Caz counts it down

catshark88

There are people with horses all over the threads I follow on here. Just shows how many people manage to make the costs of horses manageable by sheer hard work and innovation...lol!

LAM2011

catshark88 wrote: »

There are people with horses all over the threads I follow on here. Just shows how many people manage to make the costs of horses manageable by sheer hard work and innovation...lol!

i am very lucky in that my OH helps financially with mine - one is his anyway. but they are DIY, have dropped to front shoes only - deep litter their beds - good hay and very minimal hard feed. It means I am constantly knackered through the winter getting up at 5:30 to do them before work and back again after work - and why I havent had new clothes or a haircut since I can remember lol but I wouldnt have it any other way. Truth be told 2 years when I had my LBM I did consider selling my horse but she is a bit tricky and the 2 people that came to try her just made me cry which is why OH stepped in

cazmanian_minx

*waves hello to LAM2011*

I have to say, I wouldn't be able to have mine without having our own fields - there are no livery yards nearer than 17 miles away and I've not heard good things about that one! Given that the trekking stables in the next village west charges £30 an hour, I've calculated I can keep both of mine for the cost of an hour a week hacking.

Talking of which, I took Finn for a hack today Not a long one, just around both ends of the village, but considering he hadn't had his tack on for two months he was an absolute angel.

The January business accounts do not make for happy reading, so I've spent a couple of hours today knuckling down to getting stock listed and have auctions scheduled to go live at 8pm tonight and 8pm tomorrow. Sales seem to be picking up again a little bit though, thankfully - I already have £240 in the PayPal account and last weekend I'd only taken £250 by the Monday morning!

I had a message on my answerphone from Amazon on Friday afternoon (I'd been blitzing the house in an unexpected fit of housework) - one of their account managers wants to talk to me about expanding my business with him. I tried to call him back but his line was engaged, so I replied to the follow-up email he'd sent and hopefully we'll get to have a chat next week. I can tell him exactly why I don't do more business on Amazon; it's just not cost effective for me. They put the Beads category in as a sub-category of jewellery, which means the selling fee is 25% instead of the more usual 15%. Now, jewellery-making components don't have anything like the mark-up that finished jewellery does and Amazon insists that third party sellers don't make their Amazon prices any more expensive than prices they set on other selling platforms. So an item that I make 27% net profit on through eBay only makes me 8% through Amazon - where do they think I'm going to concentrate my efforts??

Anyway, I look forward to discussing it with them next week and will use the opportunity to lobby hard for a new 'Hobbies' category, as I think they're missing out on a huge third party seller market by not having one.

cazmanian_minx

I bought 162 Finish Powerball dishwasher tablets for £10 in Tesco today They had a 3 boxes for £10 offer on and they'd put the leftover 'double the amount in the box' boxes from the last promotion into it. I think that'll do us until the end of the year!

We've been out most of the day, it's mother in law's birthday tomorrow so we took her out to lunch. There's a Sunday carvery at one of the hotels near her which she likes, so we went there and had a three course lunch and then did the weekly shop afterwards. Now, I know that I can never take Mr Minx into Tesco when he's hungry, because the bill goes through the roof, but I need to remember never to take MIL down the wine aisle when she has a third of a bottle of white inside her! Four bottles got thrown into her trolley, accompanied by a lot of giggling...

catshark88

Sounds like a most successful day!

After much soul searching I bought a case of 6 bottles of wine in Mr M yesterday, thinking that it would cover 6 weeks (nice wine, very well discounted).

It was a mistake. DH has opened 2 already. "luckily" he works such long hours that the rest should be safe until next week, lol!

cazmanian_minx

And this is why I hate being in debt - if I wasn't, I could be viewing this instead of just dreaming about it:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-37277317.html

I've been following this house for about 4 years, the bank is obviously getting desperate to offload it now as the guide price is down to £185k at auction tonight from originally having it on at £405k with Savills.

(Can you tell I'm watching an old Homes Under The Hammer while I'm waiting for it to get light enough to go and do the horses??)

Evcakes

Wow that is one gorgeous house, I keep looking at one in my area that I would just love. Keep thinking in a few years time I'll be able to look for my dream house!

Evcakes

This is my fave at the mo http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-37485884.html

cazmanian_minx

Evcakes wrote: »

This is my fave at the mo http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-37485884.html

Lots you could do with that

I've just realised it's mortgage payment day, so I logged into IF to check it had gone through and found that our outstanding balance is now below £120k And thanks to two regulars placing large orders overnight, I'm only £68 short of the money needed to pay both the Royal Mail bill AND the supplier bill due tomorrow I think I'm still going to put the supplier bill on the card for a couple of days though, because eBay is going to take £270 off me sometime between today and the 10th and I'd rather not risk going over the overdraft limit.

The burning question of the day though is how to categorise the train tickets I bought yesterday in my budgeting software. Normally they'd go under 'other travel', but the only reason I'm taking the train is because the Kessock bridge into Inverness is being dug up for the next few months, delays are expected to be about an hour and so for once it's going to be faster to get the train to my dentist appointment at the end of the month instead of driving. So can I get away with taking it out of the diesel budget? £20.20 for a return from Forsinard to Inverness is probably less than I'd have spent on the fuel for 180 miles (it's 20 miles each way to the station, 90 miles from the station to Inverness) and parking.

gallygirl

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

The burning question of the day though is how to categorise the train tickets I bought yesterday in my budgeting software. Normally they'd go under 'other travel', but the only reason I'm taking the train is because the Kessock bridge into Inverness is being dug up for the next few months, delays are expected to be about an hour and so for once it's going to be faster to get the train to my dentist appointment at the end of the month instead of driving. So can I get away with taking it out of the diesel budget? £20.20 for a return from Forsinard to Inverness is probably less than I'd have spent on the fuel for 180 miles (it's 20 miles each way to the station, 90 miles from the station to Inverness) and parking.

Well, why not rename the diesel budget 'essential travel' you're covered .