Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

No reply at all & as part of the problem is that they have some of my earnings, I'm thinking of escalating to the market research ombudsman (or similar) service. Survey invitations completely stopped, but the bigger problem is that I can't access my account. If I try to log in the old way with my email & password, I get a message saying that signing in is now done with a passcode, which has been sent to my phone. But no passcode ever arrives..It's possible they have an old phone no for me, but I can't edit my details because I can't access my account. My 1st email to them was answered by a bot & the reply did not relate to my question.. I clicked 'No' to the question 'Does this answer your question?' but heard nothing else. 2nd email was very concise & also requested it be dealt with by a human. No response. The problem in a nutshell is that I earned £38 before communications broke down. I can't earn the remaining £12 to make it up to the £50 cash-out because they don't send me any surveys any more & I'm unable to log into my account to try & ascertain the problem. And they ignore emails. So my £38 is just sitting there. It's not a huge sum, but it IS my.money so I am going to escalate it one way or another. I will feed back how it goes. Funny you should ask, @kayannie, as I have been thinking this week that I still need to sort it out.
F x

foxgloves

Oh, actually....amended to say that I DID receive a passcode from them.on one occasion, but it arrived after the time window during which I could actually use it so I had to request another one.......which never came. So the fact that I did get one passcode would seem to imply that they do have my current phone number.
F

foxgloves

Hello m'dears,
Useful day on the whole. No gardening - oh my goodness I felt stiff this morning. No physical activity at all while I was lergyfied so I think I must have seized up. It's improved a bit since I got going though. I did manage to meal plan from now to when we go on holiday (including the meal we will take with us for our first night) & so I was able to write a shopping list over coffee & Mr F signed up with Oc*d* to make use of the £25 off voucher which came through our door for new customers. Minimum spend £80. I thought that was too good a reduction to miss. Stocked up on some store cupboard staples too.
Other stuff: Last few green tomatoes went into a paper bag for ripening. Ripe ones triaged to identify 800g for tomorrow's SC recipe, which I skinned & prepped to get ahead of myself as should have workman tomorrow all being well. Also blanched & froze some sliced carrots before terminal bendyness set in. 
Remembered to feed my sourdough culture for baking tomorrow, tidied pantry & made room for my mincemeat by selecting a few jars of preserves to take down to my sister when we meet up later this month. Also nobbled Mr F to swap a couple of furniture items around - one is the small armchair I like in the conservatory during the warmer months, but always bring into the kitchen during winter. Ash already been checking it out, so I doubt my behind will get much of a look in! Washed a blanket & line-dried, which was a job on my winter plan.
Did a PA survey, Mr F booked our flu jabs, two baths from a single fill of hot water to save energy & worked on the family history project I'm gifting to S-i-L.
Oh & managed to extract a presents wish list from Mr F, who has a winter birthday as well as Christmas. All in all, it has felt like a reasonably productive day. Must just pop out & close the greenhouse. Enjoy your evenings all,
F xx

Sun_Addict

I used to shop with Oc*do regularly at one time and they used to send me money off vouchers on a regular basis despite being a customer. I think they are one of the best delivery services unless they’ve changed recently. 

Blackcats

I use Ocado for my dad's shopping as I can get him M and S ready meals.  My mum always cooked from scratch so he isn't a great fan of ready meals but I think he's ok with most of the m and s ones.  I get the monthly magazine and sporadic gifts - had some macarons a couple of months ago and a clemantine gin liquor last Christmas - in a light up sparkly bottle which appealed to the sparkly plastic cactus gene which still lurks in me 🌵

foxgloves

We thought they seemed to have a decent choice, @Sun_Addict & @Blackcats, but I've read somewhere today (can't recall where) that they are more expensive price-wise than W*itr*se. Delivery due tomorrow morning first thing, so it will be good to see how that goes.
I still lol at the plastic cactus tale. I'm aiming to get over to the large Yellow & Blue Emporium tomorrow & I'm hoping it won't be QUITE so chock full of plastic plants as it was last time I was there. I kept envisaging them sitting on somebody's shelf for a year or two gathering dust, then off to landfill. I wonder what future archaeologists will make of the plastic plant layer they uncover a few hundred years hence.....apart from thinking we were all mad for letting the natural world die while buying pretend crud! (Though I am going to admit that the thought of a sparkly bottle of clementine gin is appealing..........)
F

foxgloves

Hello Friday Frugalistas,
Odd sort of day. Woke up with a bit of a gallstone flare-up, so didn't fancy eating much. Then it calmed down & I suddenly wondered why I felt wobbly......realised I hadn't eaten enough & made some emergency toast. Such a cure-all, toast, isn't it? Did my regular mid-month budget check-in this morning & was not impressed to discover that I am about £55 adrift. I couldn't find any obvious error, so I think it is probably a mistake in the figures, rather than actual money being missing. I'm pretty sure it relates somehow to quite a lot of money we withdrew in 3 batches for various cash payments. I will see if anything comes to light on my next Big Budget Day, as things sometimes do, but if not, I will have to suck it up & not have a 'spare' £50 to do something nice with. Grrrr.
Other stuff......baked a sourdough & also an onion & rosemary-topped focaccia to serve with tonight's meal which is gigantes plakis (currently in slow cooker & chosen to make use of another 800g of our homegrown tomatoes). An order arrived (Christmas gifts) & I was able to chop a big sheet of cardboard out of the back of the box to make into a free moisture mat for the worm composter - I used to buy these, only £5 each, but I find corrugated-type cardboard works just as well & it's free. 
Our tree-work was done today. I felt so sad to see our lovely old apple tree removed. It was a very big, very old one - I've been told very likely as old as the house (mid-1930s) & a prolific fruiter. It had been leaning, but it badly toppled this year & basically, our shed was holding it upright. I couldn't watch the chain-sawing, but afterwards, our tree man came & showed me the wood from the trunk & it was very rotten inside. He said we did the right thing to have it removed as it was definitely going to come down very soon as there wasn't much good wood inside holding it up. He chipped the less huge branches & has raked all the chippings over the area Mr F was planning to bark-chip anyway (until we saw the price of them & worked out how many he'd need). All the fruit at the top of the tree which we couldn't reach is now on the ground, so I will make sure we go out there over the weekend & gather it in. I shall have to take a big bag of apples to my sister when we meet as I've already got two baskets of wrapped stored ones in the pantry & have used some in jam, jelly, chutney, cakes, etc, as well as lots of apples sauce in the freezer & a couple of experimental bottlings. We will definitely plant another tree & will have a little ceremony with a drink of something warming & say thanks to our old tree for its gift of so much lovely rosy apples over the years.
Anything else? Just a couple of surveys - one PA & an i-say (the latter have been stepped up for what I am thinking of as 'turkey tokens'.
Ah well, that's my day. Looking forward to getting the virtual popcorn out for the News tonight. Yes, I am political, yes, I am party political & no, I am NOT a fan (just in case anyone following my diary hadn't worked that out.......)
Off to slice up the focaccia bread so that they are my sized pieces & not Mr F's, lol!)
F xx

foxgloves

Oh, forgot to say.... also received a letter from the Building Society to inform me that the interest rate on my ISA has increased from ridiculously low to slightly less titchy. But it's better than nothing after no rises for so long. I think of that as our 'shortfall money' for if we do manage to move to Suffolk when Mr F retires, we are likely to need to make up the difference between what our house will sell for & what we need to pay for a property there. It still feels like a novelty to both of us to have any savings, as we may be reformed characters now, but we were spenders for much longer than we have been budgeters.
F x

pinkypig

Long time lurker here Foxgloves.  Just popping in to say I love your diary, it always makes me feel cosy and glad to be in my lovely home!  

Your productivity also gives me a kick up the pants - apple processing today!
Enjoy your weekend which I hope doesn’t involve mouse wrangling! X

Jellytotts

Sorry to hear your gallbladder had a wobble, mine grumbled on and off for years (without me knowing what it was) and then I had 3 huge attacks in very quick succession and decided enough was enough.  It came out last year and it's been amazing to be able to eat without fear of a big attack. 

We inherited a lot of mature trees in this garden when we bought the house, one of which is a huge crab apple that seemed dead, it was smothered in ivy and not a leaf in sight.  I've cleared the shrubs around it, cleared the ivy, gave it a really good prune and it sprung back to life, covered in millions of blossoms last spring.  But not a single apple.  DH has hinted at removing it and putting something more productive in its place but I can't bear to chop down a happy tree.  Strange how we can get so attached to something isn't it.