A frugal life is an easy life!

I was reading Average Joe's blog today and the question was asked about companies who you owe money to ringing you at work, on mobiles, etc.

The solution is quite simple:

Write to the company, politely, inform them that as from the date you write, all correspondance must be IN WRITING ONLY!

Under the Administration of Justice Act 1972 - telephone calls and doorstep visits by any company, who have been instructed in writing to cease them, are illegal.
A legal case is one that is against the law, and as such, should the company continue to call you on the telephone or visit your home, you have a legal case for walking into your local police station and bringing charges against them.

What money companies do not inform you about, is that to trade in their field, they require a consumer credit license, if they are found to be breaking the law, they can be deemed unfit to hold a consumer credit license and as such, be prevented from trading.

This includes debt collection agencies and high street banks and building societies!

Another benefit of only being contacted in writing, is that the companies tend to be careful what they say to you. If it is in wiriting, their advisors cannot flout the law and lead you up the garden path, also they have to keep accurate account notes. I have lost count of how many times that I have contacted a company and then found days later that nothing of what has been said or promised has been put on the customer's records.
Sometimes, I have found that the call has not even been recorded!

Anything in writing can be used before a magistrate in your defence (unless it has "without prejudice" written on the top), so it maybe a long winded process, but it can protect you.

Under the Administration of Justice Act 1972, phone calls and doorstep visits are considered to be "Harrassment of a would be debtor."
Send the company concerned a letter, by recorded delivery and after a week or so, all telephone calls and doorstep visits will stop.

Of course it won't sort out any of your problems, but it will make your life a little less stressful!
Good luck.

The new "armed forces" action man figure (they always were armed forces!) that were selling in Asda and Tesco before Christmas, for £15.00 (same price? How unusual... *monopoly* disguised as price matching - both equally over priced!) are now being sold at Tesco for £8.75 each.

"Helping customers to spend less" is the slogan that's plastered everywhere in store.

If they can sell the product at this price now and make a profit on it, it just shows what their profit margin was when the same stock was on sale for £15.00 in the run up to Christmas!

Good value, is only good value when the price to the customer reflects the cost of buying in the item to the seller.
Good value is not, what supermarket's want us to think, when their prices compare only to another supermarket!

Profit wise, "every little helps" should have Tesco put at the end of it!

We had problems with Huggies size 1 nappies in a multi pack, with leaking at the sides of the nappies. Several changes of clothes later it was apparent that it was not just the odd nappy, nor was it the way we were putting them on.

So when we picked up a box of size 3 huggies nappies, I was a bit sceptical, seeing as there are two types of size 3 huggies nappies comes in. Never the less we decided to try them.
They do in deed keep baby dry, but leakage is a major issue again.

Out of the 102 nappies in the box, we have used about 70 of them - more than 20 of these have leaked number 2s up the waist and out of the legs!
This has resulted in 20 changes of clothes - when the washing and changing is taken into account, any "value" disappears and it starts costing more money.

It is no good having a "super dry" nappy when baby has to be changed every hour or hour and a half, once the number 1 fills up any of the nappy it pushes it away from baby's body and any number 2s that follow go straight out the sides and waist, resulting in a full change of clothes for baby.
Imagine our frustration when we have changed baby 30 minutes before going out, only to find she has leaked all over her clothes!

We wouldn't recommend this product as it is not good "value" and does not fit baby securely when baby has had a number 1.
They do make another "size 3 huggies nappy" in a red box, so we may try them to see if they are any better, more than likely we will try a different brand as we have had problems with both size 1 and size 3 huggies nappies and no longer trust them.

All the toys and teddys, all the people in and out, all the music and dvds, all the animals walking past and the noise, all of which make no difference at all to sprog2.

When she sees her feet, that's the centre of her world!

I grew up in the 1970s with the addage that eating everything in moderation is good.
We never had central heating until into the 1980s, we had ice on the insides of windows on winter mornings, then again we rarely knew anyone with asthma.
We ate everything as kids, worms, dirt, things we had dropped on the floor. We drank corporation pop in the hot summer days, lived for the school holidays on jam butties until teatime.
Allergies were rare in the heady days of my youth, the theory that was the norm then was that if you were not exposed to or fed things, then you could in theory develop allergies to them, much the same as the body is given innoculations and builds a resistance.
Sprog1 was brought up with the same theory during the 1990s, with no ill effects.

So with sprog2 fast approaching the age of solids (how fast does the time go!) an appointment with the health visitor to "advise" us about moving from breast fed to bottle fed then on to solids.

Health visitor lands and lectures us on the dos and don'ts of baby feeding.
It goes without saying that dairy products are no gos, but most things that we eat can be put into a blender and fed in small amounts to sprog2.
Then we were given "advice" that I questioned immediately - asking how if kids are not exposed to certain foods, can they build up a tolerance to them?
The answers were contradictory!

Wheat:
The advice we were given was not to feed weetabix, until after the baby is 12 months old - as babies don't build up resistance, they "instead develop allergies to it!"
So imagine my surprise when a week later I am walking the aisles in Asda, looking at packets of baby rice, I see that recommended baby rice for a 6 month old baby, has wheat proteins added to them!
So who is correct? The government advice via our health visitor or the food company that has been feeding babies for decades, stating that wheat protein benefits our baby from as early as 6 months old?

Honey:
Now I knew this one, babies should not be given honey as it does not go through sterilisation processes, the health visitor confirmed this stating that children under 2 years old should not be given honey.
Today, whilst out shopping, we picked up some Johnson's baby soap - when we got it home it reveals it has an expiry date on it?
Soap that has a shelf life?
As it contains honey!
So who is correct? Official guidelines of the government via our health visitor or Johnson's a company that has been specialising in baby products since well before I was born?

It is not advised to let our baby eat honey, but it is ok to smear her in a product that contains honey?

It is a minefield for parents these days with all this conflicting advice, you pin down a health visitor to give a straight answer and they simply cannot, so what chance do parents of babies have?