Caz counts it down

cazmanian_minx

I've stuck it in Other Travel and moved the money from the diesel budget to the other travel budget.

My car insurance renewal quote has come through and isn't too bad - £230.91 up from £203.95 last year. I thought I was going to get hammered for being female, but I suppose being in my late 30s does have some advantages after all! Annoyingly, they've sent the quote through a little ahead of the 30 days, so I can't start shopping around until the end of the week, but I shall be following the MSE guide and seeing if I can get it any cheaper. Last year, no-one managed to beat the renewal quote, so well done Swiftcover!

I do have enough in the business bank account this morning to pay RM and the supplier, but I'd still be £138 short if eBay took payment early - it's usually the 9th or 10th, but that's the weekend, so they'll probably take it on Friday and I just can't take the risk of breaching my overdraft limit. I've paid the supplier on the card this morning and will pay off the card as soon as I've got that extra £138 in the bank, so there'll only be a couple of days' interest on it hopefully.

Despite some horrible weather here the past couple of days, winter seems to finally be coming to an end - the boys were out grazing this morning rather than waiting at the shelters for their hay, so there's obviously a bit of grass starting to come through.

hillside777

It looks as though the property you like sold at auction last night.
It is no longer on their site.

catshark88

bonnington wrote: »

It looks as though the property you like sold at auction last night.
It is no longer on their site.

Well that is most unreasonable of them....;)

cazmanian_minx

Bonnington, that happened last time as well and then it popped up a few weeks later with a different auction house. I've checked that auction house and they have a sale on 27th Feb with the catalogue going up next week, so I guess I'll know for sure whether it's sold or not when that's published.

I'm now just £14.70 short of the supplier money and the eBay bill, so it looks like I'll be able to pay the card back tomorrow morning Having auctions running seems to be be boosting my other listings, as eBay sales are going better at the moment. Something to bear in mind for the future.

Anyway, I have a big pile of beads on my desk to get listed, so if you see me on here again before 5pm, feel free to shout at me

cazmanian_minx

Friday scores on the doors:

(last week/this week/ + or - amount)
Business
Overdraft: -£-4503.02 / -£4573.76 -£70.74

Business total: -£-4503.02 / -£4573.76 -£70.74

Personal
Overdraft: -£2966.63 / -£3093.35 -£126.72
Egg card: -£3190.00 / -£3150.00 +£40.00
Barclaycard: -£2800.00 / -£2800.00 no change

Personal total: -£8956.63 / -£9043.35 -£86.72

Grand total: -£13,459.65 / -£13,617.11 -£157.46

The personal overdraft increase isn't quite as bad as it looks, because Mr Minx hasn't paid me back for his half of last week's shopping yet, so I can mentally deduct £42 from the increase. I got the supplier money paid off the business card this morning and I have enough available in the business account to cover all bills up until 17th February, when there's another supplier payment due. I'm £300 short of making it at the moment, so hopefully that'll be in the bank by Monday morning.

The Egg card statement generated overnight and I've paid it immediately this morning. The monthly interest on that was under £40 for the first time since the promotional rate ended (if you ignore the variances caused by them pratting about with the statement date) so that feels like progress of a sort.

Anyway, I'm now inside 30 days for my car insurance, so I'm off to see how much I can reduce it by - wish me luck!

cazmanian_minx

Got it down to £159

cazmanian_minx

Horrendous Tesco bill of £95 today, but £36 of it was whisky (Mr Minx is having a particularly stressful week at work) and Mr Minx has promised to transfer £100 to me tomorrow for last week's and this week's shopping.

I have another reason to be glad that my horses are barefoot today - yesterday afternoon I was picking out Finn's feet, which he can be a bit twitchy about. He's been pretty good recently, so I wasn't really paying attention and was totally taken by surprise when he kicked out with his left hind just as I was picking it up. He caught me square on my right hand and booted it so hard that the hoofpick flew 10 feet across the yard! Because it was just hoof and not iron, nothing's broken, though it swelled up quite impressively at the time and I have some bruising coming through today.

Mr Minx's lightbulb appears to be flickering again. In the car today he mentioned that if he wasn't paying off his credit cards and car loan, we could have 10 days in Mauritius every two months :eek::eek: We've agreed that we're not going to have any more capital expenditure this year other than the amounts already agreed (buying the croft land and replacing the house doors) and we'll concentrate on paying off debt. We were going to get the field drainage sorted as well, but that can wait for another 12 months - the winter fields are quite poached around the entrance to the shelter area, but we had the digger in quite late last year and as long as they get a good rest over the summer, they should manage another year without too many problems.

cazmanian_minx

There is a glimmer of light - I transferred £400 from my PayPal account this morning and have another £225 on its way from credit card transactions (actually, that should be transaction singular, it was just one sale!). That leaves me needing less than £2k for the rest of the month and means I might have enough to place an order with an overseas supplier at the beginning of March.

cazmanian_minx

Ohhhhhhhhhhh pride comes before a fall - at 9am this morning I had 2 orders waiting to go and a grand total of £10 in the PayPal account I picked up a few more during the morning and then had an urgent one from a regular customer, so I did pack up and go to the Post Office, but it was touch and go whether it was worth the diesel...:(

One benefit of being quiet today is that I had time to get ready for visitors this afternoon. My mother in law has Mr Minx's brother and his wife staying with her, so the three of them came out for tea (if Mr Minx wasn't up to his eyeballs in a really stressful audit, brother in law and wife would probably have come and stayed for a night). Mr Minx was supposed to bring home the box of Christmas biscuits from his bottom drawer at work, but he forgot yesterday and wasn't due home until about an hour after they were due to arrive, so I had a rummage in the cupboards and made sultana scones and shortbread. I'd made the scones before but it was my first attempt at shortbread and it turned out really well - Mr Minx actually thought it was proper Walkers shop bought

I'm hoping we don't get the Big Snow tomorrow, though if it's a choice between snow and rain I'll change my mind and have the snow. Often we just miss bands of weather as they hit the rest of the country. I'll cross my fingers....

cazmanian_minx

We had Big Snow from 5am until about midday and ever since midday we've had Big Rain. The animals aren't impressed. The boys are tucked up in their shelters with hay and Jura is snuggled up next to me on the sofa - we're having an afternoon in front of the woodburner catching up on Person of Interest and The Following.

I think I'm going to have to take a £250 paycut from next month. It'll mean that not much gets paid off the personal debts, but it might mean that the business gets back on its feet again.