Caz counts it down

dawnybabes

Just a few things then ! Have a great time x

scottishspendaholic

Have a brilliant holiday Caz, hope you relax & have fun.

Xxx

Mara_uk7

Have a wonderful holiday, dont be thinking about us here shivering in the wind and rain, oh no, dont even give it a thought .. Enjoy the sunshine and try and RELAX !!!

DebtFree2012

Have a wonderful time xx

gallygirl

Oops. You've probably gone now. So welcome back :hello: Hope you had a great time

cazmanian_minx

Thanks everyone, we're home and we had a fab time, despite me taking my next door neighbour's cold in my hand luggage and coming down with it on day 2! The weather was gorgeous (28C and sunny every day), we went sightseeing and catamaran sailing and by the end of the week we were completely chilled out - I always reckon a week of holiday there is like three weeks holiday anywhere else

The final bill for extras at the hotel wasn't too horrendous, £430 which included the catamaran trip (£130 for a full day for 2 of us including drinks and food) and a pair of trousers Mr Minx bought from the hotel shop (£45), all our drinks and lunches on the five days we were in the hotel. To go all-inclusive would have cost an extra £350 each so we came out on top

We've come back to a couple of unexpected bills Mr Minx's truck has failed its MOT with two broken leaf springs. The garage, who are very good at keeping costs down, told him that proper Nissan replacements would be £700 each and it's generally recommended to replace all 4 even if only 2 have gone :eek: however, they could get non-branded ones for £230 for 4 :T "That's not your biggest problem though," the garage guy said, nearly giving Mr Minx a heart attack. "I'm completely booked out until Wednesday and can't do it until then, it's about a 5 hour job." So Mr Minx has booked tomorrow off work (he's still a bit jet lagged) and will get the bus in on Monday and Tuesday - apparently it's legal to drive the truck away from a failed MOT as long as it's booked in for the work to be done and you don't drive it between taking it home and taking it back (garage guy has just been on a course about MOT legislation and was as surprised as we were to learn that!).

The other bill is for the new rug I've just had to buy Finn - it was pouring here when I got home from town, so I went to put the boys' rugs on and found that his had a massive rip over the quarters; not just the outer layer but through the filling and the lining as well :mad: Fortunately I have a 10% coupon code to use on eBay that expires on Saturday, so I managed to find him a new Rhinegold for £32.99 including delivery which got reduced to £29.69. I'll take the ripped one to be repaired at the weekend.

I got the shops all open after we touched down at Glasgow yesterday and had 17 orders to go today with £250 in the PayPal account. I need to take at least £3k by the end of the month, which may be a little tight, but my charm bracelets are nearly ready to ship (hooray - much quicker than anticipated) and I've placed a big order with a UK supplier today for all the things I'm out of stock of, so hopefully sales will pick up quickly.

cazmanian_minx

Would you like to see some truly horrendous scores on the doors? You would? OK then....

(last week/this week/ + or - amount)
Business
Overdraft: -£-8006.00 / -£8872.79 -£886.79

Business total: -£-8006.00 / -£8872.79 -£886.79

Personal
Overdraft: -£462.89 / -£988.89 -£526.00
Egg card: -£3215.00 / -£3150.00 +£65.00
Barclaycard: -£2495.00 / -£2495.00 no change
Nationwide card: -£2630.00 / -£2600.00 +£30.00

Personal total: -£8802.89 / -£9233.89 -£431.00

Grand total: -£16,808.89 / -£18,106.68 -£1317.79 :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

Not Good. I've got a £23 postal order to pay into the personal overdraft and someone is supposed to be PayPalling me another £18 for a girth tomorrow, but that's just drops in the ocean really.

At least the sales are rolling in. I banked £460 this morning, got wiped out of a load more stock and had to place another order with the UK supplier.

Oh, and after Finn's rug and Mr Minx's car, we had our third - the brake on the chainsaw has broken. Hopefully that's the last of it

At least the scales are being nice to me - I was brave and got on them the evening we got home and they said +3lbs, but I'd opted for vegetarian food on the flights home (Emirates serve a lot of fish, which I can't eat, and their meat is halal which I'm not all together happy with - need to look into it more - so I changed my meal choice to veggie via their website) and had eaten a lot of white carbs (bread, pasta, rice etc.) and thought that most of that might be water retention from the glycogen spike. Sure enough, 2lbs gone now and hopefully the third will vanish over the next couple of days. Given the last time we went away for a week and had help-yourself buffet meals in the hotel, I gained over half a stone, so this is a resounding success

cazmanian_minx

Oh, and I know my signature is wrong - I've tried to update it three times now and it doesn't want to save for some reason. I'll leave it until next Friday I think (yes, I know, wuss!)

Knit_Witch

I can't change mine either Minx - I think it is a forum wide problem

cazmanian_minx

I think you're right Knit Witch - I've been gradually catching up with all my subscribed threads and it seems to be a common theme.

One thing I forgot to mention on Friday was that the-Barclaycard-formerly-known-as-Egg didn't charge me any interest this month, even though there's still a bit of 16.9% balance on there. Last month the interest was exactly £1 - do they not bother collecting it if it's less than £1?

It's been a fairly spend-y weekend. Tesco was £84 (after careful use of coupons and multibuys got it down from £97 - I was particularly pleased to get 3 bottles of Aussie shampoo for £6.75 by combining the 3 for £10 multibuy with three coupons!), I got another bag of Speedibeet from the tack shop (£12.50), dropped Finn's rug in for repair (probably £15 to £20) and filled the car up (£57). Finn's replacement rug hasn't arrived yet, so he's pottering around the field in his wicking fleece with Merlin's no-fill shower sheet over the top of it. It's a bit long over his backside (Merlin takes a 6'6", Finn's a 6'0") but other than that it seems to be doing the trick. Fortunately we appear to be in the eye of the storm at the moment and although we've had some really heavy showers we haven't had the gale force winds and torrential downpours we were forecast. It's actually sunny at the moment!

I had an hysterical conversation in RBS yesterday morning. To cut a very long story short (involving a model yacht and a forgotten wallet), the cocktails savings account owed me £426.92, so I went in with my business account card to identify myself and my paying in book for my NatWest account so I could a) pay in the postal order for the girth I sold and b) give them the account number to transfer the rest to. Although they could see the savings account on their screen, there was no option to transfer out of it via faster payments - or any payments at all. They could transfer it into my business account, but there'd be a £3 charge to the business account. I asked if it would help if I came in with the actual card for the account - they said it might, but I'd need the PIN which I didn't know. They tried to get the computer to send me a new PIN, but their system reckoned there was no card attached to the account (probably right, we opened it five years ago and we've never had replacement cards issued, so they've probably expired). Two bank staff and I scratched our heads for a moment until I had a brainwave and asked if I could take cash out, as I've done that before. Yes, no problem, they said. In which case, can I take out £426.92 please and then pay it in using this paying in book? They burst out laughing and said they were glad someone in the building had a brain! (That amount was excluded from Friday's Scores on Doors, so the overdraft is that bad, sadly!)