kids, so not wildly extravagant) so may need to increase the monthly budget a little. 

Cars (£200 a month)
Insurance due Feb - I've set a reminder to see if we can knock some off the extortionate amount they charged last year, about £800 I think 😱 With no points on either licence, me with 8 years no claims (only that little cos that's when we got a second car) Mr C with 20+ (not that it makes any difference). Two older cars probably don't help, but even so. Speaking of which, one car hit 170k miles recently, and the other 190k miles, so we may well need to budget for at least one new one soon...

LPG (£170 a month)
Delivery on Christmas eve, £563.73 will go out at the end of January. Deliveries over the last couple of years have been
End Dec 2025
Early Oct 2025
Late Jan 2025
Mid Nov 2024
Early April 2024
Not all the same amounts. Monthly amount does cover the annual cost nicely though.

Web hosting
Been ignored over Christmas but when we get to Jan I'll be issuing Mr C a reminder.

House insurance
Again, due feb, reminder set to avoid last year's extortionate rate. We did try a cheap insurer for £350 a few years back - they sent us all the docs, then sent us a letter cancelling because they'd realised we had public footpaths and a derelict outbuilding 🙄 So cheapest of the cheap isn't for us here, but I think we can do better than what we have! 

TV licence
Due out this week, and there's just enough to cover.

Long term savings
This is actually our long term savings - we don't have a secret stash elsewhere to draw on. As I said, it's possible we might need a new car this year, and the pesky boiler has been dripping (although seems to have stopped now, touch wood...). I would like to build this up a bit.

I've had 3 months without YNAB now, and I've not missed it so won't be reversing the cancellation - my spreadsheet works nicely and I actually enjoy a paper cash book, so we'll be sticking with that for next year. I'll do a new version of the spreadsheet for the new year to stop things getting cluttered.

Right, I think I need another cup of tea after all that! 😂 will ponder some form of uber frugal January in the meantime, and see what's happening on Prolific...