Caz counts it down

cazmanian_minx

The customer paid over the weekend and two regulars decided to have a restock as well, meaning I sent out over £2000-worth of orders on Christmas Eve :j:j:j:j:j

I'm at my Mum's until Monday evening, so no scores on the doors today, but I just wanted to log in to record the rare (and temporary!) event of having no business overdraft - the account is £146.48 in credit

Much as I need to do some stock orders, the first thing I'm doing when I get home is paying off that horrible card again. With a bit of luck, I won't get charged any interest on it if I do it before the January statement generates.

Oh, and I've been naughty I've been looking for a tweed jacket for about a year now, but not found anything that I liked enough to buy at the price it was being offered for. Yesterday Mum and I were hitting all the outdoor/country lifestyle shops in the area to try and find me a fleece to replace my 15+ year old ones which are nearly bare on the sleeves and have holes in the pockets and I saw a jacket I liked the look of, tried it on....and it could have been tailor-made for me, it fitted so perfectly. I shut my eyes as I turned the price tag over, knowing I was probably going to buy it if it was under £200, and was pleasantly surprised to see £89.99 Since I'd had £40 in cash as a Christmas present from a family member, that made it only £49.99 from me and I'm going to enjoy wearing it for a very long time (Assuming I can stay a size 10 :rotfl:) Seriously, it's the first new item of clothing (i.e. not a sub £2 eBay bargain or pants and socks) I've bought since July 2011, so I don't feel too bad about it, but I thought I'd better confess :A

Hope everybody reading this is having a good festive season - cheers :beer:

cazmanian_minx

We eventually found a fleece yesterday afternoon after I realised I was going to have to compromise - I wanted a half zip with zipped pockets and could only find half zip with no or open pockets or a full zip with zipped pockets. I was moaning about all the women's fit ones being pink or pastel colours, but Mum had a brainwave, dragged me into Childrenswear and got me to try on an age 13-14. It fitted! So I got a nice olive green microfleece fleece for the princely sum of £8.97 - no VAT on kids' clothing

The business account is now registering the £960 going to HMRC on Monday and showing overdrawn again. Ah well, it was nice while it lasted :rotfl:

We've been lucky with the weather back home. Mr Minx says that the roof tiles were rattling so badly at 2am that he had to take the dog to bed with him because she was shivering in fear but the only damage has been the little pointy cap thing coming off the top of the vent pipe from the annexe bathroom and the rusty old wheelbarrow getting flung out of the wood store and falling apart. It's done 4 and a half years, which isn't bad for a £20 Homebase job that's lived outside in all weathers, so it's been honorably retired and he's got a new, tougher one from Allans of Gillock today.

hillside777

That made me smile buying a young person's fleece. :rotfl:
Plus no VAT. :T

Trust you're enjoying your time relaxing at the moment.
Enjoy while it lasts.

cazmanian_minx

bonnington wrote: »

That made me smile buying a young person's fleece. :rotfl:
Plus no VAT. :T

Trust you're enjoying your time relaxing at the moment.
Enjoy while it lasts.

It seems there *are* advantages to being short and flat-chested after all

I'm having a lovely time, but I do miss Mr Minx and the (other ) animals

cazmanian_minx

Right, back home and here are the scores on the doors for 31st December:

(last week/this week/ + or - amount)
Business
Overdraft: -£2153.52 / -£819.87 +£1333.65
Barclaycard: £1458.82 / -£1458.82 no change

Business total: -£3612.34 / -£2278.69 +£1333.65

Personal
Overdraft: -£2705.00 / -£2995.29 -£290.29
Egg card: -£3225.00 / -£3225.00 no change
Barclaycard: -£2850.00 / -£2850.00 no change

Personal total: -£8780.00 / -£9070.29 -£290.29

Grand total: -£12,392.34 / -£11,348.98 +£1043.36

So I ended the year moving in the right direction anyway Here's the monthly movement for personal debt, which I don't think will look so healthy!


Debt 30th November 31st December

Overdraft £3080.00 £2995.29 -£84.71
Egg card £3260.00 £3225.00 -£35.00
Barclaycard £2900.36 £2850.00 -£50.36

Total £9240.36 £9070.29 -£170.07

At least it's also moving in the right direction, which will be more than it does next month as there's a four figure tax bill to pay at the end of it

Just to make me feel better, here's the 31st December figures compared to when I started this diary on 29th June:

Business
Overdraft: -£1910.01 -£819.87 +£1090.14
Barclaycard: -£8999.00 -£1458.82 +£7540.18
Business total: -£10,909.01 -£2278.69 +£8630.32

Personal
Overdraft: -£3620.69 -£2995.29 +£625.40
Tesco card: -£1608.91 £0.00 +£1608.91
Egg card: -£3521.76 £3225.00 +£296.76
Dental loan: -£1250.00 £0.00 +£1250.00
Post Office card: -£800.00 £0.00 +£800.00
Barclaycard: £0.00 -£2850.00 -£2850.00
Personal total: -£10,801.36 -£9070.29 +£1731.07

Grand total: -£21,710.37 -£11,348.98 +£10,361.39

When I started this diary, my challenge was to pay it off by my 40th birthday in 2015 and I calculated that I'd have to repay at a rate of £18.90 a day, not accounting for interest. That figure has now dropped to £11.78 a day and I'm now thinking that if I can pay off £10,361.39 in six months, maybe I can get rid of the remaining £11,348.98 by the end of this year....?

Watch this space

Happy new year everyone, and thank you to everyone who's read this diary in 2012 - may your 2013 be fruitful and fulfilling :beer:

cazmanian_minx

I forgot to record the December PADs (probably because they weren't great!) - I did copy them out of my sig when I was updating it and then forgot they were there and copied something else before I'd pasted them :doh: It was something like £513 anyway.

Mr Minx had a rush of blood to the head while I was away and booked a visit from the local (well, local-ish - Highlands, anyway!) double glazing people to quote for new front and back doors and new windows. Their sales rep turned up today, measured everything up, talked us through the options available and then gave us the price. The two doors and the windows done as they are currently in standard double glazing frames would be £8,000 inc VAT. But we also asked him to quote for double glazed sash windows - this house would have had them originally. He did warn us they were substantially more and he wasn't kidding - £13,882 inc VAT :eek: Mr Minx and I have thought about it and since we intend to live in this house for at least another forty years, we're going to wait for a bit longer, save up and have the sash windows, on the grounds that neither of us can face 20 years of coming home every day, looking at the house and thinking 'Oh Gods, I wish we'd had the sashes'! The doors are getting urgent though, so the deposit for those is paid and the surveyor will be in touch next week to come and do the properly accurate measurements to get them made.

Mr Minx is back to work tomorrow, so I've found the latest Flylady thread on Old-Style and will be throwing myself into cleaning and decluttering the house

cazmanian_minx

Not much to report today. I've had £6.43 out of Quidco. Most of the day has been spent either cleaning or updating the stock spreadsheet in preparation for placing an order with my UK supplier tomorrow. I'm going to leave it until the afternoon, then it won't be sent out until Monday and the bill won't fall due until about the 6th February - the last thing I want is a big supplier payment due at the beginning of the month, but I really need some stock as all the items that lovely French lady bought just before Christmas came from them and she wiped me out of quite a lot of stuff.

cazmanian_minx

Back to the normal Friday scores on the doors and this week's are going to look atrocious because I've had £3347 come out of the business account since the last ones!


(last week/this week/ + or - amount)
Business
Overdraft: -£-819.87 / -£2911.98 -£2092.11
Barclaycard: £1458.82 / -£1458.82 no change

Business total: -£2278.69 / -£4370.80 -£2092.11

Personal
Overdraft: -£2995.29 / -£2260.38 +£734.91
Egg card: -£3225.00 / -£3225.00 no change
Barclaycard: -£2850.00 / -£2850.00 no change

Personal total: -£9070.29 / -£8335.38 +£734.91

Grand total: -£11,348.98 / -£12,706.18 -£1357.20

I think the word is 'ouch'!

I ordered my £2 statutory credit reports online from Experian and Equifax last night (Call Credit doesn't believe I'm me, so I have to write in for that one). Interestingly, Experian doesn't recognise my address properly - that may be why I'm having problems getting 0% cards these days. The problem is that we don't have a street name here, just a croft number (and those aren't consecutive) and then the village name. Experian doesn't pick up the village name, so instead of my address being selectable as '177 [village name], Near Thurso', which it is on most systems, the only address Experian would accept was '177 Thurso' - no matter how many times I tried to get it to correct. I'm pretty certain last time I ordered them to this address, a couple of years ago, it was OK. I'll try to get it changed, anyway.

cazmanian_minx

I've decluttered nearly all the Christmas chocolate over the past few days, so this morning I thought I'd better start decluttering my winter weight gain and started the 5 day Phase 1 of the Harcombe Diet. So far I'm not feeling too awful, just a headache to contend with and wanting to sleep a lot. The first time I ever tried this I felt sick for three days and could barely eat, but you come out feeling SO much better on the other side that it's worth it!

(Before anyone thinks I'm doing some extreme detox thing - I'm not, it's just five days of only eating meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, a small amount of brown rice and natural live yoghurt. No processed foods and no drinking anything other than water.)

I've done my January business cashflow forecast and it's not too horrible; £3800 needed by the first few days of February and that includes paying off the credit card in full from last month. It's a free listings week for businesses next week, so I need to get as much of the unlisted stock on as I possibly can.

hillside777

When you see you've decluttered the chocolate I assume you mean that you have eaten it. :rotfl:

Trust you are keeping well.
Currently looking online at somewhere towards you north of Helmsdale. DW is more convinced than me. I'm not convinced at all as it is quite rural. It is on the A9 which I anticipate being quiet that far north.

Enjoy the rest of the evening.