Getting it together...one £ at a time!

Homegrown0 · 10 January 2019 at 3:33PM

Overpayment
Cashed out £3.29 from Qmee and £5.40 from PA and sent it straight into my CC.

Homegrown0 · 10 January 2019 at 5:51PM

It's been a bit of an admin-y afternoon so sorry for all the spam!

Just checked my credit union account which was emptied before Christmas (this is what i generally use it for) and my balances stand at:

Christmas account - £100.00
General savings - £200.01

Quite happy with leaving these to tick along until the next time I remember then and check. They'll both continue to go up by £50p/m as per my SO.

kindofagilr · 11 January 2019 at 10:22AM

Homegrown0 wrote: »

It's been a bit of an admin-y afternoon so sorry for all the spam!

Just checked my credit union account which was emptied before Christmas (this is what i generally use it for) and my balances stand at:

Christmas account - £100.00
General savings - £200.01

Quite happy with leaving these to tick along until the next time I remember then and check. They'll both continue to go up by £50p/m as per my SO.

Well done, it's fab when you have been able to carry over xx

Homegrown0 · 11 January 2019 at 2:49PM

kindofagilr, my credit union Christmas account pays out the first week in November so by the end of the year, i've made two payments again (end of Nov and end of Dec). Must've rolled a little over on the general account which is nice.

I figure if i need this for the summer for our holidays, i should have £450 in there to top up our spending money if needed but I'm hoping to just forget about this money and save for our holiday spends as planned. We'll see what the next 5 months bring! Are you back into Christmas savings already?

Homegrown0 · 11 January 2019 at 3:03PM

Happy Friday everyone! I hope the weekend gets to you quickly and you have something nice planned?

Our holiday
As I've mentioned, we were booking our holiday from the bonus that I received at Christmas from work and I was hoping it'd just about cover travel and acommodation for the four of us for a fortnight. I booked our travel last week (£666) and expected the accommodation to be £1400. The two suppliers I could've booked with were at the same price with the same cashback amount.

However, when I went to book last night, there was an early bird booking discount, taking it down to £1095 (including all the little extras like linen, towels etc) AND the cashback was boosted from 4% to 10%.

So i decided last night to just book it there and then before the prices had a minute to fluctuate!

Pending cashback is now sitting at £100.01 and I have £300 still sitting in our savings account which is a bonus.

This will be allocated elsewhere (my husband needs to pay for the remainder of a stag do he's going on next month + spending money so likely it'll go to that).

Good things:

We booked our holiday! (In case you didn't notice the massive essay above - so delighted, I want to mention it twice)
It's Friday!
I haven't spent a penny today
I've felt a bit more motivated today to get work done, clearing the decks for the weekend
I've got a really low spend weekend coming up (that's the plan anyway!)
My car got fixed (new brakes and 2 new tyres) - it came to £297 when we'd been quoted £600 by the national garage who did our service in December. Turns out our brake discs were fine and they were charging us double on tyres. So glad we went with a local place
Quiet night on the cards tonight, which we need after a busy week!
Most of the house is clean, as our lovely cleaner just paid a visit (just need to tackle the bedrooms myself either tonight or tomorrow afternoon to finish the place off).

Not so good things:

I haven't managed to pot anything in my sealed pot today (mainly because I have no cash in my purse)
I'm behind in my daily to do list because I'v been focusing on work this morning (darn work getting in the way of my personal admin!)

Spends
Yesterday was a hideously spendy day, but all accounted for of course:

£1095 holiday accommodation (from my bonus)
£40.01 to put fuel in husband's car as I was running on empty (from spending account)
£35 at chiropractor (from our spending account)
£297 on getting car fixed (from savings account)

:eek::eek::eek:

Homegrown0 · 11 January 2019 at 7:59PM

Well my delight at having spent nothing yet today didn't last long, as i had to order a new tshirt and jumper for my son's club that he goes to on a Friday night (it's a uniformed group). Tonight is the first week back and when he put the tshirt and jumper on, they were skintight and half way up his arm! He's either grown like a weed over Christmas of they have shrunk in the washing!

£24.95 including postage (complete rip off, of course, but there's only one place you can buy these things). The good thing is that I can save the current lot for my youngest who will likely start this club next year when he goes to school.

At least I had money in the clothes/ gifts pot to cover it!

Homegrown0 · 12 January 2019 at 2:22PM

My poor little guy isn't well today - we had swimming this morning but after that he jist flaked out while my older son was at his other class. Just snuggled into me the whole time. When I got home he had a high temperature so we are having an afternoon of Calpol, water and chilling on the couch. Nothing else for it!

My eldest son got full marks on his big spelling test yesterday so my husband is taking him for a small treat after his optician appointment.

While I'm chilling with my little guy I'm going to do our meal plan and shopping list which I'll buy in either tonight or tomorrow.

Not a lot else to report - husband paid in all the change to the bank (£39) and I was planning on withdrawing it and putting it in my sealed pot but actually I think it's better to pay it off my CC so will do that this afternoon. Takes my 'pay debt before Xmas 2019' total over £100 So happy with that so far considering I still have two DDs to go out. The £100 is just from 1 small DD and £50 of extra.

Off to make the most of the peace and quiet to get orgsnised!

Homegrown0 · 12 January 2019 at 2:28PM

Also, scraped back up to £1.39 on Qmee but I'm still getting screened out of a lot which is annoying.

Homegrown0 · 12 January 2019 at 3:17PM

Shopping list done!
I've been reading foxglove's diary (about 30% through) and have really picked up a few tips from her, one of which i used today. I wrote my meal plan, wrote the corresponding shopping list then went through all the cupboards, freezer and fridge to score off all the things we already have. I then substituted a planned meal (that we had nothing in for) for something we already had in the freezer.

I still eye roll at the cost for the volume of fruit and veg that we eat but I'd rather have a higher shopping bill and eat well than the alternative. It just grates me that I can get a pack of 50 chicken nuggets for £2 and waffles for £1 that would feed my two for over a week when I'd be lucky to get two days worth of meals for them eating vegetables. We eat frozen veg where we can to minimise cost and waste.

Anyway, I'm hoping that tonight/ tomorrow's shop will be less than £50 for the 32 items we need.

Meal plan:
1. Chicken, bacon and leek pasta with veg
2. Tandoori chicken skewers, cous cous and salad
3. Vegetarian sausages, gravy with onions, mashed potato and peas
4. Slow cooker beef stew (packed with veg) and potatoes
5. Chicken curry, rice and sugarsnap peas
6. Fish cakes, broccoli, peas and potatoes

DawnW · 12 January 2019 at 3:25PM

Your meal plan sounds lovely - certainly better than cheap chicken nuggets and waffles!

Getting it together...one £ at a time!

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