Holiday Mode: On

I am finally on holidays until the end of the year (insert wild applause). It means I can finish sorting out my flat, which has been a bit neglected and has suffered from my rampant procrastination.

Yesterday was my Christmas breakfast party with work, making it a really frugal morning with a delicious cooked breakfast served up by the managers. I also got a lovely Christmas gift of a years' subscription to Headspace, which has stacks of meditation and mindfulness podcasts. They also gifted me some Sony bluetooth headphones (!!!!!!!) which I was very excited about, but as I don't need those myself I'm going to make sure they end up under someone else's Christmas tree.

Unfortunately in the afternoon I realised that there was no lunch happening. I think I sort of expected morning tea to be a feature. But no, and it meant I had to buy lunch. I'll admit I was lazy and shelled out the £3 for a "meal deal" meaning that along with my sandwich was a packet of Doritos and a bottle of Coke, two items I realistically could have done without. Oh well, I'm excusing it by saying it was my last day of work for the year.

I have absolutely zero excuse for what I did on the way home. I went into a pound shop and emerged £14 poorer. These shops are a trap, I tell you! Sure, I can pretend I needed all the things I bought, but really, I could have done without most of them. Except the chocolate. That was an essential.

In other news, after a tip from an EE rep, I got Experian on the phone to ask about my missing credit score. The nice lady on the phone did something magic, and my credit score suddenly appeared. This missing credit score was probably the reason the bank knocked me back for a home loan earlier in the year. I have a rubbish score mostly due to me not having lived here very long, but it's a score, which is better than no score at all. Within two minutes I had applied for and been approved for a credit card at 56% p.a. interest, and I have applied at a second bank as well, which will let me know shortly. (Danger danger Will Robinson: don't go nuts with credit or loan applications, as the applications themselves could harm your credit rating.)

I can hear the gasps. No, I don't plan to spend that credit. I am not crazy - 56% interest for goodness' sake!!! - I simply need some way to begin improving that score, and credit cards are all I can really do for now. I did read the fine print and provided I pay out the balance in full every month, I should have no fees or interest. So I plan to actually load it with my own money in advance then use it while shopping.

PS. Considering how many of my posts are arriving late, I'm dropping back to posting twice a week.