1 Step Closer Diary

1_step_closer

Well here we are and it's Friday! Taping "Corrie" and "BB" as step daughter is over, and her and dad are watching a DVD. Don't think they need it quite so loud though..............

Sooooooooo this week. Spent £6.78 in the chemist on Wednesday as OH had man-flu and needed lemsip and I needed deoderant and paracetemol.

Thursday I had man-flu! Off work for the day and slept most of it, croaking "hello" down the phone whenever it rang..........noone there, stupid automated telesales things.

Tomorrow be will a spend day though (sorry):o

I need £20 for my electric tokens (very long story, bore you later with that one), £5 stamp towards car tax, also need to get a birthday card for hubby and I said I would also get him a watch as a present but not to expect anything hugely expensive or grand. (Wonder if he'd appreciate a Mickey Mouse watch from Argos)

On top of that - :mad: - I need to pay some drain people £60 as - complicated bit) next doors bathroom pipe goes into a drain in our garden. Ours goes into the other next door...............see a pattern? Anyway it's been blocked and overfowed before so we paid for it to be cleared and she paid us back.

I can see the questions here already...........she lives up north at weekends..........so isn't here weekends..........and she is also my boss.........so we have to be tactful etc etc! I leave tings like this up to hubby as I'm as tactful as a bacon buttie in a Mosque.........

I am also quite impressed with myself as I came home from work, cleaned all the house, did all the ironing and had tea ready!!!!! for when himself and SD came home. Not that she ate much of it mind you. She never does. (Bone of contention here) Very tempted to ask her mum very nicely if she would feed SD before she comes over as I am just wasting food/money.

anyway enough rambling,bye for now!

bobbie78

sounds like you're doing well. Tesco do some nice watches or see if you can buy something via quidco or pigsback and get some cash back too :j Could you just make a birthday card on the computer that would save a couple of quid?

Keep going with the diary you are doing great:T

1_step_closer

Aw thank you! That's really kind!

The watch hunting was a complete disaster. Didn't find one he wanted in my price range (fussy devil) so am just giving him the cash instead. Much easier!

Got a bargain in Woolies - got 2 fleecy throw blankets for my settees at half price, so instead of paying £32 I paid £16. Yay go me.

Drain people came - £50 not £60 so well chuffed BUT the 6 houses in our row do go into our drain so it isn't next door at all. We are all private (I think) so not sure council will help BUT environmental peopel will apparantly so left it to hubby to sort out. I felt so sorry for the drain man - the smell......eurgh! and the mess - even more eurgh.Did make him a nice cup of tea though. We are the only ones with a drain cover not anyone else. Ah well!

What else.................got a £2 coin so that's in the Branston jar. Umm spent in Boots (still not well), got himself a card for £0.99 and as I hate shopping with a passion treated myself to a Greggs sarnie.

Oh and joined the library. I'm a devil for buying books! so that has changed now.

Npower saga next...............

1_step_closer

Ok...............The Saga Begins

Cue dramatic Star wars type music and the yellow words scrolling upwards on your screen...........

A long time ago (Nov 2005)
In a galaxy far far away (um, Wales)
A great scam (sorry, adventure, hits head, adventure) took place.........

We had a prepayment meter which was great because we knew how much we were paying each month, could top it up as and when, etc etc. However when you need the emergancy credit, 2p takes a long time to count down! (Those of you with this meter will know what I am talking about.) So we decided to change to DD. In addtion as we have gas with this company would get £50 discount. Yay! thought we. The Rebel Alliance is uprising. So we changed.............had a reading of over £200 in credit. The nice lady on the phone asked us what we wanted to do. Keep it on there and when it has gone, start taking the £50 dd a month. 4 months go by and I am now waiting for the DD to go out. It didn't. Stupid me thought we must be using less electric than we thought.

NO

The Empire came into it's own and we were sent a BILL for over £200. So I phoned and asked what was going on - to be told that the original credit figure was wrong. So I asked why hasn't the dd been taken? Obviously no Jedi powers there as they hadn't even set it up. GRRRRRRRRRR

So - next stage is they would £50 for usage and an extra £29 for the arrears. Doable I thought, not happy but there we go.

In Dec we were sent a bill for over £450. (Obviously Darth Vader is now in on the act). I went beserk and after huby tactfully dealt with various phone calls we have now gone back to a meter and can see exactly how much we use and what pushes the price up.

I know prices have gone up and I have looked on Uswitch but prices are similar for my area.

Oh and the £50 discount?????? April 2007 which is now no longer applicable.

So if I ever win the lottery, I'm going to get a shedload of tokens and feed them in one by one. I don't care if it costs NPower more money to sort out our bills etc and is a pain in the bum for them.................tough!

Just wanted to add that this is no reflection on the employees as they have a tough job and the engineers are always very nice. It's the faceless rich idiots at the top I have a problem with!!!!!

1_step_closer

Week has gone by fast!

I am monitoring the electric meter and will post the readings on MOnday and then average out per day. I must admit I was obsessing about this so much, hubby is buying energy saving bulbs.

Big spends this week - asda shop, paying for the drains, birthday money for hubby..........at least I haven't used my debt card! which i would have done by now.

Have a nice weekend all,

xx

taxi73

well done you are getting there and this year can't possibly be as bad

1_step_closer

Thank you! I was nicely surprised yu posted, I thought I was wittering away to myself!

There will def be a treat to myself this year though - if I have the right year - the last Harry Potter book. But that is a whole new thread.......

Not missing my car as much as I thought I would either.

1_step_closer

I am having a no spend day today - willpower or what! I have 2 fishtanks and was giving them a good clean when I thought - I need more fish. I don't actually, I just wanted more fish. The others are doing fine as they are, they are healthy and seem happy enough.

Got a form to fill in for work so had better get on with it.......

bobble_hat

Hi One Step,

Well done for starting up a diary, I find it really helps. You seem to be doing really well so far. Sorry you had such a yuck year last year.

1_step_closer wrote:

Quick question..................I don't spend every day on this site only really visit about 3 times a week, so how do I find my diary again after a few days?

Another way to do this is to subscribe to your diary thread. Select Thread Tools at the top of the page and select subscribe, then when you log in go to User CP and subscriptions, you will see all threads you are subscribed to in there.

Hope that makes sense.

Bobbly x

bobbie78

hey well done for the NSD's at least. Sorry the evil empire are being so evil but well done for taking control of the situation and trying to find a way to resolve it for your advantage. Keep an eye on the freebies board as I've seen free energy light bulbs on there some times.