And now we go again...

lashie

100% agree with your assessment of Super Saturday!! I did giggle at Wales and I am half Welsh! Was also quietly pleased we prevented Ireland from getting the grand slam! Shame it only comes round once a year and we have no WC on the horizon. So lovely to finally see Italy giving the teams a little run for their money, let’s hope that continues into next year. 

beanielou

More Scottish ferry woes on the news sadly. 

Makingabobor2

The LT tour sounds great. I always think of you when we watch Secrets of the London Underground. DH would love to do a tour

EssexHebridean

lashie said:

100% agree with your assessment of Super Saturday!! I did giggle at Wales and I am half Welsh! Was also quietly pleased we prevented Ireland from getting the grand slam! Shame it only comes round once a year and we have no WC on the horizon. So lovely to finally see Italy giving the teams a little run for their money, let’s hope that continues into next year. 

We were honestly delighted for Italy - it's been a slow build, but it really feels as though they are now a team to be at least wary of, if not fully feared yet. I suspect that may well have been Wales's issue actually - that they dismissed how much of a thread Italy were going to be. In fairness - we only scraped the victory against them too! The story about the young lad who is still at Uni and has been working as a pizza delivery driver just made the tournament for me, too! 

MAB the tours are generally reasonably easy to book on so if you were planning a visit to London at some stage it would be worth him looking to see if there are any tours available to book for a suitable day while you were down here. They really are so good!

Beanie it's one thing after another with the wretched boats - although the change they are looking to make this time is far from the worst they've ever come up with.  it just gets really frustrating having to constantly plan for a Plan B, C etc! 

MSE Stuff:
- Sant-And-Er have finally sorted out the issue with one of our savings pots and have released whatever the security block they had put on it was. 
- As a result of the above I have now been able to transfer the £38 we spent on fuel for the fire earlier in the month back to the joint account where it belongs! 
- A quick check of the banks this morning confirm that all is well - there was a very small (50p) balance on the CC and I have transferred money to zero that off now.
- Omelette last night made use of the rest of  a bag of salad to have alongside - no food waste in this house! 
- MrEH is sorting getting my car booked in for her MoT - probably on Thursday now by the sound of it. Ironically after nearly booking it in early I'm now bouncing up against the expiry! 
- had an email through from the C0ventry this morning about their new loyalty regular saver at 6.75% on a maximum of £250 a month - I think we'll probably go for that as it makes sense, so that will reduce the amount going into the Savings For Solar pot from next month. Out for discussion at the moment.
- I need to make the payment for our LT Museum Friends visit to 55 Broadway - as mentioned yesterday this is £10 each and will be coming from our personal spends. We will also try to work out something else to do that afternoon I suspect - which may be as simple as a pop in to the Museum itself depending on what the weather is doing - in order to make best use of my travel cost. 

Other stuff:
- I want to do some research relating to whether to shift my ISA ahead of the end of the tax year. My current one pays 4.75% and is a limited access one - I could move to something similar paying 5.07% so it's probably enough of a difference to be worthwhile.
- the plan will then be at the beginning of the new tax year I will open a new ISA and that will then take a chunk of our joint savings - the long term EF, basically. 
- I also want to look into options for shifting my mobile deal again - I'm less than impressed with the data signal in particular I'm getting via TalkMobile - whether it is just that vodafone's signal is poor round here, or whether it is throttled back for the piggy-back provider I have no idea - but it's frequently dire! 

EssexHebridean

I've just been reminded of one of those "we got our in the nick of time!" things - heard from an ex neighbour at the weekend that the service charge on our old flat has gone up around 90% for the new financial year! Apparently they haven't bothered telling anyone anything confirming why there has been such an increase - just sent out the demand and the payment schedule...! 

lucielle

Oooh lucky escape! 

L

beanielou

That’s dire. 

PennysIntoPounds

Wow. Many eeks!

savingholmes

Wow that's huge. Yes I expect you are doubly glad you moved now.

EssexHebridean

Isn't it shocking! They did this a few times years ago and we challenged it - didn't get the demand reduced but it was corrected in following years each time, and they then stopped raising the huge increases as clearly they realised we weren't just going to accept it. It's slightly tough to not wonder whether the fact that we are no longer there and now this massive increase are entirely unrelated (which is something that our ex neighbour also mentioned, funnily enough!!) 


Anyway - we have nice cheerful MSE type news to be cracking on with
- MrEH has gained a tax refund! It's not enormous, but it is enough to be able to do "something" with - so we are plotting and planning. A bit has gone to the mortgage - meaning that this month's OP's are now within a couple of £ of cancelling out the interest for the month. I think we have agreed that the rest will go three ways - to my pension (as the tax relief I will get then increases the value of course), another large chunk to the mortgage (As of course that will have a far longer term effect as well as it's capital we will not be paying off for the next 15+ years), and then the balance to the Savings For Solar pot (as that also will have benefits for the future beyond just an "accruing interest" level. At the moment it's lurking in my Sant 5.2% account though so I won't worry over much about moving it with any great hurry! There will also be a a further lower amount to come back in his pay at the end of the month too - but we don't know how much that will be yet, and there is no certainty that his payroll dept won't screw that up so we'll believe it when we see it!  (And will also plan for where that is going to go when we see it, as well!)
- I got an email yesterday afternoon which although I initially thought "yeah, right!" and went to bin it, chimed a bit - it was a "You can now claim your £100 Amazon voucher" type thing - and when I thought about it, it DID ring a bell that when we bought the mortgage related life insurance there was some sort of offer through the Supermarket of Money...sure enough, I checked back, and yes! So I have completed the application for that and we should be getting that in the post - bonus!
Always very cheerful to have unexpected money - it doesn't happen often after all! 

The other thing we will need to plan for is how best to use his NI saving that will be kicking in in April (mine is so teeny as to be barely noticeable so I'm keeping it! ) - I'm currently leaning towards simply adding that to the monthly mortgage payment to be honest - as that will then become an OP without even trying each month. The earlier saving that kicked in at the start of the year we have just accepted will be left in the joint account to cover the increases in various things for the start of the new financial year - CT, broadband and TV and that sort of thing. Although the water has gone down, I am still expecting that in 6 months it will need a small tweak upwards again, so that £14 saving will probably not stay at quite that level long term. 

Other stuff:
- Gas use for the month is squarely lined up to be less than our predecessors used last March (which is the only thing we have to use as a benchmark right now, of course) so that is good. Electricity too should be lower, but we seem to routinely be lower electricity users than they were anyway - I suspect less tech and generally more mindful of our use. Of course a sudden cold snap could well scupper the gas, at least, but we will see!
- I have made a start on a master meal plan for the next few weeks - although ironically enough at the moment tomorrow still has a blank against it! I'm going to make a big container of pasta salad at the weekend I think which will feed us on Sunday and Monday. 
- MrEH collected a bag of wild garlic yesterday morning - I will need to deal with that this evening ideally, and it will probably take the form of pesto again I think as that proved really popular last time. In fact, I could process that up and use some of the resulting pesto with gnocchi for tea tonight rather than using the bought pesto. 
- The C0-0p offers this week include 25p off MrEH's paper, and 20p off milk, so I have nabbed those, Also got 25p off our next shop on their easter competition so we'll be claiming that as well. 
- This week's Lidl shop will get us to the next spend threshold for the freebie product - annoyingly I think it's biscuits and stuff which is less useful than some - but equally I can grab a pack for us to set aside to take on holiday with us so that will work OK. 
- I need to get my head around some dates for one of my bestest pals to head down for a visit - we really should have planned this sooner as it's looking horribly like being Autumn now depending on what fits in with her. 
- I also need to get some airshow accommodation booked and sorted. I will do the usual thing and book stuff on cancellable rates then keep an eye for prices to fall in case I need to rebook! 
- I have a 40% flash discount code for something I have been considering buying for a while, I tried to use it this morning but it wasn't working so I have flagged this up with the company and will see if they fix it.