Monday Money #6 Holiday Time & A New Mobile Phone

Monday Money #6 Holiday Time & A New Mobile Phone

Another manic week in the world of Mrs Mummypenny. This time of the year is always super busy. There are a lot of brand events happening, lots of meetings in London and many campaigns are being agreed. Creatively May/June/July sees me at my best. I am never short of ideas, but they are tumbling out at the moment. It is highly red and yellow time of the year. Red and yellow being my Insights profile, did you ever do that in the work place? Red and Yellow signifies creativity, motivated, directional and enthusiastic.




My first episode of Mrs Mummypenny Talks aired on Tuesday, click here to listen. It was so amazing listening to my own voice and radio show on Alexa! It is quite raw and needed a bit of editing, but hey ho, I am happy with it. Episode two will be aired on Tuesday 29^th May. I will be back every week 11am to 12 noon.

I had a full-on day in London on Wednesday, with 4 big meetings with clients. The day was spent running around London from Soho to Bloomsbury to Liverpool St. The meetings ended at 5pm and I decamped to a bar to charge my phone and laptop and catch up on the day and the decision that had been made. I thrive from days like this. I am a people person and struggle with the days where I am sat behind my laptop all day, those will be the days where I DM lots of fellow blogger pals for human contact!

Octopus Energy

My first meeting was with my regular client Octopus energy. A challenger energy company who champion customer services and renewable energy. I switched to Octopus in August 2017 and have been super impressed with their service and charges so far. I also had a smart meter installed back in September which is helping to monitor usage and therefore reduce spending even further. If you havn’t switched for a while click here to get a price comparison and we will both get £50 each of you decide to switch:-) Win Win.

I worked on a fascinating project for them earlier this year where I and six other bloggers compared our energy customer services with the big 6 energy firms and unsurprisingly Octopus came out on top.

There will be lots more exciting work coming up with Octopus that I can’t wait to share with you. Saving energy, money and the planet is something that I am very passionate about, expect lots more content of this type:-)

Debenhams

I also met with the team from Debenhams and got to see the Autumn/Winter showcase. Clothes, beauty, perfume and home wear. I did a Facebook Live tour when I was there to showcase the sequins and the glitter.

I had my nails and brows done whilst I was there, which was rather nice as I needed them done! I met the mostest lovely Jack from Kat Von D who did my brows. His first comment, they are quite full;-) Lol, he tidied them up and gave me a glow with some powder and we chatted about hypnotherpay for weight loss! I left with a goody bag with some lovely bits, including perfume, a calm colouring book and a fake cactus!!

Look out for exciting content to come on things like Debenhams foreign currency, did you know that most stores have a currency exchange office. I headed there this week to get 30 Euros for Dylan’s Germany football tour and got a really great rate, much better than the Post Office.

£85 worth of Books for 50p!!!

I am devouring books at the moment and keep buying them, so I am spending maybe £20 to £30 each month on books. Most are my self-help personal discovery type books. I was mostest pleased to discover Bookchoice where I can get at a load of eBooks and audiobooks for the first month for 50p. And then its £3.99 per month. I think audio books will be amazing for long car journeys to football training. Just follow this link to get signed up for a month of free books, great for the kids as well if they have a kindle. Josh, like me devours books. He has the whole David Walliams collection of course, he is 8.

Football presentation season

We have had two football presentations this week, one for Josh and one for Dylan, both coming away with trophies which was so lovely. The coaches that look after our boys are amazing and do so much to make them better players and people. I am forever grateful to the coaches from Watton, Letchworth, Cambridge and Stevenage District for what they do.

A New Mobile Phone

I have been struggling recently with my phone, the memory size is too small, and I smashed it. I popped into my local EE store in Hitchin (lovely helpful team in there and Letchworth if you are a Hertfordshire local, both Franchised branches so do things a bit differently to regular EE stores) to see what they can do with an upgrade. We discovered that I am many months away from an upgrade, but they were able to sort out a new mobile phone for me. The new Samsung S9+ really appealed to me as I know the photographs and video quality is amazing, meaning also I will most likely sell my SLR camera.

I had to pay a small amount of money for the phone and my monthly bill has a large discount as I get a staff discount at EE for life from my employment there until 2015. Just look at the quality of my first picture.

My first instagram picture with my @samsunguk S9+. The picture quality is incredible. Time to ditch the SLR me thinks. Upping my photography game is key for Mrs Mummypenny. Thank you Hitchin EE who did everything for me. And gave me a super great deal. . . . . . #samsung #samsungphotography #samsungs9 #samsungs9plus #blueskies #hitchin #aperture #hitchinhill #hertfordshire #ee

A post shared by Lynn James – Mrs Mummypenny (@mrsmummypennyuk) on May 20, 2018 at 5:06am PDT

Holiday Time

It is half term this week and we are heading to Penzance for a short break, 4 days staying with my sister. This is the ultimate bargain holiday as we go to the beach every day (please be sunny), no accommodation to pay and the drive will cost much less with our hybrid car, maybe £80 rather than £150 that it used to cost in the old diesel S-Max.

Watch out for lots of beautiful Instagram pictures and stories. Hubby gets to stay at home as he is working and looking after the cats.

We have arrived💜⛰🌄⛱. Had to stop here first for a dip in the sea. Footy for boys. The sand is warm. Only took 6 hours despite 3 wee breaks and 1 petrol/food break. Love 💜 love 💜 love 💜 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #marazion #cornwall #stmichaelsmount #cornwalllife #castle #travel #sea #cornwallliving #penzance #beach #holiday #travelling #instatravel #lovecornwall #cornishcoast #causeway #kernow #visitcornwall #mountsbay #nationaltrust #castleonthehill #cornishlife #bankholidayweekend #landscapephotography #southwestisbest #ilovecornwall #cornwalluk #coastallife #marazionbeach #jackthegiantkiller

A post shared by Lynn James – Mrs Mummypenny (@mrsmummypennyuk) on May 27, 2018 at 10:27am PDT

Network Rail card

I was really annoyed with the trains this week. No longer can I get the off peak fast train to make it to 10:30 London meetings as the train has been cancelled permanently. I now need to rush to drop off boys and get the 9:09, peak train £5 more expensive. And it takes 40 mins to get to London rather than the old one that took 20 minutes. Plan B therefore is to arrange meetings later, 11-11:30. I can then get the train after 10am and buy myself a network rail card to save a further 1/3^rd from my rail travel. This should take my train journey from £19 to around £10 instead. Much better. The railcard costs £30 for one years’ worth of discount. Well worth it when I go into London normally one day a week.