Jacey Bedford's Journal

A few months ago I halved the cost of my ISP for the next 18 months. Saving approx £96 per year and (after initial trauma) getting a better service. Yesterday I saved £120 off a multi-car insurance policy (2 cars, his and mine) by shopping around. Yay! And today I changed energy supplier which should save me £600 over the coming year.

I'm all for being loyal to companies that treat you well, and I support local businesses whenever I can, but honestly, you can't afford NOT to shop around these days - for some things, at least. That's £816 saved over the coming year for just a few mouse clicks.

But next year I'll probably have to do it all again because companies lure you in with low rates and special deals and then whack the prices back up after the initial honeymoon period. Thank goodness for the moneysavingexpert site and their email newsletter.

My friend and ex-singing partner, H, is 60 today.

Let me say that again.

Sixty.

We've just been for lunch at the Cooper Art Gallery in Barnsley (very nice) and then had a steady hike around the (charity) shops and bookshops.

We were laughing because as folkies we've always lived on the scrag end of nothing. No one ever goes into folk singing for the money, believe me. As I said to footlingagain  yesterday:
What would the folksinger do if he won a million pounds?
Keep gigging until the money ran out.

So bearing that in mind, H is now looking forward to her first state pension payment because for the first time in many years she'll have a steady income that's actually more than folksinger income[*]! Whoo-hoo. Yay for the state pension! Bring it on!
:-)
Ha!

[*] That's nett income after expenses of course

Thanks to del_c for posting this for me

Egg have had so much flack for cancelling thousands of credit cards (a massive 7% of all their customers) that the boss has resigned. Oh dear, what a pity. My heart bleeds... etc. etc.

It appears that Egg is one of the few banks now claiming clairvoyance as the article states:

"Many of the customers affected said they had good credit records and claimed that Egg cancelled their cards because they did not make enough money for the bank. Egg denied this and said the customers might become a high risk in the future."

It's good to know that the banking industry can spot a potential high risk customer purely by the lack of use on their credit card, isn't it? I am reassured that all is well with the world.

After telling me I wasn't worthy to keep my Egg card, despite my clean record (though very low usage) Citibank - the new owner of Egg is not in my good books.

Today I received an invitation from Citibank to take out... a Citibank card. It appears I am not so credit-unworthy after all. Luckily for me I don't actually need a credit card from Citibank, Egg or any of their subsidiary companies, ever again, so I have the luxury  of contemplating how best to reply...
:-)