Fancy £15 off your next Dominos order? If you’re anything like me you’re already picturing the menu and thinking about using the discount as an excuse to treat yourself to four warm chocolate chip cookies. (If you have never had these then WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?)

My blog has always had a strong pizza vibe. One of the very first blog posts I ever wrote was called ‘Does Dominos deliver on Christmas Day?‘* and who can forget the Dominos versus Pizza Hut comparison post I did back in 2011?

If you want to see an example of top quality photography then you want to hit that baby UP. Talk about proud.

Today though I wanted to let you know about a Dominos offer being hosted by Quidco that gives new Quidco members a massive £15 cashback just for buying a pizza! 

Quidco, in case you don’t already know, is the UK’s number one cashback and voucher code site. The theory is simple – you set up an account, go via Quidco any time you want to do any shopping, book a hotel, compare insurance prices etc, and you earn cashback. The cashback you earn can then be transferred into your bank, sent to you via PayPal or as an Amazon voucher. View Post

In association with VoucherCodes

Today was a bit of a momentous occasion in our house. After 12 years of ‘I hate school, don’t make me go,’ Belle sat her very last GCSE exam.

*pours stiff gin*

It was a bit of a funny day in the end. I did think she might want to go out afterwards to celebrate, but when she got into the car outside school at about 3.30pm she just seemed exhausted.

‘Take me home’, she said ‘so I can get into bed.’ And there she sat, seemingly quite happy, eating Krave out of the box.

Luckily I had expected that she might not be feeling at her most sociable, so I decided to take her out to eat on Monday instead – a kind of last supper. Except it was lunchtime. And nobody got crucified. Otherwise it was EXACTLY the same.

We went to Zizzi as we had an exclusive 30% off mains offer from VoucherCodes.

(When you go to Zizzi, make sure you have this prawn starter. The flavour of the sauce is AMAZING.) View Post

If I’d had a pound for every time I’ve said ‘you left your light on’ over the years then quite frankly I wouldn’t have to care about my energy bills, as I would be a millionaire.

Children leaving on lights drives me absolutely mad, as there is just no excuse for it. Think about it – it’s like the light itself is TELLING YOU YOU’VE LEFT IT ON.

It SHINES. In your face.

I don’t even know how it’s physically possible to leave a room and NOT notice that you’ve left the lights on. I can only conclude that children’s brains have a vital part missing from them until they reach some kind of magical age where they are able to SEE LIGHT.

Anyway.

This post isn’t meant to be me complaining, it’s about positive things you can do to save energy – not just to reduce your bills but also to ensure that you leave less of a mark on the world. I’ve recently bought my own house and so I’m in the lucky position now where I can think about bigger things I can do to reduce energy consumption. I’ve had my loft properly insulated for example, and I’ve got decent double glazing throughout.

Even if you don’t have the cash (or the enthusiasm) to tackle bigger projects, small changes you do can add up. Here are seven properly useful ideas I’ve had to help you create good energy habits in your home.

Get a smart meter

This is top of my list and an excellent first step to help you reduce energy consumption. With free smart meters, which allow you to monitor your energy usage in real time, in actual pounds and pence, it means you can see for yourself how much it costs to do specific things like boil a kettle or run a dishwasher and thus identify ways to cut back. There is something about having this information presented to you, seeing the energy and money tick away, that really helps to hammer the message home. View Post

In association with Profile Pensions

Here’s a little known fact for you – I have a first class Economics degree and when I graduated I trained as an actuary. Yeah I know, I didn’t know what an actuary was either until I got the job, (it’s a lot of maths around pensions and insurance and risk), although I remember at the time reading somewhere that it was a job for ‘people who found accountancy too exciting’.

As you might well guess, it wasn’t really my dream job. What it does mean though is that I’m meant to know a bit about pensions.

What is it exactly about pensions that so many people find scary? Why do we bury our heads in the sand when it comes to long term finance? This attitude is particularly frustrating in the case of pensions as by the time you feel grown up enough to think about it, it’s TOO LATE. Okay, so it’s never too late exactly, but the younger you can start investing in a pension the better – money saved in your twenties is worth SO much more than in your forties. The state pension is currently only worth about £8,000 a year, so if you’re relying on this when you retire then you’re screwed. Sort out your pension NOW, however old you are.

Fortunately I did kind of twig this early on, (it would be a bit embarrassing if I hadn’t with the whole ‘working in pensions’ background), and I started paying into my first work pension scheme when I was 21. When I left that job to have Belle at 24 I took it upon myself to set up a stakeholder pension. I only paid in £60 a month initially, because I was on maternity leave and poor, but it has always been there, pottering along. Last year, when all the documents for my pensions could no longer fit into a lever arch file, I decided it was time to take action. I went through everything and it turned out, due to my flighty nature, that I had a total of seven pension pots from various jobs over the years.

Seven pensions is just a bit greedy isn’t it?

I went to an independent advisor, and they helped me streamline everything and transfer all seven into one pension pot. Just to reinforce the point about the earlier the better, that first pension that I paid into between the ages of 21 and 24? That’s now worth over £40,000. (Yeah, I know, I was surprised too.)

Is this making you think ‘Damn, I really should track down all my pensions and DO something with them?’

Good.

By the end of this post you are going to be digging that pretty little head of yours out of the sand and feeling excited about dealing with your pension situation. Well maybe not excited, unless you are a pension geek like me, but reassuringly positive at least. View Post