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

Cheery_Daff

KajiKita said:

In terms of the food spends and the top shops, do you meal plan and do one shop per week? That might help?

100% with Mr Cheery and having packet money as cash and once it’s gone, it’s gone. I can’t be doing with all that logging either! 😉

Maybe set yourself a budget for parking? £20 pcm? That way you can use parking when you really need it (vast amounts of files to take in, horrendous weather etc) without worry, but you can also keep an eye on it. 

KK

Good idea. I'm still getting used to being right in the centre of town - I used to be able to get a free permit for just outside the office, but we don't have that facility here. We get a discount, but it's still £8 a day. Still, I can do better than I did, but it's not something I'm going to make super inconvenient for myself, I don't think. 

I do usually do a bit of meal planning and batch cooking, but haven't for the last couple of weeks while doing job application stuff. I do cook every night though, and I'm not eating extravagant pre-prepared stuff - we'll occasionally have a bag of veggie sausages or a £1.29 frozen pizza 😂😂 we do eat a lot of fruit though, and we've been buying more bread than usual, and a couple of top ups have been in more expensive places - not bad when it's just milk, but once you start adding fruit and bread and cheese... Plenty we could do to sort ourselves out. 

That budget does also include booze and household stuff like loo roll and light bulbs and we did spend £25 on bedding for the spare room, it's not all just food.

edinburgher said:

Have you cancelled YNAB before? We did once but went back. Then again, we're a lot more spendy than you and the tracking element is helpful for us. I'd consider doing similar when the girls are older.

I haven't- I've had it continually for about 10 years now! But I'd never properly used the app, and Mr C never used it at all. I was quite daunted about ditching it, but actually I've managed fine with a big cash book that just lives in the kitchen, I quite like the simplicity of it. And the savings pots spreadsheet. 

It's not as easy to just poach from different savings pots, so we're really trying harder to keep monthly spending inside those budgets for food/treats etc, although clearly we didn't manage this month! 

I don't have quite the same of granularity as with YNAB - I'm writing down and checking everything that goes out of the accounts but not checking against an overall account balance - it SHOULD work out, but we'll see. 

Anyway, we'll give it a go to the end of the year then can always reinstate. 

Right, work. Mr C came with me yesterday and today so no parking, and the same today.

Fingers crossed for a phone call with good news today, although I'm not holding my breath! Quite a few meetings today so at least that'll keep me occupied for a while 😬 

Cheery_Daff

Still no news, and no premium bonds win either! 😭 I feel like one or the other would have been only fair 😂😂

EssexHebridean

Just catching up on all the excitement - not entirely sure how your diary wasn't pointing out that there was excitement to be read about, but it wasn't - you are not the first person whose diary has had this happen either - I need to give the forum gremlins a bit of a kick I think! 

Fingers crossed for you to hear soon (honestly - if people are going to say they will "be in touch soon" they need to have a think about what "soon" means to most people, don't they!)

Cheery_Daff

They certainly do EH!! 

To be fair they also said 'early next week', but it's now the end of Tuesday, and for me, Wednesday definitely counts as 'the middle of next week'.

Still, me being grumpy is not going to make things happen any sooner. I have assumed I've not got it, and it will be a delightful surprise if it turns out that I have. Of course, if they take too much longer I might just decide I'm better off staying where I am!

Nothing much to report money-wise today. I had to meet an outsider at work and bought them (and me) a coffee, so £3.80 of personal spends (I had my reusable mug, so there was a discount for mine).

No parking as Mr C also came to town with me. We'll do the same tomorrow - he's off to visit his dad so he'll drop me off on the way and collect me from my friend's house later in the evening. 

Leftovers for both dinner and tea (the same thing - yesterday's curry and rice) but that does mean that I don't have any dinner lined up for tomorrow... Bit of rice left (it's been in the fridge since last night, I'm sure it'll be fine til tomorrow lunchtime). Couple of boiled eggs? Tiny bit of tofu? Some cheese? Or cottage cheese? Bit of lettuce? Raw carrot? Might do as a platter, even if not very exciting. 

Feel like some of my waves of anxiety have dropped these last couple of days. Not only is the interview passed, but I've turned round and faced a couple of work tasks head on and feel like I'm making decent progress now, rather than just fretting and getting nowhere. It's nice to feel slightly less mad. 

Lifting my head a bit, I've also noticed the Santander £100 voucher offer which ends tomorrow... And which has also reminded me that Mr C had a letter about his old Santander account (which was just used for a switch) and which was going to go dormant if he didn't use it in xx weeks (he didn't, and I suspect those weeks have passed now). However, this seems to be for existing customers as well as new, so we're going to attempt to open one each and see where it gets us!  

greenbee

If you definitely hadn't got it you'd know by now. Our processes take ages - working round everyone's availability for interviews can make it very long and drawn out. 

Cheery_Daff

greenbee said:

If you definitely hadn't got it you'd know by now. Our processes take ages - working round everyone's availability for interviews can make it very long and drawn out. 

Let's hope you're right! I will email some hope, but won't hold my breath 😂

In the meantime, we have both applied for santander accounts. In both cases, got to the end of the process and an error page came up 🙄 but in both cases it had still emailed us to say 'thank you for applying' and the initial vou her acknowledgement. So we shall wait and see.

Also booked us a hotel for a family event we're going to in a couple of weeks. It's out if the way in a small village, and this place is 9 minutes walk, so we'll both be able to have a drink! Very jolly.

edinburgher

Mrs E experienced similar re. Spanish bank

Cheery_Daff

I think their system must have been a bit overloaded, my sister had the same! However, all of us have received confirmation that our accounts have now been opened (althoughmine says some details are different to my existing account so I need to check - possibly different salary? Or i might have put an initial instead of full middle name last time? Will check.

Still no news, although I was just in a meeting with the person who currently does the job (just because we are both involved in a particular piece of work). Quite weird!! 😂

scandimore

I got an error message too.
Hope you hear about the interview soon!

bubblycrazy

Cheery_Daff said:

Still no news, although I was just in a meeting with the person who currently does the job (just because we are both involved in a particular piece of work). Quite weird!! 😂

Is it a sign!?!