Investing in Us: Holidays, Health, and the Road to £150k

ladybird1106

So pleased for you, hopefully you can slowly improve your physical and mental wellbeing now.

Love 🐞

debtfreewannabe321

Thanks all 🤗

Well I was in bed asleep by 9 last night. 😴 Super struggling with energy and can't believe I've got the majority of the week to work yet 🙈. My legs were really badly swollen yesterday after work so today I've put compression socks on in the hope they help me. Legs already feel slightly better to be honest so hopefully when I finish later I won't feel so much in pain or tired. If I'm not doing well I'm going back to the office rather than struggling through. The student's doing okay anyway and should be okay on his own today for a few hours.

I'm working right next to a garden centre today and keep eyeing up things through the fence 🙈🙈 someone take my bank card away from me 🤪 else I might go home with no wages left and lots of plants and pots and 'stuff'.

daisy_1571

ooh garden centres are the devil's work 😆 so much temptation

redofromstart

That is great news on the TTO contract.

I would also be making eyes at the garden centre. I am off to a new to me garden centre today to meet a friend and I really think I should have declined. Relying on self control to resist, ooh, pretty…

beanielou

I must be the only person who has no love of gardens.

debtfreewannabe321

I wish I didn't care either way for a garden centre and plants and 'pretties' 🤣.

I've had a fifteen minute break this morning but wasn't really a break as I was with students. So I'm taking an hour now on my own, sat in the car with a nice view of a lake, daffodils and a blue sky 😍.

These socks are 👌🏻 amazing - really helping with the swelling and pain. But I'm going to sit and do nothing for an hour anyway as I'm here till 5. And the throbbing is still there it's just hugely reduced.

I'm trying to keep on top of paperwork, I usually let it build up a little as Friday is my admin day, but if I plan to leave early I want to be up to speed with it all. So I might spend fifteen minutes of my lunch doing that today.

DP cut the grass for the first time this year! He sent a picture half way through the morning of it and it looks loads better! I will try and do some more weeding this weekend. I'd love to have gone round the beds once at least by Easter so I can move on to the fun stuff like planting 😁.

We've had a chat about the roofs and summer house and orders of things to do etc etc and DP is still of the opinion he'd like the option to move his office back into the garden again, I think he likes the separation of work and home, and he works from home fully, so we're now reverting back to our original plan, sort of, so at the back where we currently have a dilapidated summer house we're thinking of putting a large shed instead of new summer house. Then moving all of the garage contents to there in an organised fashion as currently the garage has random cupboards from kitchens and old workshops and most are falling apart but it feels like too much effort to fix it all or do anything with it and I really don't think we have as much as we think we do it is just all disorganised. The original plan was to make a space at the end of the garden so he can have the option to move there as an office space, but I think the garage being converted is probably still the best option for more space. It is right next to the house and has electricity running through it already and because the car port is connected to the side door and the front of the garage it means you can safely go between house and garage and stay dry even in the worst weather. It's an odd building because it's built from an old RAF building apparently and the walls are cement board type things all connected together (might actually be a different material but looks like cement). So it's solid (more solid than a summer house would ever be) but it's an odd shape as the guy who built it made up his own shape/ space of one larger workshop and one smaller one but they're completely connected and one biggish space inside. Anyway, I think this is what we'll do. Shed at the back, with workshop area for DP and garage into usable insulated spaces for storing/ office space. And if DS1 does decide to move home we can house him either where DP current office is in the front of the house or even in the garage if we can convert cheap enough - and if it's not a cheap enough option we will just convert the back half which is much smaller.

Okay we've a plan.....again. so first things first we need a new shed ordering. Then once that's on order we need to take the summer house down. Once that's done we'll move onto phase two of emptying the garage and sorting the roofs out... Really need to do this whilst weather is good so suppose I ought to start looking at sheds 😆 not as much fun as looking at pretty plants! It would be lovely though to have some organisation out there in the garage!

daisy_1571

Garden sheds/cabins can look really nice but I always feel they can't be very secure both re the physical computer!s printers, wires etc but also the storage of work things on there, email addresses, client details, work details etc?

I'm not sure how organisations can go from being on site, it secure, documents secure to oh everyone can work at home with who knows how many people wandering about each house looking at stuff, poss sharing computers, documents lying about and expensive equipment on full view in garden buildings with huge windows and not much in the way of locks etc compared to office buildings.

I'd keep your idea of summerhouse at the end of the garden if you possibly can. Lovely for sitting in on nice spring, autumn and even winter days and partition space in the garage for a more secure office thats out of the house cos I understand that. Not only are people 'working from home' they are also 'living at the office'.

Be nice if you can find a plan everyone is happy with 😆 sorry if I've thrown the proverbial spanner in 😆

Dxx

greenbee

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81917262#Comment_81917262

Most companies have pretty strict rules about not using work equipment for personal use or letting anyone else use it - and monitor for patterns that indicate it is. TBH I don't trust work enough to use a work device for my personal banking/anything I want to keep private! And most work IT kit isn't the kind of thing thieves want as it isn't very saleable. Most work laptops are very locked down (plus models that aren't usually attractive to consumers) and difficult to reimage. Physical documents might be more of an issue, but there aren't many of those about in most jobs now. Most places where I've been given a printer I've also been given a shredder.

I've worked remotely for over 20 years and never had a problem. However, the number of unlocked PCs, laptops left on desks, interesting stuff on printers, and documents left lying around in offices that I've collected and had to deal with when I was office-based (it was part of my role to find this stuff, and as a result I knew an awful lot about the business!) was phenomenal. Don't assume that information is secure just because it's in a building. Or that IT for remote users is less secure than for those in offices - the IT security is usually exactly the same.

The 'living in the office' thing, I definitely get. I need to be able to shut the door on my office, but frequently have to go back in there if something comes up. And I'm about to convert my garage so I have a bigger office….

debtfreewannabe321

Evening all,

DP has two or three screens at any one time (mainly data analyst alongside other bits he does) so wants a bit more space, his desk takes up the majority of the space in the front room right now 🙈. The garage is probably a better place to actually lock it away to be honest and he had it set up in a pod in the last house in a corner of a large double garage. He liked he could lock the door each day and come home after work.

I had my lunch earlier and spent all afternoon feeling nauseous and dizzy 🥴 I'm still feeling that way now and I've had the smallest dinner. I took a charcoal tablet but it's still not fully passed. I wonder if it was the tofu I had for lunch as it had ginger on it. Even though I wouldn't call it an allergy I would say I have a horrible intolerance to ginger 🤢 and I'm often left in pain after eating it as well as dizzy and nausea. I hadn't realised there was ginger on it until I got home and mentally went through what I'd eaten and checked ingredients. I think another early night might be on the cards and hope by tomorrow it's passed....if it hasn't perhaps it's the beginning of a bug (but symptoms fit my usual intolerances).

The socks helped though and I haven't come home with throbbing legs or feet and no swelling 👏🏻 …

greenbee

I feel your DH's pain with the monitors - the reason I need more space is that I have three desks (one is currently in another room), two laptops, and 5 monitors :) And I'd quite like space to use the standing desk and walking pad without having to move other stuff out of the way (or to sit down without having to put the walking pad away).