Interest, Inflation, houses, housemates, moving and lots and lots of paint.

Redundancy money paid.  Its in the bank, a considerable amount of tax deducted along the way however because of course HMRC believe that I will be earning approximately £4000 a month for the rest of the financial year! Well yes that would be nice, but not very realistic. 
Little phone call to HMRC to claim said tax back, only to be told that because I am still in work (3.5 hours a week at private school job) then they won't send it back, but it will be paid back little by little as they realise that my wage is more like £400 than £4000.  Thats nice, but what do they expect me to live on?
So I need to figure out the best thing to do with my meagre payout which just to be clear only included £556 worth of actual non-taxable redundancy pay for my four years of hard slog at the hell hole.  The rest was holiday pay, a weeks wages and 4 months pay in lieu of notice.  Obviously thats all at 0.33 of what I was on before Christmas.
Anyhow enough of the complaining, its a lump sum of money that I would never be given again and along with my savings from exam marking etc.  I have a half decent little nest egg sat in my ISA.  The problem with it sitting in an ISA though is that while interest rates range from 0.05% to 3%, inflation is still around 2.8% so even with the interest my nest egg is gradually becoming worth less.  What I could buy for £4000 today is not the same as what I could buy for £4000 next year.  Remember when a fiver used to be able to buy a couple of drinks on a night out or a least down the local pub? Now we're lucky if we get one drink!

My plan B (one day maybe) has been to buy a few properties and its something I like doing, so I thought I might put my money down as a deposit on a buy to let. 
Houses in this neck of the woods are definitely cheaper than most places in the UK and with the college now being a university centre and attracting more and more students because of the lower fees there is definite potential in the area.  House prices are still on a downward trend too which hopefully means sellers are open to negotiation, although my attempts so far to buy a repossession property for only slightly less than the asking price have not gone well.  The estate agent told me himself that they had advised the asking price be reduced to less than I offered and that any other offers made had been considerably less.  The house needs a little work to say the least. 
The agent that called me back to inform me that my offer had been refused spoke encouragingly of how excited the sellers were (a bank) that I might offer and extra £2000 on top of what I had!  Hubby said I should have expressed my own excitement at the possibility of them accepting an offer of £2000 less than I had put forward :-)
I'll wait it out on this one and in the mean time continue the search.

In the meantime I have a couple of pieces of good news! :-)

A friend asked me if this was my new car when he saw it in the holiday pics and he wasn't too far wrong........






we went for the updated version :-)

Yes I know I'm redundant and only working very part time and no I am not using my redundacy pay to buy it!   This is hubby and I's first joint purchase, we traded in Tiglet (my 7 year old Tigra) which was doing about 35mpg, needed a new engine and only had two seats for this little baby.
She is tax free as she only has a 0.9litre engine, which also means she is very fuel efficient, so far its costing us £25 less to do about 350 miles, she has 4 seats so room for the boy and she's a convertible, the red roof is a soft top :-)

And how are hubby and I going to pay for it?  Well as I mentioned before hubby has a fulltime job (Housemaster at the private school) starting in September and my teaching hours at the school have been quadrupled! Thats sounds like loads, but 3.5hours X 4 isn't that huge, huge enough to live on though, especially as all our accommodation and food and bills are paid by the school :-)

We've known about the housemaster job for a while now and we were eager to get involved so offered to redecorate the boarding house (it was in desperate need!)
We have been knee deep in paint, literally at times, for a week now.  The place is huge and along with the painting there are a multitude of maintenance and cleaning jobs that we have found along the way so its been a slow slog and there's much more to do.  We also more or less live at the local B&Q and I am driving hubby mad again with paint colours and charts.  It does mean that since Itlay we haven't had much time to go out spending which is a bonus as the next 2 months, until we get paid a real wage in September, are going to be tight.
Even though its not our money filling B&Q's pocket we still have a budget to stick to and we are genuine scrimpers at heart.  So we have scrimped our way through redecorating a common room (lounge), 5 bedrooms and stairs, hall and landing in the boarding house, the lounge in our flat and hopefully a little more before we run out of the paint that cost us approximately £200.  This is in an old Victorian building where there is no such thing as a small room or a low ceiling so a little has gone an awfully long way.  The trade card that allows 10% off and the Dulux offer of 2 for £20 that is on at the moment have also helped, but it was mainly the decision to buy 10 litre tubs of white emulsion and the little 1 litre pots of posh colour and mix our own that saved us the most, halving the price of the ready mixed stuff.
Of course it is the school that has got the biggest bargain by having hubby and I working for free!

Hubby has taken me out for a couple of meals though, I think to thank me for my painting skills (he hates painting) and we managed to squeeze in a trip to York yesterday via the designer outlet which tempted me into a couple of purchases (at considerable discounts of course) and a mystery visit at my favourite York restaurant.

And so the situation so far:
Employment: Part time, but earning a decent wage with no bills to pay as long as I can find lodgers for my house.
Lodgers: 2 (1 to shortly depart and 5 potentials waiting for viewings)
Eating out: Hubby's treats and one mystery visit.
Hubby: 1 and we made it passed a year!
Dog: 1 (a little confused about where we disappear to every day and why we return covered in paint)
Stepson: 1
No Spend Days: Going well except the little trip to the designer outlet, DIY is keeping me away from any shops other than B&Q.

Budgets, Bargains, Sorrento, Volcanoes and the ice-cream incident.

Its about grabbing the bargains when you can and deciding not to pay full price for anything (well where possible)
Socks at the airport £3.33 instead of £8 from Next, they never have socks in the sale! No it wasn't an impulse buy, its a necesary purchase albeit hopefully not for the weather in Italy, but certainly for the Bristish weather, you can't wear wellies without socks!
My next plan is to buy a suit (for work in September) in the sale or from the Next outlet, I found a lovely jacket at the outlet in Doncaster for £9 but couldn't find anything matching for the bottom half so its clearly about timing and a bit of luck.  I quite like having something to search for though, the challenge makes shopping more fun (hubby might not agree).

Despite making a pack-up (packed lunch for anyone not from the Northern regions of England) for our journey to Birmingham airport via Doncaster (to drop the puppy off) we still stopped at the service station for a toilet brake and obviously snacks. £7 for a bag of mints, two packs of chewing gum and a choclate bar!!!
The airport wasn't much better with a couple of drinks at weatherspoons costing double what it normally does.  I think they were charging us extra for the comfy place to sit while we waited for the plane to board.
All my scrimping on the bigger purchases won't benefit me at all if I throw money away on the essentials, but maybe thats the best thing to do, think hard about the big purchases so I don't have to worry about the little things?

We had thought very carefully about our budget for the holiday, it was meant to be a cheap holiday, having spent a fortune on our honeymoon this time last year.  I know £500 each isn't as cheap as it gets, but for a 4 star hotel in Italy within walking distance of Sorrento its not bad.  We paid for B&B with the intention of being out and about most days.  We purchased the Artecard when we got to Sorrento (not as widely available as I was led to believe, but the shop in Sorrento train station had a few) The Artecard comes in several varieties, but we opted for the 3 day regional one for 27 euros.  This gave us free access to 2 archeological sites of our choice, Pompeii and the Herculaneum are 11 euros each so we used our freebies on those two.  It also included free travel on the Circumvesuviana which is local train that covers the area and has about 30 stops between Naples and Sorrento and is consequently very useful and fairly quick. A return journey to Naples is usually 8 euros so over 3 days we saved a bit.  Bus travel was also included, but I suffer badly from travel sickness on buses so that was never and option for us. 
The card lasts 3 days and once you've had your 2 free visits all others are half price and in Naples there are loads of places to see so you can make good use of it, although after seeing the Nouvo castle which was more of an exhibition center for Roman Catholic Art than an archeological site, we'd seen enough of the old and went for ice-cream (not payable with the Artecard) 
The ice-cream in Italy is of course delicious and available everywhere in numerous flavours, from Saturday through to Tuesday we had sampled quite a few and the heat on Wednesday in Naples definitely called for another. 
Have you ever had Nutella ice-cream? Me neither. I love Nutella though and it seems very populat in the Neopolitan Riviera so that was my chosen flavour.  'Solo' I was asked? 'Si, Grazie' I smiled and the vendor proceeded to pile the Nutella 'ice-cream'  into a cone that could barely contain it.  Passing it over I found it melted immediately and was not ice cream at all! Pure Nutella people! In a cone in 38 degree heat! I love chocolate, I love Nutella, but there was no way. 
I have been known in my slightly younger days to take a spoon to a small pot of Nutella and devour the lot over 30-60 minutes while watching TV, and the cone contained approximately that amount of Nutella.  Hubby having chosen a combo of Melon and Lemon Sorbets, openly laughed at me as the gooey chocolate slid down my hand while I tried in vain to eat some and keep the rest in or on the cone.
Eventually he helped out and relieved me of some of my burden, but I have to admit that even at 8 euros for two ice creams, I had to off load some of mine in the nearest bin.  I was left with a Nutella coated cone, which was actually quite pleasant, but Nutella is definitely off the menu for the foreseeable future, the thought of it takes my appetite away entirely.  Anyone who knows me will realise this must have been a traumatic experience.

Besides Ice-cream, Italy is of course very good at pizza and apparently the Sorrento area is where it came from (according to a local restauranteur named Claudio)
We sampled many varieties in various restaurants and it is definitely the cheapest thing to eat.  The pizzas are huge and depending on toppings choice and location of the restaurant the prices range for 4-9 euros. 

 The Vesuvio had to be the most impressive though, hubby tackled it solo the first time, but we shared the next time we had it and there is certainly enough for two.  Available from Taverna Rosso in St Agnello which is run by Claudio who is lovely and speaks excellent English having lived in London for 7 years and who also didn't mind us practising our Italian phrases, we found most other restaurant staff prefered to speak English not having the patience for our newly learnt Italian.

Another resturant in St Agnello that is worth a visit is Ciao Toto, which is much bigger than it looks, the space out the back is huge and much more romantic than the front room. 

Moonlight restaurant was our last night treat as it looked a little posher than the others and therefore we expected it to be more expensive, this wasn't the case, fantastic food and not badly priced.

Most restaurants do charge a cover charge per person though of between 1 and 2 euros which we thought was a bit cheeky and made us appreciate Claudio even more as he agreed with out feelings and doesn't add the cover charge.  This left us free to leave a tip that reflected our happiness with the meal.

Having climbed the pizza version, and visiting the after affects of the volcanos eruptions at Pompeii and the Herculaneum we had to go see the real thing.  So having become familiar with the Circumvesuvuana (train) we visited Herculaneum in the morning which sits in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, we planned on taking the shuttle bus up the the base camp of the volcano.  We had already been warned it was 10 euros each but we'd factored it in to our budget so that was fine.  On asking for our tickets we were told it would be 18 euros each! Apparently to include entrance fee (not covered by our Artecard becuase the volcano is an ecological site not an archeological one!)
Yes we are on a budget and yes we begrudge paying over the odds for anything, so we left the ticket office to discuss our options.
We walked and talked and somehow (neither hubby nor I are taking the blame for the 'idea') we started our walk up the mountain.
We had been told that from the station in Ercolano (where we were) it was a 20 minute shuttle bus ride up to Vesuvius base camp and approximately 10k.  We run 10k regularly without much issue so I was aware of the distance. 
After 3.5hours we reached base camp! I was not dressed for the occassion as you can see, shoes being the worst part of my attire.

 The heat (about 34 degrees) surprisingly did not get me down that much, we were at least prepared with a couple of litres of water (necessary on all our outings) but the incline, the shoes and the distance (more like 15k) combined to make me a very unhappy bunny after the first 2 hours.  I had however gone to far to turn back and so with a lot of huffing, puffing and complaining we made it all the way to the top, paid our 8 euros entry fee and looked into a Volcano. 
Hubby was completely unaffected by any of the elements, although I'd have liked to have seen him do it in my shoes!
Luckily on our way back down hubby who has no embarrassment gene decided to thumb a lift.  I stated very clearly that no one would be crazy enough to stop for us especially the huge air conditioned coaches and the 10 euros per person shuttle buses.  We were dusty and sweaty and I was not at my most gracious at this point, but by some miracle a car stopped when we were only a little way into our descent.  They asked where we were going and if we'd like a lift to which hubby answered and I professed my love to these nice young men who had taken pity on us.  I had no qualms about jumping into a car with two strangers and threw myself head first onto the back seat.  Luckily hubby followed and didn't decide to leave me to whatever fate I deserved after the hour or so of complaining how much my feet hurt.
My guardian angels turned out to be French, another stroke of luck as hubby is fluent, and so we chatted in  combination of French and English all the way to the bottom of the volcano. 
The French boys clearly thought we were absolutely nuts, but to them it was an adventure, picking up two crazy English people who they had apparently passed on the way up the mountain so must have been shocked to see us coming back down at the same time as them.
They dropped us in a town a top closer to Sorrento than the one we started our trek from which led to quite a bit of confusion and hubby and I trying out our limited Italian on many a local while we searched for the train station. 'Do've Vesuviana' did the trick although filled me with dread on first hearing it as it sounded very much like they were trying to sent us back up Mount Vesuvius and they all seemed to be pointing in an uphill direction.  Despite the rest my feet were still throbbing and I just wanted to find the train! Young and old, male and female all ten or so people we asked (we lacked confidence in our Italian more than their directions) were helpful and we got the the station thankfull for a long sit down on the train.  Although I now know to take wet wipes with me when I travel, archeological sites and dusty, combined with the heat and public transport its a recipe for feeling grimey.  I am learning though and eventually I will be an intrepid traveller, prepared for anything including sensible mountain worthy footwear.
The remainder of the holiday was a little more chilled out, sunbathing by the pool and exploring St Agnello where out hotel was located.  It was at this point that we went in search of a beach or rather a bathing platform as the coast is all high cliffs and no sand.  Our receptionist helpfully pointed us in the direction of the nearest 'beach' but informed us it would cost 10-15 euros per person to be allowed to use it! We went for a look, more out of curiosity than willingness to pay.  It literally is a platform, owned by a restaurant, with some sunloungers on it, not very beachy at all and the locals access a walkway that runs parallel and swim in the same little bay obviously without paying the extortionate prices.   We were tempted to join the locals, but the hotel pool just seemed more relaxing and convenient.

I was more than happy to find the British weather had allowed for a few days of summer on our return and have spent the last few days keeping my Italian tan topped up while helping to keep the boy (visiting for a few days) entertained. 
A trip to the local beach with the hubby, boy and puppy was probably the best thing we did over our few days.  The beach is literally 3 miles up the road, but we do not utilise it nearly as much as we should.  I think because it is so close and we could go whenever we want we don't appreciate it, whereas is was clear from the amount of traffic that many people from out of the are having seen the sunshine had packed their cars full of picnics, toys, deck chairs and the like and made the trip our way.  There are not many reasons to head out to this part of England and most of the year you only see people going in the opposite direction, but hubby informs me the beach has won awards for cleanliness so perhaps we should learn to love it and make better use of it.
We all had a fab afternoon and the weather was almost enough to convince me that holidays abroad are unnecessary, but we all know the weather won't last the week and already today the clouds have gathered shutting out the sun and threatening rain again.

The past two weeks have been a welcome break from the worries about work and life after redundancy.  I did try contacting the HR department to find out about my notice and pay, but to no avail so I decided to forget about it and to a certain extent I managed it.  I'm just going to wait and see if and how much money appears in my account at the end of the month.  Then maybe I'll have something to stress over, but in the meantime its not worth my time and effort trying to find out whats happening when I know they will only ignore me.  Slightly ironic that I have received a letter today in the name of the principal asking that keys, ID badge and any other college property in my possession be returned before I finish, although the letter also states that I finish on the 6th of July so they are clearly expecting miracles or don't know what day it is which would explain their inability to answer questions, emails or return calls, its confirmed they are all incompetent idiots!

I had other good news this week and an addition to my 'good life' but it will have to wait til next time as I promised a friend he would be the first to hear about it and its more of a show than a tell, so I'll post a piccie soon :-) 

Nearly

It all started on Wednesday when one of my colleagues text me to say she'd had a letter! Yes its the simple things that get us excited these days.  The letter stated that she was to attend a meeting the following day to discuss her request for voulntary redundancy.  They like to keep it vague even this late in the game. 
I subsequently made a call to another colleague that I knew would be in the office to see if this was a common theme, myself not having received any word although knowing that out posty doesn't make it this way until at least lunchtime.  I was reliably informed that emails and phone calls had been received by the rest of the department, but no letters.  The sentiment of each message was the same and all had meeting times for the following day.  As you can imagine I was starting to panick a little, perhaps I had been forgotten! By 2pm, still no post, I was thinking of phoning the post office to check if the posty had been down our street (can you do that by the way?) which would mean that I didn't have a letter. 
It was 2.30pm when a solitary letter dropped through the letter box, the puppy loudly informing me of its arrival.  A simple two paragraph letter with date, time, room number and person holding the meeting and person taking minutes.  Time and date being for the following afternoon, which of course I could not make, having duties at my other part time job that I refused to change on principle.  The phonecall I made to HR demonstrated their disgust at my lack of flexibility (how dare I not drop everything!)  Anyway they agreed an amendment and the meeting was set for 48 hours time rather than the measly 24 hours they intended on allowing.
As you can guess I kept in contact with my colleagues to gain updates on their progress and found that all that was entailed was 5 minutes whereby a the deputy prinicpal read out a letter either stating 'you are redundant, you have until tomorrow to appeal' or 'your voluntary redundancy request has been accepted, sort out the details with HR' As you can see my employer is very caring and supportive!  Why have they dragged it out this long if its that simple and what a waste of time and money, sending out letters to invite us to meetings and paying someone to read another letter in  the meeting!  We would have been more than happy with an email last week instead!
My meeting followed a very similar path to that of my colleagues, although I was relieved to find that I did not have to face the vice principal who proposed I cut my hours before Christmas or quit.  Instead my letter was read by one of the senior management team that I have only heard good things about, including the female staff expressing how 'lovely' they think he is.  He was pleasant throughout the 3 minutes it took to read the letter and answer my questions.  I was given a copy of the letter stating my notice of redundancy started that very same day and was sent on my way.
I may have to work my notice, I may not, I may have to write a course review, I may not, I may get paid my redundancy pay at the end of the month, I may not.  I don't know how much my redundancy pay is.  Can I get any answers to resolve all the questions I have? No, all staff are in mandatory training for three days! So I haven't returned to work since being given my notice, neither has anyone else, except the one member of the department that managed to stay employed.
I still feel like I am waiting, the situation is unresolved and will probably remain so until they pay me what they think I am owed (there's no way I will get what I think I am owed!)
I did however have cause to count my blessings again this week.  The long drawn out process has been depressing, infuriating and stressful, but for one of the lodgers I imagine finding out completely out of the blue that the job you have had since Christmas is now redundant and you need to move back to Sheffield (good job she didn't buy a house here as planned) is much more shocking and upsetting.  And again at least I have another part time job as back up, although I am one lodger down when really I need to be one lodger up so we can move into hubby's new work place without worrying about the bills at my house.
This has meant searching for new lodgers again via easyroommate.com which has been very useful in finding all the lodgers so far.  Its a bit of a potluck game though I'm afraid.  They sound perfectly good in their profiles, work full time, in their late twenties, looking for somewhere quiet etc.  Then they turn up to view the room.......nearly 7 foot tall, nearly has to duck to get through the front door, responds to everything I say with a slow drawled 'okay', informs me he works at the hospital doing 'X-Rays' thats Radiography right? Takes several years of training and a degree? This guy seemed like he'd had too much radiation!  He also wanted somewhere to store his 'two very expensive bikes' and when I said we had no storage he suggested that he could just take them upstairs into his room on a daily basis! Not sure if you've noticed but its been raining for the past month?  I have to take my wellies off at the front door when I get back from walking the puppy, can you imagine the amount of mud he would be trailing upstairs (carpeted staris).  Needless to say I did not offer him the room and we are still in search of a lodger or two.

On a completely different note.....the magic non-chip nail varnish I raved about last time, lulled me into a completely false sense of security. Having a posh event to go to in aid of the other part time employer, I brought my lovely pink evening dress out from the back of the wardrobe ans the pink and silver shoes were retrieved from the bottom of the shoebox pile. I felt however that pink dress, pink shoes and pink nail varnish would be a little too much pink. Silver nail varnish would be fab though right? And surely Boots No.7 silver nail varnish would be unchippable (made up word?)
Lovely colour, but chipped with 24 hours, and I paid full price for this one! I have persevered though just because I like the colour, but I am utterly disappointed that my faith is broken. I have receieved two £5 off vouchers for No.7 this week (one through having a £10 eye test, more about that in a minute) though so do I risk a different colour and hope that the quality of the silver is just a blip or am I going to have to expand my one small makeup bag a little with some eye shadow or something else that I will probably only use once a month?
I opted for another nail varnish (what can I say I'm an optimist) and a lovely silver eye shadow, that I commit to using at least once a week instead of forgetting about it in the bottom of my makeup bag.

So the eye test. Well I know I have a dodgy left eye. I had an eye test about 10 years ago where the receptionist was amazed that I am a driver and that the optician had not insisted I wear glasses!

I only had a slight perscription and it didn't bother me. Its been bothering hubby though, I've had headaches for the past couple of weeks ranging from mild to horrendous, probably brought on by the amount of time spent at the computer. Its my subsequent complaining that has bothered the hubby not any reluctance to perform my marital duties (I know how your minds work!) so when I received a Boots voucher for a half price (£10) eye test after having a headache that was so bad I felt physically sick, I booked a test. The perscription has worsened from 0.25 to 0.75 (that may mean more to you than me) and the lenses actually made things considerable clearer. So I have to buy some specs (I have a hard enough time choosing sunglasses) and hubby is hoping for the sexy secretary look and since he's helping me choose he will probably get his way.
Buying spectacles for the first time is difficult! Glasses don't look natural on my face and they are sooo expensive! I dragged hubby round a couple of the normal options, trying on pretty much every pair and hating nearly all of them, although hubby had a few favourites.  Finally I found a pair that looked like they belonged on my face, they looked like my glasses, not a pair I'd tried on for a laugh or borrowed from a trendy friend.  And best news of all they were only £40!
Thats until I took them to the nice lady at the desk.  Not £40 at all, £81 actually and £116 if I want the anti-glare finish.  Apparently the extra is for the lenses.  So does that mean they would let me take the frames with no lenses for £40? I was tempted to ask, but I'm not the confrontational type (usually)
We left the shop, me very disappointed, hubby wondering how many more shops this would mean he'd have to stand in while I tried on the entire stock. 
Its been a week since the eye test and still no glasses, the marking is finished so my time on the laptop is considerably less and headaches so far = zero (touch wood) so I am not in a hurry to get them, but I am still on the look out.  The next options are Tesco and Asda or online.  Online being the cheapest option, but its not the same as being able to try them on.  I just don't see the point in paying around £100 for a pair of glasses that I only need to wear now and again and knowing my track record with sunglasses, will either get scratched or sat on at some point.

And so the situation so far:
Employment: Redundant! Marking finished. Just 3.5 hours a week at my other part time job and that finishes today.  High hopes for more hours in September though.
Lodgers: 2 (1 to shortly depart)
Eating out: could have been every day for the past week, but that would have meant a lot of extra running required to burn of the calories so we stuck to 3.
Hubby: 1 (anniversary tomorrow!)
Dog: 1 (still in very good health although a little disobedient at the moment, two frisbees lost in the past couple of weeks and no one is owning up to it)
Stepson: 1 (coming to stay later this month, we are going camping, a first for me!)
No Spend Days: Not bad, a new dress and new shoes courtesy of the many and varied sales that are on at the moment.