Benbenandme's Coffee Shop ... All welcome!

benbenandme

Hmm, well having gone through the clubcard deals I'm not too sure which direction to head in now The holiday offers on there aren't ideal for us really, I looked at the cosmos ones but I would have to get to Gatwick for a flight and that won't be easy (or cheap). Also the holiday would work out really expensive and then theres my flying phobia ....

I also looked at the siblu ones (Haven in europe), but the ferry crossings are pretty much booked up already for the dates I could go

Now I'm wondering whether I'd be better to use the vouchers instore / or on tesco direct stuff that I need, and use the saved cash towards a normal holiday where I could get a deal and fly from Bournemouth. Aaaagh! Why is nothing simple!! Then theres also the option to spend them on something like a Wii for the house instead (but yeah, I know we had one before and hardly used it, but as ds is getting older I wonder how long it will be before he really wants one again) ....

benbenandme

Forgot to mention, I currently have £75.50 in deals and have another £71.00 due in Feb, so a total of £146.50 which is £586.00 in deals

dueyb

Don't know if you've seen this in one of the forums but if you haven't exchanged your tesco vouchers for airmiles before you get double the miles ( 120 miles per £2.50 instead of 60) so you could use your deals with airmiles as you can get accomodation through them as well, hope that makes sense. You have to have exchanged them by 1st march, but don't have to use them for quite a while after that.

lilmissmup

Tesco holidays aren't the deal they used to be when I went on one, think they have limited spend so you can't get the whole one free.

Are there any double up deals at mo?

benbenandme

I did have a look at the air miles thing, but my flying phobia does kinda limit that one too There are no where near as many good deals as there used to be on there. I'm wondering now whether to just use it for food shopping and put the money saved into the mortgage pot; I'm starting to get the housemoving bug again, and the quicker I get this mortgage down then the quicker we can move

benbenandme

Sold 2 items on ebay today, so thats another £7 towards the move

DeeDeeinDooDoo

Hi BenBen
Someone has posted on the Tesco thread under supermarket shopping about how they felt they didnt get such a good deal by using clubcard vouchers for a holiday. We had a similar experience in that we exchanged £300 (3 years worth of saving!) of vouchers for a £1200 and paid £100 cash for a caravan holiday in France. It was a mere 10 days on a campsite in France. The same holiday could be had for £6-700 in cash if booked online. I concluded that I wouldn't bother again. I think like you say it might be better to use money saved by using vouchers towards a holiday and pay for that in cash because you will have more choice.

Hope that makes sense?

Keeping_Motivated

Benben what would you need to get the mortgage down to to realistically be able to move?

benbenandme

Yep I think you're right DDIDD, by the time I've added on extras, like getting to non-local ports etc, then it doesn't end up good value at all. Another option is just to save them for xmas/birthday presents, eg. ds games/ cd's for ds / nephews/niece etc, even school uniform for ds in september etc, but it just doesn't seem much to show for them when I'd been collecting them for so long towards a holiday

Even something like the Merlin annual pass is good value, but from where we live I don't think we'd get much use from it so again wouldn't really be worth it.

benbenandme

KM, I've always reckoned on getting it down to £20k before I can move. Thats because when I moved here I could only get a mortgage up to £60k and if I move realistically it would be buying a property of approx £200k and selling mine for £160k, so increasing the mortgage by £40k, which added to the £20k existing would put me back up to £60k again.

However, my landlord has recently done up the flats next to me and put one on the market, its a 2-bed like mine but doesn't have a garage and doesn't have a bath, just a shower-room. It does however have an en-suite in one of the rooms and of course everything is brand new inside whereas mine is now 2.5yrs old. But, its on the market for £190k :eek: I don't think he'll get anything near that for it but it will be interesting to see what it does go for. I bought mine for £162k in June 2007, I thought it was probably somewhere between £150k-£160k currently but perhaps if that one does go for near the asking price then maybe mine will be a bit higher than I thought and thats whats kinda got me thinking about moving again However, to stay in the catchment area for schools that I want ds to go to there is currently nothing that I'd want to buy, well not in my price range anyway