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

maddiemay

It works for me, I had forgotten how gloriously vibrant it is.

Cheery_Daff

maddiemay said:

It works for me, I had forgotten how gloriously vibrant it is.

It's SO colourful! I love it 😍😍

Cheery_Daff

Just popping in with September pot totals.

These are the amounts REMAINING, that'll be swiped over to savings.

Food & household: £73.77/£350
Diesel & parking: £16.18/£300
My spends: £68.51/£150
Mr C spends: £112.05/£150
Joint treats: -£37.97/£200

= £232.54 remaining out of £1150

So that'll be swept over to savings. Not too bad - this is less than we've spent in those categories for months... Both cars have been filled in the last couple of days too so that might help with next month's diesel budget.

Some plans for October.

Going away with Mr C's sister this weekend - she's already there, we're just staying in the spare room in their accommodation for the night so no charge

Spa day with my sister - already paid for, including lunch (need to hire dressing gown etc though)

I think that's it for actual plans though! 

I've set up a new, simplified, non-YNAB budget as an experiment, and will give Mr C a tour tonight. He's going to take a more active role - I am trying to future proof more and more, just in case, having lost a friend recently at a relatively young age 😕

So. We have: 

* main joint current account - all income goes in here, all bills are paid out

* joint savings with the same bank - this holds sinking funds for all annual bills (cars including maintenance, house insurance, LPG etc) plus all short term savings pots (home, holiday, presents etc). What's in each pot is on ONE spreadsheet, to be updated monthly. If we spend anything from a pot, it gets transferred to the joint account. 

* higher interest savings - separate bank, still easy access. Has longer term savings for car, emergency fund, if I lose my job etc. 

Workflow:

Start of month, transfer £1000 from joint current to joint savings for pots. Top up all pots in spreadsheet. 

Everyday spends (food etc) not in the spreadsheet, but in a very simple app we both have on phones.

Easy peasy!

beanielou

 Oh no need to worry cheery. The bird was alive both at time of entering and leaving 😹😹😿

Cheery_Daff

Evening chums 😊

New budget started and Mr C has been given a tour. Already started spotting things to get rid of 😂😂 He's distributed the pots in the spreadsheet so all good. 

New app is a fail - Mr C's phone is too old so it won't download. The search continues. Needs to be straightforward, and able to be installed on two devices, and preferably free. Only needs to track food, personal spends etc so straightforward. 

Bank replied to my message about the weird standing order to Mr C's dormant account. Fobbed me off by saying they could only investigate if he logged in himself and reported it 😡 I said I'd tell him - but also I didn't see why they couldn't investigate it from my end - it's still an unauthorised payment out of a joint account with my name on! 🙄

Anyway, too much banking for tonight, so we'll send a message from Mr C's account over the weekend.

beanielou

The bank is barmy. 

Cheery_Daff

beanielou said:

The bank is barmy. 

I suspect the person just wanted to tick the 'response within 24 hours' box without actually bothering to do anything 🙄

rtandon27

OH just piped up  'damn right' in response to you wondering why the heck not!

Cheery_Daff

The plot thickens - and the bank is edging towards a GDPR complaint 😠

Mr C logged in - and lo and behold, he can see MY message chain and the bank's response!! 

That was a message from me, to the bank. Not attached to the joint account as such (I have several accounts with them, including a couple of personal ones with pennies in). Obviously in this case it relates to the joint account - but if they're going to tell me they can't deal with it and he has to log in himself, how can they just share the whole message thread with him?? 

He's just replied to the same message chain, reiterating the original query and asking whether it constitutes a security risk that messages are being shared.

Obviously in this case it doesn't matter - but do they automatically share messages between people who have joint accounts?? What if you have a joint account with more than one person? I didn't click anything to say which account it related to, they didn't ask permission to share with him.

Grr. I don't mind them sharing in this case - but given that they can clearly connect us, what on earth was the point of making him log in to ask the same question?!

🙄

Greying_Pilgrim

Dearest Cheery are we back to - "we can share financial queries with the 'man' of the house, but not his spouse...." 🙄

Good grief, it reminds me of the bank in Mary Poppins!  ....."the Dawes, Tomes, Mousely, Grubbs Fidelity Fiduciary Bank...."  How very dare you enquire after the tuppence invested on behalf of your husband MrC Esq!  🙄

Greying X