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Resolutions for January 2020

Think it, Plan it, Do it
Stonge
Lemon Slice
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Re: Resolutions for January 2020

#281168

Postby Stonge » January 30th, 2020, 2:55 pm

Oh well usual load of rubbish.

We've moved so thought log on the Royal Mail redirection site.

Entered old address and new address then proceed to payment.

Problem loading page

The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.
Please contact the web site owners to inform them of this problem.

It appears Royal Mail are using some out of date system that Firefox doesn't trust.

Previously today tried the Council website to tell them that we've moved out of the area. Can't be done. You can only change address within the area. Phoned them up and spoke to someone in the council tax department. Apparently they are not authorised to change anything. So what are they for? Will try writing to them and see if that has any effect.

It all just gets worse and worse. When you think it can't get any more worse, it does.

Tortoise1000
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Re: Resolutions for January 2020

#281313

Postby Tortoise1000 » January 31st, 2020, 9:03 am

Moving house is one of those ‘never again’ experiences that we forget and repeat. Have you got into the marmalade jar?

I got a leaflet from Dominos with my post yesterday. It advertised a meal called a ‘Midweek Warrior’, with a drawing of a Viking helmet. £15.99 for a 10” pizza, four cookies and a bottle of fizzy drink. £15.99! The route to being skint and diabetic, methinks, not a warrior. However I was inspired to make myself a pizza using the Panasonic’s dough setting. It comes out well. At Lidl, which is across the road from Dominos, the flour to make one very thick large pizza or two thin ones costs 11p.

I have also been experimenting with sardine recipes to use up the tinned sardine stash. These two were good, particularly the first:

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/spaghetti-sardines
https://toriavey.com/toris-kitchen/medi ... mon-pasta/

The backlog of food has dwindled to the extent that it can be counted. I have cooked for two people for half the month and one for the other half, so including lunches and dinners that is ((2x2x15)+(2x15)) 90 meals. Taking stock the other day there was still 69 meals’ worth of food left. A ‘meal’ being a steak, a fish, a can of sardines, 2 eggs, a portion of casserole in the freezer, etc. Enough for 2 more months.

I have got a bit bored of this the last few days and bought some food items I didn’t need to. However the totals are still not bad:

Food £41.40
Household furnishings £6
Car parking and petrol: £37.10
Appearance:£19
Entertainment £122.94
Gifts £179.90
Dentist £222.70
Holiday £344.73

T

Tortoise1000
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Re: Resolutions for January 2020

#281699

Postby Tortoise1000 » February 2nd, 2020, 10:35 am

January report.

The goals were:

1. Do my tax return.

2. Not spend any money. It was thinking it of this that brought me back to YTST. I haven’t had a ‘no spend’ month for years. But this tax year to date has been expensive, I’ve gone way over budget. I know from previous experience that not spending for a month makes a big impact. Time to give it a go. This will help with a longer term financial goal in due course.

3. Do some exercise 4 times a week, probably Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. That’s towards a fitness deadline later this year.

4. Write up this beautiful Pip Studio diary that Tortoise Junior gave me for Christmas.

5. Chase up the chap who was supposed to be finishing the patio balustrade.

6. Help TJ move out.


Goals 1, 4, 5 and 6 were achieved.

Goal 3, exercise, would have been 19 sessions . I did 13.

Goal 2 was the one that I posted about the most, probably because it was about NOT doing something and it left me with spare time I would otherwise have spent shopping. The results were:

1. I reduced my entire monthly living expenses, on everything including utilities and other regular bills, by £1,000. To just under £1,500, from a year to date average of just over £2,500.(‘Everything’ being except property repairs and improvements which I count separately as the 'landlord' costs of owning a house. The equivalent of rent which when I am renting I also count separately. And unusual items such as school fees which come up only occasionally in a lifetime. There were none of those this month.) I spent £53.70 on food, mostly toward the end of the month on unnecessary things because I was getting bored of this.

2. The impressive £1,000 saving was more than outweighed by the recent falls in the markets. My net worth at the end of the month is lower than at the start and my longer term financial goals are further away. :-)

3. With a thrifty mindset I made small useful discoveries such as Clubcard cinema tickets, the home-made garlic loaf, substituting vegetable oil for butter in bread, substituting grated carrot in the Tesco Citrus Salmon recipe, the lemon-marinated butter beans and the new sardine recipes.

4. The unexpected bonus was the de-cluttering. I am genuinely astonished to find I was harbouring so much food. The emptier cupboards, fridge and freezer are a delight and I am going to keep them this way.

Thank you for your company along the way, Lemon Fools. Your posts on this thread were encouraging and much appreciated.

T

Stonge
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Re: Resolutions for January 2020

#281718

Postby Stonge » February 2nd, 2020, 12:02 pm

Well done T. Admirable performance.

It's a bit like gardening. I love to sit in a chair, in the sun, with a beer, with a sun hat, watching the gardener working away industriously doing the gardening thing, mowing the lawn, pruning, weeding and all that. Wonderful.

Same with lists of objectives, resolutions and goals. It's heartening to see people create long lists and (at least partially) succeed in their endeavours. It's heartening.

And I'm always here to offer the wisdom of a lifetime of observation, appropriate advice and the odd pointer if required.

I've defeated the demon marmalade jar. Brought the implement down from Londonshire, applied it to the lid, hung on as hard as I could to jar and implement, twisted, twisted again, and again, a few times actually... pop and the lid came off. The marmalade's OK, nothing to get excited about.

I bought a Windows 10 PC a couple of years ago. Dell. Powered it up and after a lot of palavering about it suggested that I update the BIOS. I agreed and after that the PC was bricked. So it went back to John Lewis and was repaired. Haven't had much to do with it since then, except ignoring any messages from Dell obviously. Now that we've moved to Walmington (and bearing in mind that MS have ceased updating my Windows 7 PC, not that I apply updates anyway) I thought I'd power up the W10 PC and see what W10 is all about.

Apparently it updates itself without telling you. So it gobbled up all my data allowance and credit and I've been without Internet access for the last three days until my new goody bag started today. W10 PC is switched off until further notice.

Didn't miss much though.

Tortoise1000
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Re: Resolutions for January 2020

#281892

Postby Tortoise1000 » February 3rd, 2020, 10:57 am

Well done to you too , Stonge! You achieved your goals too. You moved house and opened the marmalade jar. 100% success rate. Keep up the good work!

Are you going to buy a house in Walmington now? Are you still in the rented place?

T

Stonge
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Re: Resolutions for January 2020

#387154

Postby Stonge » February 16th, 2021, 10:04 am

Well, how time flies. My latest list:

1. As I said before, just when you think it can't get any worse, it does, in spades.

2. Resolutions for 2020. As GoStevie said, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.

3. Hope Tortoise and TJ are well.

Arborbridge
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Re: Resolutions for January 2020

#387158

Postby Arborbridge » February 16th, 2021, 10:34 am

Stonge wrote:Hi T

We've been trying to move to Walmington for three years. We've been renting a penthouse flat there for three years and spending about half our time there and half in our house in Londonshire.

But we may have sold our house, at last, so we'll be moving to Devon full time. Of course we'll still be frequent visitors to family and friends who mostly live in the Londonshire counties.

The Terminator (my wife) dragged me down to watch Vera again this week. It started. After 15 minutes there were five minutes of ads. Ten minutes of Vera and then five minutes of ads. It went on like this. In total during the two hours there were around 40 minutes of ads.

I can't understand how anyone who isn't comatose can sit through this.

The story was pretty dull but there was some nice scenery, some blue skies and sunshine.

I won't be watching any more episodes.


I find Vera is a drag too, but the trick to watching anything on commercial channels is to record them and watch later. Then you can skip through the ads. I rejoice that a one hour program actually only takes 45 minutes or so, leaving me time to make a cuppa before whatever happens next on the hour.

Arb.


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