Caz counts it down

gallygirl

I agree - if they ahve to go elsewhere they may stay away!

cazmanian_minx

£377 left to find to cover the bills, 10 days to do it in If I can take £1500-£2000 before we go away, I shall be a very happy Minx indeed.

Mr Minx rang last night to apologise for not leaving me a birthday card hidden in the house for me to open this morning (yes, 38 today!), so when my phone pinged with a text message at 7.30 this morning I assumed it was going to be a happy birthday message. Wrong. First Direct weekly mini statement. Nothing when I got back in from doing the horses. At 9.40am I finally got a text from my husband to say that he'd had a really nice breakfast and was on his way to the airport. Then one to say that he'd been put in the Executive Lounge. Then one to say there were biscuits in the Executive Lounge. At which point I cracked and replied with 'How about birthday cake....??!' There was quite a long silence, during which I expect there was some swearing going in Edinburgh Airport, and then I got a reply saying 'Not yet, but could be on the way home. Happy birthday sweetheart xxxxxx' :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: Well and truly busted!!

I was annoyed at the time, but I'm seeing the funny side of it now, especially when he got back to Wick and discovered he'd left his site access passes in the kitchen here He phoned to ask if I could meet him in the work car park with them, forgetting that he'd arranged for his mother's new cooker hood to be delivered here instead of to his mother's house (because she got into such a tizzy with the oven delivery last month) and I was stuck in (yes, on my birthday) waiting for that. So he had to do an extra 30 miles to come back here, pick up his passes and then go into work - karma works *very* quickly these days

Anyway, since birthdays are usually a time of assessing how my life is compared with how I would like it to be, I'm going to go and sit down with a notebook and a pen and muse about how I want my life to be when I'm 50 and how I'm going to get it there.

cazmanian_minx

PS. If any lovely MSE-ers would like to buy me a birthday present, I'll have one of these two please Both of them are local.

The Suisgill Estate - reduced to £7,000,000 from the original asking price of £10,000,000:
http://farmsandestatessearch.savills.co.uk/property-detail/GBEDRUEDR100020/list

Borlum House - this has been on and off the market for the past year or so. Last year it was down to £350k if I remember correctly, so they're being a bit cheeky with £450k!
http://www.ckdgalbraith.co.uk/property/ELG130101/Reay

Knit_Witch

Many happy returns Minx (you are 10 years younger than me :rotfl:)

:bdaycake:

Oh and the properties look stunning

cazmanian_minx

Late-breaking financial news - I've sold Finn's old saddle The lady's bringing cash tomorrow

teapot2

Happy Birthday - good news on the saddle. Will Mr Minx be back this birthday evening for maximum reminding opportunites that he forgot earlier? :rotfl::rotfl:

In the meantime :beer: and chocolate :EasterBun

dawnybabes

Happy birthday - perhaps he didn't do the ate thing as he knew you are cutting back or the hols (clutches at straws for you !!)

scottishspendaholic

Happy beady birthday Caz?!

Does the saddle money help with the holiday/bills/charm bracelets problem, or will you be buying some nice holiday clothes?

hillside777

Happy birthday! Enjoy the rest of the evening.

Good news on the saddle. :j

cazmanian_minx

Thanks for the birthday wishes everyone Mr Minx redeemed himself by cooking a fantastic meal for supper, even though 'I forgot to hide a card in the house for you so you could open it in the morning' actually turned out to mean 'I forgot to get you a card altogether even though I came back from the airport via the mega Tesco in Wick'!!

Does the saddle money help with the holiday/bills/charm bracelets problem, or will you be buying some nice holiday clothes?

I'm keeping £100 of it to change into Mauritian rupees (note to self: need to get some English notes from somewhere, as they won't change Scottish ones - Mauritius doesn't let much currency out of the country, so the best exchange rate is at the airport when you get there!). The other £100 will go on this weekend's Tesco shop and then Mr Minx's half will be transferred directly into my overdraft.

Anyway, a bit later than normal because I had to whizz over to the next village for midday to collect saddle money and needed to take the post at the same time, here are this week's scores on the doors.

(last week/this week/ + or - amount)
Business
Overdraft: -£-8609.15 / -£7481.47 +£1127.68

Business total: -£-8609.15 / -£7481.47 +£1127.68

Personal
Overdraft: -£304.18 / -£529.59 -£225.41
Egg card: -£3215.00 / -£3215.00 no change
Barclaycard: -£2495.00 / -£2495.00 no change
Nationwide card: -£2630.00 / -£2630.00 no change

Personal total: -£8644.18 / -£8869.59 -£225.41

Grand total: -£17,253.33 / -£16,351.06 +£902.27

I freely admit that the personal spending has gone into meltdown at the moment. I think it's something to do with having that holiday feeling... Most of the overspending has been horse-related, to be honest. New hat - £55. Bag of Speedibeet - £12.50. Protexin Acid Ease supplement for Finn - £60. Second hand Enlightened Equitation stirrups - £30 (these are normally £55 new and rare as hens' teeth second hand because very few people ever part with them!). I have £80-worth of cheques to pay in and enough cash to see me through for everything until the end of the month, so the overdraft, in theory, shouldn't get much worse than it is before September.

I had an interesting time goal setting yesterday afternoon. I haven't kept a paper diary for years, but I think I'm going to keep a goal-orientated one for a while and will write a progress report in it once a month. I took the next 10 years and worked out where I want to be personal finance-wise and business-wise over 2 year periods of that. This is what I came up with.

In two years' time I will have:

• paid off all the personal debt
• grown the business to £150k turnover

In four years' time I will have:

• £5k in savings
• grown the business to £250k turnover

In six years' time I will have:

• investments
• business premises and staff

In eight years' time I will have:

• made significant inroads into paying off the mortgage
• a manager to handle the day to day running of the business

In ten years' time I will have:

• £15k a year in passive income
• become a major player in the UK bead market

And you know which of those goals are the hardest? The first two. If I can crack those - and there's no reason why I can't - everything afterwards should be relatively simple to achieve.