And now we go again...

Blackcats

It's very nice to see energy use dropping a bit after the bitter cold weather last week.  I had an email on Monday from 🐙 - headed "we are adjusting your payment". I'm not usually a pessimist but I immediately bristled and thought not more money!  They've actually reduced the payment by £50 a month.  I think we will eat into our credit but we do still have a lot of credit.  

enthusiasticsaver

badmemory said:

I too have a nasty feeling that some take the statement amount, then complain if it overpays.  Could you change the Feb payment to the rest of the balance & then change it back for March to payment in full.  Have you tried looking on their website for the T & Cs.

The Ts and Cs are ambiguous but their helpline said they should deduct the manual payment.  Your idea is a good one of changing the direct debit to just take the balance then change it for March. 

LadyWithAPlan

enthusiasticsaver said:

badmemory said:

I too have a nasty feeling that some take the statement amount, then complain if it overpays.  Could you change the Feb payment to the rest of the balance & then change it back for March to payment in full.  Have you tried looking on their website for the T & Cs.

The Ts and Cs are ambiguous but their helpline said they should deduct the manual payment.  Your idea is a good one of changing the direct debit to just take the balance then change it for March. 

I have prepaid a lot on my cc and as long as you make the payment a good few days beforehand then they dont take the minimum or the full balance  as decreed by the dd.
However once I paid  2 days early the full balance due on the EOM and they then took out more - so I suggest you give yourself at least 4 working days for the banks to catch up

themadvix

@PennysIntoPounds I’ve had that happen to me with C00p voucher - will be more aware now I know it’s a system glitch!

rtandon27

Ooo - thanks for the tip LWAP !

EssexHebridean

enthusiasticsaver said:

I posted a question on the credit card board yesterday with mixed replies but from your comment above do you make manual payments to your credit card throughout the month?  We have a direct debit set up to repay in full each month and usually I just let it do its stuff but stupidly I decided to make a manual payment after the statement was issued this month as I don't like having a high balance.  Will the direct debit due to come out in February take account of the manual payment or will it take the full balance consequently putting the account actually into credit? 

I do - yes, in fact I've just done some to take the account back to zero! In the case of ours (N@t10nwide) the payments mean that the DD almost never gets taken - it is set to clear in full though so if there was still anything outstanding from the statement it applied to then it would. Thinking about it, I'm not sure that DD has been used in the entire time we've had our current bank accounts so I must be pretty decent at keeping up to date with it! As Redo & LaPlan suggest - It probably does vary by provider but if there is enough tie elapsing to allow the payments to be taken into account I would think most won't take the DD. 

Milann fingers crossed it will - MrEH wasted no time in getting it in place yesterday morning anyway! 

PiP I was about to say that TMV had also had that issue with the members prices failing when an offer was used, then realised she's also posted to say so! 

BC you are not wrong about it being good to see the energy use figures dropping back a bit this week - we're a good 30kwh a day less on gas this week so far than last, and although the electric for MrEH's WFH day yesterday was still high it was a lot lower than last week! 

Well and truly into the dead zone at the end of the month now - so limited activity here on the financial front.

MSE Stuff:
- Some money shuffling done to the CC - including balancing money that the food account owed MrEH against money spent on the CC on Saturday that he owed back - useful as it saves me having to get him to do a transfer that I then still have to transfer to the card. CC will now be back at zero once those payments all land. 
- the flexibility of having meals available from the freezer has come into its own when MrEH reminded me that he was out for drinks with a work colleague later on - I've switched tonight's planned meals out for options which we can heat and eat separately, and tonight's planned offering will be done tomorrow instead. 
- We discussed this morning the best options for MrEH's travel this evening and realised that with the current £2 bus fare situation it probably made more sense for him to get the bus back at the home end rather than me take the car to get him from the tube - it's a 15 mile round trip pretty much from us to the station, so by the time the depreciation and fuel costs are factored in, I suspect the bus fare will be cheaper!
- Salvaged the near loss of some bread dough that MrEH managed to forget he's set the machine going with yesterday morning - we now have a loaf which whilst it closely resembles a doorstep does appear to have a vaguely decent crumb - I'll find out this evening how well it toasts - and tastes! - as it will be accompanying soup.

Last night's house jobs ended up being shining the kitchen sink, a quick tidy and setting up a load of washing to run first thing this morning. Might have to stop doing that though and revert to just setting it going in the evenings as it should have been doing its painfully noisy spin at about 7am - but in fact had seemingly finished it some time earlier than that - oops! I mean it didn't wake us up, so it's to be hoped it also wouldn't have disturbed next door... MrEH was doing the washing up when I got in so that was one job not needing done.

I'm also quite pleased with myself  - on getting back last night the first thing I spotted was that the recycling bin was on its side again and my bike had also fallen over - again! wrestled the two things back into some form of order, and managed to get the cover back on the bike...but by the time I got indoors it would be fair to say that I was feeling in a bit of a grump. However, I recognised this, excused myself to go up, get changed and de-grump myself, and came back down in 10 minutes having thoroughly re-set and got over myself - thanks to Greying for putting the focus on situations exactly like this one! 

Cheery_Daff

Well done on resetting yourself! I was trying to do that this morning after being unable to get an on-site parking space despite there being literally NO other cars in the car park 😡 I did find a (paid for) space but it took some doing, and I'll have to move it in an hour, most inconvenient. 

However, worse things happen and I KNOW this is an ongoing issue. I'd made peace with it, but for some reason it particularly riled me this morning! I shall endeavour to take a leave from your book and Greying's and reset myself 😁

lucielle

My errant recycling bin has decided to stay at home during this windy period. I’ve bungey tied the lid to stop everything from escaping. I did invest in a litter picker because if it does escape it usually ends up in the stream. After a few near misses of face planting myself in said stream whilst trying to get the rubbish out I decided this was the best course of action. 

L

EssexHebridean

L a litter picker very much sounds like the best course of action if a stream is involved, yep - and bungee straps too, why didn't I think of that with ours? For goodness sake, you'd think I'd never had experience of how to deal with wheely bins in windy environments, wouldn't you! 

Cheery - I think it's such a good habit, and the first step on it is to recognise the behaviour when it's occurring isn't it. I heard someone say something on a podcast yesterday that is something I've been reminding myself of for years - you can't control the way anyone else chooses to behave, you can only choose your own reaction to that behaviour. True, or what?! I've realised though that the first conscious act when you can feel a "reaction" brewing is to remind yourself of that - and then actively choose what your reaction is then going to be. That's going to be something I'm going to try to stick with. 

Financial dead zone continues - but MSE Stuff such as it is: 
- The CC is zeroed which is nice - and the only spending I'm planning on popping on there over the weekend should be food related. 
- I have another £3 off £30 spend coupon from T's, and also need teabags, Although from a quick look it appears that B&M might be my best bet for those...so in fact I'm more inclined to stay with using L's for the main shop, that happens to be just along from B&M so I can nip there for the tea bags and then should be able to head back to L's for my free bakery item...
- MrEH was home later than expected last night but fortunately the additional soup I'd got out of the freezer for him hadn't defrosted much so I took the executive decision that as it only contained veg and dairy it would be fine to stick back in the freezer. Also sliced the remainder of the bread-brick and froze that as well - in spite of its density it was surprisingly tasty! 
- The ingredients for tonight's tea are already out and in the fridge ready for this evening. It will be turkey, shallot and mushroom mash-topped pies and I'll cook the remaining broccoli to go alongside I think - although it may be that the broccoli ends up in the pie, we'll see. Hopefully won't take too long to throw together and I can just pop them into the microwave on the oven setting to crisp the tops.
- I am holding off on placing my Cl1n1que order from the time being as they're down to a really limited range of items on the free gift, so I will check again in a couple of months when they will almost certainly have a new offer! There isn't anything I need urgently, the voucher I have will last, and that will make best use of my hard-earned! 

Jobs for this evening:
- Finalise next week's meal plan
- shopping list
- see if the washing on the airer (bedding) is dry, and if so transfer the load from the machine up there to dry.
- empty the dishwasher - although if I'm lucky MrEH might have got to that one before I get home! 

Plans: 
The only specific plan for the weekend is to get bits from home and from Mum's to the tip - I'll need to sort out the timing on that (probably for sunday) and then we'll get our bits sorted on Saturday morning I think.
- It's Big Garden Birdwatch weekend so we'll definitely want to be doing that - as we now have a garden to join in from! 
- I'll get the shopping sorted tomorrow I think - that work well as first it means it's cheaper as MrEH isn't accompanying, and second it just means it's not taking time out of the main part of the weekend. 

Well I reckon that's about enough waffle from me for now - at least the end of the interminably long month that is January is now in sight, nothing to do with money, just the fact that it's dark, and Christmas is just over, and it is cold and damp and and and...! 

Makingabobor2

It really is a long month isn't it? And this week seems extra long as well, I was convinced it was Friday when I woke up,,,lol