Caz counts it down

Cwtchie

We've had two customers lately who did exactly that. The first one didn't read the advert and then blamed us, the second one said it didn't fit his car - when I asked what car he had, no wonder the part was for a completely different make and advertised as much! Anyway the negative feed backs remain and knocked us out of top seller rating, no matter how much I complained to ebay, but here's hoping that they have miraculously changed their policies and yours is removed

cazmanian_minx

If it was on Amazon I could get it removed on the grounds that it's purely a product review, but not on eBay unfortunately At least this time I'm not bumped right up against my overdraft limit, I've got a cushion of nearly £3,000, so if I do get a drop (and so far it looks like it may not happen, or at least not as badly) then I should be able to trade through it until the neutral drops into the six month category.

My day off with Mr Minx was a bit of a non-event unfortunately We left at 10.45, after I'd packed up the remaining orders, stopped at the Trawler in Golspie for lunch in the car (best chips on the A9!), made it to Raigmore by 2.10, Mr Minx spent a grand total of eight minutes seeing his consultant, then we decided that we'd better get home for the animals so didn't have time to go into Inverness. We zoomed into the big Tesco for me to try and buy the new Erasure album, thinking they'd have it since it made the top 20, only to find that Tesco's top 75 in no way reflects the UK charts and they didn't stock it. Also had a look around Go Outdoors and couldn't find anything I wanted in there either, so we gave up and drove the 2.5 hours back home. So I don't really feel I've had a day out at all

Never mind, I have some me-time on Wednesday - off for a one-to-one session with my trainer, which will either inspire me or kill me!

Pippilongstocking

Loving that the hosses are loving the lettuce.

Phooey to a scuppered day off and adventures.

Sorry about the customer stuff - so unfair.

Better luck next time xx

DebtFree2012

Ohhh you will have to report back with your aches and pains! You already do plenty but no doubt he will work you hard! Good Luck!

cazmanian_minx

It may be off, he's fighting a lurgy - he'd hoped he'd be better in time, but he's not sure, he's going to see how he feels in the morning and email me.

It's not been the best of days, to be quite honest. The weather has been so appalling that the horses haven't set hoof outside their field shelters. When I went down at lunchtime to check hay levels, I got togged up in my oilskins but didn't take my gloves because I wasn't intending to muck out - so of course, Merlin had decided to rest his bottom on the edge of his hay feeder and the inevitable had happened....! Serious hand scrubbing before I started packing orders again!!

Mr Minx's truck is still at the garage and Nissan are not being terribly helpful in assisting them fix it, given that it's a known fault with Navaras.

Remember we had the kitchen roof fixed a couple of months ago? We've had our first wet easterly since then today and whilst the old leak is fixed, it's now leaking in a new place. To be fair to our roofer, he did say that the problem might be higher up inside the chimney and unfortunately it looks like it is. He's going to come back tomorrow or Thursday to take a look.

And for the third expensive thing of the day, Mr Minx noticed when he got home that the little knobbly thing on the end of the satellite dish arm had been blown off, so he reached up to push it back into place and the entire dish arm snapped off. I doubt very much that we'll be able to get an engineer out for a few weeks, given today's weather, so I'm hoping that the local Sky installers will just be able to sell me a replacement dish for Mr Minx to put up himself - should be a fairly simple job since we know the alignment from the current dish.

That said, there have been a few positive things as well Mr Minx managed to mend the bathroom extractor fan at the weekend, so we don't need to get an electrician out. I managed to mend the cordless phone, which hasn't been working all day. Oh, and I got paid for my transcription and proofreading work and paid off the Nationwide card completely :D:D I did have to borrow £236 from the tax bill savings pot, but that'll go back in soon enough.

It's been pointed out to me by a friend that since the Halifax card is at 0% for a couple of years and I'm paying 6% on my business overdraft, that should be the next target rather than the card, which is going to need a bit of a change of mindset. Until I've got rid of that overdraft, I now need to take as little as possible out of the business account, just enough to top up the transcription and proofreading money to the minimum I need to live off. Fresh SOA needed, I think, will try and do one over the next few days.

Getting the balancing act between reinvesting in stock and paying off overdraft is also going to be tricky. I ordered a load of Christmas-themed flatbacks today, which will hopefully be a quick turnaround sales-wise. I had four of them in last year and they did really well, just had a couple of packs of each left over which sold last week, so I've got 500 each of those in this time and added a few more designs - I'm going to sell them as a variety pack as well, hopefully I can shift them fast for some quick cash.

DebtFree2012

So what's your options then for paying things off?

Bad news and good news there but nothing that can't be fixed.

We're due a clear night down to 6 degrees then rain tomorrow but clear night again so I think I will leave the pony out overnight tomorrow.

cazmanian_minx

Just keep slogging on, I guess. The card will now go down to the minimum payment (rounded up to the nearest tenner, so £60 a month) until the overdraft is gone in YNAB. Once the overdraft is cleared, I can start taking out my usual drawings amount again and go back to using the transcription money to throw at the card. £7,030 seems like a lot of overdraft to go, but I keep having to remind myself that it's less than one month's cash bankings at the moment. I need to have a really good stockroom clearout, I'm sure I can raise at least half of it by selling off slow-moving stuff at cost price!

We're due to have one last downpour between now and midnight and then it should start to slacken off a bit.

cazmanian_minx

Trainer still lurgied, so we rescheduled for next week. I rang the local Sky people as soon as they opened - they're absolutely swamped with calls after the last couple of days, so much so that they need every dish they currently have for booked visits, but said they were expecting more tomorrow or Friday and would let me know when they're here. Then Pete the roofer turned up, had a good look at everything from ground level and said he'd be back in a few days' time to get up on the roof and test all the harling on the gable end. We're quite a way down his list on the grounds that our roof is still actually on, unlike a few other people he had to see this week, and Mr Minx is a bit stressed at the amount of moisture currently in the kitchen There's no more water coming in, the rain has stopped, but what came in over the past two days is working its way out.

As I wasn't going out today after all, I got some proofreading done on top of sending out orders, then a stock delivery arrived with a big special order for a customer, so I was able to send him a PayPal invoice. Hopefully he'll pay overnight and that'll be £360 extra banked tomorrow

DebtFree2012

Great news re bankings.

Could you get a dehumidifier (sp? late and tired and in a boring audio mtg) to soak up some moisture from the kitchen?

cazmanian_minx

It had dried out by morning - he just made a slight error of judgement in cooking pasta in there while the ceiling was still cold and damp on the other side and the condensation went berserk.

The big order didn't get paid for overnight, but that was my fault for sending the invoice to the wrong email address. All sorted out and it was paid up this afternoon. Since I hadn't got round to banking the PayPal balance that morning, I transferred £520 this afternoon and 10% of that brought the YNAB overdraft balance into the £6,xxxs

We put the heating on a few days ago, just very low, and I can't believe the difference having the windows done has made to how the house retains heat. Fingers crossed that means lower electricity bills when we have the spring reading in March.