Merry Christmas

Yep, as I start this blog it is 3am on 26/12/2010. Merry Christmas. Good bye 2010 you wont be missed but you should be.

In 2010 I stopped smoking. I have slipped up from time to time but have been pretty consistently smoke free since February. My last slip up was a cigar back in November and I'm pleased to say that, whilst I enjoyed it at the time, I have had no sudden urges to take up smoking again. It does feel good and it does make a difference to smell, taste and so much more. Where I really notice it is in my ability to get started in the morning. I can leave the house within 15 minutes of getting up in the morning.

2010 also saw my drinking cut to the level that I now drink per week less than what I used to drink per night. This was not an intentional cutback but a cutback as a result of money (or lack of it). I don't count it as the triumph it is because I'm not at the stage where I maintain this reduced level of alcohol through choice. When there is beer or wine available I cannot rest till it's drunk. Hence I sit at 3am in the morning blogging because I have a case of beer available.

The reason I'm glad to see out 2010 is because I have had to adapt my lifestyle so many times. So many things have stolen every penny I have that it scares me. I know people less well off and am fascinated by how they manage to cope because I am struggling. It's that struggle that I intend to blog about in 2011.

I'm frankly shocked at the cutbacks that I have been able to make. Whats more I am finding further new ways to cut back. I'm not going to get evangelical on you but I am getting obsessed with maintaining my lifestyle on less than half my original budget. I doubt very much that I'll get through 2011 without sacrifices but I'm hoping that I can pit my wit and guile against everything life throws and offer advice on how it's done. If this is something that interests you, then bookmark this blog.

Savings update
My latest savings are small but worth mentioning none the less. One of the big expenses in life is having a car. Tyres, breaks and servicing will always be there as will insurance and tax. So when you can make any saving against your car it's got to be good news. Already I saved £79 on tyres against the next cheapest option which in itself was saving me about £40 per tyre against the average price.

Car Share
During the heavy snow and ice my wife and I have been sharing the journey to work in one car rather than going our separate ways. This has meant that I have had to learn to be a bit nicer in the mornings whilst she has had to learn to SHUT UP (I mean constrain her 'Oh what a beautiful morning' type exuberance')till she gets to work. Life's all about give and take after all.

Car sharing has made sense in the bad weather as my car is much safer in the snow. We do however work relatively close to each other most of the time. Given that we are trying to save some money I think that the car sharing may have to become a slightly more permanent solution, although it cant be completely permanent as my base location does change from time to time. The saving on fuel from car sharing should work out to about £10 per week. That's £40 per month or £480 per year. Now we're talking. You're also looking at less costs for breaks etc on the wife's car so I'm going to round the car share saving to £500 although I may tinker with that figure throughout the year.

Total saving on car share: £500
Time taken: N/A
Delay versus using two cars: around 5 minutes per day.


Light bulb moment
So I drive up to the wife's work to pick her up. When she gets in she says that 'there is some bad news'. She's at the wind up (having fun with me for those who aren't familiar with Glaswegian). The bad news she referred to is that, as I drove up the drive to her work, she noticed that one headlight was duller than the other. Hardly the end of the world then. Or is it?

My car is as American as cars get. It celebrates Independence day and thanksgiving and doesn't take a day off for the queens birthday. Now an American car in Europe has certain advantages but also certain disadvantages. For those who have never been to the UK please now do a google search for roundabout (all one word). It's a European (but us Brits love it more than any other country) approach to junctions. I believe that there may be incidences of roundabouts in every country in the world however, there are incidences of roundabouts on almost every street in Britain. At times they have been known to widen a junction just to fit the roundabout in (wouldn't the wider junction have been the solution in the first place?)

Anyway the reason I mention roundabouts is that they demonstrate both the advantages and disadvantages of an American car on British roads. I'm sure that the driving standards agency here in the UK will give you the theory behind roundabouts but I'll give you the practical and they can argue later. A large car driven confidently onto a roundabout has right of way over all other cars at all times. (America 1, Europe 0). Large American cars have the turning circle of Ocean going liners. Roundabouts are circular (America 1, Europe 1).

Yep American cars grew up with the American road network. This meant that European and American cars began to develop very slightly differently. This is why having an American in Europe can be a disadvantage. You basically have to plan for any breakdown in advance because, the part you need is made in America and needs to be ordered. Or does it?

Turns out that the Japanese have saved my bacon by fitting my non standard tyres to one of their production cars. They still aren't exactly common but at least I can now get tyres on this continent without having to buy the premium brand.

The engine actually comes from a Volkswagen but has been re-configured for a 4x4. Why? Well here in Europe we can't afford the 4 litre gas guzzlers they make in America so insist on diesel engines. The only resulting issue is that these specially adapted diesel engines are almost unique. The engine manufacturer didn't create them for the car they now live in nor does the car manufacturer know anything of their performance or faults. The result? Expensive repairs.

At least lights must be simple. I don't want to sit on this one. It's an inexpensive repair, an important repair and, I hope, an easy repair. I drive to a very good parts shop that very night. Because I know nothing of cars I carry the book around in the 'glove compartment' (I believe this is just the dashboard stowage compartment outside the UK. I like glove compartment better. Wonder if it has room for my leather helmet, goggles, silk scarf plus a good flask of tea?) I request a headlamp and hand over the book to be certain that I get the right one. An H13. None in stock but it can be got on order. It's Friday night and the order will be here by Monday. That seems OK. To be honest, for my car, it seems simple. I was expecting that it would have to come from a mythical land and that obtaining it would involve a surcharge for wrestling it from the teeth of a dragon. Not so. Or so it seemed.

On the Saturday I decide that, rather than wait till Monday, I would just try another shop for the part. This is where I started to get suspicious. This other shop didn't have any either. The bulb was listed but couldn't be sourced locally except...........AT THE DEALER. I HATE THE DEALER. Guess I'll wait till Monday then. At least I don't have to deal with THE DEALER.

I phoned ahead on Monday. Guess what? Turns out that, unless I pay for it to be couriered separately, it will take over a week to source an H13. I'm not driving illegally for a week in this weather. There is a chain of auto shops in the UK that seem to sell everything. I try their website. Why haven't I tried them before? I don't trust them very much. So when I try their website and get recommended something completely different from what I want I'm not too surprised. Yep they wouldn't let me search for something as simple as the bulb that I wanted. Nope they wanted my registration plate and then made their own recommendation. An H4. Thank god I had read my book and didn't just go in to the largest car store in the UK relying on them to know what they were talking about.

I needed a bulb. I searched further online. The H13 does exist but it would seem that almost no-one stocks it and, if they do, they want about £15 for it. At that price I could use THE DEALER. I HATE THE DEALER. I phoned. The poor girl on the phone probably wondered why I sounded so tense as I asked for the service department through gritted teeth. My jaw was so tight I must have sounded Australian. The service department (my nemesis) passed me to the parts department. I explained that I wanted an H13 bulb. The guy asked, why? I gave him the make model and year. No problem. It's an H4 you're after. You can pick one up anywhere. But the book says H13???? Nope, H4.

Now here's where my own OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) kicks in. I haven't ever and will never trust a word that that garage says. I hate to name names but I do have a Barry doll that I stick voodoo pins in to. (Problem is Barry has a 'my car' doll that he sticks very expensive pins in to every time he sees it). Anyway this is the second time that H4 has been mentioned with my car. Could it be true? Could my car actually take one of the least expensive and most widely available car bulbs in Europe?

Wikipedia turned out to have the answer. Apparently bulb tech developed differently on the different continents. Since the 80s however there has been some kind of agreement about standardising these technologies. Essentially an H4 bulb is an H13 in America. So I bought an H4 but not from the dealer.

How many IT Trainers does it take to fit a light bulb?
So garages want between £5-£10 for changing a light bulb. How difficult can it be? Well, if the book is to be believed, it's one of those things that will be easy once you've had a go. Not simple by any means but, provided you can grow a second set of opposable elbows and have an eye on an adjustable stalk, you should be OK.

Why would the European light fitting be any different? Why would the book neglect to at least mention that European vehicles are different?

Yep it turns out that once again my European car is an issue. It turns out that, once you figure it out, it's not such a big issue but, the book has no instructions for a European light bulb. Fortunately I had some warning as I use a forum and some other poor sod had had my problem first.

I don't like opening the bonnet(Hood) of my car. Releasing that catch is like opening the door on Narnia. Nothing under there means anything to me. Everything looks expensive (£200 per item I imagine). Nothing under there looks even remotely mechanical despite the fact that it is, by definition, an engine and therefor a mechanical thing. I'm a logical sort of a guy. The theory behind the combustion engine makes sense. Gas, spark, energy to turn a wheel, wheels that turn wheels, belts etc. Then there's a battery that's powered by the engine. I get that. Open my bonnet however and you'll get four buckets of fluid (screen wash, breaks etc) and a big black box with some wires and pipes attached. It is no more mechanical than a digital clock.

Anyway, I at least know where the headlights are. They appear to be sealed from behind with a rubber housing which makes sense. The housing comes off relatively easily and the cable to the light is stiff but easy to detach. The bulb itself however was held in by a clip that could not be defeated. I'm glad I parked up somewhere quiet and tried this in daylight because in twilight or darkness it would have been impossible. All in it took about twenty minutes to do job that would take a mechanic less than five however the thing is I did it. I didn't waste £15.99 having an H13 bulb delivered from down south. I didn't waste £5.99 having someone fit the bulb.

Nope I spent £4.99 on a bulb, twenty minutes fitting it and endless hours gazing lovingly at it's fresh glow and thinking....I did that. Oh and the bulb I took out was an H4

Total saving on headlamp and fitting £17 approx
Time spent sourcing deal: About 4 hours thanks to confusion over the bulb required
Delay as opposed to getting a shop to fit: Saved days as the shop wanted to order the part mentioned in the book.

Update
I've had a letter from my new electricity and gas supplier confirming when they will take over my billing. This should mean that quidco will soon be paying £80 in to my account (February I believe). My new supplier will also reward me with £100 off my first bill which should be due in March. Keep your eyes on this page to see if everything pans out. Because the transfer completes in January I shouldn't have to pay a direct debit to my previous supplier so that might be a nice little £100 saving during the skintest month of the year. Anyway this may be the last blog of the year so, if it is, Have a great New Year and I'll see you all in 2011.
T

Kitchen sink drama

Tuesday, 17.10 pm, -8 degrees.

We have water problems. The heating cut out. The waste pipe had backed up because it had frozen. This happened last year as well so my wife knew what to do. We disconnected the main waste pipe and left the boiler dripping in to a bucket. The instant the waste pipe was sorted the heating started working again. Mental note: look for ways to stop it freezing up.

Wednesday, 7.10am, -14 degrees.

The taps in the kitchen stop working. The pipes run up the inside of an outside wall and would appear to be frozen. Also there is no hot water anywhere in the house. It's first thing in the morning so we'll sort it out later, after work.

Wednesday 22.10pm, Still -14 and it hasn't got above -4 all day.

Still no water in the kitchen. Still no hot water. Time to look in the garage (under the kitchen) and see what the pipes look like. Trouble. It's 10pm at night and I'm looking at a pipe joint with a beautiful baguette diamond of frozen water between the end of a cold water pipe and the joint. Above this further up the pipe a weld has split but has not been forced appart the way the joint has. Not good. This is mains water. When this thaws there will be a major problem. But it isn't likely to thaw anytime soon.

War summit.

We've both made our work every day through the last two weeks of snow and freezing tempratures. We know that we just can't be phoning a plumber. Under normal circumstances you are talking about a £50 call out charge, £50 per hour (with a minimum of 1 hour) plus materials. In the middle of winter in an emergency you can double those figures.

Decision:

We are both calling in for an emergency half day (possibly full day). The good news is that it's unlikely to suddenly stop being freezing so, although we have burst pipes, we should be able to sort things out quickly and more importantly dryly.

Thursday, 06.50 am, 4 degrees.

The good news is there is no ice to scrape off the car windows. F**K. The undertone in my wifes voice as it says 'I think you better come downstairs' leaves me in no doubt that downstairs will not be good when I get there. I'm trying to wake up but hear this funny hiss behind everything. It gets louder as I go down stairs but everything looks normal. I head to the basement.. You've seen it in a hundred horror movies. Why would you go down there? Why not turn the light on? You know that's where the murderer is waiting to pounce...

Imagine water, under as much pressure as you can possibly exert, blasting against a temporary ceiling and pooling all over the floor. Electric sockets etc are soaking. It's relentless. I think that, given that I'm not even awake yet, I can be forgiven for running about with one thumb in my mouth and the other up my ass for five minutes. I was basically looking for something to turn off. There were taps under the sink that I turned off. They made no difference so I assume that they literally cut the supply to the sink taps above. Is that necessary? There was no water in the kitchen despite it being imediately above the pipe that was jetting water everywhere. When I went below there was nothing to isolate. I followed the pipe back because the kitchen and garage are an extension built on to the house. The water must have been plumbed through the main house at one point. I just cant find it.

I return to the scene. I point out to my wife that the water is escaping up the way rather than down the way. I fear she may look for a tool sharp enough to kill me as she doesn't see what my point is. It would almost be worth shutting up and saving my life here but I'm on to something. The fact that it's very early and my wife is cold wet and angry should not be a reason to hold back with stupid ideas. Should it?

Let's consider the evidence: The kitchen is bone dry despite being only centimeters above the main leak. The garage pipes are the main problem but must be fed from somewhere else as the house was built long before the garage extension. I ask if we have any pipe that we could put over the gusher. Where did that come from? There's about a meter of white plastic tubing hiding in the cellar. OK. That goes over the gusher and then we can point it outside, away from the electrics and ceiling. This is a major turning point. OK so maybe it is expecting too much for me to think that my wife would congratulate this solitary moment of genius.

Nobody says it's good but suddenly we've bought some time. With this extention to the pipe in place the immediate disaster is averted. Water can now be directed away from the house and out into the drive. Don't underestimate the thinking/breathing time this buys. With this pipe jammed between two rungs of a ladder it can actually be left pumping water out into the drive. Believe it or not we can now consider a cup of coffee. This is the fix that costs plumbers thousands. It's harder to charge stupid amounts of money when the burst doesn't look like it's going to bring the house down at any second. What we have now is thinking time.

Now I really wish it had been me. I got to within centimeters of it and can only blame tiredness and panic for letting me miss it but it was my wife who found the stop cock that isolated the water. it was in the farthest darkest corner of the basement. As soon as it was turned fully the water stopped and the world became a better place. The gusher became a trickle and then finally stopped. Phew.

Provided it's accessible repairing stuff like this is no where near as difficult as you think. This is where the wife and I make a great team. I can think up the solution and do the grunt work whilst the wife (sounds male chavanist to call her the wife but I like to keep this site annoymous so can't use names) has the technical skill to cut the pipes and carry out the repairs. A good plumber would have a blow torch and solder and copper joints to carry out the repair however, fortunately for us amatueurs, plastic and rubber now rule the day. You can buy push-fit connections to replace almost any joint. What's more they do exactly what you need them to do. You push them tight and they form a perfect seal.

The moral of the story?? The turning point in our whole saga wasn't the repair. It was finding the stop cock and isolating the water. It was buying ourselves the time to stand back and look at the disater calmly as opposed to panicking. For the next twelve months this blog will be mainly about saving money. Repairing our own plumbing in the middle of winter saved us about £200. You can have all the plumbing skill in the world however it's absolutely useless unless you know where to turn the water off.

What I would like is for every reader of this blog to go now and turn on a cold tap. It could be to a bath or a sink. Turn it on full. Now make the water completely stop running without touching the tap. provided you managed to carry out that simple exercise successfully you are now equipped to deal with plumbing.

I'm still wondering however, how the hell did it get from -14 to 4 degrees over night. Is someone up there picking on us or what?

Total Saving on Plumbing £200 (estimate)

Time taken to fix 3-4 hours
Delay Compared to phoning a plumber: Probably faster.

Strike1 to the Thrift. Save money while you earn

OK I'll figure out a proper way to track what I'm up to ready for the start of the year but I feel the need to start recording anything that I try in my mission to save money that works straight away so you can either: copy it if it works everywhere, or make you aware so you can look for something similar in your own country.

As I said I'll figure out a way to present all my findings over the coming weeks but I want to get some details down fresh while they are in my mind. I don't do new year resolutions so this will just start immediately and run whenever I find a new and clever way of saving money.

First does everyone understand the term thrift? To be thrifty is to save money. Scottish People are often accused of being overly thrifty. They say that copper wire was invented as a result of two Scotsmen fighting over a penny. We're actually not that bad but I think most people are being a bit more careful with their money at the moment so maybe the Scottish Reputation for stinginess will return. Personally I think the Scots got their reputation because they are not stupid with their money. Unfortunately I'm of Irish descent (no offence to our Irish readers but Ireland's money worries have been somewhat in focus over the past few weeks).

OK, let's see if we can save some pounds or make some or something.

Tyres

First up lets get the cash rolling in with some tyres. Now this probably is quite specific to the UK but the principal is probably world wide. Do a google search using just your tyre code and narrow the results if possible to just your country. Haven't the time for all that searching? Let me give you some perspective on this one. My car has an unusual size and width combination that it shares with very few other cars. The numbers sound innocent enough on their own but even decent, honest tyre dealers suck their breath when they hear them in that combination. The big national 'fit them quickly' tyre shops don't even have these bad boys in stock. Yep I have to give a days notice if I'm going to have a flat and I can't have one at weekends. One tyre from the dealer (excluding fitting) is £165. (At the time of typing that's 193 Euros or 263 US dollars)

Now for once the dealer price is not ridiculous. A National tyre company who won't be beaten on price quoted £159. A local tyre fitter who I trust gave a similar quote but then phoned around and came back with £113 (including fitting valves and wheel balancing). Ebay had a couple of sellers doing second hand Pirellis with approx 5mm tread for about £30 but who buys those? Even more curiously who fits them? Can you fit tyres at home? I know I cant. There was a web-site that I discovered a while ago and bookmarked that offered a budget tyre by a company called Nankang for £58.70 however this didn't include delivery (£5.99) or fitting. Not sure how a tyre fitter would react to that as I assume they make something out of ordering the tyre as well as fitting it. I'm not even sure what the cost is to fit a tyre. In case your wondering, the fact that the tyre is cheap doesn't really worry me. It's not a remould and it's certified European Safe so it's good by me. It may not last as long as the pirelli but, at a third of the price I'll cope. Anyway these tyres were out of stock at my time of need so I had to search more. For future reference the stockist was called camskill. http://www.camskill.co.uk

In desperation (near bald tyres in the snow isn't good even on a 4x4) I searched more and found another company with a budget model. These tyres are called Nexen and cost £73.70 but this includes delivery and fitting plus valves changed and wheel balancing. I'm a sucker for the valve change and wheel balancing. I checked out web reviews for Nexen tyres and they seem to get between 3 and 4 out of 5 on the review sites so they aren't all bad (The continental premiums I have don't do any better). The site (for those in the UK) is CTyres http://www.ctyres.co.uk.

One pitfall to watch for: My only concern with these guys is that they work through a network of independent garages. As I wanted the tyres quickly I phoned two of these independents directly to see if they wanted to 'cut out the middle man' so to speak and take the work directly from me. Neither was even remotely interested. As one said 'that's just ridiculously cheap for those tyres. Order through the site and I'll happily fit them but I couldn't do those for under £100'. So I did order them through the site and the order was confirmed on Friday for fitting on Wednesday. They were to be fitted by the guy I've just quoted tomorrow except.... They called to say they were out of stock and they couldn't give a date when they would be back. They could offer a dearer option however. Poor show I say. Unfortunately for that company they broke this nugget of bad news to my wife instead of me. She suggested that, as an act of good faith, they source whatever they can but price match the quote given. After some stumbling they agreed. Good show I say. So provided they get fitted tomorrow as stated then we have our first genuine saving. Taking the next cheapest quote of £113 per tyre, we purchased two tyres for £147.

Total Saving on 2 x tyres £79

Time taken to source deal (1hour approx)
Calls to confirm (2)
Days delay compared to next cheapest option (3)

Cash back sites

These are a new Internet phenomena and something to approach with caution. These are sites that promote the goods and services of various companies to you but offer an additional incentive to you if you use a link from the Cash back site to sign up to the promoted product or service. If you want sound advice on how these sites work and the various pitfalls of using them in the UK then I strongly recommend going here first http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/cashback-websites

Money saving Expert is a consumer site in the UK but it's advice probably holds true around the world. They test various ways of saving money and report comprehensively on how they work and what to watch out for.

Anyway I have a couple of colleagues who swear by one of these sites. So I thought I would try one out using a product that I have some knowledge of.

Gas and Electricity

In the UK Gas and Electricity supplies are deregulated meaning that companies are free to compete on price. There are however only five major suppliers and, despite them all competing on price, there are regular claims of price-fixing between them. As someone with a bit of knowledge in this area I take any savings quotes with a pinch of salt. What I do believe in however are straight forward bribes (loyalty bonuses) and discounts. I went to the cash back site http://www.quidco.com to check out what was on offer.

According to Money Saving Expert they are only the second best site to use but I went for them anyway as I was aware how they worked. I believe they also operate in the US.

Quidco were offering £80 if you used them to switch to one of the UK electricity and gas suppliers. I used another site that I trust to check this supplier out http://uswitch.com. (Remember Quidco aren't doing a price comparison to say that this company will be cheaper. There's no point getting cash back if it costs you more than what you already pay). According to Uswitch I would indeed save around £220 per year by switching (remember Uswitch quote a total saving so that includes any incentives. read on). This would be in addition to the money Quidco would give me. I've already said that I don't put a lot of faith in these discounts and I don't believe you should either. There were however two extra incentives that made this a deal worth looking at. The package on offer tracked at 2% below standard prices. On my annual bills this amounts to £31 per year. In addition there was a sign up bonus of £100 for a limited period. The potential total saving is:

80+
220+
=£300

I'm not going to count any of these savings as being real until I have actually made them. It's also worth noting that the package I've signed up to is not fixed so will get dearer if prices rise and also ties me to that company for a year. Watch this space to see if the discounts work out to be true.

What I do know to be true is that, by changing supplier, I will release around £200 of credit that I have with my present supplier. That is the only part of the above deal that I am reasonably certain of although I wont know the exact amount till January as it takes six weeks to switch and I'll use power during that period. If all goes to plan I'll have approximately £280 in my bank in February with £100 off my first bill in March so, whatever way you cut it, I'm better off.

One pitfall to watch out for: Most suppliers bill quarterly. Add up your last four bills and you'll have a yearly amount. In my case I use £1550 per year (£700 electricity and £850 gas). The new supplier was quoting a monthly direct debit combined of only £50 per month (£600 per year). THAT IS NOT A SAVING. THAT IS WRONG. If i was to pay that I would quickly go into debt. If you get a quote like this you must phone up and make them sort it out. It's not that I want to give away any more than I need however my maximum saving should be about £220 and this includes the £100 incentive. My direct debit should therefor be no less than £110 per month. Don't get suckered in this way because once your in debt it becomes very hard to leave one of these companies. Also understand that that £110 per month will be too little in winter and too much in summer meaning I will never seem to be paying the right amount. It wont balance out till I've paid that amount for twelve months so don't increase or decrease your payment amount until the first year is up.

Time taken to source deal: N/A (Just log in to Quidco)
Time taken to investigate potential saving: 30 mins on Uswitch
Time taken to gather information and switch: 1.30 hours working out present bills

It's a lot to take in but on my first thrifty post I have:

An actual saving of £79 for tyres against the next cheapest quote
A potential saving of £120 from the new utility supplier over one year (£10 per month)
A potential incentive of £80 for using Quidco to change utility supplier
A potential cash incentive from the new utility supplier of £100
A potential refund of £200 from my present supplier

If everything works out I will have saved £199 and earned £380 for a few hours online.

I'll figure out a better way of presenting this information shortly folks.

This could be ...Extreme saving with Tquittin. What do you think?

8 hours is not enough

Hi folks from snowy Scotland

Computer
It was a sad day last Sunday when I finally had to admit that, in its present condition my faithful old desktop has had to retire. The fact is that the glitches that it's reporting such as missing registry files and blue stop screens are just symptoms of a hardware problem that I just can't get past.

I spent about two and a half hours on Sunday trying to fix it and then had to admit defeat. As any good geek will testify, a computer is a conglomeration of many parts so all is not lost. The graphics card and sound card will probably make it on to a new 'basic spec' machine when I can afford one. The good news is that the hard drive is intact and runs using an external USB caddy so I shouldn't be too down. What I miss most is the graphics though and its not just me being fussy.

We probably watch more TV online over the net than what we get through the box. I have a 32" flat screen that has served as my pc monitor and display for online on demand television for about three or four years. The thing is I managed to purchase the only flat screen ever made that didn't have a VGA input for the PC. With my trusty desktop the graphics card had a HDMI output which was fine but the laptop only has SVID which is OKish for TV but dreadfully blurry for text like my blog. I did have to treat myself to a USB keyboard however as the laptop one just doesn't cut the mustard for any kind of typing. So for the moment the laptop will have to step up as the main PC because there are no funds for a new desktop, just now or, any time soon.

Credit Crunch
That brings me to the tale behind the title of my blog. 2010 has just been too tough and I'll not weep to see its passing. Although I don't want to wish my life away. I shouldn't complain as I have been able to pay my bills (most of them at least) and I have a decent job but it's the complete lack of even a spare penny as a contingency that's getting me down. I took my car to the dealer for new wheels. Yep I'm still screwing the dealer for every penny after my failed MOT earlier this year. Anyway they couldn't do two of the wheels because I need new tyres. That meant shopping around for tyres and yet more money. Then there will be next years caravan fees before you know it. I already can't afford Christmas so god knows what will happen if something unexpected crops up. So I am going to commit now to earning more in 2011. I don't do new years resolutions, it's not that, but I'm not spending another year of all work and no play. So here's the plan...

Between now and January I'm going to research ways of earning more and spending less. The blog has lacked focus since I gave up smoking but, from January I'm going to start monitoring what ways I come up with to earn Money. I'll also try to measure what I can manage to save by either using less or by learning to do things myself. Yep, this blog is going to be about thrift. I'm going to share whatever advice I come up with on beating the recession and living life. Any tips you guys have will also be included.

Iphone
This weekend saw new iPhone software released on the world iOS4.2. So why hasn't there been a blog about how to jailbreak? Well I haven't even upgraded yet. I'm waiting. I'm actually considering upgrading but then not jailbreaking. To any jailbreaker that must sound strange. Well the truth is that I want to see if I can improve the performance of the phone. I have already gone back to my HTC for satnav because the iphone is so poor. But it seems to be poor at everything so I'm wondering if it might perform better without the customisation. Watch this space for results.

Smoking

This weekend my wife was away with relatives. As I wasn't there I decided to have a wee weekend to myself. I bought a 24 pack of beer and settled in for some serious guy time. I even looked out some old vinyl 45rpm singles. Anyone out there remember the Stranglers, the Clash, The damned? What about some 80s stuff like the cure or the fall. I've even got older stuff inherited gradually from relatives so have some great stuff from the stones and Rod Stewart. What does this have to do with smoking? Well there's been a cigar kicking about my office since long before I quit. I've mentioned it more than once in the blog. I always enjoyed a cigar back when I smoked but this one survived intact. Until now. Yep, late on Friday night I nipped down to the cellar and smoked it outside the back door. Now anyone who follows the blog will know that there have been the occasional cigs.(The last one was back in July) To be honest the cigs haven't done anything for me and they are just one of those things where you try one once in a while to see if your missing something and then realise that you aren't. The cigar however was different. I loved it. So much so that I can't have another one because I would quickly become a smoker again. Maybe on Christmas day or boxing day I might have another but otherwise it's a no no. I've been quit since February and I aint going through that again.

Car

Finally. It's snowing heavily here. Yep winter isn't just around the corner, it's here. This could last till February. I've just spent two hours clearing the path. This means that the wife and I will have to share the car. To all those who scoffed at my 4x4, who's laughing now? Can't wait till after Wednesday when the new tyres get fitted but to be honest I'd rather be in my car with bald tyres in this weather than most of the other cars I see sliding around the road. Last year mine had a hiccup on black ice but apart from that it's the only way to handle this weather.

Hope everyone is well. Enjoy the snow. Give me ideas to make or save money or to do things myself without paying. I'll update again next week.

Cheers

T

Help my PC has turned blue and isn't moving. It might be....

Just in case the world thinks that I've given up the blogging I thought I'd drop a very quick post to let you know what's happening.

For the past two weeks I've had a bit of a rush job on a work so have been working on parts of it at home. These things can get pretty all consuming hence the lack of activity on the blog. The good news is that it's finished and looking good. The bad news is that my PC is yet again in pieces around the office floor. I just cannot figure out what's making it so sick. I even tried my hidden ace of using a different hard drive just to get it started but it just wasn't playing.

It went blue on Friday and I spent most of Saturday pulling it apart and trying to cajole it into activity but to no avail. I would have went further today but I sacrificed the virtual world to go out amongst the real world and see some relatives. I can be really guilty of shutting myself off from the world once the caravan season ends. What that means is that, if you don't own a caravan, some relatives haven't seen me since the last time the trees were this bare and the nights this dark. It's a shame because every time I visit I think, I really enjoyed that, I should make the effort more often. I hardly even saw my brother in law (he's not really but I think of him as being) and he's one of the very few folk who might have some idea how to fix my pc. Here in Scotland there has even been pockets of snow and the temprature has been down close to zero. It could be a long cold winter if this keeps up.

Anyway I'm on the laptop and its late so I'm off to bed. I will update the world as soon as I either get the pc back up and running or give up the ghost and admit defeat. The money pit is empty so there's no option for a replacement PC so I'll be burning the midnight oil to get this one fixed. Plus after seven years or so of service I doubt a new one could ever live up to it (or down to its unreliability).

There's also rumours about iOS 4.2 around the corner and a new version of iTunes so there might be a wee iblog due soon too. Although itunes and all the software for updating my phone is on the broken PC so that may be a problem.

So I'll be blogging again very shortly. Wish me luck in the meantime
T.

The clock struck one....Then struck one once again... It was twice 1am in the morning.

November!!!!! Here in the UK the clocks went back one hour on Saturday night. It's a strange ritual but, what happens is that, on the last weekend of October we put our clocks back one hour and keep them that way until April.

Why? Believe it or not it's to do with health and safety. For a few more weeks at least it will mean that the mornings are brighter (and therefor the roads are safer) for kids going to school. It's supposed to allow us the maximum amount of daylight during our waking hours. Problem is that many of us work in doors and so, by mid to late November, will leave the house in darkness, work indoors during the 6-8 hours of daylight that we get and then return home in darkness.

I sometimes wonder how we got to the top of the food chain. We waste all of our quality time working hard to earn money for things that we price beyond our own reach. Lower down the food chain the less inteligent animals hibernate, or store food, or at very least only hunt when they are hungry (and scavenge then). Us clever animals have made it so we must hunt at least eight hours of every day from age 16 to age 65.


My Jack Russell, and the cat that preceded her have both watched bemused as my wife and I get up at early oclock year after year on bitterly cold mornings to head for work whilst they turn around and snuggle deaper into their blanket (with a bowl of snacks at their side). Sometimes, despite being practically incapable of containing their excitement at our homecoming they still show no desperate urge to leave the warm house for a stroll through the snow. Strange little dumb animals....

Sorry for the lateness of my post this week. I try to post around the weekend unless something important crops up however this weekend it was our thirteenth anniversary. For folks our age (40ish)thirteen is quite an achievement. So we took a long weekend which is why the post is late.


It's good the way our anniversary falls. It means that we can celebrate our love for each other as we head in to winter in October and, provided we don't kill each other during the long dark winter months, we can declare our love once again at valentines day and look forward to spring. As I wrote on last years anniversary card: 'as long as we have each other, we'll never run out of problems'.

October was a funny month for the blog. Visits dropped from around 500 per month (based I think on folk looking to break their iphones) during August/September to 389. Personally 389 is about 386 more visitors than I would expect. (Myself, my mum and my wife shouldn't really count in the stats). What is interesting about last month though is that the blog is now truly global. Vistors came from 48 countries/regions. The US provided almost as many vistors as the UK with Canada and Australia not far behind. Someone from Hong Kong visited five times whilst someone in Saudi spent almost 15 minutes in one visit. Some African states now show on my map however I have yet to ingratiate myself with the good people of either China or Greenland. Come on guys you don't need to smoke or break iPhones to join in. Tell us what interests you and we'll try to include it.

I'm sure I've got more to add to this post so I'm publishing it so I can go to bed but it may get longer tomorrow night.

Untill then...

T

Money for Christmas

Seasons Greetings

First things first: We need to have that Christmas conversation. You know the one. You have it every year and you know you do. It replaces the weather conversation. Got it figured yet? I am of course talking about the conversation we all have every year at this time of year when we haven't even had Halloween (trick or treat or whatever you call it) but the shops are full of Christmas and the TV starts getting in to the perfume ads. It's been gathering pace since the last weeks of September and it will only get worse. Between now and the first week in December our favorite topic of conversation will be... 'I can't believe that Christmas is starting so early this year'. 'Can't they just let us get October out?' Then in December we can start our next favourite topic which goes 'doesn't really feel like Christmas this year does it?'.

Back to Black

I seriously need to find some way to make some money. The wife and I both have hard working decent paying jobs and I swear we've not had two pennies to rub together all year. Every time I look at the money something else comes up to steal it from me. It's the car tax, it's insurance, the caravan, the dishwasher (that ain't even fixed yet), it's endless that's what it is. I've been reading Poets blog about her attempts to work from home and, whilst she's finding it a bit up and down, I'm wondering if I could get a second income from it. I'm even considering getting a couple of back shifts in a shop or something just to have that feeling of having spending money again instead of just paying bills. People say 'at least you still have your health' but actually it's mentally and physically draining constantly trying to figure out what can and can't be paid or trying to learn to do things yourself because you can't get a tradesman to do it. Actually sometimes that bit can be quite rewarding when it works but, it' got to work.

Yep I've got to figure out a way to make some money. Realistically I wouldn't be able to maintain a second job for any length of time unless it was something I could do at home. What I need to do is find a way to market my existing skills and use what I have. I can knock out professional presentations in minutes, on more than one occasion my user guides have been chosen in preference to the official version from the software vendor. I can put together courses on telephone skills, sales, debt collection, complaints, train the trainer, all that kind of stuff and more. God almighty a bunch of Canadians even managed to teach me to train reliability engineering to engineers. There are some problems however:

First everybody thinks that they can do great presentations. (Trust me they can't. It's like the start of xfactor when you get the ones whose friends think they are a great singer.)

Second companies need to deal with a registered business. They can't just pay cash to some guy touting for business.

Third I'm at work during the day and these things need scoped out. There need to be meetings etc.

Forth I don't even have any idea how you go about tendering for that sort of thing or even how much to charge.

So that's what my brain is working at just now. How can I turn my skills in to cash. Please put any suggestions you may have on the back of a cheque made payable to.... Only joking but any ideas gratefully received.

Meta Tags

Last week I talked about a new geeky bloggy thing that I had learned called HTML code and I mentioned using meta tags to ensure that google et al would find my site and list it highly on any searches. Well I've been monitoring the site as always with google analytics and I'm pleased to say that meta tags have made absolutely no difference what so ever to the uptake of my site. Visitor numbers have neither increased nor decreased. The most popular way to find my little corner of the web seems to be to google quitzits or any sentence that includes smoking and spots.

QuitZits

Since they bring people to the site I think it's only polite to update you all on them. When I first read about them there seemed to be some agreement that they were a short term (about three months) side effect of giving up. Utter Bull I'm afraid. I gave up in February and I still get them (as bad as ever) now.

How can you tell that they are quitzits? They may look like any other zit but they are actually a bread apart. They can come on from nowhere pretty quick and you'll feel them like a solid lump under the surface of your skin. The problem is that they sit deeper than a normal pluke so can get quite red and angry but be way too thick skinned to burst. Try not to burst them anyway. Not sure about this one but stick with me. If you do squeeze them they don't empty and go away like a normal spot. They stay there looking just as angry but with the added joy of a scab on top. Burst or not they go down by themselves. The problem is that within seven to fourteen days they come back. They come back in exactly the same spot but the second visit is usually the last. They do have a habit of leaving a red area of skin for a while afterwards but at least they are gone.

So there you have the quitzit. Painful, unsightly and abnormal. But bearable and nowhere near as bad as smoking. Since I smoked for thirty years it's hardly surprising that my skin has some withdrawal symptoms. Smoking drys and eventually ages the skin so maybe I shouldn't be complaining about looking like an adolescent.

Until next week...

T