And now we go again...

jwil

Enjoy your long weekend.

Blackcats

Have a lovely long weekend.
I find the chase account very easy to operate so I wonder if it's the setting up phase that's being fiddly.  We mostly use ours as our main spending account now with sub pots for various categories which are quick to transfer money in and out of.  There's cash back on spending and a separate automatic round up account that I try not to peek in until the end of the month when it's always a nice amount to move to the accumulated gains pot.

glad your new alarm is working well - I'm certain I couldn't tolerate Ms Holden at any time of the day or night (no offence).  My kids always started a sentence with "no offence" when it was highly likely to cause offence to someone - they seemed to thing it absolved them from being horrid.

LadyWithAPlan

Your tagine with jackets sound awesome ! 

Not tried the chase but generally with these online banks of which I have a few once it’s set up - often they want you to do a talking video with some code - then it’s easy 

EssexHebridean

I had originally assumed it would be a one off with the photo of the ID and the selfie for setting up, but it was asking me for it every time I tried to log in, and the lady on the phone didn’t say it was just for setting up when I raised it with her, just that she could see it might be annoying… maybe they have changed the way things work for new customers. It’s a shame, it looks like a nice account to have. 

My TGTG bag got cancelled last night in the end, but in plenty of time so I’m not too annoyed. Consoled myself by setting up the subscribe and save order for my favourite peanut butter - which ended up costing me not much more than it would had I been able to buy it at the good food show as usual - they aren’t there this year. We’ve also made use of a Black Friday deal to order from the rapeseed oil people we like - another small business we found through the food show and have been buying from since. That should arrive next week. 

Today has been a fairly standard Friday - a walk this morning (we wandered round some of the old bits of the town for a change) and general house stuff. Went to Lil’s this morning and made use of the 10% off for a good stock up - although there will still be oddments to get elsewhere. Got home from Lil’s to discover that my new earbuds and the PB had arrived. Earbuds are fab - I’m really impressed! The courier had clearly been playing catch with the PB box though - I suspected all wasn’t right as I got a strong peanutty whiff from the unopened box, and sure enough when I opened it both tins had popped their lids - peanut oil and butter EVERYWHERE! 🤦🏻‍♀️ Raised a replacement request on chat and was slightly surprised that they didn’t even want photos…anyway, they’re sending out a new batch and I’m to keep the ones that arrived damaged. I feel a bit guilty about that to be honest, although my suspicion is that they won’t keep well, and the worst of the two will also probably be quite dry as it’s lost most of the oil which would usually be stirred back in. There may be a lot of satay sauce in our immediate futures though! 🤣

Managed to get two loads of washing out on the line today - not entirely dry but nothing that overnight on the airer won’t solve I’d say, and one load was towels so that was a nice bit of money saving in action right there. Having looked at the forecast I’m going to throw another load of towels through to go out tomorrow morning too I think. 

Food this evening is going to be either fish or burgers with chips - just waiting for MrEH to decide which option he wants. We’re also planning on popping to a local pub this evening - we walked past this morning and they appear to have a decent range of beer on. It’s one MrEH has visited before, and it’s a good half a mile closer now than it was before we moved which makes it a far more attractive proposition for a Friday night beer! 

lucielle

Your pub visit sounds good. We’re off to a quiz tomorrow night. 

L

PennysIntoPounds

Don't feel guilty, it's not your fault that the items you paid for arrived damaged. Good customer service warrants loyalty and vice versa!

How exciting to have a nearer pub with good beers to check out, hope you're having a lovely evening 

savingholmes

I'd be frustrated on that account too.

Enjoy your time off.

milann

Phew I’ve finally caught up. 

Pleased your mum had a lovely 80th birthday. 

Everything is sounding good at your end. Hope you enjoyed your evening in the pub 🍻

EssexHebridean

Well we did indeed get to the pub, although it was sadly disappointing - just a couple of fairly dull Greene King beers on - MrEH had a half of the IPA and said it was drinkable enough, but not the best. I generally don't favour GK beers at all so I had an orange juice which wasn't really the plan! while drinking those, we remembered that there had been a pub across the road, although we both had a feeling that it had closed, but having finished our drinks in the first one we went to investigate and found that it had in fact re-opened, and was serving an Adnams beer which made MrEH far more cheerful. I had Shipyard IPA which isn't the most interesting in the world but was perfectly pleasant, and the pub itself was nice enough that we decided to stay for a second one, and agreed that we will definitely happily return. 

Saturday was general bimbling about in the morning - I was able to get my brake light bulb changed - having tried and failed to do it myself (in spite of knowing exactly how the light cluster is removed, mine decided it was not playing ball!) in fact the chap at H@lf0rds even struggled - it took two of them 20 minutes to do it in the end so I felt that was £9 very well spent! then MrEH went off to play rugby - I walked with him as far a the club and then carried on for a circular walk back to home including two of our local commons, it was an utterly gorgeous day for it too, cold and crisp. I got an online order placed with H011and & B@rr3tt for various bits - including thanks to a black Friday deal my deodorant refills at about the cheapest price I'm likely to find them - that included a couple ofr Mum as part of her christmas present too. Ended up adding a few more bits to it to get it to the level for free delivery, but all stuff we will use so that was good value. Then a nice lazy afternoon for me - a few odd jobs done before I lit the fire in the late afternoon and snuggled down in front of that for the evening.

Sunday we headed up to Birmingham for the Good Food Show - a nice enough day but we both agreed that will probably be the last year we do it for a while at least. The tickets don't get any cheaper, and there is a lot less there than there used to be. A lot of our favourite companies have stopped attending as I've said before, and this year even those that were still there looked to have scaled down their stalls quite a bit - the people we've always relied on for biscuits, crackers and christmas snacks were concentrating on just one of their brands and a single product, and although we tried those, we weren't all that impressed. we did buy a lot of cheese, we did get our favourite Tracklements Sticky Fig Relish, and I got a bottle of the coconut caramel rum I really like. A few other bits and pieces as well, but having arrived just after 10am, we were done and ready to leave before 1.30pm - and to be honest it didn't feel like the best of value for the amount of travelling and the cost of the tickets. We will discuss what we might do instead next year I think. Came back via Mums to collect our Christmas tree from her loft - it turns out it looks like she has already got rid of the plastic box with the old decorations, on thinking about it she reckons it went to the charity shop when her other tree went, which is a shame but can't be helped. She has bought us some new decs though which is very lovely of her! 

Yesterday with us both having a day off we just did odds and ends really - went to the Toby carvery for breakfast first off, would you believe they'd run out of bacon?! Then spotted that T's had reduced the 1 litre bottles of Baileys to £10 so popped in for one of those. Dropped off one bag of odds and ends to a charity shop and had a wander round while we were there, I nabbed a bag of mixed yarn for £3.50, a bag of soft-toy stuffing for 50p, and 4 Lee Child books at 50p each. Then a second charity shop along from T's once we got there yielded another pile off books, so we are well stocked for reading material! Some more odd jobs done round the house - I re-fixed the toilet roll holder in the downstairs loo - it's still a bit "mobile" but better than it was. And MrEH put up the corner shelf in the living room which we wanted to take the smaller table lamp to get that off the TV unit.  Generally just a fairly laid back sort of day though.

It's definitely not been a money-saving weekend, but it was a nice one. Aside from the food show spending (all budgeted) both cars needed fuel - although mine only got £10 worth as I just need enough for a couple of trips to work and back this week, and I can then fill mine up at the start of the new month.  Hopefully himself will get away with just heading into London the one day this week - so his Oyster should see him through again until we're in to December! We have a planned afternoon/evening out on Friday but of course that is JUST in December which is handy. We should have just over £250 surplus this month anyway - £200 of it will go to the mortgage I think, with the odd amount going off to the long term savings pot.

We are definitely seeing the energy costs increasing now as the temperature has dropped colder - I can see from the Home Mini that MrEH has had the heater on in the office all morning, and it's certainly taking more gas to warm the place up first thing too.

PennysIntoPounds

Hooray for emergency pub!

Glad you had a lovely long weekend