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

Cheery_Daff

Ha, I did have a nap at half past midnight, otherwise I might not have managed it myself!  

Today has been a gentle one Had a long nap yesterday afternoon while our remaining friends were out cycling, then we went to the pub for tea. Nice leisurely breakfast and morning, then Mr C went off to a band practice, and friends went home, and I just hung out here in the sunshine

Three loads of washing done - final one is still out blowing around but I'll bring it in shortly. Cleaned the downstairs windows, did some more bits of washing up, but mostly sat around and read my book. Tested out the privacy of the new garden while I was here on my own with a little sunbathing  

A gentle evening is in order, I think, and then the rest of the week will be light pottering, hanging out with Mr C, and gearing back up towards work. Urgh.

Today though: 

* bring washing in
* put all washing away (might save this excitement for tomorrow)
* quick tidy in the kitchen
* hoover living room (there's rather more bombay mix on the floor than I usually like )
* bit of yoga

Then some combination of flute, IPL machine, and crochet, I think


Oh - Prolific standing at £19.65 + £2.55 pending, not too bad (would still like to tip it over £30 for August if I can!)

Re-started the Happy Wheel but that's not going quite so well - down £29.35 today... Hey ho, back into positive figures by the end of August, fingers crossed!

PennysIntoPounds

Glad you all had a wonderfully slightly disgraceful time, good for you int it 😊

Cheery_Daff

Right. Just fettled banks and YNAB, and set up the new paper budget ready for September so I can see how that works out. Feeling a bit overwhelmed by financial things at the minute, not sure why. I think because I feel like we don't really have any brakes on our spending at the minute - we don't spend on 'big' things really, but we DO fritter, and one of us (usually Mr C) ends up in town pretty much every day, spending on something (just food, or charity shop, and we both have coffee several times a week). 

still, these things are within our control to do something about, and we are both on board with making changes (we've decided to save it for September though). Reading back on old diaries, in Uber Frugal Month we've managed to save quite a wodge, so I'm hopeful we can do something similar. We're not aiming for 'uber frugal' this time - but we ARE aiming to set ourselves a budget for treats & food and try to stay within them. 

DIESEL
I've allocated us £300 for diesel - we do usually come in around that, give or take depending on the date of filling up. I'm not going to try to 'save' top ups for the next month because we do a lot of travelling, don't live super close to a petrol station, and I have no interest in running out of fuel. But we will make a special effort to combine trips. Worked out ROUGHLY based on 'real average' MPG of our cars and cost I paid for diesel yesterday it costs around 15p a mile, so going to use that to work out cost of trips. Not perfect, but it'll do.

Moving to my new office next week, and based on the above just worked out 

* Driving all the way to the office = £9.30 diesel + £7 parking = £16.30 a day
* Driving to friend's house = £8.25 diesel + free parking = £8.85 (but this also involves me walking about an hour a day too)
* Driving & train = £6 diesel + £7 train = £13 a day (unless I book trains in advance, then £6 diesel + £5.40 a day = £11.40 but that might be too much faff for such a short journey, we'll see). 

Often Mr C will end up coming too, in which case it'll just be diesel (plus extra for him to trek about visiting people). 

Incidentally, just worked out it's £30 each time we visit Mr C senior.

Cheery_Daff

FOOD
My aim is for us to eat primarily at home, and take picnic if we go on a joint day out (this will cut the treats budget as well - I'm quite inconsistent with whether I categorise the odd sandwich out as 'treats' or 'food'). I certainly won't be buying food at work, and want to build back up my stock of freezer meals - I've got 5 in there at the minute. I've got 18 working days in September, so I'd like to have at least 18 meals before I go back - one for each day. Won't necessarily eat one each day, but it's something to aim for!

(SIDETRACKED BACK TO DIESEL)
Just worked out I have 18 days at work in September. As it stands, 

6 HAVE to be in the office
1 is a meeting I'd usually go to in person, but there's the option of going online (I probably won't though)
3 I've planned to go to in-person writing retreats near the office - I really value these, so I might still go, but will decide nearer the time. 

I will endeavour NOT to agree to anything in-person outside those days.

BACK TO FOOD
Store cupboard! There's a lot in here, but it's got all jumbled up and we're not really using it. I'll put that on the list for this week - have a sort out and an inventory (unfortunately this will probably involve me eating several tins of wildly out of date spaghetti hoops...). 

That'll do for now - I'll come back to treats etc later. 

Think I'll treat myself to a little hot chocolate after that!

rtandon27

@Cheery_Daff - your petrol musing led to our own musings about how our transportation budget has evolved since 2016!  We spend a lot less on our vehicle now but a lot more on my train travel!  Overall it's still the same percentage of our budget!

...I remember seeing a recipe for baked spaghetti hoops that had been jazzed up with veggies, cheese and mashed potato on top - I think it was called cowboy pie?  A riff on Shepard's pie I think!  It's tinned - should be fine as long as the tin has not expanded or been dented in any way!

Cheery_Daff

rtandon27 said:

@Cheery_Daff - your petrol musing led to our own musings about how our transportation budget has evolved since 2016!  We spend a lot less on our vehicle now but a lot more on my train travel!  Overall it's still the same percentage of our budget!

...I remember seeing a recipe for baked spaghetti hoops that had been jazzed up with veggies, cheese and mashed potato on top - I think it was called cowboy pie?  A riff on Shepard's pie I think!  It's tinned - should be fine as long as the tin has not expanded or been dented in any way!

That's interesting about your transport budget! Whatever way I do it, it'll still be cheaper than when we lived in the old house and I had my old job in a different city - that was £20 on trains twice a week 😬

Thanks for tinned spaghetti recipe, will investigate! I think Jack Monroe had a recipe too - I did make that once, it involved rinsing all the sauce off I seem to remember, and mixing it with cheese 😂

Cheery_Daff

Ha, it looks like the Internet is awash with recipes to use up tinned spaghetti! Will experiment and report back...

Elisheba

Always good to work out the real cost of travelling by car I think, to add to your budgets. It's very easy to just think,  oh I'm driving so that's free, when there will in fact be the fuel cost. 15p a mile sounds about right, I think I worked out something similar when I did the same exercise when I moved to my current rural location.

beanielou

Ditch the tinned spaghetti. Eew. 

rtandon27

@beanielou - the only thing I ever crave from back across the pond is tinned ravioli!

https://www.chefboyardee.com/products/classics/beef-ravioli-can