Caz counts it down

DebtFree2012

Deffo get everything on 0% IMO x

cazmanian_minx

£1010 banked from PayPal this morning, so December is off to a good start! I've posted out 87 orders and am completely knackered, but exhilarated at the same time. It's what I call the retailers' high; I used to get it the week before Christmas when I worked at HMV, when the queues were down to the back of the shop and you just turned into a machine that scanned barcodes, took payment and packed bags. Now I hurl things into jiffy bags instead, but the principle's the same

I did find time to bash some calculator buttons and have transferred £2500 from the old Egg card to my current account. Once the transfer clears through I'll get the overdraft cancelled. Only a 1.9% fee as well, so £47.50 to add. That'll have to be the first card I target I think - it will revert to 16.9%, whereas the Nationwide will only be 9.9% at the end of the 0% period and the Barclaycard is a life of balance transfer.

What else? I sold two books and a DVD on my personal eBay account for a grand total of £5.97 (before PayPal and eBay fees and postage!!) - to be honest, it's more about decluttering than making money, but it's three more pieces of stuff out of the house And we have lovely, lovely neighbours - remember I was saying we were planning to pick up all our hay this month before Mr Minx has his operation? Well, I thought we were going to do it over three weekends, but Mr Minx was determined to do it in one day, which I didn't think his hip was going to cope with, so I went next door to ask if they would be able to hitch up their big flatbed trailer and come with us, so we could pick up all 110 bales at once rather than having to go back and forth (our trailer only takes 40 at a time and it's about 40 miles each way). 'Ah, we were meaning to talk to you about that,' they said, and my heart sank because I thought they weren't going to be able to store it for us. No, Mr Neighbour says that as long as I can time it for when he's on-shore, he'll take me to collect them 40 at a time as needed, so we don't have to move them all twice. We're very lucky to have them next door

DebtFree2012

Lovely neighbours as you say - lucky girl

Did you hear how the pony is doing which wasn't right for you, what about the one who you considered buying before that who was still for sale? If and when it's meant to be it will of course, am just curious

cazmanian_minx

DebtFree2012 wrote: »

Did you hear how the pony is doing which wasn't right for you, what about the one who you considered buying before that who was still for sale? If and when it's meant to be it will of course, am just curious

I'll PM you in a moment

35 orders sent today, another £508 in the bank, although £54 of it came straight out again for another 800 padded envelopes. Now only £150 away from equalling the whole week's takings for this week last year! I'm mildly concerned that yesterday's £1010 seems to have disappeared from my account after the RBS banking glitch. If it hasn't turned up by tomorrow morning, I shall ring the business banking helpline and see what they can do to track it down.

Had to place another order with my UK main supplier today (the second one this week) after a regular from Australia spent £166 and cleaned me out of quite a bit of stuff.

Tomorrow's job is attacking another box of Stuff in the annexe - I found another cache of loose gemstone beads today and they've been selling really well, so I'll get them sorted, listed and sold

cazmanian_minx

Only 27 to go today, maybe this is the start of the slowdown? It did mean that I got another 26 packs of clearance gemstone beads up for sale.

The £2500 has hit my current account and I have cancelled the overdraft. Scary....

We're battening down the hatches here tonight as we're forecast gusts of up to 100mph in the next 24 hours along with rain, sleet and snow as the temperature drops. The horses have rugs on for once, they have shelter and they have vast quantities of hay in their feeders, so fingers crossed they'll be OK overnight.

cazmanian_minx

The weather today has been, as expected, pretty horrible, but the horses are fine, the field shelters stayed put and we didn't get quite as much rain, sleet and snow as we were expecting, though some of the hailstones were pretty impressive (and painful!). Filling buckets when the water is coming out at a 90 degree angle to the tap on the water butt is quite tricky though.

32 posted today and enough banked to take the weekly total over £2k for the sixth week in a row. This is a massive improvement on last year

I've started the dreaded Christmas shopping. My brother emailed me today to check we were OK and gave me some ideas for my niece, so I got that sorted this evening and found something for my Mum as well (she's asked for an Amazon token as she's getting a Kindle, but I wanted to get her something to unwrap too ) Mum's other half will get a smaller Amazon token, which just leaves my brother and his other half, my not-quite-sister-in-law who'll be up for Christmas (Mr Minx has sorted his brother's present) and our lovely next door neighbours (I shall probably raid Hotel Chocolat for them!)

brizzledfw

So glad you guys, Merlin & Finn are OK and the sales are going so well. It's great news

cazmanian_minx

Morning. The scores on the doors look a bit horrible thanks to shifting the overdraft plus December unusual expenses onto the cards...

Business
Overdraft: -£-5175.89 / -£5125.18 +£50.71

Business total: -£5175.89 / -£5125.18 £50.71

Personal
Overdraft: -£1415.93 / -£0.00 +£1415.93
Egg card: -£3020.00 / -£5567.50 -£2547.50
Barclaycard: -£2370.00 / -£2370.00 no change
Nationwide card: -£2540.00 / -£2510.00 +£30.00

Personal total: -£9345.93 / -£10447.50 -£1101.57

Grand total: -£14,521.82 / -£15,572.68 -£1050.86

On the plus side, the amount of mortgage paid off has just tipped up over £26,000. It does seem like a never-ending climb sometimes. But one overdraft has been banished forever and I can now start battering the hell out of that Egg card.

cazmanian_minx

I had a loooooooooong day yesterday. Got up at 6.30, fed and mucked out the horses by torchlight, got Mr Minx to give me a lift the 21 miles to the station (it had snowed and he was concerned my car would get stuck down the Strath), sat on a train for 4 hours, had a fabulous lunch with a friend I haven't seen for over a year, did some Christmas shopping, sat on a train for 3 hours, got collected by Mr Minx and finally got to sleep around 11pm.

At midnight the power went off and the smoke alarms started beeping every five minutes. We didn't get power back until after midday, by which time I'd lost any impulse to get some work done this afternoon. I did get 10 orders packed up and answered a few customer queries. I think my Christmas rush is over though, when I logged on this afternoon I'd only had £43-worth of sales in the past 24 hours, though that's now gone up to £80. Still have over 50 to go tomorrow at the moment.

cazmanian_minx

First statement for the target card and the minimum payment has gone up to £111.35, so I'm going to need to shove an extra tenner into the bills account.

I ran the snowball calculator for my new situation today and if I chuck £250 a month at the personal debts (which I'm not at the moment, it's just over £200), I will be debt free in exactly 4 years, waaaaaaaaaaaay past my target of my 40th birthday in August 2015. Uggber.

I've had a small slowdown in sales, only 67 to send out today, and I think I'll see it taper off this week.