Caz counts it down

cazmanian_minx

Not a lot to report today other than I'm trying to work through as much of my Monday list as possible so I'm free for our visitors. The Post Office card has been closed but the transfer hasn't gone through for the Tesco card yet, so I'll have to wait to ring them.

cazmanian_minx

Humph, Tesco transfer still hasn't gone through. Hope I put the right number in :eek::eek::eek:

It's Monday and thanks to banking £450 from PayPal this morning, the business YNAB shows total debts starting with a 7 for the first time this year There's enough available cash flow to pay all the business outgoings for the rest of the month and I have £320 towards my drawings already, so just another £1180 needed by 30th September and the rest can go towards the 'orrible rate Barclaycard

cazmanian_minx

A flying visit this morning, as we have guests. The weather has suddenly turned bad here and I came out this morning to find two shivering horses trying to hide behind the same gorse bush I was hoping that I could keep them on the top (summer) fields until at least the end of this month, but after the digger went through there isn't enough grass in there to keep them warm through a 6C drop in temperature coupled with a hailstorm. So they've got their rugs on and they've gone down a field to some richer grass, which has made me very popular

Tesco transfer still hasn't cleared, but it only got taken off the Barclaycard yesterday, so I'm not panicking....honest....!

cazmanian_minx

Another flying visit, guests still here!

The Tesco transfer has gone through (phew) so I rang them this morning. Or I tried to ring them this morning. There was no option for balance transfers and none of the other options got me through to a human, so I hit a few random combinations of numbers, *s and #s and eventually got a real person. Sadly I don't have a balance transfer offer, but she was able to confirm that I'd be considered a new customer six months after closing the card, so as soon as the statement generates around the 20th, that'll be that one gone.

cazmanian_minx

Afternoon all - where has this week gone??

I think it's going to be an expensive month, the pony has ripped his rug, so that's gone off to the tack shop to be mended. I might be able to avoid buying my hay until the first week of October though. The weather is still horrendous here (it's the tail end of a couple of hurricanes according to the Sky weather forecast :eek::eek:) and the horses know that there's half a bale of hay scattered around the inside of the field shelter because I made sure that they saw me put it in there, but they're still choosing to be out in the wind and the rain eating grass, even without rugs on. Not so much as a hoofprint inside the shelter this morning!

I had an expected unexpected bill yesterday. That sounds a bit odd - basically I had some stock on order from China which weighed nearly quarter of a ton, so I stated on the order that I'd get my freight agent to ship it by sea. It turned out that quite a lot of it was unavailable, so my agent suggested that we FedEx'd it instead, as it would work out marginally cheaper and arrive a lot faster. The shipment turned up with no problems, I had a bill from FedEx for the VAT and duty, but nothing from my freight agent for the actual shipment costs. He finally got in touch yesterday and sent me a bill for £480 - luckily that was about what I was expecting, so I paid it this morning. I've asked him, for future reference, roughly where the cut-off point is for sea freight becoming cheaper than a courier and the answer for ex-works shipments for that particular Chinese city is around 175-190kg assuming the volume is under one cubic metre. I'm hoping to order from them again this year, so I'll make sure it's at least 300kg.

cazmanian_minx

Happy Friday everyone, here are this week's scores on the doors:

(last week/this week/ + or - amount)
Business
Overdraft: -£1980.17 / -£2202.68 -£222.51
Barclaycard: -£6500.00 / £6000.00 +£500.00

Business total: -£8480.17 / -£8202.68 +£277.49

Personal
Overdraft: -£2413.75 / -£2601.00 -£187.25
Tesco card: -£350.00 / £0.00 +£350.00
Egg card: -£3367.00 / -£3333.33 +£33.67
Dental loan: -£750.00 / -£500.00 +£250.00
Barclaycard: £2500.47 / £2860.62 -£360.15

Personal total: -£9381.22 / -£9294.95 +£86.27

Grand total: -£17,861.39 / -£17,497.63 +£363.76

Not quite such a spectacular reduction as last week, but moving in the right direction still What's making me go :j:j:j:j:j:j today is my signature - £10,063.25 paid off since March :T:T:T I'm hoping I can keep it over £10k and not let it slip back into the 9s.

I had my first game of poker for a few days last night (it would have been rude to play while our guests were here, but they left yesterday afternoon) - I joined in the nightly freeroll as usual and managed to come 3rd out of 303 for €11,70 That means there's over a tenner in the account again and I can withdraw it, but since today's PAD was the £250 to the tooth fairy loan (nearly paid off now!), it can wait until tomorrow.

cazmanian_minx

Afternoon all. Mr Minx and I have spent all day putting up Finn's field shelter, which was probably not a wise or sensible thing to do in a wind that's gusting to 35mph, but we've got the sides up and I only nearly killed him once by dropping a 3 metre side panel on him (It gusted at the wrong moment). It's definitely too windy to do the roof though, so we've admitted defeat today and will try to get it done tomorrow morning when there's supposed to be a lull in the wind for a couple of hours.

How is this money-saving I hear you ask? Well, Merlin's shelter was bought from a sawmill north of Inverness and cost me just over £2,000. Mr Minx has built this one completely from scratch - he got a big pile of planks delivered and has turned them into a shelter that will be indistinguishable from the other one, but which 'only' cost £700. OK, it fails the 'do you need it?' test, because Finn could have coped with this winter without one of his own (Merlin's is just about big enough for both of them), but Mr Minx said he couldn't bear to lie in bed, listening to the wind and wondering if Finn was OK or whether Merlin had bullied him outside, so Finn was going to have his own shelter!

We're MSE in other ways with the horses though - I was talking to one of my neighbours today and she said that her bill for just hard feed (no hay) the winter before last was £2,500. Even in the hardest winter, I can keep mine fed for under £10 a week each including hay, but that's the joy of having native types who live more or less off fresh air

cazmanian_minx

Well, that was a scary morning, getting the rafters up on the field shelter. I'm not good on ladders at the best of times, but balancing on a step ladder on a bumpy hardcore base with both arms above my head trying to hold a heavy triangular rafter in place while Mr Minx dashed from side to side with his drill to secure it to the sides was, quite frankly, terrifying! The roofing boards are all up on the north-facing side; there are about 10 left to do on the south-facing side but Mr Minx was getting knackered and he has a dodgy hip, so I didn't want him overdoing it and falling off his ladder. Once those are done we need to get the onduline sheets to go on top and some rubber matting for the inside and that's it, we're finished.

I think the 'orrible-rate/6.9%-transfer-Barclaycard may have generated its statement today, but I'm feeling too lazy to go over to the annexe and dig out the card number to log in I daresay there'll be an email in the morning if it has. I've knocked a fair bit off that in the last month, so I'm hoping that the interest bill for the 'orrible-rate bit will be much reduced.

cazmanian_minx

The Barclaycard is thinking about generating - the payment due date has moved to 12th October, but no actual statement yet. So that's another £1 PADded to the overdraft today.

A bill I was dreading in October has now been shifted to November which is a bit of a relief - the equine dentist is back and it's £50 per horse. When I had Merlin's teeth done in March, he said he'd like to check them on his next trip up here, but after that I could drop to once a year. I think he's seen Finn in the last 18 months with his previous owners, but I'd like his advice on how fast Finn's top teeth are wearing because of the cribbing, so I've booked them both a slot. The 'horse' pot in the budget has £150 a month allocated to it and I rarely spend that (£4.20 so far this month!), so I have £335 built up in it, but with mats needed for Finn's shelter, £150 going out for hay next month and £100 for the dentist the month after, it's going to empty out fairly fast.

cazmanian_minx

The 'orrible rate Barclaycard had estimated interest of £152 for this month on last month's statement. What have they actually charged me? £123.83 :j:j:j:j Plus £8.49 for the balance transfers, which compares very favourably to the £35 a month I was paying on those two cards, although obviously that's not for a whole month.

The quarterly interest bill for the business overdraft has also arrived and is better than expected at £38.07. Just the final bit of interest on the Tesco card to go now and then that's it for the month.

Total debt is looking fantastically low at the moment (about £2k below Friday's figure) thanks to today's Amazon disbursement, but I wrote a £1450 cheque to a supplier which will probably be banked this week and Royal Mail are taking £760 tomorrow, so I suspect I'll end up about even on the week, if not slightly up.