rlc22's 3 year challenge!

museumworker

Good to hear how you've been doing! The conversion sounds great, and glad to hear you've been enjoying family life/the new space/new job/holiday. You're also doing sooo much better than me on onepoll, I really need to get some motivation there - think only on about £9, and no payouts ever!! Not even heard of turnintocash, but sold all of our non-amazon worthy cds to music magp1e, and were really happy with that anyway.

Sorry to hear about the neighbour though , hope it improves/doesn't impact too much on your family life.

Any goals/plans to the end of the year?

cha97michelle

It is so good to see you posting again. I always liked reading what you were up to. Sounds like it is much nicer spending time at home. I wish we had less toys about, but then again it is kind of like wishing this time a bit isn't it.

DY - I found out points last a year on there. There are a lot of the same faces about, so some might remember you.

Are you back on the bandwagon now?

rlc22

museumworker wrote: »

Sorry to hear about the neighbour though , hope it improves/doesn't impact too much on your family life.

Any goals/plans to the end of the year?

Thanks MW. My goals for the end of the are basically just to get myself back on track and sort out a savings/OP plan for the new year. At the moment I'm just doing things like transferring my £1k a month into the Halifax rewards account to get my £5, trying to do as many surveys on OP as I can to get to payout and any of the "easy" things which can then make little OPs to the mortgage.

cha97michelle wrote: »

It is so good to see you posting again. I always liked reading what you were up to. Sounds like it is much nicer spending time at home. I wish we had less toys about, but then again it is kind of like wishing this time a bit isn't it.

DY - I found out points last a year on there. There are a lot of the same faces about, so some might remember you.

Are you back on the bandwagon now?

Thanks Michelle. It's definitely nice to have a toy-free room (well, there is definite movement into the lounge but at least it can get put away again of an evening!), but I know what you mean about wishing the time away. The playroom has got loads of bright coloured things in and a really cool lampshade from Ikea with clouds on it so it definitely looks like a kiddies room. DS loves it and gets very excited when he realises it's there

I've got until January I think to get around 5000 DY points, so should be achievable. I need to do it so I don't waste the ones I've got already.

I'm kind of back on the bandwagon. The only thing that potentially stands in my way at the moment is if this thing with the neighbours isn't resolved soon then our only option left is court action which scares me because there's obviously a huge cost involved but also I don't really want the related stress of it all and I don't have much time anyway without it. However, I am loathed to be in a situation where our rights are being infringed, going through all the stress that we already have and then end up in the same situation as before so we'll have to wait and see about that one!

I've got some AL next week so I'm going to do some decluttering which should give me some eBay bits and bobs. I'm also going to Costco with a friend to see if I think it's worth us joining (is it really sad that I'm excited about that?!)

I've also developed a slight obsession with Lidl. It's so cheap! Plus I love foreign supermarkets so it feels a bit like I'm abroad even when I'm only really down the road :rotfl:

Right - off to apply for some rebate cashback for a hoover that I bought last month (everything needs replacing at one time I find)...

rlc22

Right - time to get organised.

Money I'm waiting to come in:

• Quidco owe me £195.07 - £18.37 in next payment which will go as an overpayment
• November's £5 from Halifax Reward Account
• £30 rebate from hoover
• £50 cashback cheque from home insurance
• £3 cheque in letter rack from Kelkoo cashback - need to pay into account
• Expenses from work - around £50ish - due in my account tomorrow and since I spent it ages ago I won't miss it if it goes straight to an OP
• £100 cashback from DH's CapOne credit card - to be applied to January statement
• £95ish cashback to date on my Am-ex card - to be applied to January statement

Well, that makes me feel a bit better to have listed up there, especially as we have some biggish outgoings this month:

• Winter tyres going on Saturday - £253
• New brakes for DH's car - £??? - need to find out...
• Car tax for both cars - £??? - prob about £145 per car :eek: but as we have insurance and MOTs both due in June it's not worth getting 6 months worth for them

Hmmm... Not feeling so good now that my 3 poxy outgoings list totals more than the "extra" money that I'm waiting for!

Oh well, looking forward to next week now. Can't wait until DS's birthday on Tuesday, it's more exciting this year now that he understands more (he was even singing happy birthday the other day - so sweet).

Also looking forward to time off at the end of next week and having the opportunity to de-clutter at home. Hopefully should be some bits and bobs to eBay...

CathT

Lovely to see you back and posting. Glad you are enjoying the extra space and organisation of the conversion; I would seriously be lost without our playroom (although it is a tip at the moment as a result of going from 1 to 2 children!)

Re: the Halifax account, we managed to open a 3rd account so get £15 a month which I use to fund car expenses and transfer it as soo as it's credited. I'm not sure if you could manage to open 2 extra ones but I'm sure you could open another. We have one joint, one in my name and one in DH's. You could double your reward from them. (I don't leave money in the account, I transfer it in and out on payday).

Ouch at the car tax renewal month! Maybe you could do one for 6 months and one for 12 months to stagger it a bit and avoid same problem next year. It's at renewal time I wish I had one of those low emission cars with car tax of £30 a year!

I'm almost at £30 on onepoll too so hopefully we'll both get to payout soon.

Glad everything going well for you, DD was sooo much fun once she turned 2, she became quite the entertainer!

Good luck with ebay, decluttering so important in the build up to Christmas - I should probably do it too!

rlc22

CathT wrote: »

Lovely to see you back and posting. Glad you are enjoying the extra space and organisation of the conversion; I would seriously be lost without our playroom (although it is a tip at the moment as a result of going from 1 to 2 children!)

Re: the Halifax account, we managed to open a 3rd account so get £15 a month which I use to fund car expenses and transfer it as soo as it's credited. I'm not sure if you could manage to open 2 extra ones but I'm sure you could open another. We have one joint, one in my name and one in DH's. You could double your reward from them. (I don't leave money in the account, I transfer it in and out on payday).

Ouch at the car tax renewal month! Maybe you could do one for 6 months and one for 12 months to stagger it a bit and avoid same problem next year. It's at renewal time I wish I had one of those low emission cars with car tax of £30 a year!

I'm almost at £30 on onepoll too so hopefully we'll both get to payout soon.

Glad everything going well for you, DD was sooo much fun once she turned 2, she became quite the entertainer!

Good luck with ebay, decluttering so important in the build up to Christmas - I should probably do it too!

Thanks Cath great tip about the Halifax account. I'm off work for the next few days so I'm going in investigate opening individual ones too...

So today I went on my first trip to Costco. It was amazing, although I did spend a lot of money. Luckily it was on useful things like washing powder (enough to last for months), dishwasher tablets and the like. Also managed to pick up some bits and pieces for DS' birthday party on Sunday. I spotted that my usual shampoo is about £2.50 a bottle cheaper there too so I stocked up on 4 bottles (I have to use Neutrogena TGel or I get a really bad scalp and when it costs £7.50 a bottle that's a but depressing).

Also, they take Amex so I also managed to net £3.30ish in cashback from today's shopping too. How very MSE :rotfl:

Right - onto decluttering now. Wardrobe all cleared out and now need to decide what clothes to recycle and what to ebay. No rest for the wicked!

rlc22

Ok, so I decided that I don't have time to ebay the clothes. So most went to the dump for recycling and then I took some to a local charity shop. It's for a hospice where a former colleague's husband passed away earlier in the year, so at least I feel like I've done some good.

Having a very productive weekend so far. DS' birthday party tomorrow so I've made his birthday cake and chocolate cornflake cakes so far. I'm going to bake some cookies and make some sandwiches and that will do for the food I think.

Going to a firework display this evening (much to DH's disgust as he doesn't like them). Was very organsed and bought tickets in advance for £3 each rather than £5 on the door. I hope DS isn't scared!

museumworker

Hope the party and fireworks went well! Ebaying can be a load of hassle, so much better to give to a good cause.

CathT

Hope your DS had a lovely birthday and enjoyed the firework display. I don' ebay anymore, I use a local selling page on FB and although it's not perfect I have been able to declutter quite a lot and also buy some bargains.