Learning to walk before I run

edinburgher

@South_coast - I feel things are whooshing over my head here. I tried to avoid criticising Mrs E and came across as a misognyist instead. There's no good way to say anything online! 😅

A challenging weekend. It went from "family event without MIL's new BF" to "MIL's new BF obviously planned on being there all along". There were points where I found myself having to bite my tongue. I am not sure that he made a good impression on the wider family, either. We ended up going home earlyish, but Mrs E got to spend most of the day with her mum and the rest of the party ended up getting !!!!!! until the wee hours, which really doesn't work when you have children. I actually find myself looking forward to work tomorrow in comparison…

I worry for Mrs E. I don't want her to become distant from her mother but this chap is not somebody we wish to spend time with. She has been doing a lot of soul searching along the lines of "is it just because he's not my dad?" but I don't feel this is someone we'd want to spend time with regardless of how we knew them.

badmemory

You have a hard one to navigate there Ed & I don't envy you at all. Basically all you can do is just be there for her as you always are.

South_coast

Unusual for me, I know Ed, but for once I was being sincere (well, maybe not about the meal deal 😘)!!! I would genuinely love someone to apply a bit more oomph to my grout!

South_coast

My Santander cashback is payable x2 this morning 🎉! Thanks again for the tip-off, Ed 😀

themadvix

Mine too!! Thanks from me as well! (And to SC for the tip to check!)

edinburgher

Glad to be of assistance folks 🙂

I got 4x £25 + £10 (Santander and Plum). Money transferred out and 3 of the Santander accounts closed via their chatbot.

Plum is one of those fintech mobs, they have (or had) something like 5 different offers on the go on TCB. Only one of the two accounts that I opened tracked at all, so I wouldn't recommend opening multiple. As far as I could see, opening multiple accounts for multiple cashback was ok with the T&Cs but I'll confess that I didn't go into exhaustive detail…

The next offer I'll be going for will be the IG S&S ISA from the MSE newsletter. I guess not, they pulled the offer!

These cashback offers become all the more important as I have exhausted my Trading Allowance and I have to set aside 50% of survey earnings for tax. I've never bothered to report cashback and probably never will! As regards the surveys, I'm still doing them (for example, slow work day today and I'm at £25+) I think, however, that I will need to pay anything past the trading allowance into my SIPP. At least that way I'll keep more of the money.

Couch to 5K completed for the day and I have my swimming lesson tonight. Unless there are at least a couple of usable tips tonight or a smidgeon of structure to helping me learn, I've decided that I won't be booking another block of lessons.

edinburgher

The February break is almost upon us and I'm looking forward to an extra day off with the girls 😊 I'm quite tired and could really use a rest, even if it's just a psychological one.

The DD has gone out for my Amex with the cost of our Christmas break on it and we have accepted a quote for bathroom renovation, so we're much poorer than January 😂 It is going to cost 50% more to renovate than it cost to install 10 years ago, and that doesn't even include tiling 😭 Still, we trust the firm who are doing the work, and are going to their showroom to choose fittings on Tuesday.

Work has been a bit quiet and dull, and I received £87.21 from surveys today (£50 from Y Live and the rest from Prolific). Still no official word on an extension, although I understand that a) the funding is there and b) we're actually cutting funding against some workstreams, so there should be a surplus. Still, I'd rather have something in writing!

I decided to knock swimming on the head. I was exhausted last night after work and Couch to 5K and I just couldn't stop thinking about the previous week's session where it was 19 minutes into the 30 minute class before an instructor spoke to me. I'll definitely go back to swimming but it will be 1-1 lessons with someone who can actually structure a program of learning, not a young instructor who's a great swimmer but can't help adults plan their learning in any meaningful way. I don't blame the instructors, they should have a standard approach designed by the swimming coordinators.

beanielou

Absolutely agree on the swimming.

rtandon27

@edinburgher - hope that you will be able to give that particular teaching team that exact reasoning in your feedback - hopefully written - if up and coming instructors don't learn why they have lost a client, they will never improve!

Cheery_Daff

Shame about the swimming ed. I had a similar experience at a school swimming pool several years ago. Group lessons, one instructor and at least 10 of us. She was fine, but couldn't really do anything other than set us off swimming widths and give the odd tip here and there. Do give them feedback though. It might be great if it was badged slightly differently (space to use the pool, instructors available for advice etc, just not a 'lesson')

I'm laughing because I thought you'd written that DD had gone out with your credit card 😱😬😂