Caz counts it down

cazmanian_minx

Thanks all - she is now back in the local hospital and has perked up to the extent that she's bossing the nurses about, which is a sure sign she's on the mend

Mr Minx has had his new job confirmed, we're just waiting for the letter to find out what his salary is going to be.

I'm currently feeling very bad because I've had to let two transcription clients down :(:(:(:(:( They've both been extremely nice about it, but I still hate that I had to do it. One was Journalist #2 who emailed me yesterday afternoon to see if I could do an emergency job for her for 9am today - I didn't get home from hospital visiting until 8pm and had to get up at 5.30, plus I knew today was going to be rammed, so had to regretfully decline, and then NEL very, very kindly offered to take back the second file I was doing for her this week - I'd got 25 minutes in, but it was recorded in a cafe with a lot of background music and I was struggling a bit.

I still have what seems like an enormous amount of work to get through, especially since Mr RPC has given me yet more responsibility, but it now seems manageable to fit it round mother-in-law as opposed to 'CANCEL ALL SLEEP!!'

cazmanian_minx

Flying through because I have a file due back at 12 and another one to do this afternoon and I'm still on the sofa in my dressing gown, having not mucked out yet

Quick catch-up on what's been happening - I dropped my beloved fountain pen, which landed nib-first on a wood floor :(:( Of course, there's one MSE-er who was my first port of call for advice, and AlexLK came up trumps with the recommendation of Battersea Pen Home, who have examined it and told me that it's repairable It's going to cost £52, but it's worth every penny to me. Actually, as a standard part of their repairs assessment, they give an insurance valuation and I was surprised to see they thought it was worth £200 - I'd thought maybe £100-£120.

I'm trying to get the house money out of Santander, a bank I'm historically jinxed with on the admin side, and this time is no different, as it seems that they omitted to keep a copy of my signature in my current name (despite the five times I wrote to them with the required documentation to get them to change it in the first place!) - I got a letter on Friday to say they were unable to verify my signature and if I still wanted to continue with the encashment I'd have to go and prove my ID at a branch. Fortunately the Alliance & Leicester in Thurso became a Santander, otherwise I would have been driving to Inverness or catching the ferry to Orkney on Saturday morning in a vile mood, but I went in with my passport, driving licence, latest bank statement and my decree absolute (to prove that I used to have the surname they appear to still be working off, though all the paperwork comes through in my current surname), which were faxed through to the relevant department and I'm told all should now be well.

I also had a great meeting with my accountant on Wednesday, to talk about how I should structure all the businesses I appear to be about to start/am currently working in. After thrashing through all the permutations of sole trader/partnerships/limited companies/VAT registered/non-VAT registered - it seems that I could save a couple of hundred a year by putting the transcription business into a limited company, taking a salary from it to use up my tax allowance, and then registering for VAT as an individual to claim the VAT back on things like buying a tractor for the crofting, but that would mean I'd have to charge VAT on the rent for the holiday house and she said that although I should do some forecasting and check I was happy, she thought that the amount of extra work/costs involved in doing some of it as a limited company wasn't going to be worth the hassle for saving a pretty small amount of money, but we'd need to look at it again if/when I started to get close to the higher rate tax band.

I've also been thinking about what to do once I've paid my debt off. I'd like to keep going with an MSE diary, because I find it very helpful, but what with going into property (hopefully!), I'm going to be increasing my levels of mortgage debt, so MFW doesn't quite seem the right place. I know Gallygirl had the cracking idea of a Financial Independence board, but it got a bit shot down in flames by the Pensions and Retirement Planning board. I'm wondering if we could re-jig it slightly and have a diaries sub-board on Up Your Income, called something like Escaping The 9 to 5? Whaddaya think? Shall I suggest it?

cazmanian_minx

(Oh, mother-in-law still in hospital, but well on the mend and hopefully should be going home as soon as her new care package is arranged and put in place Mr Minx and I will move her bedroom downstairs before she comes home and it suddenly struck me yesterday that there's a full disabled shower set-up in the house I'm buying, seat, rails, everything, so as long as we remove it carefully, we should be able to reassemble it for MIL.)

AlexLK

All sounds good. Apart bank admin issues, though doesn't surprise me. I remember when we moved to our current house I had tell them three times that we'd moved before things were updated.

DebtFree2012

Yes totally suggest it. I would read with interest.

Sorry to hear about MIL but pleased she's picking up and you have an answer for the future of her home etc.

cazmanian_minx

Current mortgage part of sig:

MFW: June 2008: £145,145.00 Currently: £117,287.50 Offset: £98,199.49 Amount paid off: £27,857.50 (19.2%) Paying interest on: £19,088.01

It's not going to stay looking like that for too long, but I'm enjoying it while it lasts! Yes, Santander came up trumps and in fact I completely embarrassed myself this morning by ringing the investment team to check that my ID had got through, only for them to say, 'Er, we sent it via CHAPS yesterday, it's in your account.' :o:o:o:o

One tiny, tiny hiccup in that I've been told a strip of land at the top of one of the fields might actually be common grazings rather than part of the croft, so I've let my solicitor know, but once that's sorted, we're all systems go I think!

Let's see, any other news? Mr Minx spent last night at his mum's house, moving things around in advance of the physio team's assessment of it this morning, so I took on one of the business team files and have another to do at the weekend. I also have three sheep arriving at the weekend - they belong to a friend who's moving away and can't take them with her, they're all pretty tame and will be a nice gentle introduction to sheep-keeping, I hope, as well as acting as lead sheep when I buy lambs next year. Can't wait

DebtFree2012

OMG I am so LOVING the sheep update!

Eager_Elephant

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

I also have three sheep arriving at the weekend - they belong to a friend who's moving away and can't take them with her, they're all pretty tame and will be a nice gentle introduction to sheep-keeping, I hope, as well as acting as lead sheep when I buy lambs next year. Can't wait

How exciting - photos definitely needed.


Here are the last 3 (of 15) we had (this was a winter scene - they were usually quite white):




We are going to get another 15 in the spring (last year we did pigs for the first time and not sheep but next year we think we can manage both)

brizzledfw

Love love it

cazmanian_minx

Gosh, is it really five days since I posted on here? Whoops.

Life's been a bit busy. On Friday I went to the PO as usual, thought my car looked a bit odd when I came out, examined the back tyre and found it was, er, bald As in maybe about half an inch of faint tread left right on the outside :o I thought it had been a bit slippy on the back end going over wet cattle grids...! I'd had an advisory about the rear tyres at the last MOT and forgotten about it, so I drove home rather carefully, phoned the local tyre centre and said HELP and the lovely Sandy said if I could get into town for 4pm, he could do them same day. So I asked Journalist #1 if her urgent job could go back Friday evening rather than Friday afternoon (I hadn't got the audio at that point, so that was fine), dealt with the accountant's enquiries for Mr RPC's VAT return and then drove rather carefully into town.

MIL had just got home from hospital, so I walked up there while the tyres were being changed. Bless her, a fortnight in hospital and she's a shell of the lady she was, this fall has really, really taken it out of her :(:(:( She hasn't really improved much over the weekend, and Mr Minx has a meeting with her bank next week to activate the Power of Attorney, because she's really quite muddled about things at the moment and has taken to pressing her newly-installed panic alarm when she can't work out how to make breakfast, which is not really what it's there for. I think we may be in for a difficult few final years

The sheep arrived on Saturday and have settled in okay. Apologies for the shoddy Instagram picture!


That's Bella on the left, Loppy in the middle and Lucky on the right. Bella and Lucky are both eating from my hand already, Loppy is taking a bit longer to come round - she'll come near enough for me to throw a few ewe pellets down in front of her, but not near enough to touch yet. They didn't get shorn this year and it's now too late to do them, so they're going to have to wait until next year now. Hopefully it won't get too hot too early in the year.

The rest of Saturday and all of Sunday were spent typing, trying to catch up on some of the backlog. Today I started my proofreading shift at 6am and finished typing at 9.45pm, but I am more or less up-to-date, just one 16-minute file from a project for someone, one 21-minute interview for Journalist #1 and probably some meeting notes from Mr RPC, which he said he was going to dictate this evening. On that note, Mr RPC has asked me to pick up some more hours for him, and since I can make the same in 2 hours for him as I do in 4 hours of proofreading shift (and not have to get up at 5.30am in the bargain), I've told the agency today that I'm afraid I'm going to have to bail on the early morning shift. They've been very nice about it (I've given them three weeks' notice, which is hopefully enough time for them to shuffle the PR team around to cover it) and I'm staying on their books on an ad-hoc basis, so if I'm not busy and they are, I can volunteer/email in for work, which is very nice of them.

Right, bed, as that 5.30am alarm is ticking ever closer!