Eating a Vegetarian Elephant

Chiglepig

It seems my lender does remember my preferences, they just don't show correctly online! Had a letter from Nationwide confirming that my monthly payment has gone down by £15 . So now I can up the regular OP, or just pay it manually. My aim is to get it as low as possible for when MrC retires fully, and in case anything happened to my job. Of course getting rid of it altogether would be even better, but unless Agent Million calls, that's still about ten years away!

Cheery_Daff

I take it no call from Agent Million? Or is that why you've not posted for a couple of days, still getting over the shock?? Glad the payment has gone through as expected! 

Karmacat

Doing brilliantly, Chiglepig!

powerspowers

Well done on the surveys and OP chiglepig! 

Good luck with Agent Million. I work in benefits and revenues. Once called someone up and she answered with “capital make me a winner” 😳 sorry to disappoint love 😂 

Chiglepig

Sadly  no call from Agent Millon - I have an absolutely stinking cold which is why I've been quiet (horrid little undergraduate germ monkeys coughing all over me), but I did have 5 x £25, my biggest month so far (making up for two months with nothing), I haven't asked Mr C if he's checked yet.

@powerspowers I used to have a Summer job at a JobCentre never quite got that reaction!

Chiglepig

I should say, my PB win is set to be reinvested, MrC Holds the maximum, so any wins from him come back to the current account.

Karmacat

"Horrid germ monkeys", I like that phrase, though I'm sorry you're being attacked by them   Agent Million has abandoned me too, never fear - though I have plans to keep on pestering said Agent till I get some attention  

Chiglepig

MrC won £25 - something every month so far.

Chiglepig

Bit of financial shuffling this morning.

Monthly contribution to my S&S ISA went in today, and having my second month of increased pay, I thought I'd double it with another ad hoc deposit. So that's £600 gone in. Then I made a £20 mortgage OP - topping up the £15 that the standard monthly payment has gone down, plus £5 to round it up!

Chiglepig

Well, hello everyone, it's been a really rubbish week. I started with a cold and had to take a day off work, went back for two days, by which time it turned in to a lung infection needing antibiotics and steroids. So I've been pretty well incapacitated. On the up now, but still very much slowly, slowly, I do it every time - think I'm better too soon and make my recovery longer.

Anyway, on the MSE/MFWB front, like everyone else, my SIPP and S&S ISA are still taking a bit of a hit, but some small improvements in places. We've had a couple of expensive spending months, just because lots of things seems to have worn out at once; two double duvet covers ripped because they had got thin and fragile from washing; the puppy detroyed one of the old foam filled dog beds; Mr C needed a new winter coat because he has lost a significant amount of weight (and I hated his old one). I'm sure there were other things too.

On the flip side of that, my '£s not lbs' plan that I quietly stopped mentioning over the summer has finally kicked in, a combination of four dog walks a day (pup and dog can't be walked together at the moment), back to work on a (very) hilly campus, aqua-aerobics, and cutting out refined sugar* and I've lost 7lbs, which means I can now start to get back into the work dresses I prefer for work, but which weren't condusive to wfh. So I don't need any new clothes this winter.

I finally got another £3 survey from Populus, having been screened out of the previous four this month. I've given up with Nectar Canvass because the surveys always take so much longer than estimated, and are often from companies that pay more through their own platforms. So I thought I'd give YouGov a try - so far their estimates are much closer to the mark.

*not counting the salted caramel ice cream this week because I was ill.