Put away your purse & become debt-averse

marionmgcars

Shock and horror to see someone had paid for 3 transactions to same place on my credit card - goodness knows how it was hacked.  Contacted cc fraud dept,  and they had to cancel my card & post another new one out .  Just as well I’m not relying on credit, with all the postal strikes.  Watching my bank accounts carefully now to make sure it does not affect them too.  

Onebrokelady

Mines been off for most of the day because I was out and it will be off all day tomorrow because we are both at work so that will help me 😊

QueenJess

Cheery_Daff said:

Well we have had our thermostat choices temporarily removed - the boiler's got a fault 🙄 Plumber came out tonight to check, as we'd managed to reset it and it was working this morning, but after a service the damn thing wouldn't turn back on. Thermostat currently at 8.5 degrees and dropping. 🥶🥶

Oh no… Is it Fixed yet? I am also without heating since Friday. We are heating a single room in the day using a plug in electric heater, my daughter’s room all night with a borrowed oil radiator (she’s only 1 and feels the cold, so we have to have a minimum temp in there) and then our bedroom and DS’s get a fan heater before bed to warm it up. It’s very irritating… hoping the spare part we need arrives today.

Interestingly our hall temperature hasn’t dropped below 14.5 that I’ve seen and seems to have bottomed out there. One advantage of a super insulated, air tight house I guess? Still surprising though as it is absolutely freezing outside. My bedroom is colder than the hall though.. it has 3 external walls and is above the garage 🥶

EssexHebridean

Well done for tracking down the financial discrepancy Foxgloves - annoying when you "lose" something like that, isn't it! I have two ways of making payments to my CC - effectively via a bank transfer straight from the joint account, or by transferring the money to my own "budget" account and then transferring it again internally to the card account - even though it's an extra step of faffiness I always prefer to do the two step process as it arrives so much quicker! 

Interesting conversation about energy use/costs too. Our electricity popped its head slightly over the £5 a day level yesterday - our DD amount covers pretty much £3 a day anyway - but then of course there is the additional £76 so that actually means the difference between the monthly DD and the actual cost is being covered at the moment - hopefully that will continue for the coldest months. It's a bonus as I was fully assuming that we would dip into our credit this month. The ideal would be if the credit could remain untouched through until spring,  then continue to build even a little through next summer into autumn - as that would then be a real help going forwards. Whether it's achievable though I have no idea at the moment! 

foxgloves

Hello Campers, 
Oh my days, it's cold outside! Didn't get around to posting yesterday as we had a night out in the city centre - a concert. V festive. I was mesmerised by a Christmas jumper worn by the chap sitting in front of me. Now I know a lot of these things are regarded as pretty much 'throw-away fashion' (aaaaggghhhh!) & are probably made in far-away places in something approaching sweat shops, if not actually the real thing, but I think the factory worker setting up the digital punchcard on this particular design may not have been overly familiar with the traditional Western carrot-nosed snowman. Each of the machine-knitted snowmen were sporting an orange rectangle plastered over one eye, which looked exactly like a fishfinger. It's funny what catches one's eye, isn't it? Another funny little thing was that I wanted a banana with me as had forgotten to pack a snack, so when we popped into a nearby little supermarket on our way to the concert hall to pick up a couple of packs of sandwiches, I included a banana in our basket. I think there's a lot of shoplifting there & all the self-service tills have individual CCTV screens, so when we started having trouble with my banana, it was soon picked up because I think it probably looked as though we were robbing it. The problem was, we scanned our sandwiches, then the banana, which of course as fruit is priced by weight, we had to weigh. So we did that & it went through as £00-00. Well, if it was 5 grapes, I'd maybe have expected the scales not to have registered it, but this was a proper hefty banana! We tried it again, then again, then when an assistant appeared, I explained that their till was refusing to let us pay & was insisting we had a free banana. He looked at the screen & said that if the system had come up with that as the price, the indeed the banana was free! How odd - I bet it never happens with a side of salmon or bottle of gin! It was a very nice banana too.
Thanks for all your comments, which as always, I enjoyed reading.

@Paspatur - Our thermostat (also now set at 10 deg overnight) was reading at 11.5 first thing this morning, but it didn't take as long as that to reach 18. Our house is draughty in ways it is difficult to explain because it stems from structural alterations done by 1980s or early 1990s occupants which weren't properly thought through. It's a shame your house gets no sunshine. I do think that makes a difference. If there is strong winter sun on our front windows, we have noticed that this does help keep the temperature at 18, so triggers the boiler less. We too no longer have any debt or mortgage. This is going to be way more awful for those who do. Very difficult times for so many people.

@Makingabobor2 - I don't know about keeping heating on low all the time. We used to hear that was the cheapest thing to do, but I keep reading now that this is a myth & it's better just to target it when needed. I think we are all experimenting atm, aren't we? When next year's price rises are also factored in, it is one big massive mess in terms of household budgets.

@marionmgcars - Oh it's so infuriating when that happens. The same thing happened to me earlier this year. Thankfully I spotted the 2 dodgy transactions when they were at the 'pending' stage, but of course like you, I had to wait for a new card, etc. Hope the postal strike doesn't hold this up for you too much. They are not striking here tomorrow but I think there are 2 or 3 more days of strike action next week. I would have liked to know how somebody managed to hack my credit card account, but we never find that out, do we - I have changed all my password/sign-in details, but it would be interesting to know how these crims manage to do it, wouldn't it?

@Cheerydaff & @QueenJess - I do hope your boiler problems are now resolved.....or if not, that there is at least an engineer/new part/solution in sight very soon. 

@EssexHebridean - Yes, re that 'missing' £90 - I have a sort of similar system in that when I buy something using my credit card which needs to be paid using money from the relevant savings pots, I transfer the amount from the savings pots account into our current account before paying it off the credit card. I always do it in that order. I have a credit card payment log sheet on which I list (by date) every between-bills payment I make to our 2 credit cards. I find this is the easiest way to track things. I don't think anything would really have helped me on this occasion though, as everything in my own records & systems was complete but there was just an unusually long time-lag on the bank's part. I shall be on the look-out for similar discrepancies going forwards for sure.

F   

foxgloves

And for today's post, which will be pretty short (thank goodness, you'll all be saying......)
Mr F made porridge& coffee first thing & we wrote the grocery shopping list. We consulted the mega-meal plan I did for the 6 weeks leading up to Christmas & it has really worked, as there was just a week's worth of meals left. We assigned them to days & swapped a slow cooker casserole I'd originally included for a different 'Cook once, eat twice' meal for which we have all the ingredients & which will also use something up, thus saving on having to buy meat. He fancied some fresh air so went off to get the shopping (apparently it was minus 5-deg in town!) & I cracked on with cleaning the kitchen & baked an early cake for the birthday boy - he fancied a pineapple upside-down cake so I was happy to go with that as it's all store cupboard ingredients & used up the last few glace cherries from the Christmas cake. Also baked an almond sponge for freezing as I'd already got the oven on, to use in the Boxing Day trifle. Feeling quite productive by then, so marzipanned the Christmas Cake......& ate the trimmings with my coffee.......I wish I didn't like marzipan so much!
Other stuff? Not a lot - checked for surveys, only a couple but did them anyway, & rounded up a bag of library returns for Monday. 
It's not my cooking night, so I intend to sit with a hwb tucked up behind my back (hopefully with a warm cat on my knee) & read through a lingering pile of magazines. Will also knit some more of b-in-l's socks for the presents stash (2023!)
Love to all,
F x

Makingabobor2

You are just so industrious with all your baking and knitting etc. I love to bake but don't do it nearly as often as l would really like. Although with the cost of the electric now it takes a lot more planning. 
I love marzipan as well, been looking to get some marzipan fruits for Christmas, not had them for years. 

milann

I actually had trouble finding marzipan but did find some the other day. So I’ll marzipan mine over the weekend. I need them ready for Wednesday so Dh can take one to his boss for Christmas.

EssexHebridean

Marzipan is the devil’s food! Horrible stuff! On the flipside though you’ve made me fancy pineapple upside down cake now! 

I’m glad it’s not just me that ends up with a bit of a magazine stash to read through - I’ve got a little pile next to me right now which I’m making slow progress with! 

CRANKY40

I never have left over glace cherries. I like them more than I like cake. I like marzipan too but usually chocolate covered in square blocks by the company whose name rhymes with bitter. I'll be putting the marzipan on the cake (that I make for my friend as part of his present) on Sunday and icing it wherever I can fit it in next week. I need to allocate some time for mince pie making too. Our cat is rubbish when it comes to lap sitting. She's been in bed with the House Troll helping him to watch useless but apparently entertaining videos on his phone for most of the evening.

I really like reading about your kitchen witchery - it motivates me to be more active in the kitchen. That reminds me, there is no raspberry jam left. My job finishes after the first week in January so I will have time to turn the frozen fruit mountain in the bottom drawer of the freezer into jam and other edible things.