Hurdler's Race to be Mortgage-Free

Hurdler

Hi Lois - yes it's been busy but glad to be back.
Although - have pobably spent about as much money talking to France to try and sell my Eurotunnel shares as they are worth!
Anyway - that should be the last of the shares I inherited from mty dad sold, and ready to be transferred into a tax efficient and more importantly properly managed fund.

It's been a long old haul and perhaps (ironically) the worst thing has been trying to convince my mother that this is beter than holding on to shares whose values PLUMMETTED in the last few years (BP, BSkyB) ... I have probably lost over half the value from them just from those two alone.

I won't lie - this would be enough to clear half my mortgage... but this was something my dad developed over years so I'd like to think he'd be happy it was being invested and managed properly ...

Need to just watch Elise Christie's heat of speed skating then go get my things ready for the gym...

Hurdler

Me again - so today I have a few hours to kill before heading into the big bad city to give my cousin my old netbook for her daughter (my fave little cousin in the whole wide world) who has volunteered to do humanitarian work in Jordan (eeek) for the Syrian refugees.

She wanted a Mac... (HA said her mum!) but after a tortuous discussion with my accountant as to how to exactly treat some of my older toys that I no longer use, I spent a day wiping it and figuring out how to create a new account for her on it, and will give it to her (sale price is £35) for the price of a pie and a pint at the pub round the corner from where she works!

Now I know the concept of Tilly Tidying, I am going to do a massive Tilly tidy on my accounts this evening when I get back and it might be a monthly thing when I sort out my accounts and bills for now.

Oh another saving I made as well as the gym fees is I finally got my flat rate VAT classification lowered to "Entertainment/Media/Journalism) as I would only ever being doing a day a week of IT work which is less than 20% of my total income. That means a couple of percent of VAT obligations saved.

I am happy with all my consolidated accounts now...

• Personal Current account - (receives Salary, expenses and dividend from my Business account and dumps over a certain balance into my mortgage overpayment fund on the first of every month, leaving enough to cover that month's bills).
• Business Current - now has 3 months of outgoings including Salary and sundries and from April it will also pay my pension
• Business Saver - each month the accountancy system I use tells me how much I owe in VAT and Corp Tax and I always make sure before I pay myself expenses and a dividend that there is enough to cover that in the Saver
• Cash Allowance - each month I put £350 away and allow myself £70 in cash
• Treat Account - anything left from that £70 goes into my treat account and that's what gets used when I go out
• Emergency fund has 6 months of outgoings in there...
• Car fund has money to cover tax, insurance and maintenance/repairs
• T3sco Clubcard Plus Savings account topped up - I use that to pay for the groceries once a fortnight.
• couple of extra online savers attached to the cash allowance (a year's worth) and treat account
• Cash back on Amex platinum and Play.com vouchers on an MBNA Visa when Amex isn't accepted

My thing to change/do in March will be a Tilly tidy from my main bank into my overpayment account (which is probably the easiest to do as they are all in the same place).

I like me a plan, I do!

Hurdler

To be added to Vernon next time I go to the bank - £40 for selling my netbook to my cousin (and I got a lovely text from her daughter thanking me for it)

Seeing as cashmygadget showed it was worth £35 - I think that's a decent sum.
My cousin wants me to buy something nice with it - but I have my treat accounts for that - that £40 is a few squiddly-diddlies closer to making a 3x overpayment next month - and that's pretty nice too!!!

Hurdler

Trying to figure out what constitutes an NSD.
If I go in to town for my weeklky round trip to the bank... the mileage and parking is business. As is lunch occasaionally bought out.

BUT often I claim it back as expenses at the end of the month.. so is that strictly NSD?

Hmmmmm [/scratches head and goes back to writing about tennis]

Alchemilla

IMHO if you are definitely going to get stuff as a business expense then it doesnt spoil your NSD. Unless you deceive yourself about what counts as a business expense of course!

Hurdler

Alchemilla wrote: »

IMHO if you are definitely going to get stuff as a business expense then it doesnt spoil your NSD. Unless you deceive yourself about what counts as a business expense of course!

hahah - I do remember having an entertaining chat with the accountant when I had to get glasses for work since switching careers... I need them for working on the computer (given that I write all day) and for reading... so he was arguing that maybe I couldn't claim if I read in the evenings... I snorted... WHAT evenings! Tennis orders of play come out after a day of watching and writing about matches - by the time I go to bed... if I saw ONE MORE WORD!!!! I also invested in a proper office-chair with adjustable whatnots and lumbar support and was sternly told I was never to use it for personal use... absolutely no taking it downstairs to use at the dinner table... I mean... what????!

I do remember when I DID have a proper job, the rumour mill told tales of the guy who got sacked for buying a log cabin on his company amex card!!!

Hurdler

Ohhh where has today gone - 5pm, only three pieces written... and some muppet wanting 700 unique words on Indian Wells. I wonder if unique includes expletives?

Alchemilla

At least he didnt buy a duck house.

Tell me about your WHIRLWIND OF CHANGE?

And do you have a cure for tennis elbow?

Hurdler

Well the whirlwind of change is in the diary ... Upshot is - felt had no other option in life but to take voluntary redundancy, took first job that came along which was a HUGE mistake, took a ridinkidonk amount of times to pass freakin' shorthand - got stuffed over by a gittish editor while I toiled for my break in sports journalism and now that's what I do. (MSE pals - did I miss anything?? )

I have never suffered from tennis elbow. Not even golfer's elbow come to that. But my back don't half hurt to hell after serving practice ... And given I have no cartilage left in my knees from years of being (surprise surprise) a hurdler ... Tennis is quite possibly THE WORST pastime I could do!!!

Hurdler

So... I saw in my Online Accountancy package last year that I needed to pay some PAYE/NIC (£20.70) so I remember long and protacted conversations to work out how much to pay and what the reference was and paid it.

Then I got an email from someone at the accountancy saying I'd overpaid ... but had the notification come from THEM or HMRC - I assumed them as that was where I had seen it first and left it to my lovely account manager to sort so that the £20.70 could just be refunded to the business account. Would mean just a smidge more for me when I came round to do my salary, expenses and dividend... so all good.

Hadn't heard back all week so called up lovely account manager... turns out the complete noodles I worked for before I finally set up on my own (who could not organise the proverbial in a brewery) screwed up my PAYE... potentially... to the tune of around £700.

Obviously nothing confirmed yet, but if so - 'tis a HUGE relief as that ought to cover most of the cost of redecorating the front room thanks to rain getting in behind the parcel box bolted to the wall... which hopefully won't take too much away from Vernon the Virtual Money Pig. But then agan am I being bad in spending it before it's confirmed?!

Then again this is HMRC we are talking about who gave me an £800+ rebate that same year and then demanded it back.

So I suspect I will owe them money instead.

I once asked a great mate when did life become so complicated - she said "somewhere between Farleys Rusks and paying a mortgage"....!