I manage to be frugal most of the time but not all the time. One of my failures to be frugal this year was in deciding to buy a new Apple iPhone. My dubious rationale for this was the slight improvement in the camera or battery life justified the expense. So in the months leading up to the iPhone 15 being formally announced I surfed rumours about it on the Internet. And was too credulous in believing one rumour that in the UK the iPhone 15 wouldn't have a SIM tray any more.

As I wanted to take this putative new mobile phone on holiday with me in October and November I decided to convert the SIM card in my existing phone to be an eSim ahead of time. This turned out to be a bad idea on two counts at least. My current SIM card was with Vodafone which served well apart from when I was travelling and using Google Maps. That tended to eat through the small data allowance on the plan I was on, I don't use a mobile much so normally not an issue. So I decided to switch from Vodafone to LycaMobile and then just move the eSim over when the new phone arrived. The port from Vodafone to LycaMobile went smoothly, the downside was at home Vodafone's network seemed better than EE's. Ah well.

The new iPhone arrived late September and it arrived with a SIM tray so worrying about using an eSim had been a total waste of time! And to make matters worse LycaMobile couldn't move the eSim from the old iPhone to the new. So I decided to change horses in midstream and move from LycaMobile to 1pMobile which I had been considering in the first place as 1pMobile suited my mobile usage better. There was a hiccup getting a PAC code from LycaMobile as they were having technical issues so it was into October before I could start the port in of the number with 1pMobile.

It was then that it transpired that LycaMobile had suffered a major cyber attack and were having to rebuild their servers. The port in took weeks and I was worried lest I lose the mobile number which would have been painful. It did complete late October but not a saga I want to rerun. I also had another learning experience getting a suitable case for the new iPhone but that's another story.