I recently celebrated my *whisper* 37th birthday! And naturally that meant that I could load up a few apps and loyalty cards and get a few freebies and money off vouchers.

This might be one of my favourite rewards in recent years. Birthday rewards for loyalty cards and apps only started up a few years ago, but they do seem to be a slowly growing trend. I don't like things to go to waste so I've only signed up to things I know I want, there are more offers beyond the four I've listed here.

Paperchase - £5 off with Treat Me card

If you're signed up to the Paperchase "Treat Me" card and you've given them your date of birth, then around your birthday you'll get an email saying you have a £5 voucher ready to spend. They give you a code to use online or if you're in the shop just hand over the card and it will be assigned to your purchase.

I used it to reduce the cost of my 2023 diary. For the past few years I've been keeping a daily hand written diary and I generally purchase them from Paperchase as I'm left handed and find their diaries are quite easy to write on both sides of the page.

Although the code is emailed to you close to your birthday, it generally has an expiry date set 30 days later. If you time it well you could combine it with a sale to get a real bargain!

Greggs app - Free sweet treat

If you download the Greggs app and add your date of birth then you'll find it automatically gives you a free sweet treat voucher on the app! I got this delicious sprinkle doughnut but other options include yumyums, gingerbread biscuits, and chocolate chip cookies.

The offer was added to my app on my birthday itself and was valid for 7 days, if you don't have a huge amount of time to use it. In my case though I was going into town to do some Christmas shopping so I just made sure I stopped by Greggs on my way back to the car. If you don't have a Greggs nearby then you might want to decide if it's worth the cost of a trip.

You also need to have had the Greggs app for a few weeks before your birthday, if you download it on the day then I don't think it will work.

Hotel Chocolat - £5 off with VIP Me card

Like Paperchase, if you have the Hotel Chocolat VIP Me card then you'll get an email confirming you have a £5 voucher on your VIP Me card, or a code to use online.

Back when you could get three selectors for £10 this was a fantastic bargain, as you could get great chocolate for half off. Sadly though inflation now means that it's £12 for three selectors and it doesn't feel like quite as good a deal (to me at least, but I understand why the prices went up).

Instead I got one selector and one milk chocolate "tiddly pot", with the voucher I paid less than £2 for the pair of them. It's still a really nice offer though and if your birthday falls just after a holiday like Halloween, Christmas, or Valentines, then you can use the voucher to get some already discounted chocolate.

My birthday falls in the middle of November and the email normally arrives in my inbox right at the end of October, valid until the end of November, so I think it mostly covers your birthday month.

Costa Coffee - Free cake with the app

If you have downloaded the Costa Coffee app and filled in your details, including your birthday, then you can get a free cake for your birthday. Like the Greggs app this is automatically added to the app on your birthday, and you need to use it within the week.

I chose the millionaire slice but I don’t think it limits what you can buy. I was very tempted by the lemon muffin as I really like them, and they had also released their festive menu so there were also Toblerone muffins, large mince pies, and a cake with a reindeer face.

If you want to download the Costa app then you can use my referral code (8XQ6D), and we will both get 5 free beans, which will put you halfway towards a free drink.

Overall a nice little haul that just required me to pop into a few shops, I had a week off work anyway so I was going to a few places with the relevant shops. It's a nice way to get a few treats for free or very reduced.

Books I read in May 2022

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As you'll see from the books this month, I've been on a bit of a Second World War kick.

I can't really explain why, I'm not normally much of a recent history fan. And actually the second one, about the Home Guard, was read this month because I borrowed it from my local library so needed to read it before returning it. Had it been a book I'd bought it would no doubt still be sitting unread on the bookcase.

I did cheat a tiny bit and still write it in my "to be read" section in my planner, just so I could have the pleasure of ticking it off. I also returned it to the library before taking a photo for the blog.

Becoming a Women's Institute Speaker

In a recent post about my side hustles I mentioned that one of my main earning streams was doing talks for the Women's Institute.

I really enjoy my talks as an alternative side hustle, and I know that WIs need a good diversity of speakers. So I thought I would write a little guide on how I became a speaker, and a few things you need to keep in mind if you want to become one yourself.

Books I read in April 2022

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In case you haven't picked up on it from my previous posts about books, I am a bit of a history fan. Most of the books I read tend to be history non-fiction, with the occasional foray into fiction when I need a bit of a break.

This month it's all European history! And it's covering pretty broad periods of time too.

Side Hustle Total - January to April 2022

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I don't have a huge number of side hustles, especially compared to others in the FIRE world. I tend to fall in and out of them as my attention waxes and wanes. And some of them (such as YouGov) have a high total to reach before payout so there are quite a few that are slow burners.

Despite that, this year I decided to finally start tracking my side hustles and the amount I'm earning from them. When it's a slow drip of £2 here and £5 there it can feel like you're not getting much out of it. But totalling it all up makes you more aware of how much you've actually earned over 12 months and can help with motivation. 

Books I read in March 2022

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I thought I would manage to hit 4 books this month as we started off March with a little holiday at Center Parcs and took a pile of books with me.

But typically the first week back at work absorbed so much time that I ended up reading a lot less for the rest of the month.

As with previous posts, these were all books on my "to be read" list in my planner, and this time they were all new reads!

Starting my steps towards FIRE

In the past year I've started to read up more on FIRE. This personal finance programme, which appears to have started in the USA, has crept in to British personal finance circles over the years.

In my round up of books I read in December I mentioned one about financial independence and promised to post more about why I had picked this book up.

I will admit that I've had some doubts about putting this post out while my country is going through a cost of living crisis as it looks incredibly tone deaf. However, I've been sitting on this post, tweaking it and editing it and rewriting chunks of it, for the past 6 months. This is simply bad timing.

But the fact that I can still post this comes from a position of privilege. It is absolutely not right that people are having to choose between heating and eating. We are one of the wealthiest countries in the 21st century and the way things are right now is an absolute disgrace.

For me at least the current situation has made me more determined to save and be careful in the coming months and years. And it is balanced with donations to charities including my local food bank, which does excellent work under very difficult circumstances. It's also going to be a very slow process as I'm nowhere near being a higher-rate taxpayer and that seems to be what most FIRE people are.

Books I read in February 2022

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As I mentioned in my post about books read in January, I am on a self-imposed book buying ban until I work my way through a good chunk of my "to be read" list.

I've made myself a list in the back of my planner and the opportunity to tick things off is proving to be a decent motivator. Some of the books are re-reads as I'm not sure if I want to keep them and at the very least I'm finding that this is a good way to make me read the new ones I haven't touched yet!

Despite this there is one re-read that wasn't done for decluttering purposes, but purely because I felt a need to have a little brain reset. Sometimes after reading a bunch of new books I need to read something familiar and that I enjoy in order to dive back into the pile of the unknown!

Books I read in January 2022

This post contains affiliate links. These links do not cost you money, but if you purchase something after clicking them I get a small fee for sending you there. The information below is an honest review, if I don't like something I will tell you!

Like many people my December featured a pile of new books for Christmas. My "to be read" list is now so big that I'm on a self-imposed book buying ban until I get through a good chunk of the list.

Naturally with a week off in January I managed to get through several, but as you'll see - one of them was so big it took me most of the month to wade my way through it!

Review: Salted caramel and blondie cheesecake

For months now I've been drooling over the English Cheesecake Company cheesecake slices on the dessert shelves in Waitrose. I'm a huge cheesecake fan and for years all we've had in supermarkets is the standard New York cheesecake, chocolate cheesecake, and strawberry cheesecake, sometimes with a lemon one if you're lucky.

Total mortgage overpayments in 2021

Back in July I looked at the mortgage overpayments me and my husband had made in the first half of the year. 

In that post I mentioned that our aim was to overpay £1000 a year. In the past few years we have missed this target.

How I walked 300k steps for charity

Back in September last year I took on a personal challenge. I decided to walk 300,000 steps in one month to raise money for two charities; Tommys, and the Miscarriage Association.

Why 300k steps, and why just walk it?

September has 30 days (you can start singing the rhyme if you want) so it was equal to walking 10,000 steps a day. I've often tried to do 10k a day and never quite managed it. So doing something that involved hitting that target consistently over a month was definitely something that felt like a challenge but also achievable at the same time.

I hate jogging and running. I'm never very good at it. I get out of breath very quickly (I know this would reduce if I kept at it but it really puts me off) and I hate how hot and sweaty I get. I needed to do something I knew I would at least not get too fed up with too quickly.

Why those charities?

I picked Tommys and the Miscarriage Association because I've had two miscarriages during the pandemic. One late loss in October 2020 and the other in April 2021. Six weeks after my first miscarriage I found myself calling the Miscarriage Association phoneline. A very calm and reassuring woman spoke to me for forty minutes and calmed me down after hours of crying.

I also used the websites for both Tommy's and the Miscarriage Association to get answers after both losses. Tommy's carry out research into miscarriage and baby loss and at one point I took part in an online study they were holding about research outcomes.

I wanted to do something that would repay the Miscarriage Association for the use of their phoneline, and also help fund research to help other people like me in the future. I decided to walk for both these charities and split the money raised between them.

How did I do it?

To start with, let me say that the first week was exhausting! I used to walk to and from work a lot but obviously that was seriously curtailed during the pandemic. So I was a bit out of practice and my muscles were not happy about how much work they were now being forced to do.

But after that first week it got a lot easier, and towards the end I was practically bouncing along the pavement every time I set foot outside the door.

If you're thinking of doing similar challenge then here's a few tips.

Make a bouncy/jaunty/fast playlist

My playlists are mostly Metallica and Rammstein but for this I deliberately made a broader one. Still with good rock songs that I like, I didn't eliminate the Rammstein completely.

But I did make a playlist of songs that had a fast tempo or that were a bit upbeat. It's a lot easier to walk fast if you've got a faster beat in your ears as you end up trying to match it. Even if you can't keep it up for long it does get you moving, and if it's something you like then you'll look forward to loading it up for another listen!

Work out routes that give you a lot of steps

I was tracking my steps through the Health app on my iPhone. After each walk I would check it to see how many steps I had done and then started to work out where to walk to get lots of steps, or how to make the most of fifteen minutes at the end of my lunch break.

For example, I quickly learned that a loop around the estate I live on was good for just over 1000 steps. It's a bit of a boring walk so I couldn't just loop around 10 times but it did mean that I could nip out before eating lunch and get 1000 ticked off.

Likewise I worked out that a much bigger 40 minute loop down to a small supermarket and back again was well over 5000 steps. There were several potential routes as well so I could even get close to 6000 depending on which way I went.

I always get a mental boost from getting halfway through things nice and early. So after a while I set my alarm to get up a bit earlier and do that one long loop first thing before breakfast. I would have a rumbling stomach by the time I got home, but I was over halfway before even starting work! I could then walk around the estate twice at lunchtime, and then I just needed to round it off after work.

Visit new places

Most people don't need an excuse to go somewhere new but me and my husband are massive homebodies and most weekends are spent at home.

We both had a week off work in September so we used it to go and visit some places that we hadn't been to. We moved to this area five years ago but we haven't really explored properly, which seemed like a bit of a waste.

During the week we were off we visited a village and a town near us, and also drove over to my parents (who moved during the pandemic so they're only 20 minutes away now) and went for a walk that my Dad measured at 10,000 steps. We also did a long walk along the river where we live, just to give my normal routes a bit of a break.

I also did one Saturday in London where I did a huge walk from Liverpool Street Station down to Westminster and back again. That was a very long day but I like walking through central London so it never felt difficult. I just had very worn out feet at the end!

Get ahead so you can take a break

After the first week I realised I really could not walk every single day. I needed one day to completely unwind at home.

Luckily walking isn't an exact science so pretty soon I found I was actually doing around 12,000 a day. Building up a buffer during the week meant that at the weekend I could look at my total and have a day or so in hand. I ended up taking Sundays as my off day where I could just lounge around on the sofa and not have my phone glued to me to count every single step around the house.

Did I make it?

Yes I did. Of course I did. I couldn't let myself down when the charities meant that much to me.

In total I walked 312,847 steps in October! I'd like to do it again one day. But not immediately, my feet still hurt.