2026 - consolidation and calm

dawnybabes

my son wanted to do a Russian GCSE was most bizarre as he wasn’t doing any languages (ASD so managed to get exempt from it)

beanielou

My DS learnt mandarin at one point.

Rhyddid2026

I've always wanted to learn Russian. My ancestors were Armenian but I figured learning Russian would be more useful than Armenian.

jwil

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81885693#Comment_81885693

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81885800#Comment_81885800

I really got into Russian history and literature when I was at college and so it's always stayed with me. I'll try it one day!

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81885730#Comment_81885730

They do Mandarin at little jwil's school, though he isn't. Little miss has tried Japanese and South Korean on Duo.

jwil

I'm trying to do some more listing but the laptop or ebay is so slow. I've been browsing new ones but I shouldn't really. I do need to buy a new monitor for my work setup though as the kids highlighted that the current one was making a noise. The connection for the power cable has been dodgy for a while.

I could get one from work but I prefer to have what I want at home, and then of course I can use it myself too. It looks like I can get a new one relatively cheaply from Argos so I will probably do that.

in_need_of_direction

any nectar points or cash back available?

beanielou

Oh yes. Nectar points.

jwil

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81886022#Comment_81886022

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81886130#Comment_81886130

I did both, thank you 😁

jwil

PAD (Payment a Day)

Today's PAD - £2

Jan - £172

Feb - £183

Car balance Sept 25 - £11,031 - now £8,290

jwil

Well I did get very spendy in the end! I bought us a new computer, a new monitor for work, a new desk for me to work on and a replacement desk for the computer as the one we use currently is falling apart. 😱

I'm having kittens a bit about the spend, and it's all on the credit card at the moment, but I'll just have to transfer from savings and suck it up! I do love the new computer, I went for an all in one, as we've always just used the laptop as a desktop so it's fixed in one place anyway. If we go away, we take the ipad so no need for anything there. It's so fast, it's lovely!

I built my new work desk today and set that up with the new monitor. I am very happy with that too. It means I no longer have to pack everything away at the end of the day to clear the table for dinner. It will be nice to have that little space for me. Ideally I'd have liked something bigger, but it sits where I want to sit and I didn't need to move a tonne of stuff to put it in.

My usual holiday jinx has happened as well. Whilst prepping for the new computer, I was moving all the photos from the laptop to our external drive. That has failed disastrously so I think we've lost a huge number of photos from over the last decade or so 😫 So I've spent around a day and a half trying to recover them and sort this out. I took the drive to a local computer repair place, but they think it needs to go to specialist data recovery which won't be cheap.

I'm not particularly bothered myself, but it contained all the photos of stuff that DH has sold over the years, and one of the key reasons I've been able to get him to declutter is by him having that photographic record of what he's had. I don't think all is lost though as I've some backups in other places, so I've been trying to gather all those together so we can see where the gaps are. We definitely won't have everything, but I'm hoping we'll find a decent amount.

I did find some photos that I took of the house at the start of 2016. I felt sick looking at them with all the stuff, and it shows how far we have come with clearing this place. I can't even remember us living like that! There's still a way to go, but it's a million times better than it was!

It hasn't been all computer stuff and nonsense this week. Me and the kids have been swimming, bowling. Little jwil has been out with his friends. We were out at the weekend. We've been to spend time with family. It was my birthday and I was spoiled. So there's been lots of good stuff among the drama.