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22 August 2024 (Thursday) - Money

Last night I was looking at quotes for car insurance. This morning my Facebook feed was full of adverts for insurance companies. There’s a sign of our times.
With nothing happening on-line I took the dogs for a walk. We went up to Longbeech Woods again. The road to the car park is the narrowest you ever did see, and in the car park was a humungous camper van and a smaller one too. There wasn’t a lot of space left. Apparently that car park is on some web site used by camper van people who are too mean to pay campsite fees which using a proper campsite incurs.
As I said a few days ago, for the most part these campers aren’t doing much harm and if I had one I’d want to save on campsite fees too. But having one van taking up half the car park is taking the piss, isn’t it?
 
Yesterday I mentioned that a new geocache had gone live in the woods. It gave us a target for today’s walk. We walked a mile and a half to where it was and I spent far too long hunting for something which wasn’t really that hard to find. And then the rain started. And all the dogs tried to roll in something foul. Fortunately they all missed, but Bailey then ate whatever it was. For all that she is smallest she is certainly the most disgusting.
There was then an entertaining few seconds as we passed the half-way point. Bailey launched a play-attack on Morgan, and they had a play fight. They do this from time to time and to anyone listening it sounds as though they are trying to murder each other. Pogo heard it and came running up shouting… and then was completely stumped. Which one should he tell off? Which one should he protect? He barked loudly at both and then found himself having to fend off a play-attack from Treacle.
We walked for three and a bit miles and in that time didn’t see anyone else at all. And the rain soon stopped.
 
We came home. I made a cuppa and phoned the insurance people. The last time I phoned them I was on hold for over an hour before I got to speak to someone. Today the phone was answered in about twenty seconds. That was an improvement. I told the nice lady that I’d been sent the details for the policy renewal details for my car’s insurance. I told her that her company was planning on putting the cost of the insurance up by over two hundred and fifty quid. I told her that was too much, and that I’d been on Go Compare and had quotes for two hundred quid less than they were proposing. She asked all sorts of questions and blathered on… after a while I stopped her. I told her she was blathering meaningless words. The bottom line was that I wanted a serious reduction in their price or I was going elsewhere. She said she needed three minutes to review my data (oo-er!)
After two minutes she offered me their top-of-the-range policy which included pretty much everything her company had to offer for less than a tenner more than I was currently paying. Not two hundred and fifty quid more. Ten quid more. I’ve mentioned car insurance renewals before; both on here and in conversation with friends and colleagues. I’ve met so many people who don’t look at the price of the insurance when it comes up for renewal but just pay it. A ten-minute phone call saved me two hundred and fifty quid this morning.
And here’s another saving… Leave yourself short of money for one year and put as much as you can aside. Then in the next year pay for your insurance policy in one go rather than paying it monthly. You effectively save two months’ money if you can get the cash together to pay in one go. Having left myself skint a few years ago I now pay car and house insurance in one yearly amount and save quite a bit.
I’m very mean…
 
I then drove into town. Yesterday our holiday money arrived. Where we’re going next month is a tad off-grid. The locals will want American dollars for anything we might want to buy and aren’t going to be overly keen on giving out much change. Consequently low denomination notes is what we want. The hundred dollar bills the bank sent yesterday are of no use to us.
I went to the bank. The chap there said that maybe their branch in Maidstone might be able to change them. I pointed out that I was in Ashford, not Maidstone. He suggested the bureau de change in the shopping centre. I went there, and after the silly old bat at the front of the queue stopped showing off to her mates I explained my story to the woman behind the counter. She immediately knew which bank I was with. She said that bank’s foreign currency people always send out high denomination notes and their local branch always send people to her. She said she’s not supposed to change notes from one denomination to another, but said she’d change up half of them.
I then went to Santander and NatWest; neither of whom dealt in foreign currency. One of them suggested two other places I might try. Other than saying that both involved a car trip I won’t say where. One place wasn’t interested at all. The other was brilliant. They too weren’t supposed to change notes from one denomination to another, but when I suggested I sold the dollars to them, then bought back low denomination notes they realized I wasn’t trying to pull a fast one, and they swapped the money for me.
 
By the time I’d been all over the place and finally got back home the day was half gone. We had a cuppa and scoffed the cakes I’d brought home for lunch, then I set about solving a geo-puzzle which looked as though we would be walking past it later (we did). You can see the puzzle here; in theory the solution is obvious. In practice it took some farting about. But after half an hour (or so) I had the thumbs-up from the checker.
 
“er indoors TM eventually finished work. Despite a rather windy evening we took the dogs down to the Leas at Folkestone for a little walk. And with walk walked we came home. I fed the dogs, “er indoors TM went to the kebab shop. We scoffed kebabs whilst watching the second episode of “Celebrity Race Across the World”.
I took a rather strong dislike to some chap being a prissy princess refusing to take a night bus.

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