Top Tips in 2017: Collecting Air Miles

Welcome to 2017!

Instead of doing the generic post about what resolutions I've made and my general ramblings about the fact I am sure to break it in two weeks time. I thought I would combine and create a post about collecting air miles and my top tips about how to do this as I've had lots of people asking me recently how I've done all my travelling over the past few years, and part of it was due to the wondrous world of air miles, and in particular, I collect Avios points. There are many ways to collect points, the biggest one being by booking flights with airlines that are part of the one world alliance such as British Airways and Iberia to name a few. Therefore I thought I would share some of my top tips for collecting air miles so everyone can get themselves free flights (although you do have to pay the taxes), upgrades, or even holidays! When we are all strapped for cash in the new year, what better way than getting a discounted holiday from your everyday spends.

                                                

1. Is the ticket free with air miles? 

Ultimately, no, as when you purchase flights with air miles you still have to pay the tax on the flight. However, this can be as little as £50 for short-haul flights and £200-£400 for long-haul flights, but it certainly varies depending on airline and flight.

2. Do I have to pay for my own ticket to collect air miles?

No, you can collect them from anyone you are travelling within the same booking or if you are booking flights through work!

                                                     

3. So how can I collect air miles?

- Flying: pretty self-explanatory, whenever I fly I always try to book my flights with an airline that allows me to collect Avios points. The first thing I did was to sign up for a BA executive club card, as although I don't fly enough just on BA for all the rewards, it is the easiest place to combine all your points on. Click here to sign up.

- Credit Card: The next step was to sign up for a BA Amex Card. I use this card as much as possible as it earns me 1 point for every £1 I spend and bonus points for spending with British Airways. Also, within the first 3 months, there are an extra 10,000 points to be awarded for spending £1000. The 22.9% APR is high but I just pay the balance before the end of the month or as soon as I can to avoid any interest. This card is then linked to by BA exec account where the points are transferred to each month. If you decide to apply for this, use my referral link here to be awarded more bonus points. 

The downside is that Amex is not excepted in every shop, however, I have found a way around this with another credit card I have which I will explain later.

- Clubcard: As much as possible, I shop at Tesco and have changed my preferences in my account online so instead of receiving Clubcard vouchers to spend in Tesco I have it linked to my BA exec account again to earn Avios points. Click the link here to sign up for a Clubcard. 

To go hand in hand with this, I also have a Tesco Bank credit card which is a Mastercard which is accepted in all shops. With a Tesco credit card, I collect 1 Clubcard point for every £8 spent not in Tesco and 1 point for every £4 spent in Tesco. Although this is not a huge amount, as this credit card is linked to my Clubcard which is already collecting Avios points for me, it works well too. The BA card earns me more points so I use that where I can, but having the Tesco Mastercard as a back up where Amex is not accepted. With a Tesco Mastercard, there are plenty of options, I have the card with 5.9% APR but there is one with a 0% charge on balance transfers for 40 months which may be a better option for those who might use it to pay rent or bills. Click here to apply for one!  

- Shell Petrol Loyalty Card: Just pick up one of these cards from your nearest Shell garage, register it online and choose the option to collect BA Avios points which will be then linked to your exec account and every time you fuel up at a Shell garage, just have them swipe your card and you'll start collecting points. Here is the link to the website to register your card.

 - Shopping: If I'm shopping online, the first place I'll go is to avios.com where I have signed up for a free account, and I periodically move my points to my BA exec account or to my avios.com account if I want to spend points. avios.com features hundreds of well-known retailers such as ASOS which often has bonus point collections earning up to 8 points per £1 spent!

All of this might sound a bit much, but trust me, once it is all done and set up, every time you spend money you will be collecting air miles, and soon you will be jet-setting across the world in high-class style for budget prices! If you need any help with it just email me here.

Good Luck and Happy Collecting!

 

Have a good week my loves!

Lots of Love, Kate xxx

Christmas Time at Home

Well, now lovely people I have actually made it back to my parent's house in the darkest depths of Hampshire (which has recently been voted the best place to live in the UK - Winchester, you should check it out!). Anyway, now that I am back for the best part of two weeks, what am I going to do in this wilderness I hear you cry!? Well, your guess is as good as mine. I mean there's the constant desire to be classically Christmassy and watch films and eat till I explode, which I'm sure will come within the next few days and the fact that I've kinda finished most of my work, bar a few pieces that need editing, I have found myself with free time on my hands and as I am stuck in the arse end of nowhere, what better to do than actually read something for fun.

Yes, I said it. For Fun. I can't remember the last time I just picked a book off my shelf to read that wasn't involved in some coursework or essay deadline. So now, sat here in front of a roaring fire because the heating in our house has broken, and unable to watch Gilmore Girls because the Internet is so patchy and prehistoric, I am taking the opportunity to write this blog post and read.
Okay, I'll admit I am starting off with some YA fiction, only because these are two proofs of books that are set to be published early 2017 that I got from Scholastic in the summer - so I have been only waiting a ridiculous 4 months to read these amazing stories.

I literally just finished reading, The Goldfish Boy, what can I say, it was incredible. I know it has been compared to A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, by many reviewers and, although I haven't read it, I saw the play in the summer and I would agree that the premise of the storyline is very similar. However, I think Lisa Thompson's offering updates what has gone before it and is a very sensitive way of dealing with a complicated subject matter for younger readers. I won't say anymore so as not to give the plot away, you'll just have to go out and buy it for yourselves next year.

The other book from Scholastic that I've yet to read is Ink, by Alice Broadway. Although I've read the first half of the manuscript in the summer I haven't finished this book yet and the whole idea of this story is so exciting that I cannot wait. The idea of living in a world where your entire life-story is tattooed onto your skin is fascinating and very Hunger-Games-World-esque. The cover art is absolutely beautiful too!
For me, this was one of the greatest perks of working at Scholastic, getting to see the proofs before everyone else, and for a time, being sworn to secrecy. Definitely, one of the draws to go back, I would really like to go back there once I have graduated, so fingers crossed an assistant's job comes up at the right time for me!

Anyway, that's enough for one day, I'm gonna grab a cuppa, snuggle up with Alfie (my cocker spaniel mad dog) and get stuck into Ink. 

Have a good week my loves!

Lots of Love, Kate xxx 

Its....CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!

Hello all,
I'm back again in a much more positive mindset and a much happier post because its CHRIST-MAS!!!!!!!
Okay, so it might not quite be Christmas just yet, but it is now officially December which means it is no longer too early to put up the tree, although let's be real, the tree and Christmas decs have been up in our house already since mid-November as we've got to make the most of winter here, not being at uni for actual Christmas. Very sweetly the boys announced the other day that they will be cooking Christmas dinner for us this year which I am actually really looking forward to, and to see how it turns out, although I have every faith in them.
I don't want to get sad because this post is meant to be happy happy happy, but seeing as this is our last Christmas together as a group, and I know we've had our ups and downs completely, everyone has as housemates, but for the most part I think we have done pretty well as a group of strangers put together at the beginning of first year and we are still housemates three years on. We've done good.

I am pleased, though because next year I will be (hopefully) staying here at RHUL to do my Masters as I have been unofficially (thanks to the Classics department) given a place on the Ancient History course. So, Royal Holloway, you've got me for one more year!

But back to the subject in hand, CHRISTMAS. Although I have done none of my shopping yet, and it will probably end up being a last minute job with the help of Amazon Prime, I love the Christmas feeling. Christmas days itself is fun, but a little bit of a let down I always find compared to the fun of the hype of the weeks leading up to it.
One of my most favouritest things about Christmas has to be London at Christmas, the lights, the Christmas markets, the crisp London air, I just love it. Oh yeah, and Winter Wonderland, although the crowds there do drive me utterly mental.

           

Well that it for my random ramblings today, I'm gonna try and write more posts on here more often from now on, although I do say that every few months or so and fail, I'll try I promise!

Have a good week my loves!

Lots of Love, Kate xxx

The Persistence of Being Alone

While I write about many different and sometimes difficult things on my blog, this one may be one of the hardest things to write about which is why, although I will be publishing it, I won't be publicising it.

Regular readers (if I even have any - hello to those that are), will notice that I've been a bit silent over the past weeks. I haven't actually written a post since the beginning of October. I could blame this on third year, being busy, having more important priorities than this (sorry), or a whole host of a number of different things, but honestly I haven't felt like writing, partly because I don't have anything to write about but partly because I didn't want to write this blog post, which I always knew was coming at some point.

Don't get me wrong, I love university, and despite the ups and downs I've had, I can genuinely say I have enjoyed it and wouldn't really change it for the world. Well, that was until this term. In part, I am loving 3rd year, weirdly I am really enjoying my degree, yes there is a lot of work, but organising myself well is the one thing I can say I am really good at and excel in. The content of my work may be shit but I will get it all done on time, probably early. No, the hardest thing this year has been the persistent feeling of being alone. Not lonely, just alone.

Now, when you live with your friends, life can be great but also sometimes it can be really fucking hard. You don't always get to do the fun things you usually do with friends who you don't live with because you see each other every day, and your time spent together is doing silly house related things like arguing about who is going to empty the dishwasher next. I'm finding this very hard to explain without coming off very whiny and selfish, let me try again.
Part of the issue is that my timetable is so messed up with my job and me working from 9pm-3am or even later is that when I am at work, everyone is asleep, but when they are at work or busy with committee things, that's the time I have free, the time when it would be nice to spend time with people other than myself. Like I said, it's not being lonely, but I am increasingly finding myself alone in the house of an evening, perhaps a few hours before work, perhaps not, alone. I get it, everyone has busy lives, I do too. It is just hard sometimes when you see all your friends on a fleeting unimportant basis, and nobody has the time to make time for each other anymore.

This also may be me sounding bitter because I'm single, but it is really not meant to be, I'm happy being me, but it is hard getting sidelined by girlfriends and boyfriends of your friends. I'm so pleased for all my friends in relationships and I wish them the world of happiness together, I truly do, but how can I explain to them that I miss them. How can I ask them to want to spend time with me, just once that actually means something without sounding so extremely selfish, its not fair to them, they want to spend time with the people they love, and yet so do I. This feeling of fading into the background is something I've never experienced before and I'm not sure how to take it. It all got too much for me the other day, well this and a lot of other things that I got such an intense feeling of claustrophobia that I just had to leave Egham, get out of my house, and go some place where I could be alone without feeling alone. So I went to the gorgeous Beth's house at RVC, just for some peace from myself. Being there for 2 days has certainly helped but I'm back now and I'm still not sure how to cope.

Ultimately, I am really looking forward to having a break because I think I need sometime to myself, to believe in myself once more. I'm a very independent person, but not very good at being alone. I'm happy to go out for dinner by myself, hell I even went travelling by myself, and would do again, relying on other people to do the things you want to do is bullshit sometimes. You have to do something yourself if you really just want to do it, not ifs, buts or excuses. Yet that doesn't mean it is not better sometimes to do things with your friends, I think it is finding that balance that I'm struggling with at the moment. Not being somebody's number one priority is hard for everyone, let's be real, we all want to be number one in our friend's lives, just like they want to be number one in ours, but what do you do when that changes, how do you take it, do you keep holding on, or do you let them go? What is too much? What is not enough?

This post was always going to be somber and somewhat depressing so I'm sorry if you've come here looking for some cheering up, you won't find it from me at the moment. My answer to feeling like this? Tell people? Yeah, well I've tried that, it didn't really change much, so now I'm going to embrace myself and love me. Its about time somebody did, because I'm fucking amazing. I'm done feeling sorry for myself, I don't want to complain, I don't want sympathy. A long time ago I wrote a post on what it meant to be strong, now I think I know what it is. It is this.

Have a good week my loves!

Lots of Love, Kate xxx

Wake up to Third Year

So here we are, 3 weeks into third year, the beginning of the end has already begun and I'm not going to lie to you, it's scaring me shitless. Don't get me wrong, I'm really enjoying my course so far this year as I, like everyone else hopefully, have finally got down to doing modules that I really want to do, none of this compulsory bullshit. well apart from the dissertation of course, but we don't speak about that.

The fact that in less than 9 months time I will have graduated (hopefully) is insane, the amount of things that have to be done between now and then is crazy, and the fact that I am meant to have ideally decided what I am going to do with the rest of my life is ridiculous. I am no way closer to knowing what I want to do than I was at choosing university age 17. I'm hoping I'll just end up falling into something again like I did with Holloway, and that turned out pretty fucking awesome for the most part.

Anyway, all this thinking about the future and the finality of third year malarky has made me come to the conclusion even more that it is totally okay if you have no idea and no plan what to do at the moment, or really ever for that matter, especially straight out of uni. This is the prime time to be working shitty 3am jobs and living in a crappy hole, because why not. Why not be saving your arse off to go travelling or whatever you want to do so much that all you can afford is beans on toast for weeks on end. Why not? Might as well do it now before the actual responsibilities begin. Thinking about it like this makes me really excited - but one thing I have certainly decided is that, as much as I love them, I cannot live back home with my family, so I am going to have to do everything in my power to not. For those of you that don't already know (and if you don't, where have you been for the last 4 years!?) my parent's house is in the middle of nowhere, Hampshire with a population of about 1000 and the average age of about 90. So yeh, no more of that thanks!

I'm applying for various Masters courses at the moment to try and delay the inevitable, but at the moment the idea of leaving here is also really scary. Can you see a theme evolving? Apparently, I am scared of everything in my future at the moment. Well no, I'd like to think no, although it is scary, it's always very exciting doing something new. I've got the whole world to choose from, so it better be ready for me!

That is it from me tonight my lovelies, I've gotta head to bed in a bit, tomorrow I have the absolute pleasure of driving the RHUL Men's 2nds Fencing team to their match in London, lucky me!

Have a good week my loves!

Lots of Love, Kate xxx