With spring time just about to start I am getting ready for spring to start in the garden.  This will be the first year that I have really had a garden to make nice.  Last year we spent the whole time getting it ready, putting down a new lawn, getting rid of all the rubble/sand and building a few raised beds.  Now it is time to reap the rewards, we are planning to grow loads of different vegetables and fruit.

Not knowing much about gardening I have just discovered summer bulbs.  I thought bulbs were just for giving colour in the spring time with all the daffodils.  Now in the shops there are loads of different bulbs to give your garden colour in the summer.  I have been good so far and have only brought 4 packs of them, but I want to pack my garden full.  I am just waiting to plant them now, it seems to snow nearly every week at the moment so I don’t think its the right time yet.

We still have quite a big shopping list for the garden (30 metres of fencing, a shed and green house) and on a limited budget we are not going to get very far.  Hopefully we are going to get a small cheap green house from B&M.  It only costs £15 and stand just over waist height but should be good for tomatoes and chillies.

I think this year should be good, we learnt a lot from last year (you learn a lot from failure) so hopefully this year we will be able to have courgettes, peppers, pea, beans, carrots, pumpkins and even watermelons.  We will be using the book from Carol Klein from Gardeners world so hopefully everything will turn out OK.

I used to have a number of different accounts with Lloyds TSB including a cash ISA account, and a current account, but I was a victim of identity fraud which cleared my current account out completely. Rather than noticing this unusual activity my bank proceeded to charge me £35 every time a direct debit was refused.  Appalled at how they handled it I closed my accounts; the cherry on the awful cake was how rude they were about that.

Before I brought my house I also had NS&I, child bonus bonds, which my parents had made when I was little.  The return on these was spectacular and I will defiantly be investing in some myself if or when I have children of my own.  The major benefit is that all returns on Children’s Bonus Bonds are completely tax-free for both child and parent.

The best thing to do if you are looking for any kind of account is do your research.  Check out money supermarket websites and keep up to date with news about savings and probably more importantly ask your friends and family for your good local banks, customer service is worth a lot.

My mum has decided she would quite like the property, because she is nearing retiring age and my grans house was a bungalow, which my granddad had built.  I think it is a great idea, as it is a low maintenance and well built. The only problem is them getting the money together, at their age I think they might find it hard to get a mortgage lending deal.  I think it’s time to check out some mortgage forums as it is always a good idea to know what you are talking about when you are dealing with people in a particular business. 

Since they bank with nationwide, they have looked into remortgaging with them.  This is probably the best option if they want to keep both houses, but I really think once they are settled in their new home they should sell up or rent their current one. 

The worst thing they can do is sell their property quickly for the money, like many websites and adverts suggest.  There are obvious reasons why someone would want to do that, for example if they are in real financial trouble, but I don’t think it’s a good idea unless absolutely necessary.

Before all that though, both houses need to be thoroughly cleared of all the excess clutter that has accumulated over the decades. It’s amazing how many old magazines and books two houses can hold, car boot sales,  EBay, and charity shops here we come!

Now im looking forward to full blown summer, it’s always been my favourite season, mainly because there is so much to do.  In winter many attractions and theme parks close down for the season, people are more likely to stay in; there are fewer parties (minus Christmas of course) and no weddings. 

In summer everything is bustling and alive.  There are festivals, town shows and fairs, lots of things to do in the garden (we are going to try and grow our own vegetables again this year), and sometimes it’s just great to laze about in the sun with a barbeque

My wife and I made a deal this year to buy the Merlin annual pass as a treat and try and go to every attraction on the list in a year.  The attractions includes Chessington, Legoland, Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, London eye, Dungeons, Warwick castle, Madame Tussauds and the sea life centres, so it should be brilliant. 

A few years ago we brought a zoo pass from Wobern safari park, which was very close to where we lived.  Not only could you get into Wobern for free but loads of other zoos too. It was a brilliant buy as we calculated the ticket paid for itself about 4 times over because we went so much. Sometimes we just went for an hour or two, to have a picnic, but it never got boring. 

Summer for the twentysomethings, as I am, also means weddings as our school friends settle down.  This year we are taking a groom to be zorbing,  as part of his stag weekend (dressed in womans clothing of course) then we are all going quad biking I can’t wait. 

Bring on the summer sun!

Fridays are my favourite day at work, not only because we are facing the weekend, people always bring in a few foodie treats, but mainly because I get to leave a little bit earlier.  This means I get to avoid the hellish Friday night traffic before it gets really bad.  This Friday completely without notice we were told we had a last minute meeting and had to stay late.  I was gutted, no early start to the weekend and a whole load of sitting still in traffic.  As always on a Friday I was expected to meet some friends in the pub, I was over two hours late and completely furious by the time I finally arrived.

While I was ranting about me stupid job and my rubbish day, I realised my companions were looking a little uncomfortable and I guessed I had put my foot in it somewhere.  It transpired that one of my friends was drowning his sorrows after unexpectedly losing his job that very day. I have heard plenty on the news about companies closing and people losing their jobs but it luckily hadn’t effected me personally until that moment. 

This was always going to be bad news, but it was made even worse by the fact that he had recently purchased his first house, which he has only just got looking like he wants.  Two years ago back when property prices were falling, he found it really easy to get some good mortgages deals and jumped at the chance to be a home owner.  Now he is really regretting that decision as he is not the kind of person to bury his head in the sand, he will not be able to handle any repossession problems.  

Needless to say, I have had better nights as we were all pretty down.  We spend the evening thrashing out ideas as to how he could avoid repossession, but short from getting another job fast (not an easy thing at the moment) we were not much help. 

January is of course the month for the day dubbed Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year.  On that Monday the radio was full of how it was scientifically proven to be the most depressing day.  It sounds strange that scientists would want to prove something like that but then they always seems to be proving something strange. Well it turns out to be a load of rubbish made up by a PR company for a holiday company who paid a scientist to put his name to it.

It is understandable why people may be depressed, during Christmas there is a lot of pressure to spend a lot of money and many people end up with a lot of debt on their credit card with no chance to clear it any time soon.  I can imagine debt advice companies being  run off their feet at the moment.

I think at the moment there is a lot of advice for people about their money.  I think we need it as well, we seem to live in a generation that does not know how to manage money as if we want something there is always a company that is willing to give out unsecured personal loans to anyone who asks.  In fact the companies actively look for customers, I used to get automated phone calls from a debt company who were very concerned about my debt problems and were going to give me another loan to solve them.

I still think that to be in debt is quite a foolish thing to do, and can be avoided.  Mortgages are an unavoidable thing, but if you let your self get into unaffordable debt though personal loans then the answer should be to write it off and pay off only what you can afford.  You should be forced to sell all valuables like flat screen TV’s and expensive cards and then pay off what they can afford of what is left.  This month I have lived on very little because I have had to and with websites like This is money around it makes it much easier.

The snow has finally gone, it was a real surprise looking out of the window to see green on Saturday.  It feeling like ages since there has been any colour in the outside world.  We opened the curtains and were amazed it is like spring has arrived, out bulbs are already emerging and it is actually a nice temperature to be outside.

We have decided to do some spring cleaning early this year to get it done and out of the way.  We already have 3 big boxes of stuff to go to the charity shop, a big pile for Ebay and three big bin liners of rubbish.  There is something very nice about getting rid of all the junk to give us some space.  In our house we are both hoarders of things, we have never thrown much away so over the years we have accumulated an unbelievable about of junk.

We have found loads of  things we never knew we had, a case of unlabelled CD that were full of all our music all ordered in folders, something that we haven’t had since my old computer died.

Next weekend as long as the weather stays ok we are going to tackle the garden and get it all neat and tidy for when we start growing out veg.  Growing veg is our new thing for the year (we had a go last year, but I am ignoring that because of the major failure it was).  We still have leaves from last year in the beds and now everything has died down its our chance to clean behind the fence in our garden where people throw junk.

With all the fresh veg and living on a budget very heading towards the Good Life.

With my wife still out of work and not getting any benefits, and me not getting paid a lot budgeting has become a big thing in my house.  It isn’t as bad as I thought it would be, we have always been careful with money, but now if we don’t need it to live we don’t buy it.  One of the biggest changes we have made is not going to supermarkets.  They are terrible for getting us to buy things we didn’t really need because they are on offer at the end of the aisles tempting us.

I think that the most important thing with keeping your money in check is the finacial planning you put in place for yourself.  Making sure you know how much your bills are going to come to every month.  I love my online banking for this, I pay all my bills by direct debit so by just logging on to my account I can see all my monthly outgoings in one simple list. From that I know how much I have to spend on other things like food and petrol.

The problem I have at the moment is that I am breaking even every month, giving me no extra to save for other expenses such as car insurance or paying more than the interest on the money I borrowed for the house.  I know it is an extra expense but I am considering some form of protection for my finances just in case the unforeseen happens.  I have looked at cover for critical illness and something new to me called mortgage life insurance but I haven’t decided yet.  I think it is important to make sure that you get the right cover, not just the right price, which is why when it came to renewing my home insurance I looked at the latest reviews.

When I do actually have to go shopping or I am looking for a new financial product I always look at the Money Supermarket website.  I get the email update and it is always packed full of good ideas and the latest offers.

What ever happens I know that there is always ways to save money, you just have to want to do it.

It’s that time of year again where it snows and causes havoc. I personally love snow and always have, but what I don’t enjoy is the slushy, icy aftermath of a lot of snow and the inevitable horror stories of people stranded and cold. 

I don’t know how many times people need to be told but there are always reports about people falling through thin ice.  A local school had to get all the emergency services out to two boys who had made it to an island in the centre of a nearby lake and couldn’t get back, this obviously put everyone who came to help in danger. 

I work in a school and there is always the possibility that the school will be closed to pupils.  This is usually followed by various complaints about ‘a little snow brings everything to a holt’ and how it has disrupted their parents work.  I understand that it must be hard to change plans etc, but the only reason that schools close is due to them being sued by parents for things like children breaking bones on ice in the playground. The schools really are just watching their backs, quite rightly.

The good things about the snow is it makes you feel like a kid again.  There is something about it that makes you want to have snow ball fights and go sledging.  The night before I was supposed to go back to work it snowed and we had at least 10cm of snow on the floor.  I should have gone to bed ready for the next day, instead we took a tray from the kitchen down to the local field and went sledging.

Unfortunately now the snow seems to be melting so the chances of having another day off work are decreasing.  I just hope it snows heavily over night.

It seems now that there is even more delay as there is now a new for sale sign up in the garden with a new company so it could be that the owners have got fed up with waiting and put it back on the market.

I was surprised to read that property prices during 2009 actually went up 6% over the whole year. After what seemed a terrible time for the economy one area is recovering. I don’t think anyone knows will happen to property prices in 2010 none of the experts seem to agree. Some seem to think that we are going to see the improvement continue whiles others say we could see a decrease in house prices by 10%.

It is expected that interest rates could be frozen at 0.5% for 2010. You would have thought that because interest rates are low, then the rates for mortgages would be low. But the greedy banks are just using the low interest rates as a way of making more money. The high interest rates could put home buyers & property buyers off during the year. During 2009 property prices were driven up by the lack of supply, but with the prices higher more people could decide to sell. If this happens prices may dip during 2010, I think the best thing to do is watch the people that invest in property as it is their livelihood to know what is going on.