Lynn's MFW Diary

setmefree2

Lynn11 wrote: »

Well today I made another £50 overpayment for January, making the total paid for January to be £500. Hurrah!!!!

Well done on that!

Lynn11

Well on friday went on the scales and found that I had not lost very much - 1lb over the last 2 weeks. Everything seems to be happening last week. Been having a repeat fault with my car and took it to the garage again last monday for them to look into this as a light on the dashboard would come on and my car losses a bit of power. they could not find anything wrong (3rd time in the garage) but I have to take my car back this monday and will be given a courtesy car as they are trying to get to the bottom of this and sort it out - it means I still have transport for me and my daughter if we wish to do stuff on monday, tuesday etc. Also the heating is being tempmental - we are on british gas contract so they sent in an engineer and he is due back on tuesday to change the pump and do tests and also my 2008 service, which never got done. He seems to think that we may have to flush out the whole system and this will hopefully help. We had this done about 3-4years ago by another heating contractor as BG was too dear but they have brought down their prices and will guarantee to fix fOC if if happens again in 3yrs time, so this will be an expense of £700 we think - oh what joy. Good job I have money away in a savings account - did not really want to touch it but we need our heating system sorted. February is going to be an expensive month due to several birthdays etc and going out the next 3 weekends. Not much in the current account at the moment after taking off all the DD's etc but at least I get paid next week and on 19th february.

Lynn11

Well had a phone call from the garage yesterday to say that they have found the fault and the cylinder head needs to be replaced at a very expensive cost of approx £1400. Anyway it needs to be fixed and I ahve the courtesy car til the end of the week when hopefully I will get my own car back. Also today BG came to check out my heating and do the service. They replaced the pump, FOC but our system needs to be flushed out otherwise we will have more problems later and this is a cost of pprox £700.

Hoping to make the feb overpayment tomorrow of £500 and then March overpayment will be going to the credit card to pay off the bove costs which will be put on in the next several weeks. Thank goodness we have an emergency fund we can dip into.

StuartGMC

Lynn
Very valuable case study on why the emergency funds are so important and need to be readily accessible; hopefully it reinforces the good advice offered from this board to others.

When you get the heating system flushed do firstly look at the colour of the water; if the system has active corrosion taking place it will tend to be "rusty" brown. This shouldn't be the case because once filled, the oxygen in the water should be readily consumed and then corrosion will be mitigated. I am surprised you need to have it treated again soo soon after the previous flushing. Have you checked there is no overflow from the expansion tank whilst it is operating, and that the expansion tank is not getting hot? We had this issue as the system was "overpumping" thus drawing in fresh water to the system and corrosion products then increasing the cold regions on radiators etc. Pop up in the loft to check when the heating is running to be certain.

If the water is black it is probably in better overall condition, as the oxide formed on steel is different and once the oxygen is consumed corrosion will stop (remember the trick of a nail in boiled water which was sealed in a bottle not corroding vs. one in tap water and left open to the air?).

Do also ask about the inhibitor they will be using in the system (mixed or anodic) in the latter case you need to be certain on the dosing concentration for the system. (I'm not a plumber, but you may be able to guess my technical background from the above?)

Hope that this time you'll get some long-term good operation of the heating.

setmefree2

Lynn11 wrote: »

Well had a phone call from the garage yesterday to say that they have found the fault and the cylinder head needs to be replaced at a very expensive cost of approx £1400. Anyway it needs to be fixed and I ahve the courtesy car til the end of the week when hopefully I will get my own car back. Also today BG came to check out my heating and do the service. They replaced the pump, FOC but our system needs to be flushed out otherwise we will have more problems later and this is a cost of pprox £700.

that's gotta hurt :eek:. Poor you. Sorry for ya!

Lynn11

Made £500 overpayment to mortgage for february - good as no overpayment in March due to the unexpected expenses which have arisen.

Got my car back and it seems to be running good now, so this has been put on the credit card and the usual mortgage overpayment will be used to pay most of this off.

Got the latest credit card bill in and cause I did not pay off the whole amount in january, leaving a balance of £48 for 10 days I think as I made another payment to it at the end of January - they charged me over £9 interest. I could not believe this and spoke to them. They advised me that they will reduce this by half, so I paid the credit card in full this month £400 so we have limited funds and hopefully we can survive on this until next week when I get paid again. We have plans to go out on saturday night for dinner.

Anyway BG have not phoned me yesterday with an day to come to flush out the heating. I should be ok with this as it means it will not be on the credit card soon and the heating is behaving itself at the moment in this cold weather. I have put in a holiday request for my work for next wednesday so I hope that they will phone soon to arrange a day otherwise hubbie will need to take a day off for it. It is too cold and too much going on to do this on my usual days off monday and tuesday, I did phone up to see if we could arrange this and was told this was in the system and they cannot do anything untl the right department phones me.

On saturday past we had friends over with their kids and phoned out for a domino pizza - we managed to get a great deal 50% off if you spend over £30, so we only paid about £9 each. Good.

Snow is lying here and have just finished building a snowman with daughter - great fun!!!

Lynn11

Well after reading different diaries on here and watching martin lewis on friday night, I decided to look at the different interest rates we have on our savings. Anyway not so good for our 2 nationwide ISA accounts which are only 1%. I took £2800 out of 1 of the account and put this in a nationwide fixed rate bond for a year at 3% interest - its better than the usual isa rate. It means that a small amount of our savings we cannot touch at a slighly higher rate but we still have access to all of our other savings if we need this so will need to keep in the 2.4% and 1% accounts.

Whilst I am trying to get a better return for my money, hubbie had not cancelled the agreement with the wine club, so we got another delivery of wine. He has now since cancelled this but it is still an additional £50 on the CC which is high.

Heating has been playing up the last few days, so we have been phoning and pestering BG to give us a date for the flushing of the system. Anyway they are supposed to be phoning hubbie tomorrow and we will see what date is given, I had put in for a 1/2 holiday next wednesday but I gather they will not be doing the work then, so will have to use the holiday as work do not give back holiday also approved. Hubbie can use his holidays up as he has more than me since I only work part-time.

Tomorrow is a sad day as we are going to a good friend's mum's funeral.

Lynn11

Well last night we were out for dinner to a japanese restaurant and then to Strictly Come Dancing Tour in Glasgow (it was great) - my birthday present. Anyway ended up being a bit ill during dinner so had to go to a shop to buy paracemtol so I could enjoy the show. Today is my birthday and I ended up in bed all day, even now as still not feeling too good. Daughter and daddy made birthday cake for mum and was practicing singing happy birthday with granny today before she came home.

evab_2

A bit late of me to wish you well in your MF journey, but Happy Birthday hope you manage to enjoy yourself despite feeling poorly.

Well done on the overpayments!

setmefree2

evab wrote: »

Happy Birthday hope you manage to enjoy yourself despite feeling poorly.

Well done on the overpayments!