Cheery's country living adventure

Right, YNAB and banks done, and as usual, I have discovered that if you don't keep an eye on these things they dance around behave like right pesky fiends behind your back :eek: :eek: :rotfl:

So. Budget is settling down after moving house, slowly getting an idea of how much things are costing, although gas, electric etc are all still a bit up in the air and working on guesswork. Changed electricity suppliers too, and we're now paying a monthly amount (£58 :eek: ) with the new bunch, but not yet had a final bill for the old ones yet. Hoping that will go down, but probably not til we get radiators installed in the 3 rooms that don't have central heating so we can stop using the plug in radiators! :eek:

Diesel is expensive, but I think last month's £220 was an aberration fortunately :eek: Spent £67 filling the smaller car twice this month (that's the one I use for nipping back and forth to the city for work, so that will come down considerably now I'm working at home more). Not filled the bigger car up at all yet, but that'll likely need it this week, which will be about £45. So that takes us to just over £100. Shocking, but much more reasonable.

Food/grocery seems to have come in at £113 so far this month :eek: which is not unreasonable - except the majority of it is meant to come out of Mr Cheery's cash money not the bank account so I don't know what's going on there...

£85 on the treats budget so far, not bad as that's for both of us - mostly covers cafe trips and lunches out, and we've paid for a couple of friends too this month.

My own personal spends have dropped drastically since we moved I am SUCH an impulsive cake buyer :rotfl: I don't walk past the shops on the way home any more, and don't really meet friends for a cuppa in a cafe any more - far more likely to go round to someone's house after work now.

One professional membership has come out (£95), and I did buy my 'new' camera for £52.

Still not decided what to do with my nan's money yet. I did want to use it to get us started with land management etc... but so far I've ended up putting stuff like the plastic greenhouse, dry stone wall course etc just through the normal bank account.

However, we do need to get used to there not being *quite* so much wriggle room in the budget any more... :eek: Had quite a bit before and could absorb stuff like that, but the mortgage has eaten all our wiggle room really...

Not putting ANYTHING into savings out of normal wages at the minute which is distressing me slightly...

However, I did get the 'everyday rewards' payment from the bank, so that's £5.50 gone to the mortgage :j signature updated :j That's going into a separate bank account now rather than directly to the building society after it transpired they just sit on it for the entire year and I don't get any more interest anyway! :eek:

Right, best get on with some work!

Right, four traps set now :eek: Pesky furry menaces. Never had mice before but expected it moving to the middle of the countryside in a house that had been empty for a year before we got here :eek: They are quite cute, especially the little field mice But they can't live in our house! :eek:

Wonder how long it will take before we cave and start to kill them off? We're both a pair of complete softies so it might be a while :rotfl: but at the minute we're checking all traps several times a day and going on at least one long walk a day to the bottom of the fields and quite frankly I have other things to do :rotfl:

Anyway - back to money :money:

* Prolific is up to £7.80, will wait to £20 for a free payout. Might get there in May

* Really need to sit down and sort out what to do with the money Nan left me I've ignored it so far, I wanted to spend it on getting set up with our land - but so far everything I've spent has come out of the main account, which is fine, but I'm finding I'm reluctant to buy stuff like fruit trees because of the cost. But that's exactly what I DIDN'T want! I don't want to fritter that money, but also fruit trees are a great thing to buy as they'll just keep on giving

* £108 spent on diesel this month, one car will need a top up today ( about £30 I think) but the other is three quarters full, so it'll be £150 for the month, and we're going into May with two nearly full tanks :j Much better than last month! Also I'm working at home a lot in May so that should make a difference too.

* need to sort out LPG. Apparently you have to tie into a two year contract. We paid existing supplier for a half fill before we moved in but we're down to about 30% of tank now so need a contract. Existing supplier has offered 37p a litre plus VAT for first year, with a 'variable' rate in the second year - looking at the LPG thread on here they can bog off. Going to ring the little local supplier and see if they can do better.

Right, I really should get off the computer :eek: Going out in half an hour, and I wanted to get my fuchsia and rosemary cuttings planted out if nothing else.

Just dashing through - had an email with an electricity bill so popped in to check it :eek: Reckons we've used £154 worth of electricity since 4th April :eek:

Even worse - it was based on an estimate meter reading, and when I tried to input the real one, it said 'this is much more than we expected, please upload a photograph of your meter; :eek: :eek: :rotfl:

Oh dear. It's a 100% renewables company which I don't mind paying a bit extra for, but this is ridiculous. However, I suspect the issue is at our end - we have three rooms that don't have radiators, and have put electric heaters in them, and have just gotten into the habit of putting them on in the morning and leaving them on all day - so all three of them could be on for 18 hours a day :eek:

Needless to say I have been round and turned them all off :eek: