Chica's gonna get a house! (hopefully)...

ChicaBonita

Well I am back on English soil - landed last night at 1:50am *yawn*! Plane was delayed due to French air traffic control (merci boucoup....) and didn't get into bed until 4am. Got up at 10am today so I didn't lose too much of the day but feeling it now. Have been using today to unpack etc as I am back into work tomorrow.
Got a bit upset when our bags turned up - even though I'd put a lock on my case, the lock was nowhere to be seen when the bag came round on the carousel, and when I opened up the bag to check it was mine, the inner zip had been undone.....luckily anything of notable value I keep in my hand luggage, but I did have some fake purses and scarves (shhhh) and some pricey makeup in my bag that I then worried had been taken. Of course in the airport you can't really check if it's all there. Anyway, long story short, everything seems to be in order but I am not happy about it. Perhaps the lock didn't catch properly and came off, but I will be getting a sturdier one in future. I think the inside zip thing bugged me as well....

I don't really sleep while travelling, so on the way home in the taxi I put live all the eb@y listings that I'd had to take down while I was away. Determined to get back on the wagon and sell, do my surveys etc. I did do some on PA while I was away as well.

We spent fairly well, did a couple of day trips and had some meals out of the hotel, the bf had to withdraw 50 euros to top us up right at the end - exchange rate was awful charging us £46 for 50 euros!! :eek: I transferred him £23 for my share. We went up El Teide which is the volcano in the centre of the island - went up a cable car and tried to go as high up as we could, but even though the sun was bright there was a lot of wind up there, the path was SO rocky and unstable and we only had a limited amount of time that we could stay up there. Got some amazing pictures though and I would definitely recommend it if anyone does go to Tenerife.

I got paid last Thursday, only £20 short due to sickness which is lovely. Moved all my money around while I was out there, even after going into my overdraft £260 last month I have £366 to play with the rest of this month. I am on a strict no buy, however, so only super essential things are allowed this month. Let's see how I stick to it!

As you can see in my sig, I am now 48% of my target - my target for 50% by the end of July is completely doable, and I want to see how much more I can get. I added £45.30 from paypal into it as well (money from PA and eb@y) so that was a nice boost.

As mentioned my car had its MOT while I was away - my stepdad paid for that as an early bday present, so that's all done.

Tenerife was really really lovely - cloudy a couple of days but most of the time was nice sunshine, hotel was lovely and close enough to the beach and bars/restaurants so we never felt like we went far. As mentioned above, we went to markets which I thought would be handmade bits and pieces - turned out it was full of replica items lol. This may be controversial, but I'm not in the stage of life where I can shell out hundreds of pounds for a scarf, purse or handbag, so when I see things that are good quality and a style that is well known I jump at it. Got some lovely silk scarves for my mum and me that that I'm really pleased with.
I read lots, ate lots and drank lots - we tried to exercise but the gym in the hotel had NO air conditioning, so we almost fainted when we did a work out. And that's not even an exaggeration, I have only fainted once (after a too hot bath!) and I was so close to doing it again I had to lie down in the room with my feet up the wall for 20 minutes!!

Although we had a lovely time, we both got antsy after 7/8 days - we both like our routine, and I felt like I wanted to get back into *real life*. We've discussed that maybe next year we do a shorter 7 day holiday instead of 11, which would be cheaper and also open up an opportunity to do another weekend somewhere should we want to. Oh first world problems!

Anyway I think I have rambled far too much - I've thought about my diary a lot while I've been gone, and I've lurked on the forum, but it is so difficult to type on my phone on here that I thought it best to leave it to one big catch up post. I will hopefully get back to updating daily from now on. Hoping also to have plenty of NSD for the rest of this month :money:

I hope you've all been well!!

ChicaBonita

Well diary, back to work today! Was fairly quiet actually, so a nice transition back to reality. Although my phone alarm didn't go off when it was supposed to so was almost late :eek:

Yesterday my mum got me some stuff in her grocery shop, so I can't count that as a NSD. Today, however, was NSD 1 of July. Already been tempted by things online but managed to stop myself!

Did my first run since 20th June - an easy 3 miles. Although it wasn't that easy in the heat this afternoon, was sweating like a pig. Feel so much better for having done it though.

ChicaBonita

ugh what a night! Between a mosquito in my room and my stomach, I got barely no sleep. Gave up at 5 and just got up (this from the girl that never gets up before 7!). Anyway, did an amazon order, £49.95 for some coconut oil, herbal sleeping tablets, protein shakes, and some colouring pens, among other things. The pens are an essential as I have a colour by numbers adult colouring book, and I can't do most of them as the pens I have at the moment don't have much variety (some of the images in the book have 15+ colours, all different shades of the same colour, and I only have 20 pens at the moment!). Anyway, today will not be a NSD.

Did some yoga, catching up with Love Island (guilty pleasure!) and will get ready for work soon. My cat's been really moody with me since I got back, and he hasn't snuggled with me since I returned from holiday. He sits near enough that he can watch me, but doesn't actually want to show me any affection yet feeling rejected haha.

ChicaBonita

I just need today to end - on top of hardly any sleep, come into work and my colleague is off on holiday so I'm not only covering her, but dealing with complaints and angry customers.....just need to go to bed

ChicaBonita

Today's lesson is to always check paper bank statements.....

My everyday banking is now with Natwest, but I opened an account with Abbey (now Santander) when I was at college. I only used that card to buy things in Primark and eb@y. Whenever I use paypal now, I use my natwest cards to pay.

Anyway, I still get paper statements with S-Bank, but I never open them, because hey, I don't ever use that account so why bother!?

I open an official looking letter this morning to say I've got an unauthorised overdraft of £136.85 with Santander :eek: open up the latest statement I received and they charge me £95 a month for that privilege!!!!! I look back, turns out a £10 payment to paypal (which I can't workout how that has happened) has caused this mess.
Anyway I phone up S-Bank to clear it and close my account - guy helpfully tells me he's clearing the other two £95 charges they were about to add on there!!!!! Paid it over the phone and will be closing my account on Monday.

I will have to look into which f***ing paypal transaction caused this, and be more vigilant in future. The annoying thing is, my natwest accounts I check daily as I have online and mobile banking. Ofc with s-bank I never bothered as I never use it!!!!!!

The guy kept going on are you sure you can afford it, do you want to split it? I was like noooooo just clear it now in one chunk I wanna be rid!

Means I am going to have to do some shuffling around this month as I was not expecting this at all. Added to the sh*t show that yesterday was, I just wanna cry

Happy Saturday

ChicaBonita

Immediately went onto paypal and removed the santander account as a payment method. Bit redundant now especially as I will be closing the account on Monday once the funds have cleared, but made me feel a tiny bit better.

I did put £200 in my holiday fund this month to save for our next break away, but I may just move back some of it to cover for the outlay today. Would probably be the best option.

ChicaBonita

Spends issue - £10 to my bf as my half of the pizza last night ; £17.29 in Tesco on work food and some shampoo (among other things) ; £10 to my mum for things she bought the other day.

Did a 4 mile run which was hard in this heat. Just glad I managed it, might have some sangria tonight the counteract it though

Turns out the money that had come from my account in error was from PayPal, and for some reason my PayPal was defaulting to this account that I never used, so certain purchases that I thought I was paying for from my card were instead being paid for by the old account. So that's where the od came from. I did call PayPal to discuss this, and all but one transactions was me - they are going to investigate a £10 transaction that was labelled as a "fee" to PayPal on my bank Statement, but the girl onthe phone couldn't see it on my account at all. I've had to upload a copy of my statement so she can look into it. Maybe after all this I can claw back £10?! Not sure how long I need to give them to look at it, maybe I'll chase later next week.

ChicaBonita

Oh I also made a small eBay sale today so once that's been posted and I've given it a couple of days to be received I can move the money over into my fund

ChicaBonita

need to report some spends -
£1.27 for eb@y postage but I will take that back from my paypal account
£25 on eyebrows - sorely needed, the sun had bleached them to nothing!
£5.50 on red wine- also sorely needed, really fancied it and work today has been hardddddd

ChicaBonita

NSD 2.

Called to close my santander account - she said there was a DD for paypal on there. hmm. Anyway the account is closed and DD cancelled so I'm sure I'll find out if there is a problem with that. No idea what that DD is for, and that's obviously what the fee was on my bank statement. Not sure how a DD can be set up without my knowledge? Need to chase up paypal as they haven't come back to me with their investigation on that yet.

Colleague not in today due to sickness and looks like they will be tomorrow as well. Sigh.

I've done my exercise for tonight, so now I will eat, have some red wine, and colour the night away. Supposed to be going to the cinema tomorrow which we haven't done in ages, will be a nice treat