Better, and savings

 Well, I managed to shower and dress without incident, hate sitting around in my dressing gown during the day.  We already have grab rails strategically placed in the bathroom, husband put them up years ago for when my Mum came to stay, they're proving very useful when getting in and out of the bath to use the shower.  The pain is easing up a bit - standing in the shower (holding onto the grab rail) and having the hot shower spray directed at my lower back was bliss.

Marlene, thank you for the info regarding the electric heat pad, I've ordered one.  Annabeth, I do sometimes use cold compresses on my back, yesterday though I felt heat was needed.  Viv, thank you, I rested most of the day, and yes, getting up for a little walk round every hour or so, to stave off being stiff.  HH, I can't ever imagine being pain free, I think the best I can hope for will be less pain and being able to live with that, which I'm sure will be achievable with osteopathy.

Husband got the washing out of the machine (I put it in and set the timer the evening before) and pegged it on the line - he pegs it out in a very strange way I must say, but so long as it dries it doesn't matter much.  It was very windy yesterday so dried quickly.

I see Sue of A Smaller and Simpler Life is going to do a new savings challenge, using her lovely big enamel teapot.  We used to save all our copper and 5p pieces in a big jar, and £2 coins in another jar, this went towards fuel costs for our holidays.  Well, now we don't go out shopping much (even less now I've stocked up) and almost never use cash anymore, so we no longer have coins to save.  So I've restarted doing something I used to do - transferring small amounts of cash from our main bank account to our savings account....I got out of the habit of doing it regularly.  It works like this - twice a week I check our main account and round it DOWN to the next whole number....eg, if there's £555.55 (as an example) in there, I'll transfer £5.55 into our savings account, leaving £550.00 in the main account.  Doing it twice a week, even with small amounts the savings build up quite quickly, and I don't even notice the little amount missing from our main account.  I already have a standing order set up to transfer a set amount monthly into another savings account to cover our caravan site fees and our Council tax, both of which are paid annually.

There was a calculator thing in the paper yesterday morning, if you input some figures it worked out how much better or worse off you'll be following the Budget.  I did ours and the calculator estimated we'll be £10 p.w. worse off.....not really a surprise with the way prices are going up, and the Chancellor failed to mention any good news for pensioners.  So cutting costs, and saving in any way we can will be even more important.  Husband's surprise small pension windfall (which enabled us to buy the caravan) isn't going to last forever, only a few more years in fact.