EH - Essex > Hebrides...the next step of the adventure?

EssexHebridean

Sky beaten into submission. If the first person I spoke to honestly thought that I would fall for "I can offer you £10 off your broadband, then once you've accepted that I'll put you through to someone about the TV" then he must have been totally daft, and if the second person I spoke to honesty thought I was going to accept "Oh yes, that £33 a month deal that we've been offering all over the place? Well actually it's really £50 a month..." then she must have been even dafter! Finally got put through to person three, who was in "retentions" and was also a) lovely b ) not as daft as the other two and c) actually seemed to want to help! Ascertained that yes there IS a £33 a month offer and it DOES apply to existing customers as well as new ones, but there was a glitch on the system that wasn't letting her switch me to it - eventually her manager agreed to sort it all out manually.

There is a £10 admin charge to add on to next month's bill, but after that we should go on to the straight £33 a month which is by far the cheapest I've had from Sky in years so I'm pleased with that.

Other financial fun today was finally having to grit our teeth and pay the outstanding balance on the council's major works bill. This was the thing we were disputing for all manner of reasons - and eventually they did give best part of £1000 credit - that was some months ago but it's taken them until now to remember that they need to actually ask us if we wouldn't mind paying it now please. I mean clearly we'd rather not, but we supposed we probably better had! The money has been set aside for it since we were first invoiced back in 2013 so not as painful as it might have been but with that, the electrical works here, and the car, the poor old ISA is looking a bit more scrawny than it has done! Still as MrEH pointed out at least we HAVE now paid out everything that needs paying for!

rtandon27

EssexHebridean wrote: »

Sky beaten into submission...

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:
Love that thought!

beanielou

Well done on Sky!

Seasidegal58

After reading about your Sky win I'm just delurking to say a big thank you for giving me the impetus to finally get on the blower to them myself. Im now paying £38 per month over 18 months for TV, broadband, line rental, free weekend calls, wi-fi, and some other bits as well! The cost per month pre-phone call was £76. I've have dropped the box sets but like you wasn't watching them anyway and i didnt have sport or movies.

And to be honest there wasn't really any haggling involved.

Big thanks again!:T

EssexHebridean

rtandon27 wrote: »

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:
Love that thought!

IN fairness it was pretty much what happened. I actually thought the second girl was going to lose her rag completely when I told her that they simply couldn't advertise a price then when people called up say "Oh no, that's not the real price, it's really £17 more than that!" :rotfl:

Thanks Beanie!

Aww SeasideGal well done! Yes, our pre-haggle call cost was a bit over £72 a month which was just WAAAAAY too much - no way was I letting that continue! I always dread the hassle of calling but that hour on the phone has just saved us.... *runs to grab calculator* Wow - over £700 :eek: Jeez- that's some hourly rate! :rotfl: Anyway well worth an hour of hassle for making that sort of saving!

Lots of odds and ends done here today - car washed this morning - I don't trust the hand car wash places not to scratch them so we always take them to the garage with the jetwash then once every few months they get a thorough going over outside home with a sponge and a bucket. Popped in to ThaT supermarkeT while we were out for bread to go with soup for lunch and MrEH's newspaper, and also grabbed some reduced price cheese which is always a good thing. Called in at the charity shop too - 4 books for me, 6 DVDs and a pair of shorts for himself - £4.50 altogether which I call a bargain. This afternoon has mostly been pottering about plus some gardening - dug out the compost bin and scattered the bottom half of what we dug out over the freshly dug bed so that will be ready to plant once we've decided what to put in it. Oh and I got out for a short run this morning - just a couple of miles to establish whether the dodgy knee was OK, which so far, it seems it is! :T

EssexHebridean

Hey ho - what a long while since I last popped in here, it's been a busy few months!

So since I was last here...

Hebrides holiday done and dusted - glorious 2 weeks in a lovely cottage in the most fantastic location this year - so much so that we'd booked it again for next year before we left this time round! :T Also booking it directly with the lady who owns it meaning we save £100 fees to the agency, and don't have to pay the refundable damage deposit either - and she's leaving it at the same price as 2019 so wins all round there!

Most of May, June & July completely "lost" in a fog of trying to sort out the UK beer order for the Great British Beer Festival - MASSIVE task, more involved even than we dreamed it would be. Many sleepless nights, much panicking, but managed to pull it all together and the order selection was pretty much universally held to be one of the best for years so phew to that. Now we just have the tall order of trying to do even better next year!

Airshow season is pretty much done now and I've done far less this year than in previous seasons - which I knew was going to be the case, partly as the Reds are now in the US/Canada where they have been for a month now and partly as beer festival stuff was always going to restrict what I could do this time round. Found a balance that works for me I think though and already know a few shows I want to book for next year - although the weather didn't play ball a lot of the time this year the shows I have been to I've really enjoyed.

MSE type stuff pretty much slipped off the radar when we were so frantically busy - but thankfully it's all "organised" enough that it does mostly tick along these days. The CC bill money shuffle nearly got missed one month - but I picked up on it in time - and our expenses for the festival got put in later than they should have done meaning I transferred the subsequently late-arriving money to the CC after the DD had already been set for the balance - so I've had to shuffle some funds early this month to stop the joint account being left short. It doesn't matter in the least as I did realise it had happened, but it means I'll need to apply a little m ore brain power when I come to sort this months shuffle out...

MrEH's regular saver account came to an end - we chose to transfer £1k of the resulting £3300 odd paid out to the 0% card as I want to start hammering that down a bit. The balance went to a split between mostly long term savings and the remainder to top up the ISA which we're trying to build back up little by little. Currently there is no account lined up to replace that with so we'll manually transfer the monthly £250 to savings - at the moment the ISA, fro the new year it will revert back to the longer term pot unless a new Reg saver option opens up. Looks like Nationwide are abandoning that route for the time being, though. My Reg Saver runs until December so at least we get a few more months of that interest rate anyway! The Tesco account will also be dropping its interest rate in November when the fixed rate comes to an end - currently we're looking at shifting the contents of that into one of the Marcus Accounts that the MSE site has been singing the praises of for a while now. Best option out there for easy access and at this stage we do need easy access, so...

Surveys are currently abandoned - although I want to pick up on those again so that is something to think about. Currently my big challenges are trying to get back to a routine again after a few months where things have been anything BUT routine...

EssexHebridean

So just looking at a quick review on the 0% card.

Started out at £4500 balance transferred over in March.
Current outstanding is £2850 allowing for regular monthly payment plus the £1000 from the regular saver.

0% is in place until November 2020 - and between now and then there will be 13 monthly payments of £105 = £1365, meaning that I will need to set aside £1485 from the second regular saver which will expire to make sure this is cleared by the date the 0% ends. Not too shabby. I *may* still be tempted to try to get rid a bit sooner mind, not least as my suspicion is that MrEH's car is now not going to hang on until we finish paying that card off - he managed to (accidentally) park it in a hedge a few weeks ago which means that part of the trim at the front is now held in place with Duck Tape...not exactly ideal and might mean that passing the next MoT Test is rather more of a challenge than we might like - need to get our tame mechanic to take a look and establish whether it can be viably glued back together I think.

We HAVE now established what sort of thing we'll be replacing his with though - and the plan of action will be broadly similar to with mine - pay as much of the cost as is viable on the cashback CC, then BT to another 0% card which he will be responsible for applying for, albeit I'll probably do the day to day management of as my phone will take apps etc and his won't. We have to look for something that will be compliant with the Ultra Low Emission Zone in London, going forward - even though it's another 2 years yet before it comes out as far as we regularly drive there is absolutely no point whatsoever in buying something now that won't comply then, on the offchance that the situation may change in the meantime (which chances are, it won't). The good news on that though is that we have established that Citroen engines started complying at some stage in 2015 (Renault were 2016) giving us an extra year or range to look in for him - every little helps! So while currently I'm keeping my eyes open to see what is out there, we're still thinking right now that we'll try to hang on to his car for as long as we can, subject to any repair costs or MoT issues that come up in the meantime. The longer we can delay, the less we'll have to pay for a car of the age we want, realistically, so it pays to stretch things as much as we can.

Elsewhere things are trickling along as they should. We have decided currently as I mentioned before to put the surplus from the joint account plus the £250 that doesn't currently have a regular saver "home" into the ISA to make a start on building that back up again as that took a hit with firstly the electrical works at home, and subsequently the final payment on the disputed major works bill, and the car replacement. All stuff that was planned in, and known about, but it still felt like a hit regardless! In an ideal world I'd like to get it back to the "perfect world" figure we had before but that will take quite a long time - so initially the aim is just to build it back again slowly for now, allowing that we do have other planned spends on the flat coming up. (Which I need to start driving forwards again as left to MrEH it will never happen!)

Looking at a bit of a "use up the freezer" challenge for next week and onwards for as long as it takes, I think. usual situation - seems to be a lot in there but I'm struggling to make meals from any of it! Time to knuckle down and tackle it, though, so nothing further to go in there until it's been taken in hand!

rtandon27

EssexHebridean wrote: »

...Looking at a bit of a "use up the freezer" challenge for next week and onwards for as long as it takes, I think. usual situation - seems to be a lot in there but I'm struggling to make meals from any of it! Time to knuckle down and tackle it, though, so nothing further to go in there until it's been taken in hand!

Gotta love a good freezer challenge EH! Can't wait to hear your creative solutions!

We did our last one during staycation at the end of August - only 'rule' was that each meal had to use up a freezer container! - everything else could be from the store-cupboard, fridge or bi-weekly veggie box! Made a dent but also reminded me just how much we have squirreled away! We'll need to do the challenge at least 2 more times before we are back to just 'normal' contents of frozen fruit, veg & bone broth!

EssexHebridean

I'm not sure they're going to be so much "creative" as just plain "odd" to be honest RT - we'll see! (And I've also realised that considering we're heading to Ludlow this weekend for the food festival the chances of us returning from there with nothing to add to the existing freezer contents is non existent which may not make for the best of starts!)

Did make a start this morning though - I was nearly at the end of my milk so MrEH got a new bottle out for me, and then I remembered to take the tub of chicken left over from last week out ready for tea this evening. :T
Additional thoughts:
- If there is still a chunk of chorizo in there then the frozen seafood mix would make cheaty paella - and if not then it'll make thai-style fish stew instead as I know I also have white-fish fillets.
-There are still burgers from when Aldi were selling a load off at 50% discounted, and there is the rest of a bag of oven chips - that sorts out a Friday night tea at some stage.
-There are several tubs of stewed gooseberries - I need to remember to actually move forwards with remembering to turn these into crumbles on Sundays when we're at home!
- The last of the Hebridean salmon pate & Salar salmon needs to be incorporated into saturday or sunday night teas.
- Stornoway black pudding (plus white pudding/fruit pudding) begs for further Friday night teas being fry-ups. The Ludlow haul should add to this as we usually end up with some nice sausages and some of our favourite bacon from there.

That's a start. Perhaps I need to start doing rough meal plans for more than a single week ahead? For things like Friday nights and weekend meals that could potentially work well. Hmmm. There's a thought!

DebtFreeDuo

Food festival in Ludlow sounds lovely, its not too far away from where I am! I've been trying to use up all of the stuff I have in the freezer this week to stop me spending a fortune in the supermarket while I'm waiting on my first meal box next week. I'm not too far off it being empty now, hoping it will get me through the rest of this week!

Rough meal plans sound like a great idea, I like to write a list on the fridge of what I have in there and what meals they might make and cross them off as I use them up.