Caz counts it down

cazmanian_minx

I like your thinking If we cash in all our Avios, we can get the flights down to £800 and that includes the Inverness to London bit. However, I have to think about whether I really want to spend 12+ hours having my ears blasted off in the company of a lot of Confederate flag-waving Trump supporters, which I suspect, given the politics of some of the bands playing, will make up the majority of the audience That's giving Mr M pause for thought as well.

cazmanian_minx

Little matched betting milestone reached - ticked over £500 profit this evening It's all still tied up in various bookmakers, as I'm trying to build up my betting exchange balances, but hopefully I'll be able to start taking some out later in the year.

cazmanian_minx

Payments made to Lloyds and Halifax cards this morning, as I realised I hadn't had the usual 'Your new statement is ready' emails through. That takes me over £27,000 paid off.

America definitely off the cards, we've decided we'd rather not visit while it's still in its somewhat unsettled state due to the change in administration. So we looked at the Italian Lakes, which Mr Minx has never been to and I'd like to go back to, and 14 nights in a 4* hotel in June, room and breakfast only, is going to cost the same as 10 nights half board in our favourite 4* hotel in Mauritius! It's either Mauritius again or we try and cut costs a bit by doing something we discussed a while back; a Top Gear-style road trip round Europe for a couple of weeks. How hard is driving on the right in a right-hand drive car, anyone know?

DVLA has been notified I don't have my car any more and I've rung the insurance company, who are sending me a refund of about £9 - apparently the cancellation charge is waived if you've sold the car. Still feeling a bit sad that it's gone. I think it's not so much the car itself, but what it represented - if I ever get the urge to just take off, my choice of escape vehicles is now (a) a vintage tractor, (b) a quad bike, (c) a 15-year-old pick-up which is absolutely bone-shaking to drive unless you've got a stock trailer full of sheep on the back, none of which I fancy going too far in!

Oh well, back to work for the day, let's get this debt paid off, this house up and running and then buy a replacement

cazmanian_minx

A fairly productive day - Mr RPC's accounts are more or less up-to-date and I've made him a nice spreadsheet of all the invoices he needs to pay. I've done half of a file for Journalist #3, listed 114 strands of beads on eBay (not all individually!) and thrown another barrowload of manure on the veg patch.

Now off to try and finish covering the last raised bed in horse poo and de-bounce the dogs at the same time.

brizzledfw

Boo to US trips, but understand completely.

Road trips around Europe come highly recommend by us

cazmanian_minx

The horses had their tetanus boosters today and no vets got trampled in the process, so I think we'll count that as a win Even better, they don't need another one for another two years.

It's been quite a spendy day really, even though the only actual money paid to anyone was postage for an eBay sale. As well as the vet call-out, I went out on the quad bike this morning to feed my sheep and found the fencing contractor I'd asked for a quote at the top of my drive, parked up in a tractor towing a digger and a bulldozer. He flagged me down to say that the quote for my agricultural building had come back from the manufacturer and he'd put it all together with the groundworks for me, but in the meantime, the quote for the fencing work I need doing comes in at £6.40 a metre plus £40 per strainer post, or a bit more if they hit rock putting the strainers in. It's about 440m to be done, so that's £2,816 plus any strainers we need - I'm going to mentally consider it £3,500 and hopefully will get a nice surprise when the bill turns up. I've given him the go-ahead anyway, and if the house round the corner failed the percolation test he was doing there this afternoon, then he'll be able to start next week, so with apologies to my neighbours, I'm rather hoping it did

However, balancing out my spending today, the money from the car has hit my bank account, meaning I just need to wait for two card statements to generate and then all the old debt is gone. However, the croft debt is about to go up, a lot. A couple of weeks ago, during our regular weekly chat, my mother mentioned that she had some five-year bonds maturing, she couldn't find anything with a decent interest rate to reinvest it in, and would a further family loan help with finishing the house off? Well, yes, it would, but on one condition, that I pay the same rate of interest I'm paying on the rest. We had a bit of an argument about that, because she thinks I'm paying her too much, but in the end she mentioned a figure that made my eyebrows go up considerably, said she'd think about it and let me know.

Yesterday a cheque for £30,000 arrived in the post. I am beyond grateful - it's more than enough to finish the house and will allow me to pay off the 0% cards which start coming due from April, meaning there's less pressure/rush to get the house mortgaged. We have a formal loan agreement in place between us and I'm paying 3.5% (it started as base rate + 3% with the original loan, but when the bank cut to 0.25%, I inserted a clause into the agreement that changed the interest rate to base rate + 3% or 3.5%, whichever is greater, so she doesn't have to worry about her income dropping) and once the house is finished, I shall be trying to get that amount into the offset ASAP, so it's there to be repayed immediately if bond rates start to rise again and she wants to put it into something secure. For now, though, I'm very, very lucky that she can help me in this way and I am more than happy to help her by paying her a decent return on the money.

mfmaybe

Wow, what an amazing offer from your mum. But also, what a wonderful daughter you are - your deal sounds more than fair.

Can't wait to see the finished product.

Question on the fencing quote. Is that quite a standard rate, do you think; or do you find prices higher (or lower) due to your location? Asking for a friend

cazmanian_minx

mfmaybe wrote: »

Question on the fencing quote. Is that quite a standard rate, do you think; or do you find prices higher (or lower) due to your location? Asking for a friend

I think it depends on a number of factors:

1. Local competition - I can think of at least three people locally who fence professionally and I'm sure there are more, so pricing is usually competitive

2. Length of fence - a neighbour was quoted £10 per metre for a small job, whereas at the other end of the scale, the same guy quoting me just did the 1.5km common grazings fence on the west side of the village and I think came in at about £6,500 for that.

3. Distance the machinery has to travel - using a tractor to tow diggers and bulldozers around with the current price of diesel has to be factored into the price per metre, if it's that kind of job.

4. Geography - I'm sure my quote would have been cheaper if a larger proportion of the work to be done was closer to horizontal land rather than vertical! Will they need to drill to put in the strainer posts? Also, is it all accessible by machinery or will they have to work by hand in places?

Hope that helps your friend Mr Minx taught himself to fence and it's physically hard work but not that difficult if you're doing it on flat non-rocky ground. Expect to spend a couple of hundred on the tools if you can't borrow them off someone though.

mfmaybe

Thanks Caz, it's good to have some kind of ballpark figure before you start.

cazmanian_minx

Sitting here in slight shock at the moment - I decided to do a casino offer to unwind after getting a bit more typing done this evening. These aren't risk-free matched betting, but all casinos publish their RTP (return-to-player) percentages for each game and so you can calculate whether the expected value of an offer is positive or negative. If you keep doing EV+ offers, over time, although you'll bust out with nothing on many of them, the mathematical probability is that you'll be slightly up and since I enjoy blackjack and slots it's a pleasant way for me to spend half an hour.

So far my biggest win on one of these has been about £13. The one I chose to do tonight was put £5 through slot machines, the casino gives me another £5 which has to be played through 10 times before the winnings become mine, i.e. play through £50. Well, I hit not one but two big bonus rounds, including winning £128 from a single 40p spin, and walked away with over £200. Can't believe it!!