Caz counts it down

cazmanian_minx

Well, I can honestly say that this is the nicest Christmas Day I've had as an adult. Just me, Mr Minx and the animals, no pressure, just vegging out on the sofa with the woodburner and a large variety of Sky Sports Christmas Specials (Chris Kamara finishes me off every time!).

After last year's bumper present-giving (I got him an iPad, he got me a PS3), we've kept it more low-key this year, although Mr Minx's idea of 'a little clip-on MP3 player I can go running with - please don't spend more than about £10 on it' turned out to be an iPod Shuffle!

AlexLK

Sounds like a great Christmas, glad you had a good one.

cazmanian_minx

Survived a day with my mother in law Mr Minx is so exhausted that he's just fallen asleep midway through an episode of Game of Thrones (we're recording the marathon of all four seasons on Sky, as we've not seen it).

Other than that, I've spent the first £15 of my Amazon tokens from Mum and my brother - my Marie Kondo arranging revealed that I only have about three long-sleeved tops that don't have holes in and I've managed to find three Esprit ones for £4.99 each.

Time to haul Mr Minx upstairs - will try and catch up with scores tomorrow, though since it's only four days until the end of the year, I might just tease you a bit longer and do one big catch-up on the 31st

cazmanian_minx

AlexLK wrote: »

Sounds like a great Christmas, glad you had a good one.

Thanks, Alex - sounds like yours got off to a good start as well, hope you've had a lovely time with your family

cazmanian_minx

Dare I show my face in here having not done scores....?? :rotfl: Seriously, I have decided it's not worth doing them today and then doing them again in four days' time, so it'll be one big catch-up on the 31st.

I haven't been completely idle though, we went into town to pick up 'a little bit of shopping', but I made the mistake of letting Mr Minx into Tesco before we'd had lunch and £71 later.... :eek: However, that did include all next year's Christmas cards and gift wrap for the grand total of £8.

I think 2015 is going to be the year of sorting out. I was thinking earlier in the shower about what I want my days to look like and this is a provisional weekday timetable for while I run the bead stock down.

6.00/6.30 - alarm clock goes off
7.15-ish - Mr Minx leaves for work.
7.15-8.00 - horses and dog
8.00-9.00 - exercise
9.00-10.00 - pack orders
10.00-4.00 - transcription, proofreading, writing
4.00-5.00 - tidying and cleaning
5.00-6.00 - horses and dog

sonicetomeetyou

Hi there Caz. I've been reading your diary over the last few days and just thought I'd stop and say hello now that I'm caught up. Your diary is very inspiring. I love the idea of the transcribing and proofreading work but have never done anything like that before, so was wondering if you have any advice for how to get started? I work 16 hours a week in a shop for minimum wage and hate it as I'm not a very people-person. I would love to find something that I could do from home that would pay a little bit better than survey sites, which is what I mostly spend my free time doing now.

cazmanian_minx

sonicetomeetyou wrote: »

Hi there Caz. I've been reading your diary over the last few days and just thought I'd stop and say hello now that I'm caught up. Your diary is very inspiring. I love the idea of the transcribing and proofreading work but have never done anything like that before, so was wondering if you have any advice for how to get started? I work 16 hours a week in a shop for minimum wage and hate it as I'm not a very people-person. I would love to find something that I could do from home that would pay a little bit better than survey sites, which is what I mostly spend my free time doing now.

Hi, thank you for reading For transcription work, you really need a typing speed of 65wpm or better, so test yourself on something like TypeRacer: http://play.typeracer.com/ (use the Practice option rather than racing) and if you need to improve, Google 'free touch typing course', there are masses of them online. Once your typing's up to speed, you then need to learn to listen and type at the same time. You can download a free piece of transcription software called Express Scribe here: http://www.nch.com.au/scribe/ then record yourself some audio (if you've got a smartphone, record yourself reading a news story, or record the evening news, if you haven't, search for an mp3 of a podcast) and give it a go. The trick to getting fast is learning to re-start the audio while you're typing the last couple of words from your previous chunk.

This is the application site for the people I work for (this is not a referral link and I don't get any payment if someone starts working for them after hearing about it from me) - there are practice typing speed and audio typing tests on it as well: http://careers.takenotetyping.com/ Good luck if you give it a go, they are very stringent - they sent out an email just before Christmas telling us to be proud of being on their books, as over the past 18 months they've had 15,928 applications, 4,647 completed the testing process and only 291 passed! I got into the proofreading as a result of being on their books as a transcriber, they sent an email out to all the typists asking if anyone was interested in doing a bit of proofreading, I applied and got accepted onto the team. It's not really proper proofreading, it's basically a read-through for spelling, formatting and research (so correct spellings/capitalisation of brand names etc).

17 orders to go today and £295 banked. No proofreading today, though I did do a shift last night, and at the moment only one file to proofread tomorrow, which is one that I should have done last night only the typist hadn't finished it and it hadn't been reassigned. So someone's been working their way through that today, hopefully, ready for me to check through in the morning.

LAM2011

Hi Caz

your christmas sounded lovely - mine wasnt far different except I have to drive 3 miles to see to the horses.

We have loads of snow at the moment but luckily our YO still allows turnout although I turn them out after a haynet and bring back in about 3ish. They are ready by then.

Hope 2015 is a good one for you. x

cazmanian_minx

Right, here we go, nice big scores on the doors post

So, these are the 'weekly' ones, although the last week figures are actually from 12th December. Not that it really matters, as I've not exactly had the best 19 days of trade ever...

Business
Overdraft: -£-5,700.00 / -£5,590.00 +£110.00

Business total: -£-5,700.00 / -£5,590.00 +£110.00

Personal
Halifax card: -£5,250.00 / -£5,250.00 no change

Personal total: -£5,250.00 / -£5,250.00 no change

Grand total: -£10,950.00 / -£10,840.00 +£110.00

Monthly ones aren't that brilliant either....

Business
Overdraft: -£-6,000.00 / -£5,590.00 +£410.00

Business total: -£6,000.00 / -£5,590.00 +£410.00

Personal
Halifax card: -£5,310.00 / -£5,250.00 +£60.00

Personal total: -£5,310.00 / -£5,250.00 +£60.00

Grand total: -£11,310.00 / £10,840.00 +£470.00

However, if I look back a year to the end of December 2013 things are a lot happier (I've adjusted the business overdraft figure to the way I now report it - the figure in the scores at the time was the actual balance of the account, whereas now it's the amount committed from the account):

Business
Overdraft: -£10,000.00 / -£5,590.00 +£4,410.00

Business total: -£10,000.00 / -£5,590.00 +£4,410.00

Personal
Egg card: -£5,450.00 / £0.00 +£5,450.00
Barclaycard: -£2,330.00 / £0.00 +£2,330.00
Nationwide card: -£2,510.00 / £0.00 +£2,510.00
Halifax card: £0.00 / -£5,250.00 -£5,250.00

Personal total: -£10,290.00 / -£5,250.00 +£5,040.00

Grand total: -£20,290.00 / -£10,840.00 +£9,450.00

Okay, I confess to being slightly disappointed I didn't a) pay off £10,000 or b) get the total under £10,000, but given I wrote this on 8th January when DebtFree2012 asked me how much I wanted to clear in 2014:

Realistically, however.... I would be satisfied with the credit card totals coming under £7k and delighted with them going under £5k - so £3300 to £5300 is my aim

I really can't be too upset

Have a very happy new year's eve everyone, see you tomorrow with some resolutions!

Chrysalis1976

Well done that's fantastic especially given the ups and downs with the business, best wishes for the new year hope it's a good one.

C x