EH - Keeping on track. (AKA focus Woman! FOCUS!)

EssexHebridean

NDS's - 10** 1/10
Food - 3 x shopping trips needed* 1/3
Food : Meal plan right through the month**
Grocery Budget: No more than £70 spent £27.90/£70
Survey Network: Hit £20 threshold and request payout
OnePoll : make 50p a day average in answered surveys £5.30/£15.50
ISA : get them sorted - [STRIKE]1 new[/STRIKE], 1 for transfer 1 new opened and first deposit made
Electricity : Get it changed to new supplier. done - going to Flow Energy - no exit fees so if they're rubbish we'll leave again!
Tax Return - complete and submit DONE! :j

Updated - 2 more OnePoll surveys done this morning :T

Planning how I might be able to squeeze in some extra hours this month too - I can definitely get in a half day on the day we actually go on holiday as I don't need to leave home to collect MrEH from his train north until about 4pm. I should be able to work enough extra hours to also make that up to an effective full day. Hoping I might also be able to get in some more - which would be helpful - have to see how things go.

**edit** Not going to be a NSD today - heard back from the people's who's self-catering apartment we're booking for a week at New Year and they need a £50 deposit. Of course I *could* cheat and date it for Friday - won't be with them until then, in any case....! rofl

EssexHebridean

Definitely not a NSD yesterday in the end - the cheque was written for the cottage deposit, AND we've booked one stage of our travel over there too! :j The first details of the flights etc for that time of year were released yesterday and we were a bit worried that they were all massively more expensive than we were looking at. Based on research previously, we'd budgeted £300-£350 for the travel portion of the trip - but what we saw yesterday made it look more like it was going to be over £500 - and quite honestly it would have been questionable whether we could have justified that. As it is though, MrEH spotted that we could fly to a different Island (Barra) and then get connections through from there via ferries and a bus, so we've booked the flights from Glasgow to Barra as they were available at £40 each. The best bit about this is that it means we get to tick an item off our life list - as Barra is somewhere we've wanted to fly to for a long while - the flights land on the beach! :T

Anyway - all we need to do now is work out the rest of the travel to fit in with that but a quick look last night suggests that we *should* be able to get the whole lot booked for £300 ish - which would be great.

Other than that - food wise we're ticking over - potato and "roast" pointy pepper salad last night was rather tasty, although a bit of an odd concept for MrEH to get his head around I think. :rotfl: Anyway, he ate it and proclaimed it "very nice" so it might get repeated. He didn't even tell me it would have been improved by the addition of a bit of bacon - his usual line when anything veggie is served up to him. Tonight will be salmon pasta, using the remains of a pot of soft cheese for the sauce. I'll also use another spoonful of the pesto for flavouring there - aiming to get that jar finished before we go away.

Extra Hours: 1 hour worked yesterday, 15 minutes this morning, wil hopefully do another hour tonight.

mooomin

You're braver than me - I hate flying when I'm landing on tarmac

Barra is lovely though - I remember going there as a kid although we went by ferry!

EssexHebridean

Barra is indeed lovely - we've been there a few times now and really like it. The New Year trip though will see us continuing to get the ferry across to Eriskay, then the inter-island bus up to Benbecula where we've got self-catering booked for a week.

Got a quote back for car hire too - £168 for the full period we're there, which isn't too bad. We now just need to make the decision whether we save ourselves a teeny bit of cash by not hiring it until the Monday - although if they can drop it down to the ferry thus saving us the bus journey, that might work even better.

EssexHebridean

NDS's - 10** 1/10
Food - 3 x shopping trips needed* 1/3
Food : Meal plan right through the month**
Grocery Budget: No more than £70 spent £27.90/£70
Survey Network: Hit £20 threshold and request payout
OnePoll : make 50p a day average in answered surveys £5.30/£15.50
ISA : get them sorted - [STRIKE]1 new[/STRIKE], 1 for transfer 1 new opened and first deposit made
Electricity : Get it changed to new supplier. done - going to Flow Energy - no exit fees so if they're rubbish we'll leave again!
Tax Return - complete and submit DONE! :j
Extra Hours worked: 2.25/10

Edited and added to to reflect extra hours I'm aiming to work this month. 3.5 of them will make up the remainder of the half day I'm taking on 22nd, and the balance are "money in the bank" as it were.

starnac

You are doing well EH. Glad you can do extra hours at your job to make up for the time you are taking off. I can barely keep up with you though. You are always jet setting off somewhere!!

EssexHebridean

Morning Starnac! I can't keep up with myself sometimes either!

Being able to make up time like that is useful - helps them as well as me, so works all round though!

Update then:

NDS's - 10 3/10
Food - 3 x shopping trips needed* 1/3
Food : Meal plan right through the month
Grocery Budget: No more than £70 spent £27.90/£70
Survey Network: Hit £20 threshold and request payout
OnePoll : make 50p a day average in answered surveys £6.05/£15.50
ISA : get them sorted - [STRIKE]1 new[/STRIKE], 1 for transfer 1 new opened and first deposit made
Electricity : Get it changed to new supplier. done - going to Flow Energy - no exit fees so if they're rubbish we'll leave again!
Tax Return - complete and submit DONE! :j
Extra Hours worked: 3.5/10

Managed a NSD yesterday, and there is no reason whatsoever why I shouldn't manage one today, too! :T Weather is truly appalling, so no inclination to go anywhere at lunchtime, and I'll take the chance to get another extra hour done tonight too.

Need to put together a shopping list for tomorrow, and also to check exactly what we have in the freezer that I can use against meals through next week. It's our favourite farmers market this weekend and I'd like to go but not sure I can justify it, annoyingly. Hmmm.

So, jobs for tonight:
- Sort out freezer
- Shopping list
- meal plan
- take another look at ISA's and make a decision on the transfer.

Happy Thursday all! :cool:

EssexHebridean

NSD yesterday! :j:T Also an extra hour and 15 minutes worked, so will update my list in a bit.

OK - the ISA thing. I make no apologies for the fact that this blurb below is copied almost verbatim from "elsewhere", but truth is that Greying's comment above about jumping through hoops got me thinking...

The new 2014/15 ISA is sorted of course - that's earning 2.5% in a Nationwide Regular saver ISA (which I notice is now one of Martin's top picks!) and will do nicely, thank you. I checked the rate on the old one that I was looking at transferring last night, and that's currently paying 1.3%, which actually, for an old ISA with a variable rate, isn't bad. That's the one that contains the money that will (eventually) be needed to pay the council's currently disputed Major Works invoice - so needs to be "reasonably" accessible, or at least to not have horrendous penalties. We've talked about this and the longest fix we're comfortable with is 18 months
Options:
Halifax 1.55% variable (easy access)
Tesco 1.65% Fixed (1 year, 30 days interest penalty)
Nationwide - Instant ISA Saver - 1.5% Variable (easy access)

I'm wary of using Nationwide for this one as well, although it is a simple option, as I'm worried I'll get confused and accidentally try to pay money into it, which could give me a problem with the HMRC bods. It may be that there are safeguards to ensure you can't, but I have no idea if that's the case, or not.

The final option is to take on board the fact that the current 1.3% rate actually isn't bad, and that it's a variable rate, likely to be at its lowest at the moment, so if interest rates generally increase, so will that rate, most likely. In other words, leave everything as it is, and re-check in a few months/keep an eye on what Martin is advising, but not to rush into anything now. It's in my mind that if interest rates DO rise, which they've got to, it's just a case of when, my variable rate might well overtake any of the fixes that are out there for the time period we're looking at, currently.

Opinions/thoughts/pro's & cons all very welcome!

Food tonight is going to be a Tapas type meal (also following inspiration from Greying!) Chipolatas cooked with smoked paprika, Pan Com Tomate, Patatas Bravas, the remaining chickpeas (probably dressed with smoked paprika and rapeseed oil), the remaining mushrooms (almost certainly fried with garlic and butter) and the remaining pepper, roasted. Maybe some cheese, too. If I remember I'll do a photo of it, if I don't you'll have to use your imaginations. :rotfl:

Small Money Saving Thing: I've entered the competition for the free tastecard - even the 2 month one we'll probably get some use out of at this time of year, and if we win one of the 1 year ones that would be ace.

For now though, I have a list to be attacked. :eek:

mooomin

Depending on how much is in the ISA I would shift it to the Halifax one for the extra 0.2%. If you had £10,000 then it's £130 for one year where you are or £155 for Halifax. Now, it's only £25 but every little helps

I moved mine recently for the extra 0.2% and to have easy access in case of emergency. I'm just not comfortable with moving to a fixed rate in case anything goes wrong in the house that needs fixing!

EssexHebridean

Good point, well made. And yes, seeing the figures written down like that, it does make sense. I presume I can move it again anyway,l and of course (Doh!) if rates generally go up, then the Halifax one will too, almost certainly!