Putting My Life Into Order

catandy

well I just saved 160£ off the software development work so thats a result! and business made us £76 in 3 hours of being in use last night so thats good as well.

Im on track for a bonus from the co I freelance for this month - only 150£ but better in my purse than on their balance sheet

DS1 has his first wrestling match tonight that hes getting paid for and he's so proud of having his first 'job'. He's already asked me how much he needs to pay me 'to live at home and for everything I give him' - he's a really good kid and he's got his head screwed on properly. He's got a free pass till he finishes college for paying board and keep and hten he's away for 3 months over the summer so I'm not going to tie him down with responsibilities - time enough for that in life when he grows up

catandy

my finances are in a total mess with DD bouncing all over the place... so far I think its 4 so thats at least £40 in fees so far... plus still got to pay the bills as well. Roll on Friday of this week when I pick up my first proper pay cheque since November and I can settle back into a routine again - money in - bills out.

company with ex is finally ready to kick off into full production - from the 15th of this month we will be fully operational and ready to start making some money from it - we need to pay the developers for the last tranche of work by end of next month but we have 75% of it set aside and another 5 paydates till we have to pay them so need to make 1000 usd in sales each week for the next 5 weeks (we've done it for the last 5 out of 8 so its likely to be achieved) if not I will have to make up the shortfall from what I earn at my job next month.

catandy

and ive just had a total meltdown with Aqua credit card who are the only people to still be hammering on charges to all these cards and hassling on an almost daily basis for me to make them a payment - ive told them i dont get paid till friday but do they listen???

anyway just got interest frozen completely and all they needed to do that was know how much debt im actually in to the total amount ?!?

oh well mine is not to reason why just to send the letter thru again to them and get this all sorted once and for all im sick of them and want shot of them completely same goes for all the others as well.

other good thing that happened today so far is our business made £49 profit in one hour of use this morning and has sessions scheduled for 15 hours over the rest of the week - Come on!!!

catandy

ok first proper payday tomorrow and i cant wait :j just so i can see some balances start to shrink lol. oh well just imagine what it will be like when im not paying off debts - I wont know what to do with all the extra cash I will have (but I'm sure I will find something to do with it lol)

anyways business made us 112 in profit yesterday in 4 hours which is great - cant wait for the main contract we have to up production as they are scheduled to - all set to go for early next week so will be nice to see activity there.

had a day of surveys yesterday which earnt me just short of £8 but will take time to be paid out and got a carboot planned for sunday so hoping its going to warm up a bit by then

catandy

payday is here and its not as exciting as I had thought it would be - money in ok, loan payment out ok, payment to essentials made ok,, not a lot left to last till next pay day :rotfl:still got to make payments to credit cards this month - cant afford to clear all the arrears on all of them so I'm still making short payments this month but they have all accepted it with a view to being back on track next month.

with regards to business the main company/ contract we have using our system threw a huge spanner in the works yesterday - they want part of our system totally redesigned and reprogrammed to suit them - they had the opportunity to look at any changes they wanted to make to the system before xmas which is all the work we have paid to have done by the software developers, they didnt look at part of it which they now have picked up on and refuse to use the system at all until we get it changed for them. so until we can get it from them exactly it is they want changing/ how it needs to work we cant get the developer to put together a quote for us or any idea of timescale which puts everything on hold again. I got close yesterday to telling them to take their business elsewhere - business partner has the weekend off this weekend which is probably a good thing as he just wants to tell them they are idiots. we would pass on the cost or part of the cost of getting it reconfigured but how fraught things are at the moment I dont see how we can do that - basically we're being held to ransom or thats the way it feels.

At the moment I regret this business with my whole being, its taken too much time, effort and not to mention all my money to make it happen, its right on the cusp of taking off but the company that want to use it want us to change everything around for them which again takes time, effort and more £££. I'm out of energy or motivation on it, without it taking off properly with the company in question it means ex will not be able to afford to move out as he was due to be drawing an income from the business from April. At the moment I just feel like sitting here and crying with the frustration of it all. I'm even more of a little ray of sunshine than I usually am at the moment uh?

catandy

well ive snapped myself out of my woe is me session of yesterday and decided to get my head down and just get on with it. Dont really have much of a choice really so as my mum would say 'others have it worse than you get on with it'....

ive just done a complete audit of whats in the freezers, fridge and cupboard. i then sat down and did a menu plan for the week working out what we need. I'm setting myself a budget of £25 total this week on food so we can use up whats in again - most of it will be fruit and veg, milk etc but I need meat enough for one meal so will be going to the local butchers. with all the scare stories about what you really get in packaged food ive gone back to the local butcher so i can see him cut the meat from the joint - I like to think that I know what a carcass of the relevant animal looks like so if it looks right it means we're not eating horse or donkey or goodness knows what else

business last night was operational so the company using the software cant be that !!!!ed can they? slowish night we made just £29 in 4 hours live but at least it all pays out immediately - one of the payment processors only pays out every 6 months so I hate it when we get transactions thru on that one. Also saved about £4 yesterday by the currency moving back into our favour again when I paid for some of the overheads so it all adds up.

plan for today is to put together PPI claim letters to 3 of the credit cards - the only ones I had it on. It's taken me this amount of time to get the template letter sorted and find all the account details. Not holding my breath but if it works out then great.

ive now got 3 defaults showing on my credit history with the others likely to show the same next month as it all works a month in arrears doesnt it?

anyways all the stuff is ready for the car boot im doing tomorrow so fingers crossed its not raining dogs and cats

catandy

ok so im 21 pounds up after the car boot of yesterday and got room enough in one of the cupboards to shut the door without having to bodyslam it shut. ive got 2 black sacks worth of clothes left that didnt sell that are going to be taken to one of those shops that buy old clothes by the kg so should be another 6£ or so there - £27 for clearing out junk result

done a menu plan for the week and think I may even get away with spending less than £25 - I'm becoming a real demon for using everything up and wasting nothing. I'm also getting back into real 'cooking' with everything from scratch rather than ready made everything which is so much better for us health wise.

business wise ex and I sat down and looked at the options over the weekend with regards to the changes the company want us to make to the software. In reality they could have looked at that feature of the software any time in the last 6 months of using the software to work out how its currently configured doesnt suit them - if they had told us the changes they wanted made we could have got most of it done in the last lot of development work at little extra cost to what we have already paid out. To add it on now its a totally new feature and is likely to be another 1K of development work - and will be a feature of the software only being used by that company, none of the other users of the system have a problem with the current set up. so long and short of it if they want it they pay for it. the other thing we are going to pull them up on is their commission payouts - we pay out 30% commission up front on the website and the remaining 50% on successful sale but the company have been paid the 30% of 1000 usd that is never going to be spent, they have disabled the website, meaning we are 300usd or £200 out of pocket. That is going to be offset against their current commission payout which again is probably not going to go down too well... to be honest i just want to get it straight with them - are they going to use the system, how do they want the system configured and are they willing to pay for the changes, if not then is there anyway forward and if not then we cut our losses with them. should find out today / tomorrow at the latest.

................................................................................................

so plan for this week is work today, waiting for a new project to start from tomorrow so day off probably tomorrow whilst that is organised. bills all paid for the month so thats good, got to chase up the DD that bounced and get them sorted, sort out how much money we have set aside for software developer, drop off bags of clothes and get paid for that, do the bits of food shop we need. then hustle for a new contract from Tue pm onwards...

catandy

company made £62 in 4 hours of being operational last night so that was ok - got a £100 cash bonus from work yesterday as a 'well done' for a lead I generated - I've worked on the same project for 10 days and not even a sniff of anything so I think its bribery to keep me doing what I'm supposed to be doing but thats ok by me as well

software development is paid for and money set aside for the developer so thats all going ok as well. means we are absolutely 'potless' both as a company and me and ex as individuals but all the bills are covered so now its just head down for me at work, for ex at our business and make this work to build us an income and some income.

CC payments are still on nominal payments - to put them back onto proper payments I've got to find up to £300 per card and if I clear the arrears it makes interest payable again. So plan is another couple of months of nominal payments then clear a couple in their entirety - probably smallest balance ones.

catandy

ok so company I freelance for has left me high and dry again and maybe doing so till after the Easter break which is really not a good sign. Ive been told to contact them again tomorrow to find out what is going on - this feels like its slipping back to where it was last year and what got me in this mess to begin with. I also need to find another freelance job to run alongside my main one so I've always got a back up plan again. I can start to sell our smaller software solution again but I need a guaranteed income as well so both parts go together really.

software development is completely finished and just needs paying for now - we're £380 short of being able to pay it out and its not due to be paid till end of april giving us 6 weeks and 7 payouts from the payment processors to make it. Not got any concerns here really I just want it paid so then we know that every penny the company makes over and above the monthly running costs is profit and can be used to payback some of what has been pumped into it to make it a live business concern. ex will be taking an income from it first of all so hes got a living wage and can move, then i take an income then i start taking tranches of the development money back to repay what I've pumped in... thats the plan, unless ex's kids decide they desperately need something or something drastic crops up but thats all going be over my dead body.

Aqua CC has issued a default notice and passed the debt onto a DCA meaning I've got a chance to do a F&F with them later this year. I'm actually happy this has happened not least cos it means the interest is frozen completely moving forward. 3 defaults now showing and will see if there are any more when I check my updated Noddle report tomorrow. so that's Cap 1 both cards issued defaults and passed to DCA, Aqua ditto and Barclays going to do it next month - MBNA and vanquis i find out tomorrow...

....................................................................................

plans - carry on what im doing, pay the bills i have to at the rates i have agreed, get this business up and running properly with the biggest contract we have and push it all the way to be as succesful as possible. find another freelance job so I can double up a bit on projects, add selling our software into the mix, keep NSD and LSD going as I am currently, menu plan to control those costs, just carry on carrying on

catandy

I'm sitting here in tears cos something has finally gone right :j - the company I freelance for have just given me a contract for the next 2 years full time work making me a guaranteed take home amount meaning I can plan ahead with some sort of certainty. I know the product that I'm working on, I know the systems used and I know what target I need to achieve. And with all that in place me and my kids have finally got some stability returning to our lives. I've not sent my acceptance back yet but I will do after lunch so it gets actioned as soon as the right dept it opened. I just cant believe after all this stress of the last couple of years it seems like its lifted in one action - feels a bit unreal to be honest.

Haven't even sat down and worked out what it means to me being able to pay off these damn debts - I will do I mean I want to work out how long till I'm a free woman and when my kids can start living a bit but that will probably wait till later when I've got my head on straight again