Cheery's buttling diary: tea in one hand, plant pot in the other, running shoes on

Cheery_Daff

We did indeed Starnac, thank you Mr Cheery not too good for various reasons at the minute and currently having a nap.

I've spent the afternoon in town having lunch and then tea and cake with a pal Had to get the bus down as was running late - it's £1.70 each way and pesky driver didn't have any change so I ended up paying £1.80. Grr. Then the woman in the cafe tried to add £2 + £1.20 and got £3.50 - might have normally let it go but after the bus driver I wasn't being short changed again! :eek: :rotfl:

Walked home as I couldn't bring myself to pay another £1.70 and now quite worn out!

In on my own for a few hours tonight so planning to make a list, get some tidying done, sort out some photos, put holiday clothes away from last week :rotfl:

Cheery_Daff

Ooh!

Had an email from Ovo saying my fixed deal was coming to an end. However much they've been annoying me I'm NOT going to switch right now because I don't want to have to go through even more of a palaver getting someone else's Smart meter installed :rotfl:

Anyway, Martin's cheap energy club says they're one of the cheapest anyway :money:

So I fixed again for the next 12 months - apparently in the last year we've spent £1400 ish and we're predicted £1216 next year :money: So we've got 100% green electricity plus gas, £60 a year cheaper for managing everything online (although we can still ring them up eg if the Smart meter is playing up, like we have been!)

AND.... (and this is very exciting) - the website seems to be working for me again! :j So since we're on a flexible direct debit thingy, it's letting me switch how much we pay

Currently pay £99 (down from £150 originally!) and since we're £408 in credit (!) the recommended is £85. Could switch it as low as £63 a month, but since they pay 3% on credit balances anyway I'm going with their recommended £85 - still a saving! :money:

Seems to have gone through ok too :j

Just need to make sure we save that extra £14 a month now :rotfl:

rtandon27

:jYeah - great to hear the website is finally working! & you can save some £££'s as a result!:j

Karmacat

Cheery, thats brilliant news! And frankly, I'd be tempted to leave the amount of the debit where it is - 3% p.a. is one of the best interest rates you could possibly find

Cheery_Daff

Maybe you're right KC... Wonder how they'd feel if I used them as an unofficial savings account and transferred everything out of my ISA to them?! :rotfl: That's certainly a good incentive to get people staying in credit with their bills - wonder why nobody's done it before? (or maybe they have!)

Maybe I should switch it back again... They'll wonder what on earth I'm doing! :rotfl:

Cheery_Daff

Hmm, poor brain whirring with all manner of financial stuff at the minute :money:

I was thinking about savings rates, and remembered I have a credit union account, and that they pay a dividend at the end of the year rather than a specific savings rate.

Just been online and checked - apparently my dividend for last year was.....

..... 29p :rotfl: :rotfl: Don't think I'll be retiring any time soon on that!

(mind you, in fairness, the most it's had in it this year is £151 and that wasn't for very long!)

Thinking of squirrelling my Christmas money in there - not for the savings rate (!) but because it's nice to support the credit union, and Christmas is a cheery thing to save for :j

Also got to thinking about ISAs... I have one now, of course :j But I remembered that a few years ago I used to have one with the Co-op (who I bank with). I didn't really understand about the tax free-ness back then and just treated it as a savings account.

I also didn't realise you got a new allowance each year

I distinctly remember ringing the bank one day, trying to sort out some of my old accounts (I had ended up with quite a lot of current accounts open!) and talking about the ISA. I'd checked the savings rate and it was something daft like 0.2% - I'd only ended up with a few pence of interest anyway.

I said I might as well close it as I was barely getting any interest anyway - the woman agreed and closed it and transferred the dosh to my normal savings account.

Which presumably, looking back, means that I've lost the tax-free-ness of that year's allowance... :mad:

Ah well. I didn't really realise it existed til this year so shouldn't really complain - probably should have read the small print properly!! :rotfl:

Karmacat

Well ... all this financial stuff is hard to understand, especially if its foreign to you. Look at how bad my decision was on the French apartment! But that woman should absolutely have told you to transfer it, not close it, cos then you don't lose the tax-freeness, and you can still move it to a better interest rate.

Interesting on credit unions too! I was pootling around the interweb yesterday looking at finance posts on a variety of blogs, and the topic of credit unions came up, but it was American, so not much use over here. Must find more out about it.

Hope you're having a good Sunday (which might include not being up yet!).

starnac

Glad the website is working for you now. That sounds like a decent interest rate. I wonder why they do it and none of the others do?

Money is a minefield if you don't know what you are doing. You just need to look on these boards to see that

Cheery_Daff

You're both right of course and I shan't be too hard on myself for daft financial things i did in the past! Forwards!

No idea why others don't do the 3% thing - but Ovo are reasonably new and were set up I believe with the express desire to stop doing all the stupid things the big energy companies do, like having a million choices of tarrif that nobody can understand. On the whole I really like them and their approach, and it seems they're pretty high on Martin's list at the minute too. We get £60 a year discount for managing everything online (which suits me) and pay an extra £50 ish a year I think for 100% green electricity, which I also like :j

Nowt much to report the last couple of days. Ticking along, barely spent anything. Loving being back on my foldy bike for work trips now i've got the bag that attaches to the front of it :j Have only done one work day on the bus the year (when it snowed) so on office days I'm cycling 10 miles a day and have eliminated ALL bus spending - saving approx £40 a month :money:

Now waiting impatiently for payday (Friday) so I can do all my budgetry fiddling in YNAB :rotfl: It's really cut a lot of my idle day to day spending - because you allocate everything to categories I can see when I've got to the end of my allocation of 'unnecessary food' spending and have to consciously steal it from a different category - somehow it's MUCH harder to steal from 'holiday fund' or 'house maintenance' for a chocolate bar than it is to just transfer another few quid from a generic savings account :rotfl:

Maybe this'll make me rich eventually! :rotfl:

(in fact, what is more likely to make me rich is being good at my job, and wittering on here past midnight when the alarm is set for 6.15am will NOT help with that!! :eek: :rotfl: )

Karmacat

How true all of it

And if I ever have discretionary spending again (or ever eat chocolate again!) I might well join you on YNAB, it sounds brilliant.

Hope you got up in time for the office