Steadying the ship - a perilous voyage across the financial middle

edinburgher

@rtandon27 Online shopping with Sainsbo's is a guaranteed ticket to receiving several baskets of near-dated produce that will end up in the food recycling - never again! 🤬

The rest of you - wheesht! I did a thing that made my day easier.

rtandon27

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82141129#Comment_82141129

Ah yes - I was once a loyal shopper and Sainsbos until a crazy delivery driver put paid to that! We switched first to a local restaurant supplier (during pandemic) and then back to 0cad0 - who have incredible return/refund policies and the loveliest delievery staff! We also get smaller shops these days from Waitflower via ub3r and those are perfect everytime!

As for shopping lists, I have a standard one stored in the shopping app for when I do a weekly shop and then just remove anything not needed and add the thing or two extra - 15 mins tops and then it magically arrives at our front door! Hooray for technology!

edinburgher

I went to a very enjoyable leaving do on Friday night (honestly wasn't expecting that) and a less enjoyable hangover on Saturday 😵 Mrs E was very kind and sympathetic, with normal humanity levels restored by dinner time.

Much more productive today:

• Early morning free weights session at the gym
• Took the girls to our local shopping mall to give Mrs E a bit of time to relax
• Picked up ingredients for coq au vin at M&S, which I am very much looking forward to for dinner
• £8 paid into my SIPP to cover 2 units of VALL, will be rounded up to £10 after initial tax relief
• Printed off my university timetable for 2026/27 and downloaded all of the slides for this Tuesday's introductory sessions. It is amazing how few days they expect me online for! Will be finished for Christmas by the end of November, with a 6-week? break after that
• Packaged up Mrs E's Suri toothbrush for return (battery fault but kudos to their top approach to returns and the lifetime warranty that I signed up for back in the day)! A replacement has already been received

turtlemoose

I'm sure it was you Ed that highlighted the etoro offer three months ago... many many thanks, as I've hit the required minimum 90 days so have just withdrawn £110.77 of free money, woohoo! (And of course allocated straight to CC debt)

edinburgher

Well done for making a profit!

Suffolk_lass

I also store the offers I have selected from Morries card in the Morries shopping App basket. Having elected to buy 2 big bags of prunes (Mr Sl's chosen thing) I only needed some snack nuts to hit the maximum booster points this month. I need one more pack of butter (margarine or spread) too to hit mid points for that. At this rate, I shall hit £30 of vouchers by Christmas!

Currently on the lovely Isle of A - not the bay this time; we are up in the north, watching the little wee ferry do the heavy lifting across to the mainland. No idea why the state owned carrier would specify a ferry too big for the harbour when Peel Ports are notorious for no investment in their infrastructure unless there is money in it - but they did. Too deep and too long. So, the Pentland Ferries leased ferry continues to limp back and forth in nice weather (and stop because it has no warp speed in poor weather). Lovely…

edinburgher

@Suffolk_lass - I hope you enjoyed your holiday - the best I have managed to said Isle was a day-trip with DD1 earlier on in the year.

I have done our month-end finances early as today is a university day and I'll be excessively busy at work tomorrow. Nothing to write home about but heading in the right direction (+£4,000 NW, +£775 "strict"/portable NW). My personal highlight was us being at > 18% savings rate, we average c. 16.5%. In theory we are 9 years away from FIRE but it won't work like this because of money tied up in pensions and relative youth…

Only other financial news was opening a 6.5% RS with Chase which will complement the need to keep £1,000 in their savings to get monthly cashback.

Suffolk_lass

Thanks @edinburgher we are still in E. Ayrshire until tomorrow, as it's my Mum's 97th birthday today! Had to be done. No drama on the way back but my word, Calmac!

Suffolk_lass

You are quiet. I hope just busy and all is well

edinburgher

Hi @Suffolk_lass - I have been feeling a bit on the scunnered side. We had a tiring couple of days in the Borders for Mrs E's birthday (DD2 is not great at transitions, making a fuss during the night when staying in hotels etc.) When we returned, I had to catch up with two weeks of university reading, which was 500-600 pages in the course of a week in addition to family, full-time job etc. 😬

Trying to simplify a lot of year-end finances by doing everything today in terms of overpayments and investments for the rest of the year:

1. £340 OPed (it has been a while)!
2. £95 paid into my LISA
3. £252 paid into Mrs E's ISA
4. £236 paid into my ISA
5. £140 paid into DD1's ISA
6. £62 paid into DD2's ISA

Plan for the stormy day is to drive Mrs E to the station (daft SIL is insisting on a birthday day out during the storm), then off to Aldeez to buy hot chocolate and mini marshmallows to keep the children fortified/high as kites. I've also tried my hand at repairing some badly stripped screws for our living room door handle. Nothing too fancy - cocktail sticks and wood glue.

I've had better months! Hope everyone else is thriving.