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Ministrone soup. The best frugal soup ever! I mean, who ever uses up all the celery, cabbage and peppers. Add a potato, slightly bendy carrot and one of those soggy tomatoes that is past its roll around date...handfull of whatever pasta and tada...with a few extra flourishes from the spice cupboard you have a pan of comforting lovliness. I like it with a bit cheese in the bowl that sticks to the back of the spoon and has to be scraped of with the teeth!

agree, you need to be eagle eyed but it really is worthwhile taking the time to browse the aisles. This week I stocked up on litre fruit juice boxes...by comparing prices in the 2 biggies near me where they both had ' buy one get one free offers' on opposing brands...I now have my favorite juices providing me with 50% of my daily vitamin intake for the next 2 months at half price. Granted I had to visit the shop 4 times in order to be able to carry it all back, but hey, I am unemployed and didnt mind the exercise! On the subject of price comparing, I dont know about where you live, but here we get a load of adverts in the mail from supermarkets about what they will have on special offer over the coming weeks. Read meticulously...cross reference if necessary... before sending those annoying circulars to the papiermache box. build your meal plans for the coming few weeks around whats on offer if the deal is good ( beware, dont be sucked in by all the rubbish you dont use or need ), and try to make the meal plans work together so that you aren't left wondering if that half a bag of peppers will taste good blended with those bulkbuy cherry yoghurts!

mm, also wondered that. thanks.

update...they just wouldnt pay it...account was 7quid short...guess its good in a way as it means I dont go overdrawn....well more than i already am! FB_Addon_TelNo{ height:15px !important; white-space: nowrap !important; background-color: #0ff0ff;}

Do you mean the sig block in my Profile? if so just checked, there is nothing in it. Still stumped.

YAY GADS! this company is driving me absolutely up it! Phoned back today as agreed, the plan that I was offered last week is , according to the supervisor, no longer in operation...when asked he said that they no longer offer this kind of repayment plan as of yesterday! how very convenient. He insisted on offering me something else. All I want is to be able to actually pay this bill..pay off the money. They can help me by reducing the amount of interest and not adding any more charges ...but that is just my opinion, he apparently has no authority to do this ...but what he can do is offer me a probationary period of 2 months at 27GBPpayment with normal interest and normal charges ( 12GBP carried from last month for late payment) and then the following months at a reduced interest rate but no extra charges.. which means I accrue close to 200 in charges and interest on my account in those 2 months , so in this case...after the 6 month period ( that I was offered last week ) I will owe them 200 more than I do today. I, in my lack of understanding, fail to see how this helps me pay them the money that I owe. Can anyone offer enlightenment?

Am guessing this is some tech problem as I cant get rid of it. Check out the bottom of my post, this addon is appearing in my last 3 posts and is proving to be un-deletable. What is it and how do I tell it to " Bog-off!" ?

you mean Barclaycard from Barclays? According to my Barclaycard account nothing has changed...gonna call when I get the sleep out my eyes and the fifth cuppa down my neck! Re the parrachute account ...have no wages, no benefits etc being paid , but could do with another account simply for the sake of still having one, need one that i can apply for and run online as am currently 'of no fixed abode'...hmm, the options are narrowing by the letter! FB_Addon_TelNo{ height:15px !important; white-space: nowrap !important; background-color: #0ff0ff;}

so I have a barclaycard and, as explained in another thread, approached them last week over several reasons one of which was being unable to meet the current minimum payments, they said I needed to make the minimum this month then could arrange for a reduced payment for 6 months, they said I could let them know my decision by tomorrow. So, in the meantime I have tried to make the minimum payment for this month but my payment was declined by my bank. This is the first time the bank have refused to make a payment to my card. Co-incidentaly my debit -card account is with barclays. Is this a coincidence or do they contact each other when someone indicates a case of need. Do they do this? ( Although unable to check the bank account I was sure I had money in there to make this payment.) FB_Addon_TelNo{ height:15px !important; white-space: nowrap !important; background-color: #0ff0ff;}

yep, only payments to be added to this account in the last 18months is from ppi ( which they were supposed to remove last year and didnt) and interest, then more recently charges for exceeding the limit. they said can start by refunding this for the last 12 months...will wait for the proof before I count the chickens though....they still want the full whack for this month and for last months (missed payment)which they are still calculating on the basis that I was exceeding my limit and paying for the ppi. What I was wondering about though is, although I realise my credit history is already marred, I have more or less been attempting to keep up with minimum payments...so does accepting a plan do me damage in the long run re future banking options/lending/mortgage etc or is the odd missed payment actually more damaging. is an agreed plan a win win situ for me and the bank and I should jump at the chance? Frankly, getting credit was always an issue even though till last year I had always worked, payed my dues and had a healthily active account with the bank, so actually I think that thoughts on credit scores and rating are really sometimes a waste of grey matter anyway! But I would at somepoint maybe like to have my own home...and I dont mean when Im 90 and believe me the clock is ticking!

okay need something with internet banking primarily, and really only for bill paying purposes

lol, thats hilarious, laughing my socks off! You think anyone will notice that Im a novice??????? hahahahaha, nowt like a good laugh!

So the lady on the phone ( yes I phoned) said I should speak to their department that deals with helping people make payments, by reducing the interest rate for a stated period or accepting a much lower monthly repayment that normal. The lady in said department wasnt quite so open I felt. She wanted to know what I wanted them to accept, but seemed a little confused as to what she could offer me...she threw about terms like full settlement, partial reduction of interest , probationary periods but wasnt really very clear about anything, and when I asked about the implications for me if I went this route she was well and truly garbled. So I said I needed time to consider..but basicly I meant to find someone who could inform me a little better. I have a few days before payment is due to get a more clear understanding. Who can tell me anything about these arrangements ...or even what my options are for such arrangements? The debt is not enormous...under 3000, but big enough to be kicking my po, and I want this stress out of my life. I currently have no personal source of income and really nothing in the way of assets ( dont think holey socks count).

I know, the position is completely compromised by the time lapse...life is sometimes rubbish and you have to prioritise and to be honest, strange as it seems other things had to take priority over money at the time. Really what I want is something from the bank is acknowledgement that they failed to act to help me , that they denied me access to what was going on with my account ( they outrightly refused to tell me where the money had gone) and a thorough investigation and satisfactory explanation into how a mistake could occur. I am not expecting much more than that to be honest...although a little compensation for the sheer inconvenience of the immediate aftermath wouldnt go amiss and, in my much humbled opinion, is not really too much to expect for something which it seems to me was likely a banking error. The rest, as they say, is life! Thanks for the other info, all helps towards making this jumbled mess of finance into something way more tolerable.

they say they have no record of my request last year to halt payment of this . Funny that , considering that in the exact same communication I requested the new card be cancelled...that was of course logged! but as a "goodwill gesture" they will refund the last 12 months plus interest plus the associated exceeded limit charges...ok this is good. However, and there always is one...(often more than :-| ) I am such an idiot! I only noticed this payment as from last year, but apparrently it has been applied since 2003!!!!! :shock: how the heck did I not notice this! I dont remember asking for this. No Sir I do not. What to do now? Do I need to have the original agreement to check. For sure dont have it ...have nada to hand from the time before becoming a nomadic wanderer of this cruel and unforgiving land we call debt and unemployment! But romantic digression aside, WHAT DO I DO NOW?

Think this is what it was called. Am sure I saw info on these and setting one up somewhere here but, for the life of me, cant find it! Anyone point me in the right direction please?

Hi, posted this in the entirely wrong forum yesterday, Duh! So am copying it to here to try my luck again today, sorry if I bore anybody with its repetition "Barclaycard schmarkleycard! Optional payment protection, what is it and why do they insist on adding it to my account when I have specifically requested them not to? have a limit of 2600 on the card, have been struggling to make payments but mostly managing for the last 18 months, right about the time when they started to apply something called ' optional payment protection' to the account. I didnt ask for it, as far as I am aware didnt agree to it and have called them to say that I do not want it , yet they are still applying it. Firstly, I can find very little explanation from anywhere as to what it is and exactly what I would get out of it in the instance that I should be able to claim on it (highly unlikely) . I have not had a valid card for the last 18months, I have requested that they do not renew the card as I do not wish to add to the debt. In Feb I made a payment of 200pounds, last month I unfortunately couldnt manage, Payment for this month is due end of this week . The debt is now over 2800, having payed them edging on 1000 over the course of the year I now owe them exactly 400 more than I did when I had a valid card and no payment protection... and I aint spent a bean! I now have 2 months of fees for the pleasure of exceeding my limit, plus another for missed payment. Am concluding that I am unable to pay the bill again this month I accept my debt and want to pay, but know that it'll take time to get back on my feet both work and healthwise but this is just putting it out of reach." There are more details to the situation but think they belong in a different thread, so just want to deal with this one here. Am currently getting help with a letter to them asking for a refund, is this the only action I should take?

This problem is old, maybe now too old to do anything about but it still narks me and I am gaining strength in my war on corruption! In summer 2007 all my money just quite simply vanished from my current account...what I had and also what I didnt, ie overdrawn. Unfortunately for me, at the time of discovery, I was in an airport arrivals lounge in a foreign country trying to pick up my rental car which I needed to get to my final destination - a five hour drive away. The car was prebooked on my barclay debit card.. needless to say the rental didnt happen because the card was declined. This was a business trip, I am self employed, I needed this car to get to my job, to earn money! 8 painful hours of expensive conversation and subsequent empty phone batteries ensued and I was offered no explanation from barclays helplines, nor help...neither would they tell me where the money had gone because apparently I was not "authorised to have that information" ( Travelling to my destination any way other than by car that day was not an option, got thrown out of the lounge by soldiers doing a lock down at 11pm, spent the night under some seats in a windy external terminal building and got kicked awake by soldiers and 5am, crumpled bleary eyed and very unprofessional looking). Needless to say this was highly embarrassing for me work wise, quite frightening personally but more so than that the knock on effects were immense. Although the money reappeared 4 days later it was already to late. The car was essential, My work at that time was internet based, and for the next 2 weeks I was to be in a location of minimal connection...the car was needed to travel to a city to keep my business running. As a result I had to delay my next terms work by 4 weeks, loss of income again, but more damaging was the fact that in that time the opposition came in and simply took the opportunity to take my new client list . I did not recover from this. I lost my business at the end of that year. Barclays failed to offer me satisfactory explanation and never took any responsibility for the matter of the missing funds, mental exhaustion and stress related problems the following year meant that I was unable to deal as efficiently as I would have like with this situation. 5 house moves ( due to lack of money), 1 nervous breakdown and 18 months of unemployment later I'M BACK!...and believe me I got a fight in me! Is there now too much water under the bridge, or time even, to bring this matter up with them, will they just laugh me from the building? I reckon it will be difficult to prove loss of income when I had only been self employed for a short period also the direct connection from this to the resulting ( in my opinion) stress related illness. I need a bit of advice on whether to go this or no, and if so what angle to take...which info to use and which to leave out. All help very welcome. Not too surprising little fact: I am overdrawn on my barclays account since 2 years!

Barclaycard schmarkleycard! Optional payment protection, what is it and why do they insist on adding it to my account when I have specifically requested them not to? have a limit of 2600 on the card, have been struggling to make payments but mostly managing for the last 18 months, right about the time when they started to apply something called ' optional payment protection' to the account. I didnt ask for it, as far as I am aware didnt agree to it and have called them to say that I have not authorised it and do not want it , yet they are still applying it. Firstly, I can find very little explanation from anywhere as to what it is, secondly I am pretty sure that I will be unable to make any claim from it. I have not had a valid card for the last 18months, I have requested that they do not renew the card as I do not wish to add to the debt. In Feb I made a payment of 200pounds, last month I unfortunately defaulted, Payment for this month is due end of this week . The debt is now over 2800, having payed them 1000 over the course of the year I now owe them exactly 400 more than I did when I had a valid card and no payment protection... and I aint spent a bean! I now have 2 months of fees for the pleasure of exceeding my limit. I accept my debt and want to pay, but know that it'll take time to get back on my feet work and healthwise so contented to keep up the payments until such times. But can they really charge me around 500 over the course of 18 months for this thing that I didnt want , ask for or have any use for?