The Ultimate Incentive natters on. Part 9

Dinah93

Cinny91 wrote: »

Oh! Dinah and NIM - what are your secrets for Tesco points? I was looking at the airmiles quackulator and apparently we'll need around £560 worth of points for 2 "free" flights? Would be great if we could do this but I doubt switching our weekly shop to Tesco alone will get us there!

Really? I think we needed £92.50 of points per person? Every January Tesco seem to do a bonus airmiles promo, 50% extra free, so it's worth waiting for that to trade them in. Virgin airmiles trade at a better rate than Avios. There is a boost your tesco points thread, follow that, often there are bonus points on DVDs/CDs/Games (usually pre-orders) - but a load of these and resell them on amazon - I usually make about a 10-20% loss in cash terms by buying and reselling, but it can be really easy to get £100 of Tesco points in a quarter if the right deal comes up.

We also use our Amex for all spends as we get 1 point per £1 spent. There is also a promo on at the moment to get 20,000 points as a bonus when you spend £3k within I think it's 5 months? That 20,000 points is about half of what you need for a flight to the states, I don't know about Avios but Virgin let you use a combo of points and cash so you'd get your flight half price just by getting the amex bonus points.

Cinny91

Dinah93 wrote: »

Well if you're going to state the obvious Miss Cinny, of course I REALLY want to get to 100%, but I can't see how I can bring in over £1500 in 11 days especially if there isn't another free listing weekend this weekend.

They don't call me Katherine Obvious for nothing! But lets be completely honest, going by your track record, when you get in a tight spot you always seem to have money come from somewhere. I have the confidence in you (and everyone's goals for that matter.)

And it really sounds like I had a big bowl of nauseating blind optimism for breakfast.

Dinah93

You know the famous rubber chicken on the old style moneysaving boards? Sometimes it really feels like I do that with money, I never know how, but somehow I always manage to balance things so we pull through. On the one hand I'd love love love not to have to do that, and just be able to pay all the bills easily with no juggling required, on the other I reacon we'd be no better off really as without rubber money and just normal squished up money we'd still pay all the bills like now, but it wouldn't need to be pulled to go further so we'd just still have the same standard of living? Does that make the blindest bit of sense?!

Birdie85

Wish I could be bothered with all the clever boosting points stuff. Would be a lot easier for me to do it if we had a Tesco in town, wish the council would change their mind and allow one to be built here! I used to send off ink cartridges for 200 points a time, people at work would save them from the office printers for me (back in the glory days before they installed one gigantic laser printer in the office and Tesco cottoned on to the fact that I was sending off 3-4 cartridges a month and stopped giving me points for them).

I can't wait for spring Poddle! I had to dig my gloves out again this morning so my hands don't fall off when I walk home at lunch time. That's if the snow/rain/sleet holds off, my rule is that I drive when it's wet!

I get what you're saying about the rubber chicken Dinah. Your ability to make money stretch is admirable. We really need to sort out our spending, realistically we should be able to save OH's wage every month, but we're only managing to save about half that (before something crops up to trim it down more!) because we're not sensible. We managed when I was earning so much less than I am now so we really need to get back to that mindset.

Cinny91

I used to feel exactly the same before I got my second job - too much month at the end of our wage but we still somehow managed. Looking back I can't imagine how we'd cope if we were put into the same situation again.

You're not alone with the wage difference, Birdie! We were a 16k income household this time last year - and as of next month we'll have officially broken the 30k income barrier. But there's no way we're saving 15k a year. I take a little comfort in knowing if we needed to we could, but there's no way I'm putting us back in that spot even for a short amount of time when we've worked so hard to get out of it

Dinah93 wrote: »

Really? I think we needed £92.50 of points per person?

70000 points per ticket / 625 points x £2.50 = £560. Unless I'm being an idiot with some maths here?! It's something for us to chew on, we're cutting out budgets back a bit so we have more to snowball onto our debts, I don't think we'll have the budget to work the points system!

Birdie85

Oh, remember my [strike]annoying[/strike] lovely weekend away planning last week?! Told everyone that I was booking it on Friday afternoon and they were to let me know if they couldn't make it in the morning... booked it, paid the deposit, told them all about it and 2 girls decided that then was a good time to pull out! One's having a joint birthday party (despite neither bod having a birthday that weekend) which I don't even think the rest of us are invited to (she's the GF of one of our friends and makes little effort to be part of the gang, her loss! ) and she claimed that it's 'impossible' to change it and the other is working yet couldn't let me know until 5.30 when she said she'd tell me first thing?! :mad: Best part is, I now have to cancel and pay a £40 cancellation fee! :mad: I mentioned this to everyone the only one who said she'll give me some money towards it is the one girl who was willing to go whichever date and never messed me about so I've refused (of course). One girl said 'Maybe it would have been best to make sure we were all available before booking'... grrr, what was unclear about my saying 'I'm booking it at *this time* on *this day* because it is the only weekend available at the low season price and I don't want to miss out like we did with the first date we were after, let me know ASAP if you can't make it' :mad: I'm so freaking cross, told them that I was passing the baton onto someone else to organise and was perfectly aware that we wouldn't be going away in that case! One friend sent a text suggesting we go away in September... !!!!!!, the point was we were going to celebrate everyone's birthday because they're all in April and May, does everyone seriously need 6 months notice for one stinking weekend?!

This is all bringing back flashbacks of the lot of them messing us around in the run up to our wedding. You can either come or you can't, why bother not actually telling us until 2 months before we go?!

Looking forward to NIM's subtle suggestions of how to deal with this! :rotfl:

Dinah93

Cinny91 wrote: »

70000 points per ticket / 625 points x £2.50 = £560. Unless I'm being an idiot with some maths here?! It's something for us to chew on, we're cutting out budgets back a bit so we have more to snowball onto our debts, I don't think we'll have the budget to work the points system!

Virgin flights are between 35000 and 47500 per ticket if you're flying economy, so eeek to the 70000. But yes your maths work based on those numbers. If you were doing a 35000 flight and trading in your points at 50% bonus time though you'd need 70000 total/937 points x £2.50 = £187.50 - much more doable.

Birdie your friends suck. There is nothing confusing in giving them a time and date to tell you by and its !!!!! of them tbh to lumber you with the bill when you'd ask them to let you know by a certain time.

Cinny91

I was looking at premium economy because OH is both a giant and a little bit husky so we'd need the extra room I had talked him down from first class so that's something, right? Swirly Martin?! But £187.50 is insane, can't I just buy points straight out?!

Your friends sound so useless, Birdie! I'd have told them where to get off and probably thrown a brat fit :A How much is it for the week? No way you could give it to someone else to save you the cancellation fee - no parentals that want a break?

starnac

tbh Birdie, I think the friend who cancelled should pay the cancellation fee. You gave them all enough time to tell you whether or not they could go. Sounds like you are having a nightmare though.

Birdie85 wrote: »

Looking forward to NIM's subtle suggestions of how to deal with this! :rotfl:

haha me too

kavics17

No chance on march madness.

You can also boost your tesco points by recycling inks, you get 100 points and can trade a 100 a year. Look out for freecycle, i get mine on that. Amex also has promotion to get one flight if you spend £1000 in 3 months.