I can explain some of this. While most of the housekeeping costs are roughly the same each month, in February and March there is no council tax bill to pay. With the next tax year starting in April, the monthly council tax charges start again, and this adds one line item and a noticeable amount of money to the housekeeping slice. The increased internet chunk was affected by changing exchange rates — while the £/$ rate was up slightly, the £/€ rate increased significantly — as well as including a couple of domain name renewals which came up in April. Purchases in February and March were affected by a couple if big buys which were absent from April so even though this figure includes a payment to my credit card, it’s still down on previous months.

I had hoped to make savings on the entertainment budget, and that slice has gone down, but there is clearly more which could be done. May will be an interesting month as I will be traveling around a lot. I expect the chart for this month will be noticeably different.

All photos are Copyright 2012 Jonathon Wardman. For licencing of these and additional images please contact fluttphotographic.com.

I have broken my spending down into 10 broad categories: housekeeping, basic outgoings for rent, electricity, home insurance, TV license, etc. (I think it’s worth noting that I don’t pay 100% of these expenses, they are generally split 50/50 with my housemate, but as they go through my account they are all included in this analysis); entertainment, including going out, books, DVDs, music, games, etc.; cash, as I have taken this information from bank statements I can’t define what cash is spent on, it is most likely a mix of the other categories; purchases, general material purchases such as clothes and camera equipment; internet, both our home internet, my mobile internet, and various hosting and domain services I make use of; savings, money I manage to put into savings; food, generally Tesco shopping where I’ve used my card, although does include some other bits and pieces; other bills, a broad category covering some insurance policies, my mobile phone bill, NI contributions and things like that; travel, mostly train travel, but can include air travel; charges and interest, a small amount paid in bank charges, overseas transaction charges and any relevant interest charges on things such as credit cards. All figures quoted are percentages of total outgoings for the month — they do not reflect income — but they do cover all expenditure for the month.

February gives a good base to work from. As expected the majority of my costs come from housekeeping — rent and bills. Material purchases this month felt quite high (although time will tell) as I made a number of clothing and footwear purchases before a short holiday. This holiday is also the reason the cash percentage is quite high — all expenses on my break were paid in cash, including the hotel.

March is similar, but there are a few notable differences. Firstly the cash section is much smaller, as expected, and secondly the travel section is much larger. This is down to buying a couple of flights (while the flights will be taken in April, of course I bought them in advance). Food is also considerably smaller. I don’t think I ate a huge amount less, but I presume I bought more food with cash — even at 3.3% of total expenditure it’s a reasonable amount of money.

So the obvious savings are going to be made from what I currently spend on entertainment. There are some savings to be made elsewhere — for example my ISP have just increased their data rates and we don’t need the larger allowance so I will downgrade the service as soon as I can, and I can always save on my mobile phone bill — but not only is the money I spend on entertainment the second largest expenditure each month, I think it should also be possible to reduce the amount I spend without really affecting quality of life.

The ultimate aim is, of course, to increase the size of the light blue savings pie slice. That starts this month, and I’ll let you know in 27 days how I get on.

I have two winning scratch cards; one with two matching symbols, and one with three. The scratch cards list all the possible prizes, so I should be guaranteed to win one prize from both of the following lists.

Two matching symbols:

• £8,000 – cash prizes are pretty straight forward. The T&Cs on the back of the cards say cash prizes are awarded as a cheques. 1 of these available.
• £5,000 – again a cheque, would cover the Canon 5D MkIII I want nicely. 2 available.
• Family break in Orlando – the back of the card says this prize “includes return flights from UK mainland + 14 nights hotel accomm. for 2 adults and 2 childen.” There is no information about what hotel it would be. Nothing else is covered either, so you’d have to pay for meals and any additional costs. I suppose if you were thinking about your family holiday anyway this would save a big chunk of money, so not a bad prize. Not really a prize I want. (Also see note below about holidays prizes.) Again 2 of these are available.
• 5-star city break in Paris, Rome or Madrid – “includes return flights from UK mainland to Paris, Rome or Madrid + 3 nights hotel accomm. for 2 adults.” This sounds more appealing to me. Again no information about hotels or anything, and additional costs would have to be met by the winner. (Again, see note about holiday prizes.) 3 city breaks.
• £500 – cheque. 4 £500 pound prizes.
• iPhone 4GS – 4GS doesn’t make sense, so presumably they mean just iPhone 4S. We all know about the iPhone. No information about which iPhone it would be, but I presume it would be the sim-free 16GB model. I don’t really want one, but a new one probably has a decent resale price. 5 available.
• Amazon Kindle 3G – this is presumably the Kindle Keyboard 3G. A nice prize, I wouldn’t mind one of these. 6 available.
• Superdry Watch – there are a whole load of Superdry watches. No information about which one it would be but I’d presume the cheapest. There is a thread on the Money Saving Expert forum from 2009 about the Purely Creative scratch cards where quite a few people say their cards won watches, with the caveat being a £15 insured delivery charge. So far to claim the prize I have had to send a 2nd class stamp. It’s possible they chabged the way their competitions work, but I’ll see what happens. 1000 available, so not the lowest prize as is apparently the case on the previous games.
• Top salon hair makeover – “Luxury salon haircut & finish experience is for 1 adult at a choice from 8 Burlingtons’ salons nationwide & includes style consultation, hair cleanse & conditioning head massage hair cut (or colour) & finish with an experienced stylist plus complimentary bucks fizz.” The Burlingtons website shows they have 8 salons. I checked the two nearest to me — London W1 and London Westfield — and looked at the price lists for each. A men’s cut and blowdry with a stylist (which is all you’d get, I presume, rather than any of the more senior stylists or “directors”) at Westfield is £22.50 while at their W1 salon it’s £41.00. Is there a difference? I would doubt it, but I know which one I would choose. I’m sure there are caveats to this prize, probably relating to the times you can claim it. This is the 1000+ prize, so most likely the one I will win. I actually could do with a hair cut, and I’ll be sure to post pictures if I do.

Three matching symbols:

• £1 Million – the big one. According to this Loquax article, and in turn an article in the Sunday Mirror, before 2008 there hadn’t been a £1 Million winner for 18 years. Presumably it’s a cheque, though I can’t imagine what the bank might say if you came to pay it in. Of course there is only 1 of these.
• £100,000 – cheque.
• £20,000 – cheque.
• £10,000 – cheque.
• Week at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas for 2 – T&Cs say “includes return flights from the UK mainland + 7 nights at the Venetian hotel for 2 adults.” The Venetian Hotel is currently home to Blue Man Group and Phantom – The Las Vegas Spectacular (which, incidentally, has the weirdest seating plan I’ve seen for a while). I checked some dates in July on their website and the cheapest room I could find for 7 nights $1,323. Not a bad prize. The usual caveats for holidays must apply (see below). There are 3 of these out there.
• £1,000 Tesco or Sainsbury’s gift card – there are no T&Cs notes about this one so I guess it’s just what it says on the tin. I guess it would be one of these or one of these (I especially like the Sainsbury’s “meal ticket” idea). The Sainsbury’s card looks like it can be used for regular shopping while the Tesco one is gifts only. That said, they are both limited to under £1,000 so perhaps it’s something a bit different. I wouldn’t complain about £1,000 to cover my shopping bill. 4 available.
• Apple iPad 2 – the previous generation of iPad, currently £329.00 on the Apple store. Wouldn’t you be disappointed? I’m pretty sure when I started this process it was the biggest and bestest iPad you could buy. By the time I finish it no doubt there will be yet another iPad launched. There are 5 iPads.
• £250 – a night out I suppose. In cheque form. 6 of these.
• Handheld Dyson vacuum – something from this range of Dysons I presume. We have a DC34 at the office for cleaning computer insides out. Useful for that but I struggle to see what else it might be good for. There are 10.
• £50 – hardly covers my time. Cheque of course. 100 available.
• VIP Thames cruise for 2 – “for 2 adults & includes three hour ‘homes of the rich and famous’ boat tour on the Thames with afternoon tea on board the boat.” I have heard of these cruises and I actually wouldn’t mind giving it a go one day. There’s no indication on the card which company runs the specific tour, but I did find these two forms which look remarkably similar. My guess is it’s one of these tours. There are 1000+ of these available so again this is what I’m most likely to win.

Note about holiday prizes: there’s an FAQ on the Purely Creative website about holiday prizes which asks “I’m entitled to a free holiday for two people but I want to go on my own, is that OK?” That is a good question. The answer is basically “it’s up to the holiday company.” It seems like most of the holidays are pre-arranged when the competition is launched and so there wouldn’t be much flexibility in what you can choose to do. Or at least there would be extra to pay to change the terms of the prize.

Phew, so that’s it. Those are the possible prizes. From my reading around the web, my understanding is that if you ring the premium rate line you can find out which prize you win from the symbols on your card. I guess might have found that out if I had received my envelopes back in the first place, but I’m quite happy not knowing until my prize information arrives. Who knows, it could be the £1 million and I’m not sure I could wait 4 weeks knowing that…

The information on the cards said that I should allow 28 days to “receive claim number & info.” So I waited. Day 28 was the 16th March (allowing for delays in the post), and not having received a reply from Purely Creative’s Twitter account when I asked them if the 28 days was full days or working days I decided today to contact them via the form on the website. I was pleasantly surprised when I received a reply from Rubina at Purely Creative with a claim number. The conversation went like this (with my claim number blanked out for now, so I don’t totally ruin their game — I’m not trying to do that, just test the system):

Hi there,

On the 15th February I sent two separate SAEs to you (Dept PCN, M592) requesting claim numbers and details for your “Win a Million” scratchcards. The details on the card say to allow 28 days for the number.

Assuming the envelopes did not reach you until the 17th February (sent first class), the 28th day after that was 16th March. I have not recieved the claim number(s) for either request (the return envelopes were also sent first class, so even allowing for delays in the post, they should have arrived by now). Can you tell me the situation with these claim number request, and why I have not recieved them yet?

Thanks, Jonathon

Dear J Wardman

Thank you for your recent email, I can confirm you can use claim number Pxxx

Kind Regards

Rubina

Thank you Rubina,

Can this claim number be used for both claims?

- Jonathon

yes

With that I filled in my two winning scratch cards, scanned the front and back of each card as advised on the scratchcards themselves, dropped a second class stamp in with each, and have them ready for posting tomorrow. The information on the card for this stage (and on their website’s FAQs page) say I should expect information regarding my prizes in the next 4 weeks.

I was on a train the other day on my way back from picking some things up in Guildford when I spotted on of those scratchcard you get in magazines and newspapers on the seat just opposite me. I’m aware of how these things work, what with their premium rate numbers and suchlike, but I also know they all have to offer a non-purchase route to winning. I’ve often wondered what would happen if someone actually tried the claim by post route, so I decided to give it a go.

The competition is run by Purely Create, a company with a registered address just down the road from where I went to University in Lancaster, and the company behind most of these scratchcard competitions. A brief search also turns up some quite negative reports in the papers, especially the Mirror. Despite that I figured, as long as I was careful, there was nothing to worry about. Their website, incidentally, is run on WordPress.

My scratchcard had three chances to win on it, and for each one you had to find a set of matching symbols with a prize for finding two and three matches. According to the small print on the card all distributed cards have a set of three matching symbols, a set of two matching symbols, and a losing card. Mine was no different. The small print also said I could claim one two symbol prize and one three symbol prize per household, so I did. In order to claim the prize, you need a claim number. Normally this is obtained by ringing or texting a premium rate number, but there is a postal route too — this is the route I’m taking. In order to claim you have to send a stamped SAE to their address and wait 28 days for the claim number to come back, so I put together a set of envelopes with the appropriate details on them and dropped them in the post.

That’s 4 first class stamps (that’s what I had to hand) , so the cost so far is £1.84. I’m not counting the value of my own time, of course. Based on the prizes listed on the card I should make this back (or an equivalent) many times over no matter which two prizes I win. I’ll keep you updated wit how I get on.

There are only minor changes in this version:

• Modified the behavior surrounding preceding and trailing white space in tokens and values.
• Modified behavior so leaving the replace box blank now assumes a match removal rule even if ‘remove matched’ is not checked.
• Added an uninstall function to tidy up settings when uninstalling.

I hope the white space handling will help out a few people who wish to match strings which include white space before and after their match string. Please leave a comment if you run into any problems with this release!

We are short of space on our sink, and Dana and I share a little plastic cup to keep our toothbrushes and toothpaste in. This used to work fine as there was plenty of space for two brushes and two tubes of toothpaste. Sometimes there was a problem with balance, especially when one of the tubes was nearing the end, but generally it was a perfectly satisfactory setup. But then, for some reason, Colgate came along and made the caps on their toothpaste tubes huge…

It seems they think that people want their toothpaste tubes to be self-supporting — that by giving the tubes a big cap they can stand on their own single big foot — but I really don’t see it as an improvement. The problem we have now is that the majority of space in our little toothbrush cup will be taken up by the lid of the toothpaste. Once we both get on to our new tubes the problem will be serious. Once we’re down to the bottom of our tubes and they start to flop under the weight of their new caps the balance problem will be greatly increased too.

People have been managing to find a way to store their toothpaste — on it’s side, in a cup — for years. This is hardly a revolutionary design. Were the old style caps really so bad?

I’m heading back from Scott and Jess’ wedding this weekend. They had a handfasting ceremony and asked me to do their photos for them. While I was, of course, honoured that they would ask me and trust me to shoot such an important event, I was more than a little nervous. While I’m comfortable shooting live events and theatre, I had actually never previously shot a wedding. Wedding photography is not something that I have ever really wanted to get into, but I have known Scott since we were very young and Jess a few years now, so I agreed on the understanding that they know my style and they knew what they were getting.

I travelled up on Friday morning and stayed with my dad for the weekend. (I’m not sure how long I will have that luxuary now my mum has started her new job. Their house is up for sale and I guess it all depends on how long that takes to sell.) On Saturday my dad went to take some things to my brother so I had to find my own way to the place the wedding was taking place — the walled garden in Manor Heath Park, Halifax. It’s been years since I used the busses around Halifax for anything other than going directly into the town, so I thought I should leave myself plenty of time. I set off about quarter past 12, wandered down to the bus stop and had a look at the timetable. There was some information saying that there was only one bus which went near the hospital (which I knew was the right kind of direction) and that I had missed it this hour. I decided to catch a bus to King Cross and walk from there. the first bus which arrived was from a new company in the area, Centre Bus, so I got on and asked the driver if it went to Kings Cross. He told me it didn’t, that it turned up by the fire station. I thought for a moment, despiratly trying to work out where the fire station was. I couldn’t. I gave up and decided not to risk it. As the bus drove off it dawned on my where the fire station is. It’s exactly where I wanted to go. The next bus which came along did go to King Cross so I got on that and walked to the park from there.

I was very early when I arrived so I got myself a drink from the cafe in the park and sat on the grass in the gardens. The sun was wonderful. I’d been a little bit worried that the weather might not be so good based on the previous days and the forecast, but the sun came out and stayed out for the whole ceremony. Only once we got back to Scott’s grandma’s house did the rain finally come. Twenty or so minutes after I got there Gary turned up in a brand new, fresh from the packet, shirt. He was meeting Neal at 13:50 by the gates to carry out ushering duties. A short while after the lady carrying out the ceremony arrived and we were asked to help her bring her things from the car: a little table and a witch’s style broomstick.

Soctt and Jess had chosen to have a handfasting ceremony as they felt it was the least officially-sanctioned, most non-religious ceremony they could while still having a centrepiece for the occation. The ceremony itself was nice. The lady carrying out the service explained that quite a lot of the symbolism has worked it’s way into the more common wedding ceremony and that some common terminology relating to marriage comes from the traditions in the hand fasting ceremony. I shot the all the way through, trying not to get anyone’s way while still covering the the important things. After the ceremony Scott, Jess and I slipped off to take some more formal pictures aruond the gardens, the plan was to do photos with just them in the gardens themselves and then, once we got back to Soctt’s gran’s house to do all the stuff with the families.

Scott’s gran’s house is between the wedding venue and the reception venue, up a little side track, with a nice garden. We wanted to shoot the formal pictures backed on to the garden and up the steps, but by this time the weather was deteriorating. After the speeches by Scott’s gran, Jess’ mum and Ben, Scott’s best man, the toast, and the cake cutting, the rain started to fall and most people retreated inside. I tried to get some candid shots of people as they chatted inside, especially of the grand parents who had been the harder people to shoot during the service, until a break in the weather. We managed to grab a few family shots on the grass before the rain started again, so we moved to under an umbrella and did some more there. These photos are the ones which I was most worried about, and I don’t think they are the best formal photos from a wedding, but I think they will be ok. I hope no one is dissapointed.

After the grandmother’s house we moved on to the reception venue. The Malt House in Rishworth is a nice venue. We had the whole upstairs function room area and the whole thing was very informal. We didn’t have a seating plan, and the meal was buffet style. I think this is just what they wanted — I don’t think they would have enjoyed a very formal type of meal and reception, so it worked well. The people who had been at the ceremony itself mingled a bit and some people who were only coming to the reception turned up. I slinked around the edge of the room most of the time trying to take the most natural pictures I could. I got pictures of all the key things: guestbook, favours, cupcakes, and I think I covered most people who were there. I might have missed some who were in the other room and who didn’t hang around too long, but I will have to see. I hung around until near the end when a group of us took a taxi down the valley. I was heading back to Sowerby Bridge and a few others on to Halifax.

The day was very enjoyable. It was nice to see people again, and the whole event was very laid back. I’m sure, as everyone else has said, that Scott and Jess will be very happy together. The day was pitched just right for them. Now I just hope that the photos can live up to the day itself…

The full changelog is below:

• Added the option to apply rules to either pages, posts, or both.
• Added the option to match or ignore case in matches.
• Added option to remove matched string, not replace it.
• Reworked the admin page to (hopefully) make it easier to use with new options.
• Added settings link to plugin page.

The plugin can be downloaded from the WordPress Plugin Directory.