Twinklie returns to the property ladder

savingholmes

Always nice when you can put your own stamp on your home 

becky170

Very exciting twinkle. Have fun decorating and curtain buying! 

twinklie

twinklie said:

Utility bills are scaring me. So I'm thinking we need to plan some simple changes to try and make the house more energy efficient (just draft excluders, draft excluders on the letter box, curtains on the front door etc). Was looking into the fixed tariff Octopus was offering me and it literally changed overnight. 

Octopus initial Fixed Offer
Electricity - SC - 24.38p, UR - 35.62p
Gas - SC - 26.10p, UR - 9.70p. 

Current offer for fixed rate
Electricity - SC - 24.38p, UR - 36.78p
Gas - SC - 26.10p, UR - 11.11p. 

Wish I'd actually took the initial offer now, but I wanted to wait to workout the figures. 

Octopus - Variable rate with new price cap (April 2022). 
Electricity - SC - 41.98p, UR - 28.01p
Gas - SC - 27.22p, UR - 7.34p. 

We are quite high users of gas and electricity at the minute, although as the weather improves and DH is going into the office more this will reduce. But if feels like a big decision with so many unknowns. 

Well, now I’m gutted looking at those rates. I’ve panicked and finally took a fixed deal because I just can’t cope with the ever increasing rates. The rates I’ve fixed on are:

Electricity - SC - 41.98p, UR - 67.89p

Gas - SC - 27.22p, UR - 18.81p. 

Really hope more help is offered by the government - it’s just insane.

becky170

Hugs twinklie. Hope the fix rate gives you peace of mind and let's you budget. Guess we have to wait and see what the new incoming PM has to say in the next couple of weeks. There's going to be a lot of worried people out there x

twinklie

I know it’s madness isn’t it? 

I have to remortgage next year as well. I really just want to stop being a responsible adult at this point and run away. 

Still, I’m on holiday at the minute and aside from our food shopping, we’ve so far spent £3 on a car park and we’ve been away a week already. So it’s been very MSE.

twinklie

Well we’ve now spent £6 on holiday.  Big spenders!

However, we have also ordered a Ninja Air fryer for when we get home, one of the dual ones. Our oven is electric, a million years old and not particularly efficient. So hoping this will pay for itself pretty quickly. 

We’ve also booked to come here again for 2 weeks next year. Same lodge, same weeks etc. It was only £100 deposit and I managed to get £189 knocked off the price by finding a valid online voucher. 

So something to look forward too at least. 

savingholmes

Sounds like a great result.

twinklie

Forgot to mention the day we were due to go on holiday the car broke! So we needed to take it to Kwik Fit and paid £450 for the pleasure. 

But at least we got sorted to go. We are in Scotland where there’s no real public transport and you need to rely on the car to get around. So it was necessary. 

savingholmes

Ouch to the bill. Glad you were still able to go 

twinklie

Well when we got back I did another meter reading and shortly after I got our recommended DD amount from Octopus - £662 per month!!! 

Wow. I’m not going to up it to that, but wow.