Journey to happy skinflintedness

saraih

The electrician turned up earlyish so I just had time to get a taxi to the cleaning, which normally I wouldn't do but it still ended up with more cash than I would have had.

Turns out we're getting a whole rewire in the new year, which will be a right mess and every room will need redecorating either partially or fully. All the furniture will need shifting and everything boxed up as well. On the other hand there's no limit any more on how many sockets you can have.

Seems we're on another cycle of companies offering credit in some sort of junk mail avalanche. Having a hard time imagining the apocalyptic disaster that would have to happen before I took them up on it

That's it! trying a new slow cooker lentil and beans thing and warming some wraps up so we'll see if anyone eats it.

saraih

A family member wants us to borrow money for him and he'll make the payments. I've just said our credit is terrible and nobody would lend to us. It isn't some sort of horrible emergency, he just thinks he found a deal.

There's always somebody happy to take your last penny, shame when you haven't got one

Son & heir is out with his friends this evening so I feel obliged to have a really meaty dinner while we can. Found the last sausages in the bottom of the freezer and am going to nip out and get some bacon & eggs to go with it. Full English breakfast in the evening, first world anarchy :rotfl:

No money news but that's still a good thing. OH's work haven't sent his security through yet so I just filed the payment details for when they need them.

saraih

Grocery shopping today, wasn't in the mood for it so just got enough to see us through a few days which is nice for the budget but we'll see how long it takes for complaints to roll in about the usuals I didn't get. They're always welcome to go themselves

The weather is a bit rubbish, the grass needs mowing but I'm going to get stuck into some ironing instead. There's a big pile because I've been doing it as needed for a couple of weeks, ironing is one of the chores I can happily ignore until it gets ridiculous.

No money news. Shopping was £30 but only got freezer stuff, will probably end up going again. I was too spoiled with that wheelchair making a big shop easier :rotfl:

I'm keeping an eye on the bank but it seems to be ticking over as it should.

saraih

The grass was just dry enough to mow so I did that before it gets any longer. Now there's bulk soup on, I'll stick it in smallish containers to warm up for lunch seeing as everyone is out during the day this week. Love homemade soup.

Bought the ecig oils for the month from the Sunday market, I'm down to 6mg for the first time! So far it's not bad, the swap to vaping has been well worth it on a lot of levels but not needing anything would be fab. OH has just moved down to 12 from 18.

Also ordered son & heir's books for college, £43 but I'd kept that back. They aren't strictly needed but we did find the extra books useful for GCSE coursework, so fingers crossed these will be of use.

No long walks this weekend so if there's no cleaning tomorrow I'll have to invent a reason. One that doesn't need any money would be nice

saraih

Managed to sneak in a nice long walk but got nothing else done today. Did consider the future strategy a bit, when the money settles down and we start being able to replace things I want to replace it with decent stuff that's on sale rather than tat. So sick of tat

Also thought about swapping bank accounts again for the incentive but the best ones are with banks I'd rather not use and it seems like a headache for a shopping voucher.

I'm going to have to suck it up and put a PPI reclaim in instead even though I really don't want to deal with all that again. Need to do a bit of research. It might take a long time because OH used to throw all the bank stuff out and it'd need a SAR first. I put off the Card Protection refund for ages and it turned out to be really easy so we'll see.

No news though, just idle planning again

saraih

Well I got it together enough to get a SAR letter written, put it on one side for when I get a tenner together for it. Dealing with banks is not my favourite thing.

No other news yet again, the longer without suspicious envelopes the better!

The soup I made for the freezer turned out lovely, shame I can't remember what on earth I put in it

saraih

This morning I dug out the contract for tv/phone/broadband to see when we can reasonably get rid of the tv and landline and it's quite close, January.

Costs:
Prime 79 a year
Phone upgrade 120 a year

Savings:
TV licence 145.5 a year
TV & landline - unknown

If getting rid of them and paying for Prime and to upgrade one of the phones to an unlimited package saves more than £200 a year it would be worth it. We only use the landline for 0844 numbers and since we got a free year on Prime we've found that none of us use the tv enough to be worth it any more.

That is if we can keep the broadband only at a maximum of £35-40 a month. If we can't keep the broadband as it is nobody will agree to losing the telly. They won't agree to change providers either.

This could all be rubbish though as there's a possibility that the current high speed is attached to a package

No other news. One of my bank accounts suddenly went dormant but that's my fault for not keeping it minimally active. I'll have to pop down to the bank with some ID and a bill, it's a really good free account from when I was 16 and had my first job. Never had any trouble with it.

saraih

Apparently my passport has run out! This could cause problems with all sorts of things so will have to get that sorted soon. It's the sort of thing you never need but when you do, you do. Might as well take the opportunity to sort out son & heir at the same time.

Speaking of, his English Lit grade was changed to a C after all. It was one point and they just managed to find it. He couldn't care less but I'm sure it matters to the school and it means he has 11 A-C grades and no Ds which looks a little bit better on a CV.

No work at all this week, fingers crossed for tomorrow.

saraih

Well there was two hours cleaning this morning, not much but every little helps at the minute as future things that need sorting are piling up like mad.

Need a photo for the passport but as I'm not planning a trip into town it will have to wait.

There was some good news too, a DCA for two statute barred debts just randomly sent a letter to say they've written them off and won't pursue them. Presumably they can get sold in the future and I can deal with them then but it's one more that I don't have to ignore for now. They were about £1500 together.

A pain to deal with has been L!nk, for a 24 year old uni debt of OH's. They employ only people with terminal snideness who can't use a calculator.

Them: we're calling to set up a payment plan
Me: Oh, do you have a balance for him now?
Them: yes, it's xxx
Me: no it isn't, you said there was a ccj issued in 2002, therefore you have been charging illegal interest since 2002, when you have a balance of what is legally owed I will deal with it then
Them: we need to set up a payment plan in the meantime
Me: you want to set up a payment plan when you have no idea of the amount owed?
Them: yes
Me: and when would this payment plan end, if you will have no idea how much is left on the balance?
Them: we need to set up a payment plan or we'll go back to the court to get an attachment of earnings
Me: good luck with that, you have no idea how much he owes and can't seem to find out, plus you've had 12 years to enforce a ccj that you haven't even been able to prove exists yet
Them: so how much can he afford to pay each month?
Me: ...

This is for an original loan of around £600, L!nk must have paid all of £60 for it. All they have to do is knock off the illegal interest since 2002, there's a calculator right there in the start menu.

I'd pay it just to put it in the 'finished' pile, but they can't threaten an AoE when he hasn't even changed address in the last 14 years. They can't do much of anything really but the snideness is quite irritating.

I'm putting chocolate on this Asda order and damn the penny pinching :rotfl:

Beany mexican wraps tonight with lots of olives. Yum.

saraih

Did an Asda order today instead of the market as we mostly needed stuff that's a pain to carry. £59 but it's bulk toilet roll and stuff so not too bad.

Been trying to shift some money round to renew my passport but it won't happen this week. It's bothering me more than it should, ID was always a struggle till my life got sorted out at a later age than most people. With no real job, no ID and a dormant bank account it feels like I'm disappearing

This is why I put so much focus on setting up son & heir though. Some of his friends are already struggling at 16/18, it's no way to start out and it can take years to get sorted when you begin like that.

Anyway I got some flour in so muffins are in the stars today. Big fat ones with blueberries :cool: