Caz counts it down

Verbatim

Wonderful. When will you go?
Glad your mil is improving physically. Perhaps there's something out there to help with the short term memory? She's lucky to have you both so close.

cazmanian_minx

DebtFree2012 wrote: »

Sounds great re the Tesco points, how long has that taken you to collect?

I was trying to work it out, actually - it must be about 4 years because I cashed in the last big lot for Virgin vouchers to spend on our honeymoon. It was £325-worth of Tesco Clubcard points, which is, um, £32,500-worth of shopping :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek: Though actually probably under £30,000 when you account for bonus points and the occasional period where you could swap them for 1.5 times the usual number of Avois. However, it's saving us about £940 on the flights (we still have to pay the taxes).

sugarcube84 wrote: »

A holiday to Mauritius sounds lovely!!

It is This will be our third trip there, we love the place. Just wish it was closer, as the flight is a bit of a killer.

Verbatim wrote: »

Wonderful. When will you go?
Glad your mil is improving physically. Perhaps there's something out there to help with the short term memory? She's lucky to have you both so close.

End of September next year, hopefully, as long as there's still flight availability, the Avios seats go quickly. Just waiting for Mr Minx's vouchers to come through and then I can get cracking booking everything. Unfortunately a CT scan a while back confirmed that MIL is in the early stages of dementia, so not a lot to be done, sadly

Brightspark87

Holiday sounds amazing! a friend from school recently got married out there and honestly, looks like paradise!! x

carol1963_2

Sounds wonderful. I'd settle for a bag of chips somewhere wet and windy at the moment!

mfmaybe

Caz, have you come across the Headforpoints blog? It's focus is on maximising Avios collection.
http://www.headforpoints.com/

Try this also
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/british-airways-executive-club/1643339-tesco-ba-2015-master-thread.html

cazmanian_minx

Well, as my little way of putting two fingers up at international terrorism...

2 x flights to Mauritius - booked
10 days in our honeymoon hotel - booked



£660.52 in taxes for the flights, £1,067.31 for the hotel (deposit paid, balance due June next year) - so that's 10 days half board in the Indian Ocean for under £900 each, a CONSIDERABLE amount less than we paid to go there for 7 nights in 2011 with Virgin!

Still to sort out - 2 x flights from Inverness to Gatwick (Easyjet are only booked up to 4th September at the moment and we're going after that), animal sitting, insurance (will get that sorted ASAP) and airport transfers. Other than that, we're good to go

dawnybabes

Love Mauritius, got married on the beach there, we intend going back someday.

cazmanian_minx

Well, I've saved £120 this morning, as the equine dentist has cancelled the last two days of his trip up here due to the awful weather Also renewed the dog's insurance and since they don't charge any extra to pay monthly by direct debt, have done it that way instead.

£700 has been set aside towards the tax bill, I 'just' need another £1,200, but with all this month's eBay outgoings covered and £125 already in YNAB for December's expenses, I think I should be able to withdraw £600 a month in December and January, if not more....

....which brings me to the latest Grand Plan It's November, traditionally my peak selling month. I don't have too much lined up this week (got another project for the small market research agency kicking off next week, hooray!) and I still have about £14,000-worth of stock to get rid of. If I can get all of it listed on eBay at cost + selling fees it should hopefully shift like hot cakes and I can (a) put the money aside for the tax bill, (b) pay off the Halifax card and (c) stash the rest aside ready to pay for the roof on the house I'm buying. I hope. Still no word from my solicitor about where we're up to with that!

EssexHebridean

Fabulous news on getting the flights & hotel booked Caz - just the THOUGHT of somewhere hot and sunny feels like a good thing right at the moment!

cazmanian_minx

Hello EH, nice to see you back on MSE

I should know by now never to look at my diary and think, 'I haven't got much on today, I'll have a late start.' By the time I pottered into the office about 10am, I had 12 orders waiting to go, a ton of dictation from Mr RPC, an email from Journalist #1 asking if I could do two celebrity interviews for her urgently and a special business team file coming in for 5pm.

I have chewed my way through a lot of typing today, let's put it that way! Left to finish off tomorrow are the second celeb interview (I did the more urgent one this afternoon/early evening) and turning a 40-minute phone conversation into meeting notes for Mr RPC, then I'm more or less on top of things, although I did get a WhatsApp message from Mr RPC at 7.50 this evening asking if I wanted to work tonight. I had to explain that I was otherwise booked, but if he wanted to load up his dictation system, I'd look at it first thing tomorrow, so there may be another stack of work to add to the list in the morning.

This evening's business file, which was about the construction industry, ended up with me needing to Google, amongst other things, 'Rottweiler' and 'Exocet'. I suspect someone at Google had their finger hovering over the 'Send to GCHQ' button by the time I'd finished