Caz counts it down

cazmanian_minx

Maddiemay, that sounds amazing!

Well, as expected, my YNAB was not a pretty sight once all the spending had been entered, BUT one of my clients with outstanding invoices rang me today and paid not only the overdue one but all the others outstanding on the spot :T That plus the flute money, which I paid in today, means that I need less than £80 between now and the end of the month to be square, and I have one client with three invoices outstanding for just over £80 Just have to persuade Mr Minx not to go too mad in Tesco over the next two Saturdays - oh, and be sensible about the trailer I'm going to see tomorrow... (It's being sold as a project and given it's an Ifor Williams horse trailer for £350, I'm guessing there's a LOT wrong with it! Going to go and have a look and then come home and price up all the parts it'll need before making a decision about whether it's within our capabilities to fix up, either to keep or to sell on.)

Have some very boring scores on the doors!

Personal
Halifax card: -£4,650.00 / -£4,600.00 +£50.00

I shall hopefully start making them more interesting again when I've got the tax bill savings pot topped up a bit more and a YNAB buffer!

cazmanian_minx

Some you win, some you lose...

We didn't buy the trailer. Yes, it was an epic bargain, especially since she said she'd take an offer because she needs the space, but it needed a new floor, new brakes, new electrics, new hubs and the front ramp needed attention and it was just a bit more than Mr Minx and I felt confident to do ourselves. Fine if we were only going to use it for hay, but if I was going to load either of my pride and joys into it, I didn't want it to be on a floor replaced by two people doing it for the first time and the local dealer would have charged us around £650 to do it.

On the downside, Mr Minx, having had two weeks away from home, went a bit bonkers in Tesco :rotfl: Ah well, given he's just cooked me fillet steak in a red wine and port jus, I shall forgive him

I've also finished the holiday unpacking, put away all clean washing that doesn't require ironing, vacuumed the house and done some transcription. Reading back, it looks like I didn't mention it, but the work for NEL is on hold while the client finds out if they've got funding for it or not, so when the other agency contacted me on Friday and asked if I fancied five interviews, due back Tuesday, I said YES PLEASE! I did the first, shortest one, on Friday afternoon and have ten minutes left of the second, longest one, to finish in the morning. I should manage the other three comfortably by Tuesday evening - I'm aiming to get two of them done tomorrow. I'm getting faster as I learn all the terms, it's about agricultural chemicals, so there was a heck of a lot of Googling to start off with!

cazmanian_minx

Busy couple of days. I ended up doing six agricultural chemical files in the end, for a grand total of £102. NEL's client cancelled, unfortunately, but I picked up an hour and a half's work from Mr RPC. Journalist #1 got in touch to see if I could do two files for her, which will come in later this week, and the agency has asked me to rejoin the proofreading team on a regular four hours a morning - unfortunately I can't do the hours they want (you really don't want me checking anything for accuracy at 6am :rotfl:), but have emailed back suggesting some alternative options, as some regular income would be useful right now, even if it is at a lower rate than I can earn typing.

I'm hoping tomorrow will be a quieter day, as I *really* need to get the ironing pile done!

Oh, and I finally have enough in YNAB to feel comfortable in actually paying off the Barclaycard - the money was all allocated, but I wanted a bit of a buffer in there, just in case. It's all cleared and the online balance now reads £0

gallygirl

Great stuff

cazmanian_minx

Right, I gave myself a good talking to this morning and a bit of a kick up the backside. I am lucky enough to have a life and a lifestyle that a lot of people would kill for. The only reason for me saying no the agency's suggested hours is that I don't like getting up early. Well, suck it up, Princess, people have to do far, far worse things to earn a living than facing a 5.30am alarm clock and as long as I whisk the dog outside and check the horses are okay by torchlight (they don't get fed in the mornings until later on in the year), then mucking out and a proper dog walk can wait until I finish the proofreading shift.

So I got back in touch with them and I start on October 1st Weekday mornings, 6am until 10am. That together with two of the better-paying business-related files I'm on their sub-team for a week will give me a guaranteed £900 a month. Add to that the money I get from Mr RPC, which is a fairly steady £240 a month, and that's just about my 'salary', so everything from the journalists, NEL, the other agency, the educational client and the remaining bead shop stock can be hurled at (a) the remaining credit card, (b) a pension and (c) the new house renovation.

Obviously the talking to unblocked something in the universe because a couple of hours after I made the decision, I got an email through from my solicitor to say she had the formal written acceptance of my offer on the two crofts :j:j:j:j:j:j

Life is about to get very, very busy :D:D:D:D:D:D

cazmanian_minx

PS. As a reward for getting up early, I am getting myself a new phone. I've been thinking about it ever since EE started doing their WiFi Calling thing - I currently have an HTC Wildfire S that works roughly the same way on the old Orange Signal Boost system, but it's very unreliable about talking to the broadband (apps work fine, but I sometimes have to reboot it two or three times to get it to connect to make a call or send a text) and the phone only has 512MB of internal storage. Since Mr RPC asked me to start using WhatsApp to communicate with the office, I keep getting messages telling me I'm running low on space, despite moving everything possible to the SD card. A newer phone would also really help with the blogging/social media part of the house project.

Of course, I don't NEED a new phone, I can keep on managing with what I've got. And I could go for the cheapest option EE offer WiFi Calling, which is a Lumia on a £16.99 a month contract. But the guy next to me on the flight back from Vienna had a Samsung Galaxy S6 and it was sleek and shiny and had a beautiful bright screen....

Having established that the best EE can do for me as an existing Orange customer is one month free on the contract, I'll be ordering one through Quidco once the remaining credit on my HTC runs out Legitimate business expense, of course

cazmanian_minx

Today wasn't supposed to be a busy day.

Although I was on shift for the agency today, I know that they're not run off their feet at the moment, so volunteered to go to the bottom of the list for work being assigned today, as yesterday's file had taken me a lot longer than anticipated (combination of an overseas accent I wasn't too familiar with plus someone calling in from overseas on a mobile phone to a conference call system - never great). I thought I'd have a nice quiet day typing up two celebrity interviews for Journalist #1 and catching up on some outstanding stuff for Mr RPC.

What actually happened was something like this:

• Check eBay orders - see someone has placed large order, whoop for joy, start packing
• Throw first load of laundry on.
• Pinging noise from PC alerts me to a couple of emails on Mr RPC's system that need attending to.
• Check own email to find one from small agency (of the agricultural chemicals files fame) to ask if I can do a medical file for them on a 48 hour turnaround - and they've got a glossary, so no Googling required. Throw caution to the wind and accept.
• Finish packing, drive to post office, gossip for 10 minutes, drive home.
• Hang out first load of laundry, put second load in.
• Decide that since it's nearly 12, I'll have a quick early lunch and then get stuck into work in the afternoon.
• Scoff lentil soup and three cheese scones rescued from mother-in-law's broken-down freezer.
• Type up first celeb interview and return to Journalist #1.
• Settle in for a three-hour stint on stuff for Mr RPC, get masses done.
• Journalist #1 asks if I can fit another celeb interview in for her. Agree to do it.
• Start typing up second celeb interview. Get 45 seconds in when husband gets home.
• Sort horses and dog. Horses have a mammoth strop when I shut the gate into next door and spend 20 minutes chasing each other round my field, throwing up divots :mad::mad::mad:
• Now doing some evening dictation for Mr RPC, who is going through a productive spell.

So I currently have:

• One dictation for Mr RPC, which I'm about to do.
• Two celeb interviews for Journalist #1 of about 35 and 45 minutes respectively, due tomorrow/Saturday.
• One 69-minute medical file, due Sunday morning.
• One business file from the agency, coming in by 6pm tomorrow, due Sunday midday.

At a rough estimate, that's close to £200-worth of work. Better get my headphones back on!

Verbatim

Wow. You've got your work cut out there. Hope it all goes smoothly.
V

DebtFree2012

Hey Caz

Just catching up and you're as busy as ever which is just great. I'm glad you accepted the morning shift for the agency - at the end of the day you won't know unless you try. I feel your pain with the early starts - I'm up around 5:15 - 5:30 depending on how late in to the week it gets. By Friday - I'm not worth speaking to on a morning as the week has caught up with me.

Made me lol ever so slightly at the strop the boys had .

Are you buying a mobile to use with credit opposed to a contract?

Have a love and productive day - I shall check back for the scores later.

cazmanian_minx

DebtFree2012 wrote: »

Hey Caz

Just catching up and you're as busy as ever which is just great. I'm glad you accepted the morning shift for the agency - at the end of the day you won't know unless you try. I feel your pain with the early starts - I'm up around 5:15 - 5:30 depending on how late in to the week it gets. By Friday - I'm not worth speaking to on a morning as the week has caught up with me.

Made me lol ever so slightly at the strop the boys had .

Are you buying a mobile to use with credit opposed to a contract?

Have a love and productive day - I shall check back for the scores later.

Well, at least I know that Finn can do a beautiful canter pirouette if he wants to - he did about 4! WiFi Calling is only available on contract, so it'll have to be a 2-year job.

No scores today I'm afraid, as there's been no change - once I've got next month's bead shop spends budgeted in YNAB, I can start taking cash out of the business account and paying the card down each week again.