Caz counts it down

cazmanian_minx

I missed one off the list yesterday - my accountant has sent her bill in as well, so I can add another £388.60. The line for Royal Mail was an estimate and the invoice turned up today. I'd reckoned £850 on 4th September, it's actually £848.47 on the 5th, so I'm quite chuffed that I do at least seem to have a grip on what I'm spending

What else has happened today? I've started digging through the samples and returns box and have got 12 little mini jewellery tool kits listed in my Clearance section. I've put them on Buy It Now rather than auction, so hopefully they'll get snapped up fairly quickly. I also listed a book for sale on my personal Amazon account. It's not one that Amazon can get hold of themselves as it's a self-published title and the author refuses to supply them. I happen to have 2 copies, as I bought it when it came out and got given one a couple of months ago (came free with something else I bought). The cheapest copy on Amazon was listed at £78 :eek: so hopefully mine at the RRP of £29.99 will go quite quickly.

I forgot to mention yesterday that we got a call from the travel agent to say that the middle night of our stay wasn't available at the Sands The sister hotel, the Maradiva, was also fully booked, so they couldn't just shunt us up the road for one night. They offered us a choice of two 5* hotels on the north of the island at no extra charge and after a bit of deliberation we've gone for the Lux Grand Gaube. Though I'm slightly gutted not to be going back to the Sands (oh, how tight my diamond shoes are....:p), it'll be nice to explore the other end of the island. I really need to shift 10lbs before we leave, which works out about 2/5ths of a lb a day. I reckon I can get 6lbs off quite easily, but 10lbs will be a stretch. Wish me luck!

cazmanian_minx

It's Friday and here are some absolutely dire scores on the doors.

(last week/this week/ + or - amount)
Business
Overdraft: -£-9124.35 / -£9669.61 -£545.26

Business total: -£-9124.35 / -£9669.61 -£545.26

Personal
Overdraft: -£0.00 / -£87.10 -£87.10
Egg card: -£3280.00 / -£3215.00 +£65.00
Barclaycard: -£2535.00 / -£2535.00 no change
Nationwide card: -£2658.15 / -£2630.00 +£28.15

Personal total: -£8473.15 / -£8467.10 +£6.05

Grand total: -£17,597.50 / -£18,136.71 -£539.21

Ouch. I'm due an Amazon business payment into my account on Monday along with a credit card payment from Streamline. Those combined with the money currently in there means the cheque I wrote to a supplier yesterday won't bounce, but I need to bank £360 or more on Monday morning to be able to pay the accountant. Fingers crossed for a good weekend of sales!

On the bright side, half a lb lost, now 9st 13.5lbs

DebtFree2012

Hi Caz

I wanted to see your diary after seeing you're horsey in other diaries so I will subscribe and come back soon with a glass of wine!

Just wanted to say Hi to a fellow in debt horse enthusiast.

cazmanian_minx

Testing...keep getting a blocked message when I try to reply to this thread!

cazmanian_minx

OK, that worked, must be something about the photo I'm trying to post that it doesn't like. I'll try again with a link to the website....

It's been a quiet Saturday. Trip to Tesco in the morning, afternoon spent sorting out the garden (you know it's got bad when you're taking the weeds out by the wheelbarrow-load...!). I haven't dared check the PayPal account to see how I'm doing, but I've already got 30 orders to go on Monday from eBay and that's £185 plus postage, so hopefully I'll make my target.

It's beginning to really feel like we're actually going on holiday. I've got travel insurance for both of us for £21.28 via Quidco, emailed the tour company we used last time we were there to see if they can beat the travel agent's quote of £95 for a return airport transfer, found a long stay car park very close to Glasgow airport who'll look after the car for £38 and arranged my horse sitter (I hope - she can't do the weekend, so I'm really hoping my other neighbour can, otherwise I'll have to see if the local animal sitter is available to come up). All that's left to do is book the dog into kennels, which I can do on Monday.

I've been thinking about my debt a lot over the past couple of days. I'm actually not too worried about the business debt any more. It's cheap enough at base rate + 6% - it was the credit card at 20.9% that was worrying me and that's gone and hasn't needed to be used again. So my list of priorities now looks something like this:

1. Pay off the £8500 of personal debt.
2. Get £5000 saved as an emergency fund.
3. Have enough invested to produce £15k a year in dividends.
4. Pay off business overdraft.
5. Pay off mortgage early (it's base rate + 1.1% for the whole term, so again, not a priority).

OK, so that's about a 15+ year plan, but it's nice to have some sort of road map. Of course, Mr Minx might win the lottery tonight (he's bought a ticket for the first time in ages) in which case we're buying this:

http://www.boatinternational.com/yacht-sales/37103/regina-for-sale

and spending the rest of our lives sailing in sunny waters

(She's a mere snip at £9.25m and if you think she looks familiar, she's the yacht used in Skyfall - Mr Minx has finally jilted the yacht in Mamma Mia for her )

Knit_Witch

sniggers - I hope the boat would allow you to post on here - we would miss you!;)

cazmanian_minx

OMG, WE......didn't win!!!!



It has been a thoroughly lazy day. I even fell asleep on the sofa for a couple of hours earlier. Yet again, I've missed the free listing weekend - the problem with eBaying for a living is that you feel spectacularly unmotivated to do it for your personal stuff as well.

Instead I've been making a half-hearted attempt at decluttering by working my way through the stack of unread magazines on the living room table. All the subscriptions have now ended (apart from one jewellery magazine which gets sent to me free of charge). I'm down to two photography magazines to read and six jewellery making ones. It's recycling bin day tomorrow, I don't know if I'll have got these finished by then, but there'll be a decent stack to go in anyway.

gallygirl

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

Instead I've been making a half-hearted attempt at decluttering by working my way through the stack of unread magazines on the living room table. All the subscriptions have now ended (apart from one jewellery magazine which gets sent to me free of charge). I'm down to two photography magazines to read and six jewellery making ones. It's recycling bin day tomorrow, I don't know if I'll have got these finished by then, but there'll be a decent stack to go in anyway.

Ridiculous isn't it - they're supposed to be enjoyable but just become another chore!!!!!

cazmanian_minx

gallygirl wrote: »

Ridiculous isn't it - they're supposed to be enjoyable but just become another chore!!!!!

So true! I finished the photography ones, just got the work-related ones left.

Today has just been one big blur of order packing, but it was well worth it because I banked £781.80 :D:D:D I have £290 in PayPal this evening and those two figures together are pretty much what I took for the whole of last week!

I'm fairly confident now that I'll make enough before we go to cover the business bills - whether I get paid in September is a different matter....

Knit_Witch

oooh well done Caz! another few weeks like that and you will be laughing!