Money-wise this has been a March like no other. Thankfully in a good way (mostly....) Somewhere along the way I made a $300 mistake in my budget...in my favour!! How often does that happen? Usually never right? Occasionally I make an error in adding or subtracting on my budget sheet and of those errors about 98% of them are NOT in my favour! Most times the mistake is under $50, usually less than that. Am I looking to figure out how I made the $300 mistake? Ummmmm NO! - I'm crossing my fingers I can get to the end of March with that error intact! Counting the days....
Between that $300 and my misc budget line I have almost enough to pay for 3 weeks of airbnbs in Scotland! No money taken out of savings! My goal was to spend no more than $1,000 (Cdn) for the 21 nights with my brother contributing the same amount. The final tally came to $818 (Cdn) each - EXCELLENT! (Works out to just under $40/night/person!!) I'd call that "extra spending money" except that the British pound is going up up up while the Cdn dollar is going down down down. The savings on accommodations will hopefully cover the extra we'll have to pay to buy British pounds (or poonds as the Scottish say...)
So all is booked and confirmed. Though I had mega-problems with my President's Choice Mastercard. After booking several airbnbs my mastercard was frozen due to my making transactions out of my usual pattern. Okay then, I let them know I had a few more to book so this wouldn't happen again. Well, it did, after one more successful booking my account was frozen once again. Another lengthy ordeal on the phone..."there are 23 people on hold ahead of you....." all I can say is thank goodness for Paypal which I used instead! Sorted once again I assumed my problems were over. I filled in a "travel alert" so they would know when I was travelling and act accordingly.
On Thursday I met with my brother once again as we needed to book a night near Stirling and 3 nights in Glasgow. Guess what? You guessed it! Account froze again. Well when I finally got a REAL person I went up one side of them and down the other. I'm usually very mild-mannered but this was just TOO MUCH!! After getting sorted for the 3rd time they apologized and offered me 20 President's Choice points to make me feel better - I don't think he liked it when I laughed loudly and said "don't bother - you know that's only 20 cents right??"
So here's the thing - I think I need to switch to another credit card. I received NO notifications by phone, email or text about so-called suspicious activity. (You know the messages I mean - an unusual charge just happened with your credit card - if it was you please ignore this message, if it wasn't you please call immediately!) He couldn't believe that I hadn't received any such contact and did a search only to find I was right. Stupid stupid man...
Have you ever encountered this problem? What am I doing wrong? Any recommended credit cards (remembering I live in Canad...) Grrrrrrrrr! The thought of having to switch cards irks me to no end!
Strange growths in Kilally Meadows!
After my daffodils popped up their heads we had a fair bit of snow and it got very cold again. I think they died as I don't see them now that the snow melted. Rats...
I've been checking almost daily but no activity in the nest yet. I thought I saw an osprey flying very high yesterday (I could see the wing shape) but it didn't go near the nest while I was looking. Soon!
I bank with BMO and have a bmo airmiles master card. I have never had any troubles with them either way and have used the card in Cuba and Mexico. I love collecting airmile points. We used the points for our flights to Mexico this year and that worked out great for us :-)
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