Only freedom will do

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  • stepuptothepl8
    stepuptothepl8 Posts: 913 Forumite
    edinburgher wrote: »
    Mrs E, who decided that she absolutely couldn't miss after work drinks, despite the fact that we have a pile of carpet packaging a metre high outside the house, underlay rotting on the back patio, floors covered in new carpet fluff, couches in the kitchen and hall, no food, clean dishes or space to even sit down.

    But surely that is exactly why she decided she couldn't miss drinks? :p enough to drive anyone to drink.. [delurking .. Love reading about your progress, and I'll slink away quietly again now]
    LBM 1st Feb 2015 £18182 to go :o
    my diary: time to step up to the plate. SPC#079
  • edinburgher
    edinburgher Posts: 13,462 Forumite
    Name Dropper First Anniversary First Post
    stepuptothepl8 wrote: »
    But surely that is exactly why she decided she couldn't miss drinks? :p enough to drive anyone to drink.. [delurking .. Love reading about your progress, and I'll slink away quietly again now]

    Well, I would never have left her to fend for herself in the same circumstances. I've explained that I was annoyed, the tidying is done (nearly).
  • stepuptothepl8
    stepuptothepl8 Posts: 913 Forumite
    I didn't mean any offence. Glad the new carpet is in :)
    LBM 1st Feb 2015 £18182 to go :o
    my diary: time to step up to the plate. SPC#079
  • Secret_Saving_Squirrel
    Secret_Saving_Squirrel Posts: 4,138 Forumite
    Mortgage-free Glee!
    Hope this week goes better xxx
    Paid off mortgage nine years early in 2013. Now picking and choosing our work to fit in with the rest of our lives!
    Still thrifty though, after all these years:D
  • edinburgher
    edinburgher Posts: 13,462 Forumite
    Name Dropper First Anniversary First Post
    Secret_Saving_Squirrel wrote: »
    Hope this week goes better xxx

    Thanks Squirrel,

    The week already goes better in that there's very little that I can do in the house! We're getting the doors trimmed at some point as our new carpets are very deep pile, but other than that I'm getting a chance to relax (which is lovely). Mrs E away this weekend, so I'll enjoy it while I can! :rotfl: DD on good form, she only has 4 molars to go and they shouldn't show up for 6 months yet :j


    There has been a wee bit of movement in finance land as a lot of things have come to an end/shifted/needed tweaked.
    • T5B regular savers are dead. We have transferred the £6,000 we had stashed and £160 or so of interest into the linked current accounts for the short term, we paid some bills as well)
    • £2,000+ of credit card bills left me weeping into my tea. Quite annoyed after I paid the full balance of c. £1,400 on one card, only for them to take an additional payment of £700+ via Direct Debit. No idea what happened there...
    • £3,000+ of contractor bills in quick succession
    • I have decided that I will no longer invest in bonds via my ISA and SIPP. Looking at my finances as a whole, my small DB pension essentially acts as £50,000 worth of 'bonds'/guaranteed income. In NW terms, this means that something like 40% of our NW is bond-like. This means that our previous 80/20 asset allocation was more like 50/50 in real terms, so too low risk. Everything has been transferred into VLS100 for the short term, the ISA will probably be switched into VLS80 in a few years
    • Added a few small P2P loans into the mix (secured property)
    • Crappy P2P platform money will no longer be tied up in a fortnight, time to bail out (not R@teSetter or Z0pa)
  • edinburgher
    edinburgher Posts: 13,462 Forumite
    Name Dropper First Anniversary First Post
    Think I just saved £100 from Virgin over the course of the next year, but you never can tell whether or not they will apply the discounts correctly! :rotfl:

    Guess I'll just see on the next bill...
  • Secret_Saving_Squirrel
    Secret_Saving_Squirrel Posts: 4,138 Forumite
    Mortgage-free Glee!
    Well done. I try to haggle with Virgin intermittently. We pay £43 per month for a basic TV package, no films, sport etc, a landline that we never use and an excellent broadband. They tell me that if I dump the landline and the Tv, the broadband will still be £30. Have you managed to do better?
    Paid off mortgage nine years early in 2013. Now picking and choosing our work to fit in with the rest of our lives!
    Still thrifty though, after all these years:D
  • edinburgher
    edinburgher Posts: 13,462 Forumite
    Name Dropper First Anniversary First Post
    Well, it worked out as c. 21% discount vs. what we would have paid without the haggle, but I didn't feel like I achieved much. I think we're paying what you are, but with one tier more of TV channels and a £20 'goodwill credit' off the top. Small beer really, as the guy from the call centre tried very sniffily to point out ("I can apply the line rental saver, but it'll only save you a fiver"). Well, it's not your fiver matey ;)
  • edinburgher
    edinburgher Posts: 13,462 Forumite
    Name Dropper First Anniversary First Post
    edited 2 November 2016 at 10:00AM
    • Couldn't help myself, a wee £4.76 OP made to bring the mortgage balance down to a round fiver figure
    • ISA bonds sold, reinvested in VLS100, a few hundred £ topped up in lieu of direct debit payments until March (cancelled the DD for a bit more control)
    • Referred one MSE user to R@tesetter and one to Z0pa
    • Bought a £25 chunk of a P2P loan
    • DD is currently mad about sharing - imaginary cups of tea, feeding her toy dog etc. I ordered a lovely little Schleich? toy set with a few farmyard animals and bowls and feed for them. A little bit dear for what it is, but I will break it up into 3 little gifts for her stocking. Her main prezzies are a toy kitchen, a Christmas frock and some money for her ISA

    Any ideas for a 1.5 year olds stocking? She's an 'old' 1.5 year old, definitely more at the toddler stage than the baby stage I'd say :)
  • hiddenshadow
    hiddenshadow Posts: 2,525 Forumite
    edinburgher wrote: »
    ...and some money for her ISA

    :D I'm sure she'll really appreciate that one.

    (If I had a kid I'd be so tempted to do the nesting wrapped boxes trick with a note in the littlest box saying something like "here's some money...when you're 50. enjoy!" Maybe it's a good thing I won't have kids...)
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