Cazmanian_minx's MFi3 diary

cazmanian_minx

Hope no-one minds if I start one of these too - I've been inspired by Mountainlioness :T So, to kick it off, here's some waffle about my current situation...

The Challenge has slowed down a bit for me as I've had some recent expenses and know there are more to come in next couple of months that will stop me overpaying, namely:

• Solicitor's bill - £645 (Paid. Never get divorced...)
• Buildings insurance - £250 (Paid. Don't have any control over changing insurance companies as I live in a flat and the freeholder organises it)
• Water bill - £120 (due 1st October, 6 monthly-charge)
• New flat roof - £800? (the 20-year-old flat roof over my kitchen and bathroom is disintegrating. I reported it to the freeholders - who, handily, live in the ground floor flat - and we've been getting quotes, but it looks like it's going to be about £1.5-2.5k between the 3 flats)

My emergency fund is offset against the mortgage, so I try not to touch it, but most of the solicitor's bill came out of it and the roof will have to as well.

Debt-wise, the mortgage is now at just over £28,000, I owe my Mum £15,000 (she lent me £25,000 interest-free in 1999 as a deposit to buy this flat and refuses to accept more than £100 a month in repayments - I'm *very* lucky), but have no other loans and my two credit cards (one personal, one for my business) are paid off in full each month (though the business one's a close-run thing this month - got the timing of a stock order wrong and it went on the August statement rather than the September one!)

I live with my very lovely boyfriend and my extremely ancient cat (19 and still going strong, though on tablets & a special diet for her kidneys now). Last September I made my best career move ever and resigned from my job in central London to go self-employed as an eBay trader. I was actually planning to go self-employed as a writer, but my little eBay business (which I started a few years back and fitted round work) just grew and grew and grew and now it turns over nearly £4k a month. At the moment I'm taking £600 a month out of it (£400 to cover my share of bills and living costs and £200 to set aside for tax and NI) and ploughing the rest back into expanding the stock range, but I'm hoping that this business is my route to being MFi3 - it has huge potential and is still growing at an exponential rate.

As well as the eBaying, I also answer text messages for AQA at 30p an answer, do freelance audio transcription for a university learning research institute and write the odd short story for the women's magazine market. I'd *love* to write a novel and have long harboured an ambition to write for Mills & Boon I have a friend who had her first novel accepted by them late last year and she's now on a 3-book a year contract with them, but it took her FOURTEEN rejections to get there - Harlequin Mills & Boon publish 50 books a month, but get approximately 6,000 submissions a month and only taken on 10-12 new writers a year, so she's done amazingly well. I have four or five plots buzzing round in my head, it's just being disciplined enough to write, re-write, edit, re-write and submit...

Anyway, enough wittering. My goals for the upcoming week are:

1. Photograph the new stock for my eBay shop and get it sorted, bagged and listed.
2. Answer at least 10 AQA questions a day.
3. Finish off a story I was writing for People's Friend magazine and send it to DC Thomson's Central Fiction department.

Caz

Move_To_Portugal

Hi Caz

Good luck with your MFi3 challenge and well done on the Ebay business success.

MtP

taka

Hello :hello: Good luck on your journey to mortgage freeness (is that a word??) Hope you diary helps you! I'm a MFiT questee too. I've recently started a diary too (DWF board)
Well done with the ebay business!! I look forward to reading your diary!!

Taka xx

Karmacat

Hiya! I love diaries on the dfw forum, and I know I'm going to love these too. I think its a really good idea to have a "state of play" post at the beginning the way you have - it sets it all out really clearly. Looking forward to this.

catshark88

Hi there. Great to see another diary on the mfw forum!

I have just started a business doing equestrian event photography and am currently trying to get to grips with tax requirements, especially what can and can't be expensed.

Good luck with the ebaying.

mountainlioness

Caz - thanks for the :T and glad to hear you're in on the diary thang! Look forward to reading it

What's your ebay store btw? That's a healthy turnover, well done!

cazmanian_minx

Catshark - wow, that sounds fantastic! My Mum keeps badgering me to enter for an LRPS so to keep her happy I'm doing a course this autumn that the RPS says is a good preparation, so maybe one day I'll be able to sell some of my photos. Great subject matter as well - my one great extravagance was my horse but sadly I had to sell him, he was way too much for me and if I'd kept him, even with expert help, I'd have probably ruined him. Fortunately his new owner is wonderful and sends me regular emails and pictures. This was when I still had him, on his 4th birthday:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22544094@N00/1255149817/in/set-72157600781051987/
- his rider there is over 6ft tall and he's filled out again since!

Mountainlioness - I'll get my knuckles rapped if I post a link, but I sell beads and jewellery-making bits. Average selling price of an item is £2.50, so packing up can get a bit hectic some days!! Talking of which, I have 40 orders to send out today and I'm still sitting here in my dressing gown having not had breakfast yet - better get moving!

Caz

catshark88

Caz, he is GORGEOUS!

Photo training is great (and Lord knows I could do with some) but if you have a decent camera, why not have a go at selling anyway?? Modern cameras seems to do the complicated stuff for you but if you have the eye, I bet you are doing lovely pics as it is!

I need to find subjects I can sell to a wider audience, at the mo my market is restricted to the person on the horse and their immediate family!

Desperate_Housewife_2-2

Hi Caz,

good luck with the challenge!

DH

cazmanian_minx

Catshark - have you seen Tim Flach's Equus Project? www.timflach.com - *amazing* pictures. Could you sell stock images to Horse & Hound, Your Horse etc?

Mum got me a copy of the Freelance Photographer's Handbook for Christmas last year and that's full of useful markets. A new one comes out in October every year.

Caz

cazmanian_minx

Just been totting up my 'extras' for the month. So far it's looking like this:

• Quidco - £16.94 (but next month is going to be bumper, since the OH decided he couldn't live without Sky any longer and I got a whopping £85!)
• AQA - currently just over £48, should be over £50 by the end of the month, which is what I budget for.
• Transcription - about £11 due, should be paid at the beginning of September.
• Cashback card - cheque for £165 coming, £65 of it is going on this photography course (along with my birthday money), so the other £100 is available.

Which is a total of...about £177.94. That's a lot better than I thought, actually. In fact, if I take that and add it to the lump I put aside for tax and NI each month, I should be able to top up my offset savings back to their comfort level of £5k and still overpay the mortgage by about £50. Though I mustn't forget about that water bill at the end of the month...

I should be packing up orders but I'm slightly stuck until Mr Parceline arrives with more labels and printer cartridges - at the moment I have 8 labels left and 15 packages to go and even I can see that the maths doesn't work on that one!