Teetering on the brink

dawnybabes

The pastry is almost like cereal / croissant and the apple makes it healthy.  If you have custard with it you’re getting the calcium then it’s almost a perfect meal 🤣

EatingBeans

Ok so all I have eaten today is lots of apple pie and coffee and there is still some left. 😬 I suspect tonight’s dinner will end up being the same as last night followed by the rest of the pie to use it up. 🤣 Still, that's quite a lot of meals replaced with free stuff and beggars can’t be choosers right? 

After I realised that I would have to take my dogs into the road with me to the drivers door in order to unlock the van before taking them out, I decided it constituted a safety hazard (I park half on pavement/half in road outside my house, and it is a busy main road), I decided buying a new key battery was now a necessity. 

Thanks for the offer @kmcld2 but mine is a CR2016 type. 

I decided to walk into town and pick one up at the same time as picking up some much needed guinea pig food, but to avoid putting it on a card I searched the house for some cash and rustled enough together to get both. Normally I would consider this cheating in terms of sticking to my budget, but right now just avoiding charging anything to either debit or credit card is the main objective and in that regard this was a success. 

New battery installed, central locking now working again. 🎉

Not really done much else today other than a bit of washing and cleaning. I pottered out to look at my pond and I just couldn’t bring myself to try and fix it yet, it is just too disheartening. I have forgiven little dog and we've had a lovely snuggle this morning but I can’t help but long for the day when she’s a bit more mature and stops destroying my garden. 😞 Teenage labradors are hard work sometimes.

I have at least completed a few more surveys and done another balance transfer for £190 from NatWest. It’s all the room I have on MBNA atm but it does mean I will have paid over the ‘minimum payment plus’ amount NatWest wanted this month (£523.77 instead of my usual £270), to ‘avoid long term debt and risk of account closure’. I have held this account for over 20years and it is actually the most useful of my credit cards in terms of bouncing balances around because it does not charge fees for balance transfers, only interest. This means that I can use it to transfer a balance off a card and back onto it again whilst only incurring one balance transfer fee. Keeping them happy is essential so each month I will need to juggle however much I can in order to hit the minimum payment plus amount in addition to paying down debt. Oh how I wish for the simple life of just making minimum payments on everything and focusing on one balance at a time!

EatingBeans

Helpfully, I just got an e-mail saying my credit limit on my Fluid account has gone up by £200. Normally such a tiny amount would be pretty meaningless to me but right now it is a very welcome blessing. It means I can put my food shopping for September on that account instead, leaving more space on NatWest/MBNA so next month I can bounce around larger balance transfers and get a bit more back on 0%. Once I have a decent chunk of space I will focus on clearing Fluid as it is the highest interest rate but for now the space, and keeping NatWest sweet, is more important. This is going to be a long road, but at least it will be going in the right direction again. 🙂

flamingo22

It's so hard all this juggling about, have you done any bank switches to give you some extra cash for your payments? 

EatingBeans

flamingo22 said:

It's so hard all this juggling about, have you done any bank switches to give you some extra cash for your payments? 

I did a few bank switches some months back but I also changed a lot of other accounts at the same time so I’ve had rather a lot of hard searches in short succession. To avoid raising too many red flags I’ve put a hold on switching again for a few more months to spread out the searches. I do have a current account with direct debits all set up and ready to go though, so as soon as the older searches fall off the radar a bit I will be back on the hunt for a new switch deal. 👍

EatingBeans

Weight is 204.3lbs - slightly up on yesterday and a reminder that just because there is a huge amount of apple pie that needs using up, doesn’t mean I have to eat it! (I ate almost a whole pie yesterday) 😬

This morning’s breakfast is a fruit smoothie 95% of which came from Olio. I used up the last few strawberries and peaches from the previous collection and added some banana from a pick up I made this morning, only adding a few of my own frozen cubes of mango to chill it and a drop of water to help it blend. 😋

I didn’t pick up a lot from Olio this morning but I knew I was dropping dd2 to volunteer at Parkrun so I would be right next to one of our local FWH’s who I know is happy to leave bbf items out for me in the morning - an opportunity I wasn’t going to waste. 😁 So this morning I picked up bananas, choc chip cookies for the girls, some rolls (although they are a little too stale so may go to the dogs), a bit of fresh coriander and a protein snack bar. A bit random and I am hoping for a better selection this evening, but I should have a lot more choice if I am picking up in the evening. 

EatingBeans

Today was another day with no fixed plan. I contemplated going back out into the garden but it looked rather windy and my face was already twanging, so it was decided today would be an indoor day. I spent a bit of one-on-one time with each dog, then pondered what I could do that would help future me stick to my renewed non-spendy ways once I go back to work next week. I settled on stripping my bed and trying to get through all the last bits of washing. I almost succeeded but my next task - sort out a random pile of stuff that had appeared in my room last week - unearthed a basket full of dog towels and blankets which also needed a wash. Sadly, I have run out of drying space so they will have to wait until tomorrow, but then I will be fully caught up! 🎉

With that stress inducing task out of the way, I decided the next most useful thing I could do for future me would be meal prep. So, one big pot of rice and one enormous chilli later, I now have some emergency meals I can pull from the freezer and quickly heat up. Despite owning the trays for years, the novelty of my portion sized ice cube trays is still not lost on me. I can’t tell you how nice it is to cook once and end up with multiple little bocks of meals that stack nicely in the freezer until needed. Even if I go into the office I just grab a couple of blocks, take them in my microwaveable container and just a few minutes of warming in the office and voila, a yummy home cooked meal! Apparently this makes me look really organised. Little do they know that it is actually born out of sheer laziness as making lunches everyday is one of those jobs that I hate in a completely disproportional way to the task in hand. 

Next stop, a quick YouGov survey, and then on to scrutinise my budget for next month to double check the cashflow situation and look for any ways to save money that I haven’t thought of yet. 

EatingBeans

Budget scrutinised, no further cutbacks found this month. So I moved on to looking at extra bits of money I can bring in. I dusted off my eBay and Vinted accounts, reducing prices on items already listed to try and stimulate a few more sales. Then I moved on to TopCashback only to find £22.10 ready for pay out. 🎉 I’ll be honest, I’d stopped even ordering my Morrisons orders through TCB as it always feels like a right faff compared to the Morrisons app and it never appeared to pay out, but out of nowhere they now have come through. I’ll be back to ordering through TopCashback from now on! 

Next I thought I’d read the weekly MSE e-mail to see if anything else jumped out at me. Somehow I ended up looking at the top survey sites section and realised there were a few other top rated sites that I haven’t tried. So, I have now signed up to Ipsos isay and OnePoll. I don’t expect them to pay out any time soon but sometimes I find I am in the mood for surveys and yet there aren’t any available. Hopefully this way I will be able to capitalise on my ‘in the mood-ness’ a bit more often. 🤞

Cherryfudge

What a very productive day you've had! Nice to have your efforts rewarded to the tune of £22, as well.

The breakfast smoothie sounded delicious as well as good for you, and I don't care if you say you're lazy, I'm now convinced you're organised!

EatingBeans

Well, as planned, dd2 and I wrapped up the day with a bit of Olioing! There was a bit of cross over between me driving to collect and items being listed so I gave dd2 the joy of requesting things as we went and she clearly had a lot of fun. There was a small miscommunication over quantities - a request for one pack of potatoes turned into four packs and a request for one pack of salad leaves turned into 20+ bags! The guinea pigs will eat some, we’ll eat some, but the rest will have to just be composted. It seemed like the FWH ended up with the 20+ bags and nothing else, and I am the only one willing to stop by just for lettuce (I was going past anyway). Favourite item this evening… Jam donuts from Tesco! 😋