Caz counts it down

So, as part of the flickering 'I need to sort this' lightbulb moment, I opened a new account with First Direct and switched all my direct debits over to them (and they gave me £100, which was nice of them). That's my bills account, I pay £1500 a month into it from the business account and anything over £100 left at the end of the month gets transferred to the personal current account to go towards the overdraft. Food, fuel etc. etc. still comes out of the Personal: Overdraft account, but looking at the interest rates, I'd actually be better off spending on the Tesco card which is 15.9% for purchases wouldn't I? I have tried to get another 0% balance transfer card, but have been turned down by two different lenders in 3 months, so I'm going to have to discount that option for the moment. There's quite a lot of headroom on the Post Office card and I got very excited when a balance transfer offer fell out of last month's statement, but when I rang them up they said I didn't qualify at the moment because I've only just finished a 0% offer with them.

However, if my accountant doesn't get my tax return submitted fairly soon, I'm going to have to make a payment to HMRC of just under £2,200 at the end of July - if she can get the return in before then, she can apply to the revenue to have the payment reduced (or, hopefully, cancelled completely) because my business profit for the year just ended was down £7k on the previous year, so I'm overpaying on tax.

My contribution to the debt mountain today is to write to Intelligent Finance and try to get them to reverse the penalty charge and extra interest they've added on to my mortgage for a late payment - somehow between them and First Direct's easyswitch team, they managed to screw up the direct debit for the mortgage and didn't try to take it from either current account (funds were available in both to cover it). First Direct has sent me a copy of their audit trail, but I'm not sure it actually proves what they say it does, so I'm going to photocopy it and send it to Intelligent Finance and try and get them to sort it out between them. I'd like to have the late payment mark removed from my credit record as well, it's the first one on there in 13 years and I'm actually more annoyed about that than the tenner!

I'm in the living room twiddling my thumbs as Mr Minx said last night he wanted a lie in, but he's having sinus problems at the moment and the snoring was so bad that I decamped to the spare room. I remembered to take my dressing gown with me but not anything else, so my feet are FREEZING and I can't go and get clothes without waking him up. Unless I want to go and muck out the field in my wedding dress or a velvet evening dress, both of which are in the cupboard in the spare room :rotfl:

So I've been sorting out my signature and have joined in with the Payment a Day thread - £1.39 from the First Direct account to the personal overdraft, which makes the 'amount available' on the overdraft online banking end in a 5.00. I have a feeling all my PaDs are going to be to round off balances for a while, but every little helps.

I was thinking yesterday about weight and debt. I know that a lot of people find that their weight gets out of control when their finances get out of control, but for me it's the other way around - if my finances are good I'm usually overweight and if I'm in debt I'm slim. At the moment I'm very in debt, so just out of curiousity I tried on two pairs of size 8 jeans in Tesco yesterday - the bootcut fitted perfectly and the slouch were TOO BIG!!!! I've never been a size 8 in my life!! I think I've figured out why it works this way for me though; I was a fat kid, got teased about it and a lot of my self-esteem is tied to my weight. When my weight is up I tend to hermit, when I'm hermitting I'm not spending anything. As soon as the weight starts to come off, I have a L'Oreal 'I'm worth it' moment and start treating myself. So one of my challenges as I shed ££££££s of debt will be not to regain lbsssssssss of fat in the process.

Mr Minx has been half-killing himself at work recently and is in dire need of a break, but we only have £240 in the spare change joint bank account (our holiday fund) which is not going to get us even a weekend away in a posh hotel, let alone the 10 days in somewhere tropical he'd really like. (He refuses to go camping after 13 years of it with his ex and after taking him to a 4* hotel in Mauritius for our honeymoon last year, he's got a taste for luxury - my bad...). So I'm heading off to the comping board to try and win us a holiday. Wish me luck

I should have said earlier, thank you to everyone who's commented, it's really lovely to have some support :beer::beer::beer:

I'm in a FANTASTIC mood this morning because I fired up the office computer to find an email from my accountant and now instead of having to pay the Inland Revenue £2,200 at the end of the month, THEY owe ME £80 :T:T:T:T:T:T:T:T It's a huge, huge weight off my mind and I shall be very careful about putting the money aside over the next six months so I don't have this kind of panic again come the end of January (though to be fair, I was putting it aside until it got spent on the dogs' vet bills ).

Yesterday was a no-spend day, they're actually quite easy to do up here because if you don't get in your car or shop online there's nowhere to spend your money. What are the rules surrounding NSDs anyway? For example, today the direct debit for the TV licence has come out and I have to ring the oil company and pay their invoice for the heating oil we had delivered last month, but I won't be spending on anything else - so are those exempt because they're bills and can I claim today as an NSD as well?

I've entered competitions to win holidays in Mauritius, the Seychelles, L.A., Texas, Bulgaria (not so sure about that one!), Portugal, Hawaii and a cruise in Norway, as well as a lot of Scottish short breaks. Fingers crossed