Cazmanian_minx's MFi3 diary

cazmanian_minx

October was my best EVER month on eBay - a smidgeon over £5,500 :j :j :j I think I'm going to have to revise my annual turnover target for 07/08, because I have another 5 months to go and I'm only £7,000 off it.

I think I've proved to myself now that this business works. It's time to expand a bit - at the moment my stock storage consists of about 2 sq m of space in a cupboard with my jiffy bags (I bulk buy) in the hall and the living room. So I'm moving up in the world! There's an attic above this flat. I don't, technically, own it, it belongs to the freeholders, but in the 8 years I've lived here they've never wanted to access it and there's nothing of theirs up there, just some of my junk and some of the previous owner's junk. OH, who is a DIY demon, is going to floor it and then we're going to remove the cupboard on the landing (huge but with no shelves - it used to hold a hot water tank I think, but we have a combi boiler) and put a small staircase in to access it. Voila, one storage room (there isn't enough headspace to turn it into a proper room) and because I'll be storing personal stuff in there as well as jiffy bags and beads, it's not going to attract business rates.

In other news, I came second in a 30-seat poker tournament last night! I know you're all going to go 'OMG! Gambling is so not MSE!', but I got the account to get cashback through Quidco, had to deposit and play a few hands and quite quickly found out that although I was really, really bad at table play, I could get into the top 3 and win money 8 out of 10 times in tournament play. Last night I ventured out of the micro-stakes tournaments (maximum buy-in $1) to the small-stakes tournaments, bought a seat for $2.20 and after just over 2 hours of play came away with $18. I'd have won the $30 if it wasn't for that pesky pair of kings... (I went all-in on pocket aces because it was 1am and I was knackered - unfortunately there were 2 kings in the flop and he beat me with three of a kind).

I've been playing on the site for a couple of months now, just on the evenings OH is away if I want to wind down a bit between work and going to bed. I initially deposited $20, balance after last night's game is $25 (I said I was really, really bad at table play, didn't I?? Lesson learned now, I'm not going back to it ever again!), so I'm going to go back to the micro-stakes tournaments, get my balance to $30 and then withdraw my original deposit - hopefully over the next three years I can very slowly build my $5 winnings up to something that might pay a bit of a chunk off the mortgage.

Nothing back from the house solicitor yesterday, nor from my divorce solicitor (but then I sent the cheque second class to give the money time to clear from my savings). I'm glad the next MFi3 official update isn't until January, I might have a slightly clearer picture of what my post-divorce finances will be like then.

Caz

Kaz2904

Well it looks like you are getting nicely sorted out then doesn't it! It will be nice if the owners do drop the price of the house or get the work done to it.

When I went to this wedding at the weekend, the bride had made nearly everything involved. She had made lovely headthings for the bridesmaids with flowers and beads.
I had seen a picture of one of your beads with your photos and told her about them because she will be moving soon and it will give her a bit of extra income if she starts to make and sell these things. If you could pm me some details of your new shop then I will give her the links when she gets back from honeymoon and you may get some buisness from her.
(I hope that's the right way to do it- it's not advertising is it?)
TTFN, Kaz.

cazmanian_minx

Thanks, Kaz, that's really nice of you :beer: Once it's open, I'll PM you the details - I'm creating product detail frantically at the moment!

Good news this afternoon, I chased up payment for the magazine transcription job AGAIN and got an email back to say that the accounts department had written me a cheque for both outstanding jobs (the other one isn't at 30 days yet, so I hadn't asked about it), put it in tonight's post and I should get it by Monday or Tuesday at the latest. And he might possibly have some more work for me in a fortnight's time :T (Though if the cheque doesn't arrive, I'm not doing it!)

As if life wasn't busy enough, I've somehow ended up agreeing to do NaNoWriMo again. I failed dismally last year and bowed out at a puny 3,500 words - maybe this year I'll get that first draft Mills and Boon novel out of it...

Caz

Karmacat

Hi CM

Your posts above on this page sound *really* interesting - the micropoker and the creativity - I must have lost touch with your diary, I'm afraid. I have to go input some mystery shop data, but I'll be catching up as soon as I can - it sonds like you're doing ever so well, thats great!

cazmanian_minx

Quite depressed about the eBay selling today because I have an unhappy customer and I always take it far too personally. It's on days like this that I really do think about chucking it in and going back to work, but I'm sure I'll be over it by Monday.

I've possibly found another transcription job - working for a firm that outsources legal transcription work to self-employed transcribers. I've sent them my CV, so cross your fingers. The rate's pretty good, £75-£100 a day and if they're considering taking you on, they require you to attend a training day in central London which you get paid £60 for (but not travel expenses).

Caz

cazmanian_minx

We heard back from the house solicitor this afternoon and as we'd expected, the answer was Foxtrot Oscar The seller is putting it back on the market at a fixed price of £85,000, so good luck to them and good luck to whoever buys it, it's such a lovely house.

On the plus side, I have just been very bad and booked 2 weeks here:

http://www.hayesandjarvis.co.uk/hotel/16541

next June (Through Quidco, natch!)

Caz

setmefree2

Hi Caz,

Wow :j- me & Mr SMF went to Maurititus (nowhere as flash as your hotel though) about 20 years ago - the beaches are fantastic & it is an Island paradise. Soooooooooooooooo jealous...shame about the house though.:o

evab_2

oh wow, i'm so jealous (nicely though!), my current holiday savings are £10 which will get us to Rhyl - 3 miles down the road!!!

Anyway - hope you'll have a nice time

Ev

cazmanian_minx

Hooray - some good news this morning! I have a cheque for £165.83 from the magazine I was transcribing for and it's for BOTH outstanding invoices :j :j :j

That, added to my regular monthly savings will replace the money I sent to my solicitor, so I'm back to level par again - though I saw a letter addressed to the freeholders downstairs from the roofing company a couple of days ago, which I suspect was the bill for the new flat roof...

I had a really good AQA night last night, £14 in just under 2 hours while I was watching the rugby with OH. Not my best ever, which was £23 in the same period (I hit a run of easy questions!), but a good start to the month. I'm definitely going to try and do better than last month, I only answered 104 questions for £31.20, a bit below my £50 a month target

Caz

cazmanian_minx

I feel like I'm treading water today. I've transferred money into my offset account but I can't actually pay it off the mortgage for the following reasons:

1. It's earmarked to pay off my credit card when it reaches the end of it's interest-free period.

2. The roof bill is imminent.

3. I'm probably going to have to pay my solicitor another £500 in the next month or so.

4. There's no point in decreasing the mortgage when I'm probably going to have to increase it to settle with my ex-to-be-husband - I might as well have as much of it in cash as possible.

So this month my mortgage has gone down by the grand total of £10. I had a target of an outstanding mortgage balance of £22k for April 08 to be on track to clear it in 3 years, but I think until the divorce is over I'd better switch that to a target for the savings account instead.

I'm at £5,286.05 this morning. I'd love to be at £10,000 for April, but that might be a little ambitious. I'm going to aim for £10k, but I'd be happy with £7,500 (and that doesn't include the £1,800 for my share of the Dream Holiday, which is due to be paid for in the first week of April!)

On the plus side, eBay is still storming away and I hope that I'll be able to pay myself quite a nice Christmas bonus (which, of course, will go straight into the savings account!)

Caz