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

EssexHebridean

OK - so spendiness update report time then.

Food shopping last week was £16 in Al's (exactly £16 at that - bet I can't do that again!) and then £23odd in Sainsbugs - but that also netted me a 6p off a litre of fuel voucher which I used filling my car up on Saturday. Quite a big week spend-wise for us but included £10 on dishwasher tablets in Sainsbugs - the dishwasher is throwing a slight hissy fit currently and we suspect that might be related to the Al's cheapie tablets so we've bought it posh ones as an early christmas present! :rotfl:

I did my planned trundle around to look at options for down filled jackets - nothing in Go Outdoors that suited, so returned to Mountain Warehouse to try on the one that was out of stock last time I was in there and bingo, they had it in the navy in the right size and it fitted and looked nice on - BUT of course that would be too easy wouldn't it - checked the online stocks while I was standing in the store - all good. Tried ordering when I got home and wouldn't you know it, the navy had gone out of stock again. Grrr! Ordered in the black instead thinking I'd likely be able to exchange it for the blue in store but now the black one has arrived (Today - awesome service!) I'm starting to think that I'll likely just keep that one. Anyway, ordering online using a code meant it cost me £63-odd rather than £79.99 in store so I'm content with that saving.

Booked some accommodation for an airshow weekend for next summer yesterday - a friend and I had been looking at sharing an Airbnb type place - found somewhere that looks absolutely spot on on one of the booking sites in the end so cashback earned (which if it tracks & pays out will pay for a tea & cake outing for the pair of us at some stage) and we have a gorgeous little cottage right on the seafront for 3 nights next August at less than a hotel room each would have cost us. :T

Gym pass renewed today using a 50% discount code so that was £16.54 - absolutely bargain as if I went back to PAYG it would be £7 a visit. It'll increase again next time but I still get 10% loyalty bonus I think.

Finally for the spendy tally for now - train tickets home from our planned weekend in Manchester in January bought today £38.80 plus a little bit of cashback earned. The hotel for that is already booked as are the trains up as I said previously, so just spending money to budget for. Hurrah!

My £50 cheque from Populus arrived and has been paid in so this now means I have hit and passed my target to cancel out the money spent on the camera service - I'm now on £120 earned from Surveys and cashback since I started that challenge, so this means I'm already £20 towards covering the money that Flickr are going to take soon for my photo hosting too - as soon as they take the fee for that I'll know how much it works out to so i can see how much more I need to earn to offset it. (Having said that I've had Prolific open ALL day today and got absolutely zilch so...!)

HairyHandofDartmoor

I spent exactly £100 in Mr T once, it's not often that happens . I usually use cheap dishwasher tablets in my machine and it doesn't seem to impact upon performance.

Glad you've got your warm jacket sorted.

EssexHebridean

Well HH we've confirmed that the issue with our dishwasher was tablet-related as the wash it did on Monday night with the shiny posh *(expensive!) tablet came out sparkling clean. We've agreed we'll do the next few washes using those, then start alternating between posh & "down to earth" versions for a while and see how that goes. In fairness we've used the cheapy ones for 2 years before it started causing any kind of issue - we probably should have used the occasional pack of posh ones from the start really.

I've decided to definitely just keep the black jacket now I think - there's not enough strong reasons for wanting the navy one to justify both the diesel cost and the time for going there and back again.

CC money shuffle was finished yesterday and all looks OK now. This month is already looking a bit scary but it's got a few bigger items on it that are all accounted for so all good.

Our annual VSP challenge finishes on 30th November and the tally is currently at £316 which is decent enough. We just need to decide what we're going to use it for now as it's always something "treaty" that we couldn't have justified otherwise.

Balance for our accommodation for Christmas just paid. Still need to sort out the car hire - there's a form that needs completing and sending back to them. Other than that everything else is paid/booked already so just food & drink money to cover. (Spending money is basically limited to food & drink as nothing much else is open up there in the winter to spend on!) We'll mostly eat out at lunchtimes and cook for ourselves in the evenings, and our christmas dinner will feature two enormous rump steaks from the wonderful butchers! (Last time we did this my steak was big enough that there were leftovers for a stir fry for both of us later in the time we were there!). :rotfl:

Started to think it might be time to haggle on my mobile deal with EE - I have the Plusnet "8gb data for £10" deal to use as a benchmark so might call up and see what I can negotiate. To be honest I'd be happy with them leaving me at the current price - a little over £13 a month - but matching that level of data.

EssexHebridean

Hurrah for me - I remembered that our Tesco internet saver (as previously recommended by :money: ) had reached the end of its bonus interest period. Have opened the Coventry account (also as recommended by :money: - can anyone spot the theme here?!) and started transferring the money across. I timed it bang on right as well as that one has now closed for new customers - in fact we had to hurry up a bit getting the paperwork back to them to be sure of not missing out. :T

Once the Tesco account is emptied I'll need to investigate what I have to do to close that and its predecessor - although both are purely savings accounts so probably have no impact on credit file I'd sooner not have them kicking about.

Other stuff.
- Christmas Hebrides car hire is sorted all apart from the final phone call a couple of days beforehand to confirm where they are a) leaving the car parked (although we already know this) and b) leaving the key (pretty certain we already know this bit, as well!) oh and c) telling us what the car looks like and its registration (otherwise there is a significant risk that we drive off in the wrong one which would be d) embarrassing and e) possibly a tad illegal.) :rotfl:
- We had a wee discussion about VSP and are currently leaning towards leaving it where it is and using it to fund a longer trip to the Hebrides next winter. We were meant to be heading back to Lundy for Christmas next year but the days don't work out for us - if we can do random days though we *could* still do the Hebrides...
- Shopping for this week was £11.xx in Al's and £16.xx in sainsbugs thanks to another of their useful vouchers. Not sure we'll be able to use next weeks, and we may as a result elect to shop in Morrisons as there is one near where we will be at the weekend.

This weekend will be busy and spendy but all planned-for spendy. Two meetings on Saturday, and the annual trip to the Good Food Show on Sunday. we have hotel accommodation but that's paid for already, and the money for the things we'll buy at the show is set aside between a monthly amount that we both contribute through the year and our Christmas present savings. The food show tickets are paid for via Clubcard vouchers as always. (And that reminds me I still need to print them.)

Trying to think of anything else of note - I still want to buy myself a pair of decent quality Christmas or preferably winter-themed running leggings but I'm struggling to find any at a price I'm happy to pay. Going to see if either LucyLocketLoves or Tikiboo do a decent discount for Black Friday and then re-evaluate.

Cheery_Daff

Lots of good stuff there! :j And you've reminded me I need to check our regular savers again - practically emptied them to pay the builder but not have enough cash to put back in... except of course I can't replace what I took out :rotfl: But I can up the monthly contributions again so I should at least do that!

Good luck with the leggings search :j I have no advice - I have literally one long pair that I bought when I first started running in about 2003 :rotfl: :rotfl:

EssexHebridean

Ooh yes - definitely get the contributions back again now that you can Cheery - good plan! :T That's something else I need to put on my list for just after Christmas - changing the payment from my regular saver (which will finish in January) to work out where that money is then going. I might suggest to MrEH that we sit down at some stage over Christmas/New Year and do our financial plan for the following few months though. I usually just do it myself but it wouldn't be a bad idea for him to be in on the planning side as well.

EssexHebridean

Morning all - happy Friday! An odd one for me as I'm working today but that trades off against a VERY short week next week so all good there. Also it's PAYDAY so hurrah for that! MrEH's money has already landed, and the surplus from this month has been transferred to the ISA which is s-l-o-w-l-y building back up again. Hopefully my money will land a bit later and I can do the money shuffle.

I need to remember to transfer over the spending money that we've saved for the Food Show later on so I can take that out in cash. Also to take out my own spends for the weekend. Aiming again to put as little as possible on the card over the weekend - there *might* be a meal at some stage which goes on it, but other than that I'm keen to push up back towards accounting for a lot more stuff like that from our own spending budgets.

I've made a start on transferring the money across from our long term savings account that has had the interest rate drop to the new Coventry account via our joint account - currently feeling slightly twitchy as the last transfer has left one place and not yet reached the next - and it is *usually* pretty much instant... eek! Very nervewracking, although I'm sure it will all be fine and it's just that the system is a bit laggy!

Need a meal plan for next week at some stage although we won't be shopping until Monday - and I need to account for a funny sort of week as I need something for Tuesday night that can be cooked separately for both of us, and then I'm out for dinner on Thursday night.

My only "possible spending" plan for Black Friday is if I can catch the hour that Tikiboo do their special reduction on leggings I *might* grab a pair of those - having said that the Christmas ones I really wanted have sold out. There's a couple of other designs that I like though so will see where that ends up.

Today will be a spend-day as I need to buy lunch. we both take packed lunches every other day but because it's normally just MrEH in on a Friday he doesn't bother. It got to about 10.30 last night and he suddenly said "What are you going to do for lunch tomorrow - there's no bread!" thereby answering the first question with the second part of the statement. :rotfl: I'll probably nip over to Tesco and get a salad. Also planning a takeaway this evening for quickness as we have to be away from home mid evening to drive to Birmingham.

Ooh I have JUST had the notification of the renewal for my Flickr account too - £40.27 for the year once the conversion from Dollars is done. The money is stashed in my camera savings account so can be paid straight off the card, and I'll carry on with the survey stuff to offset. It's not cheap, but it IS worth it, for me, I think, as it allows me to access my processed pictures from wherever I am, and I can store an unlimited amount on there too.

Lemon_Tree

Happy payday

beanielou

Happy payday indeed

EssexHebridean

Thanks ladies!

OK - busy week! made the phone call to EE on Friday evening though to tell them they weren't giving me enough value for my £'s currently - did a nice comparison along the usual "look what PlusNet can offer me" and promptly got better than just a match - I now have 10gb data plus the same unlimited calls & texts as before, for the princely sum of £8 a month - and as I pay in advance I even got back a few days credit against the last bill so the next DD will be £7.14 - bargain! Didn't even take any effort once I was actually through - literally told the chap that I thought I could do better, quoted the PlusNet deal and he immediately came back with the deal I am now on.

Spent the weekend in Birmingham - meetings about the beer festival on Saturday, and the Good Food Show on Sunday - and then spent a chunk of Monday getting quite a lot of christmas shopping done, so feeling like progress made there. Back at work on Tuesday, then I was off again yesterday to drive up to Scampton for the day. A bit of photographing of whizzy Little Red jets through the day, then dinner in the pub with a couple of chums last night - awesome. Now back in work for another day today then my usual day off tomorrow - and we have beer festival shaped plans for that too which will be fun and will hopefully involve catching up with yet MORE pals! A lovely sociable week, all told.

Had to re-jig the meal plan around this week as my day for Scampton changed - was originally going to be today, with lunch in the pub so back home for dinner, then the weather looked FAR better yesterday, plus our other pal was available for the evening AND things at the office changed meaning it was better for me to be here today and that gave me all the excuse I needed to change it around. That means that MrEH had the omelette he was originally going to have on Tuesday night, last night. We both ate couscous salad on Tuesday evening, and the pork stir fry that was planned for last night will now be tonight instead - yum! I do need to sort out next week's meal plan now - there is still stuff to be used in the freezer so I think I'm going to take advantage of trying to use as much of that as possible to keep food spends down. The shopping needs ideally to be at Sainsbugs again though - the Nectar offers this week are good, I have a £3 off £20 spend voucher AND having shopped at ThaT supermarkeT this week for convenience, I want to keep therm on their toes by missing another week there now. It all helps to encourage the decent vouchers! Also need to get the car to the jetwash at some stage as it's crusted with road-salt from the journey yesterday. It's more white than red currently!