Finally Debt Free After 34 Years, But Still Need to Live Frugally

[Deleted User]

daisy_1571 wrote: »

Tie-dye: firmly in favour. I'm an old hippie too and also added tshirts etc to a bucket of dye, bizarrely tied up clothes making pretty patterns. I have just 2 weeks ago dyed two white cotton tops as they were thin cotton and I dont like the pink tinge of skin showing through then showing the bit where my trousers start showing through. I dyed them lilac and nowadays it comes in a tub with salt already added. Just for fun I chucked in some white socks that had seen better days and wrapped some string round 1 pair to make tie dye !!! Haven't done that for years and years and here we are talking about it. The tops turned out fab. On 1 the embroidery was cotton so its lilac too, the other embroidery is poly thread so it has stayed white. Both look amazing. So pleased.

I love it that you and I are hippie twins, Daisy:j. Your recent tie-dying experience has made me want to have a go again, especially as the new dyes are simpler to use. The last garment I dyed, not tie-dying exactly but just regular dying to revitalise a favourite but much-worn white top that I couldn't get white any more, was an unexpected success. Like yours, the embroidery on it was white-on-white but polyester rather than cotton. The final effect was gorgeous, far better than I'd expected as I'd imagined the whole garment would come out all the same shade. Plenty more life left in that top now:j

[Deleted User]

elizabethhull wrote: »

When I went off to uni I discovered jumble sales - wonderful. I bought a long black velvet dress that I think was more of a collection of bits of fabric sewn together randomly, but the sheen on the velvet disguised the many seams ! I also bought a fur coat from another student for £3, kept it and loved it for 2 years, then sold it for £3 to another student !! My father swore we got turned away from a restaurant because of that coat.

I never had a fur coat but I too discovered jumble sales at Uni:j. My Mum probably had nightmares at the thought of my buying and wearing second hand clothes. She wouldn't even set foot in a charity shop although she was happy to donate clothes to them so long as I took them there for her:rotfl:. I don't think she ever had anything second hand in her whole life, not just clothes but anything at all:eek:. I've always found used things to be more interesting and they suit my eclectic tastes:rotfl:. I used to buy them from choice even when I had money and didn't actually 'need' to.


I've always been a massive Carpenters fan, Karen Carpenter's amazing voice was magical. I still have all their albums on vinyl and then re-bought when reissued on cassette and later CD. I must seem really sad:o. They've been showing quite a lot of Carpenters documentaries and so on recently on TV and, of course, I've watched every one. The other night I saw that she was wearing a catsuit like one I had. I was really into my catsuits:rotfl:. Not the skin tight ones that came into fashion later, more the ones with lots of fabric and wider 'trousers'. A couple of mine looked like floor-length dresses but were really more like long culottes:eek:. The first one I ever had I made myself as a result of seeing one at a jumble sale in the early 1970s. It was in a hideous colour and being some shiny nylon fabric wouldn't have dyed but I bought it for pennies to use as a template. I carefully unpicked all the seams and used it as a 'pattern' to make some of my own. What did I look like??????:rotfl:

HairyHandofDartmoor

@Carboot I'd love to have seen you in one of your cat suits :rotfl:.

HairyHandofDartmoor

Yesterday we worked on my business and I fitted in cleaning the wash basin and one lot of laundry.

Today is all about PPI :j. I want to ring the tax credits first and give them our updated income figure for last year. Then I'm going to read Martin's PPI guide carefully and put in some claims.

I'm still not convinced we'll get anything back but I'll feel bad if we don't even try and actually I'm looking forward to doing it just so that I can say I gave it a go. Who Dares Wins as someone said .

It's cold here and I'm wearing my fingerless gloves indoors. We needed a fleece blanket and a wool blanket on top of our duvet last night :eek:.

I hope everyone has a good Monday .

[Deleted User]

HairyHandofDartmoor wrote: »

@Carboot I'd love to have seen you in one of your cat suits :rotfl:.

I don't think I ever achieved the 'look' I wanted as I'm short in height:eek:. That sort of thing looked far better on tall women with long legs. At least I was slim and not 'dumpy' and my legs always seemed quite long for my height. They were still shorter than I'd have liked though:(


By the way, I only wore this sort of garb in my free time. At work I was the model of soberly-dressed propriety;) although I was a colourful student back in the day.


Good luck with the tax credits and the PPI:beer:

HairyHandofDartmoor

Thanks Carboot . We'll try and submit as many claims as we can today and then finish off tomorrow if we run out of time.

doingitanyway

Sending positive vibes for the PPIs. I have a good feeling about this

HairyHandofDartmoor

Thanks DIA . I don't feel that confident myself but I wouldn't forgive myself if we didn't at least try.

HairyHandofDartmoor

Well so far so good. I've renewed our tax credits claim :T.

DH has also claimed PPI back on five credits cards using the Revolver website :T :T :T. We know for definite that he had PPI on one of them as we have statements proving it. I think it's likely that he had it on his Barcl@ycard but we don't have statements going back far enough to prove it. The other three seem less likely but DH can't be sure that he didn't have it so it seemed worth a go.

DH wanted to stop and work after that so we'll carry on tomorrow. We still have my two credit cards, two packaged bank accounts, a couple of store cards and two mortgages to claim on.

It's quite likely that I may have had PPI on my Barcl@ycard at some point, but I'm less sure about the M$S card. With regard to the store cards we may have had PPI but have no paperwork and it's more than six years ago so they probably won't have any paperwork either . But it's worth a try. I don't know if we had PPI on the mortgages but again it's worth a try. Our grounds for claiming are that we've been self employed for over twenty years.

The packaged bank accounts are worth a go because we never used any of the benefits and we thought that was the only way we could get an overdraft facility.

So DH's five credit cards are claimed for, and we have a lot more claims to put in tomorrow :T. But I can't say that I feel hopeful about any of them .

HairyHandofDartmoor

This afternoon I need to nip to the shop and buy toilet roll which we're practically out of :eek:. I want to wash some laundry and then I've got Pilates later on.

Tomorrow we'll do the rest of the PPI claims and then I need to do the VAT return which is my most hated job apart from the annual accounts .

It's lovely and sunny but still very cold.

I can't wait for the tax refund to arrive but realistically it won't come before Friday. That won't stop us checking every day though :rotfl:.