£2,576.79 to clear by March

DD265

After speaking to the financial advisor, I made the decision to increase my pension contributions to 8%. Despite this I actually took home £55 more than normal when we got paid yesterday, so it feels like a win-win. And I'm eligible for a small (£250 pre-tax) bonus from work for something - it's nice to be recognised! That's in addition to my final bonus for the 2025 calendar year, though I don't know the amount of that yet, I'm hoping it'll be around £2k after tax. I'll be using this to pay that extra £200 off the smaller credit card, but then if all goes to plan, I want to finally get the stud wall in the garage moved to enlarge the utility.

My car had its MOT today, which it passed with flying colours; didn't even need any work doing beforehand to avoid advisories. I'm also partway through sorting out our home insurance, because in October when we were doing the car insurance renewal, adding the house saved us hundreds overall, but that policy wasn't kicking in until our renewal in this May. I've had to put husband's laptop on the policy, both due to the value and to arrange cover for it outside of the house. Tomorrow (they were closed this evening) I will cancel the automatic renewal of this years policy; I did think if you were able to purchase the policy online, you had to be able to cancel it online, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

The county show for my vegetables is now a week away and it will be such a relief when it's all over. There's just a bit too much going on (I am definitely working hard for those bonuses) and I want to concentrate on the actual allotment. That is largely my plan for the weekend though; vegetables, houseplants, garden and allotment. And food shopping. How exciting 😂

MillQueen

That's brilliant the car has passed its MOT, phew another year of worry-free motoring. Pension contributions of 8% is very good and future-you will be very thankful you did this. What a wholesome weekend you have in store, filled with plants and vegetables. That might be nice after working so hard.

DD265

It's a while since I've posted but we've been super busy!

The show was in May - boy am I glad that's over! I did exhibit in all four classes:

• My beetroot were just a thin root, no bulb
• My new potato (still attached to the root/stem/leaves) was almost the size of a small marble
• My spring onions were almost 25cm long but nowhere near the required 15mm girth
• Perpetual spinach =/= spinach.

I came last in every class, even the one where I was the only entry! Never again, but on the positive side I wasn't disqualified so I did better than I thought. Given another 6 weeks, if you ignore the spinach not being the right plant, I would've had some good exhibits. Hopefully I've given someone else the confidence to think they can do better and give it a go next year, which is precisely the trap I fell into. 😂

Since then I've been trying to catch up at the allotment (still WIP), and adding some more houseplants to my collection. I managed to snag a free pond liner for the allotment so that's this years big project once we get to it - husband doesn't know yet but he'll be helping! Mum and I went to Gardener's World Live yesterday which is our 4th trip I think; we absolutely love it. I am planning to under plant my fruit trees at the allotment so got the herbs I'd been struggling to find locally, plus some extra plants for the front garden (I bought various single plants last year to try, this year I've bought a few more of the ones that worked to fill the gaps) and I think one back garden plant that I couldn't find locally either. We go on holiday tomorrow so given the heatwave I only bought things that would cope in their pots in the shade.

There have been a couple of substantial impulse purchases this month! I've been wanting a Google Pixel Tablet for over a year now, but the cost to buy new with the dock was about £500-600. I set up an alert for when CEX got them back into stock and paid £360 for a top graded one. Very pleased with it and in perfect time for our trip. Then yesterday there was a stall selling artwork and I got some beautiful prints for our bedroom, they were £110, but it'll probably cost more than that to get them framed! We are very much in the "know it when we see it" camp for artwork, so assuming it's not hundreds of pounds, I tend to buy it when I see it.

I finally set up the tree fern irrigation in our back garden. It's not all pinned down fully yet but we want to let it settle and then adjust. This is on a timer, running for a total of 7 minutes per day (early morning, mid morning and late evening). I'm also setting up irrigation at the allotment for the greenhouse; I'm partway through that and the solar-powered pump is hooked up to the water butt and primed, so I need to put the pipes in.

On that note, lots to do in not a huge amount of time, so I had best crack on!

DD265

The MBNA card is fully paid off, kind of. I didn't trust them to take the direct debit in time when I made a manual overpayment, so I paid off the balance but it hadn't cleared before they prepped the DD so it still went through. I requested a refund of the credit balance but that's a money transfer and they charge the fee! The fee is supposed to be refunded automatically; I'm keeping a close eye. Now that I've freed up the money from those repayments I've increased my Lloyds credit card payments to clear that in July next year before it starts charging interest. I'd rather build some savings than pay it off quicker, particularly because the PCP on my husband's car ends in October next year and I want to keep my options open for replacing it; 95% sure we won't be keeping it.

The continued dry, hot weather is wreaking havoc on the garden and allotment. I'm struggling to get plants in the ground and established, and keeping on top of watering generally is a challenge. I have a battery powered pump which I take to the allotment so I can use a hose connected to my IBC tanks, and we don't have a hosepipe ban at home thankfully. I'm using the allotment pond liner to stand my home-plants in for the ones that suffered in the heat when we were on holiday, but I intend to plant them soon as they're starting to look recovered.

I don't recall if I mentioned that I've been struggling with foot pain, and it turns out that started in September last year! We concluded tendonopathy which takes 9-12 months to resolve but because I've increased my step count/running duration it felt to be getting worse rather than better. I went for a gait analysis at a local running shop on Tuesday and got some new trainers. I actually got two pairs (one for outside, a clean pair for the treadmill), but the second I bought online using my 50% Vitality discount. The "race" I'm training for is in mid September and I signed up to do the 1 million step challenge which works out to about 11000 steps a day - a good day for me normally is 5000 steps! I'd picked up a walking pad cheap on FB which is really helpful as I can use that in front of the TV.

Plans for the next 3 weeks are minimal; husband is working the weekends so I'll be trying to catch up at the allotment and in the garden, plus starting to clear the garage ready for hopefully extending our utility into there come September (August bonus permitting). Minimal plans does not always equal minimal spending for me, but I will do my best. On that note, I should go for a walk 😉

Humdinger1

Well done @DD265! All very impressive. There's light at the end of the tunnel love Humdinger xx

DD265

I got my Q2 bonus at the end of August, but couldn't decide exactly what to do with the utility/garage. Upstairs in our house is fine; three good size bedrooms and the en suite/bathroom are small but perfectly usable. Where we struggle is the living space downstairs; the kitchen is not a great layout (U shaped) for two people to be in there together, and the living/dining area feels a bit cramped even though we don't have it filled with clutter. What we do have is the large corner sofa (split in two parts) and footstool from when we lived in an open plan apartment, and it's too big for this house. So, we ordered the new sofas that we found a couple of years ago at DFS, after double checking we still wanted those. We've gone for two two-seaters, which still fit 3, and one of them is a sofa bed. Plus a smaller footstool with hidden storage (love storage). They make a substantial difference to how much space we have, and that in turn will provide a better idea of what to do with the garage. They only arrived today, so we're still working out whether we want to make any layout changes.

Husband's car is 3 years old this month, so we've got the first MOT, last service in the pre-paid plan, and the manufacturer warranty is coming to an end. £361 to extend the warranty - no thank you! - but we'll push for any issues found at service/MOT next week to be logged for fixing under warranty. I'm still in two minds about keeping it; we have another year left on the PCP. I was set on getting something else but actually its ideal for us except the range is too low for family visits, however, that was only an issue when my car was written off and we were without the diesel. It's about £10k to pay off, and I'd be spending £10-12k on a replacement (interest free money transfer with a one-off fee) so I'm wondering if it's better the devil we know and it probably is. Downside is that the car was brand new so we'll have paid all the depreciation; currently it's on track to be worth the balloon payment looking at AutoTrader, but EV prices are creeping up so it might be worth a smidgeon more next year. Not a decision we have to make now thankfully. I really don't want to take a new PCP or lease; credit cards give flexibility.

DD265

The car passed its MOT and service with flying colours; no advisories, and all green on the health check. This is making a nice strong case for keeping it. My car is booked in for its service next month, and I keep waiting for them to say the brakes or suspension are ready for doing; so far it's been fine each time despite the occaisonal squeal or creak. The 12v ports, both in the console and the boot, stopped working suddenly so I think that needs a new fuse. I'm not expecting any big bills, anyway.

We've just sorted our car and home insurance renewals; saving £135 on the renewal by threatening to leave and actually got it cheaper than last year. We could've saved £100ish by going elsewhere but I like having it all in one place and I do have my doubts about a lot of the cheaper insurance companies these days. We pay annually because I put money aside in the budget every month, so the surplus has gone into other pots and the cycle starts again at the end of the month. Chipping away at the card now; next month it drops under £5k which feels like a great milestone. I do have £82 on another card but that's just my YNAB subscription which bills in $ so it's set up to use a credit card with no processing fees for international currency transactions. I had the money set aside for it.

I am also ditching my SIM-only contract (Tesco Mobile), which is about to end, for something with better network coverage which happens to work out cheaper (Lebara). I've been noticing poor signal more and more frequently which is frustrating me. I'm currently running both sim cards in parallel, so I can compare the two, and generally Lebara is better. I will pay for an extra month of Tesco Mobile just to be sure, as we visit family next weekend (2 days after the contract ends, typical) but it's not a lot of cost to do that. The same contract at Tesco now is a couple of £ more so I don't want to force myself into that situation.

The sofas arrived and are great; very comfortable and you can just brush any claw marks away with a swipe of your hand over the velvet. Plus the living room feels so much larger. We were sad to see our old one crushed in a bin lorry today (seriously!) but we didn't want to put the time into getting all the cat hair off it and fixing the snags - which you can do with a felting needle but it's laborious when there are so many - so it's fair enough. Apparently furniture contains too many pollutants to be mixed with other household waste/recyclables. We'd had the sofa over 11 years, so it didn't owe us anything. Hopefully the new ones will last just as well.

Whatever bug/virus has been going round knocked me for six last week and I still haven't fully recovered, so I'm not sure what this weekend will bring. I've got a trail running shoe fitting and a walk with a friend on Saturday, which might be all I manage to get done. I will probably pay for the shoe fitting (£25) and buy the trainers online using my 50% health insurance discount, but I'll see which works out to be the most cost effective option. I then want a running jacket to see me through winter, which can wait until next month. I do have one but it's a half zip and constantly rides up which I find infuriating. I need to start training for a race in January; I did it in September and managed 3 laps (11.5 miles) of run/walk, but very much struggled on the last lap, feeling like I had nothing left in the tank. I'm hoping to do the same distance again in January, this time without regretting my life choices, but I shall need the grippy shoes and coat for sure.