Giving every £ a job

Blackcats

@foxgloves - I broached the subject of the d-u-m-p (aka household waste and recycling centre) with MrBC, however, I think I might have gone too far, too fast.  Will re-visit the suggestion of taking 4 beyond repair garden chairs in due course.
thanks @savingholmes - olio is a bit hit and miss lately - always ok for bread, rolls and pastries.  Listings are requested very quickly so it is becoming more popular round here.

My bank account switch has completed and the £200 switching bonus has been paid.  Just pondering whether to switch again - it feels a bit cheeky but I've definitely given the banks plenty of my money in the past.

did some more organising today which makes me feel content.  

Vegetable pasta for tea tonight - tasty and a good way to use up odds and ends of veggies.  Even better MrBC cooked it while I indulged in my guilty pleasure of Bargain Loving Brits in the Sun 😻

Sun_Addict

I love Bargain Loving Brits in the sun 😎

savingholmes

Gotta love free £. I'm also debating whether to switch again or set up 'another' dummy account ready to switch.

Blackcats

@Sun_Addict - I'm glad I'm not the only one who loves the bargain loving brits.  They seem to be nice people, making the best of their lives and I'm very nosey so I like peeking into other people's worlds.

@savingholmes - the switching seems very easy.  I used a donor account and still have my current account with the 1st direct bank.

reporting in with a fabulous shopping from home win that has saved me £100's.  The story is that I use a very old 🍏 phone which I'm very happy with but voda ☎️ keep telling me that they are switching off 3G soon and I will need a new phone which I've been ignoring but Martin spoke about it on his show last night.  I peered into my replacement tech pot which doesn't contain very much at all.  Tech bores me and so I've just been building the pot up very slowly.  Then, I remembered that my mum had a newer phone than me.  Although she was late 80's she loved texting, emailing, taking photos and browsing the internet on her phone.  I cancelled her contract when she died but I couldn't think where I'd put her phone.  After a bit of rummaging I've found it and MrBC is doing the necessary fiddly stuff to swop me over to that phone.  My dad couldn't use that phone - he has one of the big button, call only phones marketed in catalogues aimed at older people.  

Lesson learned though and I'm going to build up the replacement tech pot.  I'll put a cap on it of £750 which should cover most eventualities.  Then I'm going to work on a pot that I'm much more excited by - a new sofas pot.  Older black cat was a terror for clawing sofas and had temporary hearing loss when politely requested to stop.  Remaining black cat is less of a scratcher so I'm going to save up for new sofas.  It will take a while but I'm very motivated.  

ladyholly

Excellent money saving and good for the  environment.

Blackcats

Thank you @ladyholly

of course, having been pleased at not dipping into my teeny tiny replacement tech pot to replace a phone - the very next day the kettle broke.  

We traipsed off to curry's and were presented with 3 rows of kettles.  We must have started in the gold plated, super dooper, all singing and all dancing kettle row - prices were around £80 to £100!!!!  So when I found a very nice £50 kettle I thought I was onto a winner.  The final aisle contained a good range of kettles  that are designed to boil water and lo and behold I found a perfectly nice kettle for £14.99.  Interestingly I wavered over whether a £15 kettle could be as glorious as a £50 kettle but then the amount in my tech pot flashed before my eyes and I trotted off and paid my £15 and guess what the kettle boils water very well and makes a very nice cup of tea.  Talking of which I'm going to press it into tea making duties right now.

savingholmes

It is crazy when kettles escalate to those kind of prices!

Well done on re-using your Mum's phone. Hopefully it will remind you in a good way of her.

CRANKY40

The £80 kettle row would be the bit of our shopping trip when the House Troll says "Mum can you say that a bit quieter" as I'm wondering out loud how anyone can justify charging that for a kettle. When I was young (when dinosaurs roamed the earth acoording to the HT) if the element in your kettle blew you took it to be repaired!

Blackcats

Thank you @savingholmes and @CRANKY40.  Your HT is so funny!   My dad talks about the umbrella repair shop in a prime location near his work in Westminster - broken brollies go straight in the bin now.  Likewise my friend's husband ran a tv and video repair shop but had to close down about 10 years ago as there was no demand for repairs with people  just buying new.

when we were wandering the kettle aisles, MrBC was not really paying attention (I think he wanted to be in a more techy part of the store) so when I said "look at that" pointing out the cost of the kettle he did the classic "yes dear, very nice" type response until I pointed him at the price tag.  Then he got interested in finding a cheaper alternative.

Trying to have low or no spends until the end of the month.  Needed petrol yesterday but other than that we should be ok.

it's really cold here again today and the heating is on this evening.  It was glorious yesterday and we saw butterflies on our walk.  Today we just saw grey sky and drizzle.  

foxgloves

@Blackcats - Ditto toasters! Our toaster is on its last legs according to Mr F. In actual fact, 2 of the 4 toasting slots have ceased to work, leaving 2 which still work perfectly well. I looked at toasters when we were in a big store recently & couldn't believe how expensive they were. They had one similar to the one we'd be replacing & it was about £80 !! We've had ours for years, but I'm sure we paid sub-£30 for it.
Hopefully our old one will continue to toast for a while yet.
F