Sorry this blog has been a lot of one-off pictures and videos, but I’ve been busy.
Enjoy this! It’s true!
Can’t Wake Up In The Morning?
Then maybe try one of these – amazing! It would make me cry.
Via Nothing Labs.
How NPower have been screwing me over for the last 6 months
Hello, my name is Emma and I was billed a lot of money by Scottish Power because as it turned out, I’d been paying my neighbour’s electric for the past year and a half.
This is my story.
Wow, I wish I’d known about Ombudsmen (Ombudsmans?) sooner…
I’m not going to go into it until it’s fully resolved, but I’ve finally decided to contact the guys at the Ombudsman Services with regards to the NPower/Scottish Power fiasco
Basically, I’ve been trying to get NPower to fix this for months (that is, since October -I thought it was December! Jeez, that’s nearly 6 months!!) to no avail.
And then my girlfriend comes out with a piece of wisdom
She’s like this owl – wise but sleepy
Why don’t you contact an Ombudsman?
But what is this mysterious thing?! I’d honestly never heard of such a thing until yesterday.
Basically, is you have a dispute with a company that you’ve been trying to fix for ages, these guys help you out.
For real?
Well, I filled in the form yesterday and it was basically
- Do you have a dispute with a company?
- Have you filed a complaint with them?
- Have they resolved it?
- Has it been going on for more than 6-8 weeks?
So, I’m seriously hoping the Ombudsman guys can do something about this. Basically, I’ve been saying for 6 months to NPower
I want to give you my money!
And for 6 months they’ve been like
NO!
Which reminds me of this comic about critisism (see the 2nd panel).
So yeah. Short, but I just want to get this sorted and I’m praying this will actually. Help. Or something.
Has anyone in this finance blog place dealt with this kind of thing before? Advice?
photo by:
martinteschner
Could you live on £7.57/day?
0Interesting debate going on at the minute.
Basically, this guy, whose is responsible for the Department of Work an Pensions made a claim that if he had to live on £53/week (£7.57/day) he would.
The DWP are…shite
I’ve had a lot of issues with the DWP in the past, and I’m not their greatest fan. So I just want to do a little test to see if I could live like this. I’ll take this as £227/month.
Where does £227 come from?
Basically, IDS got “£53/week” from the money someone had from their benefits being cut, after their benefits being cut and after they’d paid rent and bills.
Could I live on this much?
Hmmm
Here are the things I’d have to pay for with my £227. Rough estimates
As you can see, I’m already up to £200. The extra £27 would easily go on other groceries I get throughout the month (The monthly food shop is JUST food we order in. It doesn’t include a lot of fresh food).
So I’d have no money left for any of this
So the answer is
Yes, but barely
Things I could cut down on:
Fun times.
Could you live on this? Do you already? Let me know! There’s actually a petition to made IDS prove that he could do it
Savings accounts are a thing, right?
So, my darling wants to open a savings account and actively save for something.
I’m so proud!
Proud, pride, lion… get it?
I had a few savings accounts back in the day. Here’s a list of banks I’ve had accounts with:
Darling is with these guys
To me they seem a bit useless, but who am I to judge.
So like I was saying, she wants to open a new savings account. I have 3 kinds of accounts:
If I wanted to open a new savings account this is what I’d think about:
So my darling’s questions were pretty similar.
What did we end up doing?
We decided to put her money into my E-Saver account. This way I can easily keep it seperate from mine, keep track of it and she gets some interest without account having the guys at Santander try and sell her an account she doesn’t need.
Awesome
Budget 2013 – Where do your taxes go
Here’s a cool interactive thing that the guardian produced
It lets you choose your salary and gives you a breakdown of where your taxes go. So now I know:
- I spend slightly less than £10,000/annum on tax
- Most of it goes to health
- About £50/year goes on water (I give to Wateraid so this means a lot to me)
And the only thing I really got from the budget is that beer taxes are coming down – I don’t drink so…
Meh
photo by:
carterse
How to get free stuff near you
D2BXFHKCKMCJ
I’ve got to give a shout out to this website
Find me some fucking free stuff!
In the Leeds area it found me:
- (Sometimes Manky) sofas
- Broken paving
- Decent TVs (I always give my old TVs away for free)
- Shoes
- Free Branches
Basically, it scours Gumtree so you don’t have to! Because let’s admit it, Gumtree is…
Excellent idea, guys.
D2BXFHKCKMCJ
photo by:
Hannibal Poenaru
A serious change to how I’m treating my debt
Hey guys!
How do you keep track of your debt? I do it using a spreadsheet. I work in Excel all week, so it makes sense for me to use it at home as well.
Haha not in a glass jar though
In fact I use a spreadsheet for all these things:
Anyway, exciting news about my debt repayments.
How I used to do it
It was confusing
I used to have this stupid system that increased how much I paid yearly because at the time, I couldn’t afford to pay the average amount needed to pay to clear my debt by the time I’m 30. It meant I kept having to change my direct debit details and keep track of stupid things in a spreadsheet.
It was crap because
How I do it now
Yes, much smarter
Over the last few months I’ve been supporting my girlfriend with the rent because she’s been out of work. However, no more! She is earning money and this month will be one that means she can pay her own rent. So, with £200 “extra” in my account now, I’ve decided that I can afford to pay £200/month towards repaying my debt. This might not seem like a lot – but alongside the money that automatically comes out of my salary every month, it’s enough to get rid of my debt before I turn 30 (June 2019). This is almost double what I was paying before – it also means that I can see £1000 disappear in 5 months rather than nearly a year.
This is better because
Challenges
Now THIS was a challenge
If you can name the game above, I’ll give you a link back to your blog/twitter/whatever 
