Cazmanian_minx's new MF diary

cazmanian_minx

Happy Friday everyone

Another £250 gone from the tooth fairy loan - just 6 payments to make on that now and having that extra £250 to throw at the cards is going to make SUCH a difference! I've had a bit of a clear out in the stock room and everything so far has sold, though there are a few auctions ending tonight, Tuesday and Wednesday which don't have bids yet. And I've paid £34 less interest on the scary-high-business credit card this month I got the statement yesterday and promptly threw £400 at it. Ideally I need to take another £2,200 before I pay any more off it (currently have £1400 in the bank, which is allocated to a supplier bill and the postage bill, both due next month, and need to save up my wages for next month of £1500 - just opened a First Direct account! - and the import bill due next week which should be around £700).

I have blown the budget a bit this month though Firstly on Mr Minx's birthday present - it's not until the end of next month, but there's a limited edition bottle of whisky he's been drooling over for a while and when we went into the shop last weekend to see how much it was, it was the last one they had of the four allocated to them, so I bought it for him. Then I got an email from Eden Court in Inverness saying that Michael McIntyre was going to be doing a show there as a warm up for his big tour later this year - and how could I pass up the chance to see one of my favourite comedians in a very small venue? If it comes to it I suppose I can always sell the tickets, as it sold out in about an hour, but I'd rather go and have a good evening's entertainment. Tight belts for the rest of the month though! Talking of which, at least the diet is going well - I've now lost 15lbs this year, 12lbs in the 7 and a half weeks since I restarted the Harcombe Diet, and I'm feeling good :A

cazmanian_minx

Happy Friday

Another nibble off the Tesco card. I actually bothered to look at my statement when I logged on to pay and found that expired 0% balance transfers are not charged at the card's purchases rate of 15.9%, they're charged at 17.9% :mad: So the Tesco card is now second on the hit list as the Egg card is 16.9% (though I suppose now that's a Barclaycard I'd better check that the interest rate on that isn't different for expired BTs as well).

Good news work-wise, I overestimated the freight bill by £45, that's now paid and the stock should be arriving on Thursday or Friday next week. I've also chucked another £750 off scary-interest-rate-business-card and ordered some new lines of stock from my Far East wholesaler, who I'd forgotten I had a US$132 credit with

Mr Minx got a call from his bank this week asking him who our mortgage was with as they were confident they could save us money. He took great delight in telling them that unless they could beat a base rate plus 1.1% lifetime tracker, no they couldn't :rotfl::rotfl: He's away to Glasgow to inspect a crane on Sunday, so I shall be taking advantage of eBay's free listing weekend to try and drum up some more dosh for the cards.

cazmanian_minx

Happy Friday everyone

Slightly expensive week, as we bought a pony Well, Mr Minx is buying the pony and I'll be paying him back rather slowly. He's 13, a Welsh Section D 14hh gelding, dark bay with two white socks and a star and he's absolutely lovely. He'll be arriving on June 12th, so I need to knock out the storage partition in the field shelter, floor that bit with rubber matting and stick up another saddle rack in the shed.

On the personal finance front, the first £1500 has gone into the new First Direct bills account. I think it's two or three months you have to pay in before they give you the £100. Mr Minx's contribution to the bills will continue to go into the old NatWest account and that'll be the 'spends' account - just makes it a bit easier to split the two out.

Business seems to be going well, cash is flowing in the right direction anyway, and I think I've just found an overseas supplier for one of my best-selling types of finding - I've been getting them from a UK wholesaler, but have found the exact same thing for US$1.36 instead of £2.20. I'm arranging samples to be sent over for nickel testing, if this works out I'm going to be SO chuffed. I've got a delivery from Hong Kong arriving today and another order of cheap & cheerful stuff being put together in Guangzhou at the moment, which should be on its way in 3 weeks time. In fact, I've bought quite a lot of stock this month and still managed to pay over £1000 off the scarily-high-rate business credit card, so doing OK at the moment (hoping that's not famous last words :rotfl:)

Mortgage related news (see, I'm occasionally on topic!), Mr Minx heard on the news that it's entirely possible the base rate will stay where it is for another 5 years, and we worked out that if it does our mortgage will go down to about £86k without us making any extra overpayments at all, which would be nice....

cazmanian_minx

Sorry for missing last Friday, but I don't think I could have typed Happy Friday if I'd tried - earlier that week, six weeks and one day after losing Red, we had to have Smokey put to sleep as well.



He was only 8. He got very ill over the jubilee weekend, the vets diagnosed a liver problem via ultrasound and recommended an exploratory operation to find out what was actually going on - his liver was not only diseased, it had fused to his stomach and made a hole in it and the vets advised that the kindest thing to do was not to let him wake up. They were astonished that he'd shown no other signs of what was going on other than being a bit off his food - any other dog with that condition would have been biting or yelping during the abdominal exams, but Smokes never even flinched. He's gone to join Red and we have a very, very empty house

So although the non-mortgage debt looks like it's going down nicely, I actually have a fairly hefty overdraft as well thanks to over £1000 of vet bills and I still have to find £2,200 by the end of July to pay my tax bill as my accountant hasn't got back to me about possibly getting it reduced as it'll be an overpayment. It'll either get put on the Post Office card or I'll not pay the £2000 I was planning to pay off Scary-Rate-Business-Card in the next two months, probably the latter as I seem to remember HMRC makes a percentage charge if you pay by credit card rather than debit card. I did get a bit excited yesterday, as a 0% offer fell out of my Post Office card statement, but when I rang up I wasn't eligible as I'd only just finished one. They did say keep trying as new offers get added to accounts every month.

At least the business cashflow is flowing in the right direction, nearly £4,500 banked so far this month which is a huge help. And the new pony arrived on Tuesday and has settled in beautifully - even Merlin, who usually will try to beat up any strange gelding he meets, has taken to him straight away and I was able to put them in together within 24 hours.

TallGirl

Aw Caz that is awfull to loose on pet is devastating but to loose two so soon after each other is just too much. So so sorry I really feel for you having lost several pet dogs and a cat in the past but never two at the same time.

Hugs from me and my two furry friends.

teapot2

Really sorry to hear about you losing both Red and Smokey - they look lovely, happy dogs in the photos and obviously enjoyed a good life with you and its good neither suffered too much. I know you'll miss them both and as you say a house seems so quiet without our pets. I'm a cat person and miss all our old boys terribly even after a number of years.

cazmanian_minx

Sorry, missed Friday as I was in Inverness getting my third and hopefully final run of Invisalign braces fitted. On top of sore teeth I also got dumped by the new pony during a saddle fitting on Friday night and then he accidentally headbutted me in the nose on Sunday morning, so I'm feeling a little bit battered at the moment!

It's been a horribly expensive month what with one thing and another, but I've finally managed to get round to selling those silver rings I looked out a few months ago and made £35. I've paid another £1000 off the scary-rate-business-card and sent my accountant a gentle nudge about the possibility of getting that tax bill reduced or cancelled. She's replied to say it look like we can do something with it, which would be a HUGE help.

Even better news, the supplier who I get my charm bracelets from sent me a picture of a snake chain on Friday to ask if I'd be interested in buying them. I emailed back to ask if they could do me trace and curb chains, they said they'd ask the factory if I could send them a picture of what I wanted, which I did. This morning they sent me a picture of a sample the factory had knocked up for me over the weekend and it's exactly what I'm looking for, so I've asked for prices. More stock being collected from GuangZhou in China by my agent tomorrow as well.

I never mentioned the mortgage hiccup here did I? Because I was changing bank accounts I made sure that there was enough money in both of them to pay the mortgage just in case something went wrong with First Direct's switching service - the payment is normally due on the 5th, but that was the bank holiday, so it should have been taken from NatWest on the 6th before my FD switching date of the 7th. I logged into IF on the 6th and it was showing as paid, but hadn't come out of either account. I checked on the Thursday, still the same. Went away for the weekend early on Friday and when I came back on Monday IF had reversed the payment, so I rang them, paid it by debit card and found that they'd tried to take it from the FD account instead of the NatWest one as the instructions they'd been sent said to change details on 30th May. Rang FD who said the instructions they'd sent were dated 30th May but said not to change the account until the 7th and they'd send me the audit trail so I could prove it to IF. The sheet of paper arrived on Saturday and says 'Processing date: 30/05/12 Effective date 30/05/2012' - NOWHERE on it does it say 7th June, so I rang FD again who are still saying it's IF's fault. In the meantime I've had a letter from IF charging me £10 for a late payment plus added interest on the mortgage and a late payment recorded against my previously-perfect payment record. To say I'm not happy is an understatement!!!! FD has recommended I write to IF with a copy of the BACS trace and if they can't help, they'll try and help me get IF to refund me the charge and interest. I'll be damned if I'm paying it since it's definitely not my fault!

DawnW

I am worried now - I am in the middle of a fd transfer, and not all my dds have even appeared :eek:

It will be 'interesting' when/if the bills go out this month

cazmanian_minx

Happy Friday everyone, even if it is a bit soggy! Actually we've been lucky up here, just a few heavy showers.

No change on the finances front really, though I think I'd probably better face up to reality and take myself off to Debt-Free Wannabe to get that side of things sorted out properly before coming back to tackle the mortgage again. Business and personal debts are standing at £21,610.37 today and although that's a lot better than mid-March when they hit a high of £27,560.88 :eek:, I've still got a long way to go before I'm back in the black. I'll still update this diary, but it'll probably not be weekly. If anyone is mad enough to want to carry on reading my witterings, then I'll put a link to my DFW diary if I'm brave enough to start one

cazmanian_minx

DFW diary:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/54141003#Comment_54141003