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Sepa seeks freedom

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Comments

  • Sepa74
    Sepa74 Posts: 962 Forumite
    edited 9 January 2011 at 12:02AM
    *shock horror* can you use Nectar with Amazon? Noooooo! Why did no one tell me?

    I use Amazon ALL the time as they are so reliable. How do you sign up for Nectar with them?

    I started with Quidco, but as I'm time poor I found it a real struggle to find time to shop around and identify what was good value on it.

    I do use comparison sites for insurance, although there are a few things where I am happy to pay more for good service - for instance I don't want to move away from nPower because they actually answer the phone when I ring them! I had the most horrendous experience with BG when I first moved into the flat, and I swore I wouldn't even consider returning to them for 10 years.

    They've rung me a couple of times over the last few years, and the conversations go like this:

    BG: "Hi, we'd like you to consider returning to BG. We can offer you xxxxx"

    Me: "I'm sorry, and please don't take this personally, but when I was with BG the service was so poor that I swore I wouldn't even consider returning for 10 years. It's only been X years, so please make a note on my account not to ring me until 2017. Thanks, goodbye"!

    Often my choices come down to finding an acceptable trade-off between cost and time. But I think this diary and the support of the guys here in MFW will help me make sure that I regularly reassess those trade-offs and don't become complacent and waste too much money.

    Goodnight!!!
    Borrowed £150,000 in an offset tracker mortgage in May 2007 - MFD May 2041 (67)

    Jan 2012 - £125,620.02 / 2,913.87 / Nov 2032 (58) :beer:
    Apr 2012 - £122,901.88 / 3,170.91 / Jul 2032 (58)
    Jul 2012 - £122, 589.02 / 3,507.99 / Sept 2032 (58)
    Oct 2012 - £120,476.31 / 3,889.42 / July 2032 (58)
  • katsu
    katsu Posts: 5,029 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Mortgage-free Glee!
    You use nectar for amazon a bit like quidco. Register your nectar card with the nectar website then go and log in to the nectar website, select the "earn points" tab then click amazon and it loads amazon for you.

    Then shop and pay and you will earn nectar points automatically. You do not earn points if you put stuff in your basket, close your browser and log in later to pay, even if you go back via nectar. You must select the item and pay in one transaction after clicking through from the nectar website.

    You have to do this each time, you can't register your nectar card on the amazon website.

    I personally find it takes so little time for free points that I've got this down to an almost automatic way of opening amazon :rotfl:
    Debt at highest: £8k. Debt Free 31/12/2009. Original MFD May 2036, MF Dec 2018.
  • Sepa74
    Sepa74 Posts: 962 Forumite
    Well, I've not been doing well, but nor have I been doing badly. I haven't had any NSDs since I started the dairy, but I also haven't spent money on anything I shouldn't have, except for a small bottle of wine this evening from M&S. I finally made it to a yoga class at the gym on Monday. I joined the gym in September specifically so I could go to yoga, but I have paid 4 months worth of fees and this was the first class! NOT very money saving AT ALL!!!

    But going to yoga, or any classes, is a matter of habit, so I think it's worth paying the money long enough to get into the habit. The gym is only £30 a month and is literally a 5 minute walk away. I joined when I did because it was an opening deal - if I joined now it would be £40, for a year contract.

    I stood on the scales this morning and was 59.0kg. I should be 55, but am more usually 56. That's a stone I need to lose, and that gym, particularly the yoga class, but also cycling in summer, is what will make me lose it!

    Our lunch club had spaghetti bolognaise for lunch today. I'm cooking roast butternut and parsnip soup tonight as it's my turn to bring food on Thursday, but I'm out tomorrow night. It's a VERY simple recipe, literally butternut and parsnips roasted, a bit of thyme (I put in rosemary coz that's what I have growing) some stock, season to taste and that's it. Here's the link: http://freshcatering.blogspot.com/2005/12/butternut-squash-parsnip-soup.html

    I ordered cat food from PetPlanet today. They always sell under the retail price, and if you order over £29 you get free delivery. They are generally very quick and reliable, and the courier they use generally reads the delivery instructions (leave around the back!), which is a rarity.
    Borrowed £150,000 in an offset tracker mortgage in May 2007 - MFD May 2041 (67)

    Jan 2012 - £125,620.02 / 2,913.87 / Nov 2032 (58) :beer:
    Apr 2012 - £122,901.88 / 3,170.91 / Jul 2032 (58)
    Jul 2012 - £122, 589.02 / 3,507.99 / Sept 2032 (58)
    Oct 2012 - £120,476.31 / 3,889.42 / July 2032 (58)
  • Sepa74
    Sepa74 Posts: 962 Forumite
    I had a fairly good week. Two NSP days, although I've forgotten which ones! And Friday would have been an NSP day, except that I purchased a Big Issue.

    I've hopefully found a cleaner! Not exactly MSE, but aside from the fact that getting a cleaner is a direct order from my mother (she is sick of my whingeing about having to do the cleaning!) I am going to look at it as an investment in my time. I have an opportunity to earn an extra £200 a month by writing articles for an internet magazine and I'm also seriously considering writing a book(!). If I can do those on the weekend rather than taking time off for them, then the article writing itself will pay off the cleaner. The only downside is that the articles and the book are in the area in which I work, so I hope I don't burn out mentally.

    Yesterday was a bit of a blow-out day - £30 for lunch and £12 for a movie...but it was my birthday, so I'm allowed. I haven't bought myself a present because there isn't really anything I want at the moment, so a lovely afternoon out with a friend can be my present to myself.

    You will be pleased to hear the Roast Butternut and Parsnip soup was a success. I also took in a Pandoro ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandoro ) that I was given at Christmas, which I spread with Tiramisu... it blew everyone's mind!

    If I'm in the mood this afternoon, I will make a birthday cake with wild strawberries from my garden stirred into it to take into work. I put the wild strawberries in the freezer over the summer, and this seems like a great way to use them up - they are so intensely flavoursome that I think they'll be little bursts of sweetness in the cake. Mmmmm.
    Borrowed £150,000 in an offset tracker mortgage in May 2007 - MFD May 2041 (67)

    Jan 2012 - £125,620.02 / 2,913.87 / Nov 2032 (58) :beer:
    Apr 2012 - £122,901.88 / 3,170.91 / Jul 2032 (58)
    Jul 2012 - £122, 589.02 / 3,507.99 / Sept 2032 (58)
    Oct 2012 - £120,476.31 / 3,889.42 / July 2032 (58)
  • Radish72
    Radish72 Posts: 2,075 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    edited 16 January 2011 at 11:38PM
    What is lovely in Tiramisu is a layer of mushed up strawberries in the middle,it just adds some sweetness to the whole thing, and then can be counted as 1 of your 5 a day :rotfl:
    Mortgage Aug 12 £165K, Aug 19 £0
    ISA challenge start 2019 £3000/£1500 (50%)
  • Sepa74
    Sepa74 Posts: 962 Forumite
    Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

    Now you've just blown MY mind, Radish!

    Not sure if I'm in the mood to make my cake this afternoon. But it's only half four so we'll see a bit later. I'm going to sit and write an article now. I earn £200 for them, and have an agreement to provide one a month for 12 months, so it's a nice little money earner. This is the second one I will have written, and it's only mid January, so I'm getting well ahead of myself, which is no bad thing.

    I wanted to post about growing things. Someone commented in a post about wanting to try and grow stuff in their tiny garden to save money... well, that's me, growing things in a tiny garden, but it ain't savin' me money!!

    So I thought I would post about some of the lessons I've learned, and which plants I've found pay for themselves, just in case it's useful to someone else.

    My pocket-handkerchief sized garden is West facing, so I get the afternoon sun. I have raspberries growing along the south facing fence. They were expensive to buy, although I was lucky enough to get them on special. Unfortunately I pruned them wrongly in late 2009 so I only got a handful of berries last year, after an initial bumper crop in 2009, but I'm hoping that now I've learned how to prune them properly (take out the stalks which have fruited and leave the young ones as they will bear next year's crop) that I'll get another bumper crop this summer. I think over the years they will definitely pay for themselves.

    I find courgettes are brilliant, although they take up half my growing patch when they are producing. However two plants pretty much keeps me in courgettes all summer, and as the plants usually cost £1 each, they definitely pay for themselves. No expensive props needed either!

    Runner beans are GREAT. Again, 4 or 5 plants keep me in beans all summer long and definitely pay for themselves. Another really good thing about them is that they grow up walls, so don't take up too much space. I'm going to grow as many as I have room for this year and freeze any excess beans for winter.

    Purple sprouting broccoli has been really good for me. I bought a couple of plants for a couple of quid two years ago. They produced quite well in March last year when their fresh, bright colour was very welcome. I didn't pull the old plants up in summer, just cut them back, and they're now starting to produce again, which I'm very impressed with!

    I've had mixed experiences with tomatoes, but a couple of small cherry tomato plants from my local greengrocers do pay for themselves, although if I wasn't growing them I would be using much cheaper large tomatoes in salads, so I really don't know if they are worth the effort. I keep growing tomatoes because I like watching them grow and ripen, and they are very nice despite not being as flavoursome as they could be because of the west facing garden.

    Wild strawberries are brilliant because they like damp shady spots, which means they are very happy under the west fence of the garden. I have a morello cherry tree there too, which also doesn't mind shady spots. I love morello cherry jam.... but can't imagine I will ever get enough cherries for more than a small jar of syrup. Ah well, we all have to have our dreams!!

    I bought a bramley apple tree which I'm growing in a large pot too. Again, I don't expect it to pay for itself at all, but I just like the idea of growing it. I got one apple of it last year, which wasn't too bad as it was the first year I've had it.

    Plants that HAVEN'T worked for me are Aubergines... my west facing garden just doesn't get enough sun, and the slugs and snails in my garden are ferocious and love aubergine plants. I am just about to give up on peas for the same reason - they just can't fight the slugs and snails and so just don't produce much at all. It's a real pity as there is nothing like peas picked straight from the garden. Mmmmmmm.

    Sweet corn and pumpkin don't do well for me, so the three sisters http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_(agriculture) are out.

    I have success with chillis, but not sweet peppers, strangely enough.

    I have a couple of pots of strawberries, but they weren't very productive last year, and I suspect the variety I bought aren't very tasty. I'm going to give them another go this year and then have a rethink.

    I've got sorrel and chard growing in pots, but haven't eaten much yet. The sorrel is very lemony, while the chard steams quite well. The plants are still quite small so I will let them grow for another year before passing judgement.

    When you add up everything I spend on my garden, it's not cheap! You can get some freebies eg compost bins from the council, while some councils (I live in Sutton) offer compost for free if you go and pick it up from the recycling centre. Pots are also expensive, and then you have to have frames for the beans, poles for the tomatoes plus you either need to buy seeds or seedlings (I buy a combination depending on what I get going on my windowsill in February) so I look on gardening as a hobby and any produce I get is a bonus.

    Does anyone have any other suggestions of things I could try out in my little garden?
    Borrowed £150,000 in an offset tracker mortgage in May 2007 - MFD May 2041 (67)

    Jan 2012 - £125,620.02 / 2,913.87 / Nov 2032 (58) :beer:
    Apr 2012 - £122,901.88 / 3,170.91 / Jul 2032 (58)
    Jul 2012 - £122, 589.02 / 3,507.99 / Sept 2032 (58)
    Oct 2012 - £120,476.31 / 3,889.42 / July 2032 (58)
  • Zeddy
    Zeddy Posts: 159 Forumite
    Hi Sepa
    Finallu caught up with your diary. I'm loving your veg tips. We've only had success with tomatoes in a hanging basket and courgettes. We're just about to move to a new house and have plans to put in some raised beds in the garden so really want to try some more veg growing.

    Hope you had a great birthday too, if you can't treat yourself on your birthday, when can you?
  • Radish72
    Radish72 Posts: 2,075 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    Spring onions are really easy to grow and if you let one flower you get hundreds of new seeds. We grew ours in a bucket
    Mortgage Aug 12 £165K, Aug 19 £0
    ISA challenge start 2019 £3000/£1500 (50%)
  • Sepa74
    Sepa74 Posts: 962 Forumite
    Hi Zeddy, glad you're enjoyed the veg tips. I'm slightly compulsive when it comes to gardening!

    Radish, I love the tip about the spring onions. I do grow them, and in fact didn't use all of them, and they have over-wintered, which surprised me. Means I have to plant less next year.

    Love the tip about the seed.... but as an FYI, it's illegal unless it's a heritage seed - commercial seed is generally patented. Be careful who you tell about it... and please don't ask me whether my purple sprouting broccoli and rocket are heritage or not :p

    I'm having a fairly good week so far... I am finding the NSP days really help keep costs down... and so does the lunch club! Today was NOT a good day - my darling, lovely mother said on the customs declaration that my Christmas and Birthday presents are worth £75... which means I have had to pay VAT on them. Grrrr. It's so WRONG when you have to pay VAT on your own birthday presents!!

    My cleaner did her first clean today...She did a good job, and it's such a relief to have a clean house, but I do struggle to justify it to myself. But I just have to keep reminding myself that I spent Sunday afternoon and evening writing an article which will earn me £200... that MORE than makes up for the cleaning costs each month.

    I had a carpenter around to look at the kitchen today as well. It is a VERY difficult kitchen to modernise. It is awful at the moment - currently everything is done on 1m of bench between the cooker and the sink, so dirty dishes pile up in the same space where you are preparing food. Ykkk! But I can't tell you how many kitchen designers I've had around, and none of them convinced me that they knew what they were talking about in terms of plumbing, weight bearing walls, hidden chimney stacks etc.

    This bloke today seemed pretty good, however, and I'm getting desperate to make a decision and get something done about it!

    I have started getting free credit card insurance through my current account, so my next money saving project MUST be to cancel my existing credit card insurance. That will save me £30 a year. I also have mortgage insurance which I want to cancel as I've now taken out income protection insurance. That's £9 a month, so it's starting to really cost me. I'll try and do that tomorrow or Friday.

    I'll go and have a gander at other diaries now until I start nodding off.
    Borrowed £150,000 in an offset tracker mortgage in May 2007 - MFD May 2041 (67)

    Jan 2012 - £125,620.02 / 2,913.87 / Nov 2032 (58) :beer:
    Apr 2012 - £122,901.88 / 3,170.91 / Jul 2032 (58)
    Jul 2012 - £122, 589.02 / 3,507.99 / Sept 2032 (58)
    Oct 2012 - £120,476.31 / 3,889.42 / July 2032 (58)
  • SmlSave
    SmlSave Posts: 4,911 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture Combo Breaker
    Hi Sepa :) I've just found your diary and wanted to say hi

    Do you know how old your strawberry plants are? Its just that you said they didn't produce very well last year and I've found that they are at their best in year 3/4 and then start to petter out.

    I'm not sure I understand paying VAT on presents *confused*
    Currently studying for a Diploma - wish me luck :)

    Phase 1 - Emergency Fund - Complete :j
    Phase 2 - £20,000 Mortgage Fund - Underway
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