Cazmanian_minx's MFi3 diary

Kaz2904

Umm, I've got a pair of tights you can borrow to wear over your head when you go to the bank- that any good?!

cazmanian_minx

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

That was OH's suggestion too!

I did have a brainwave this morning though, triggered by doing a rough cut of the September accounts and your overdraft suggestion - my personal account couldn't support a £25k overdraft, but my business one could, so that's definitely an option!

Caz

cazmanian_minx

Some good news this morning - broker rang OH back, they had a chat, we've agreed to raise our deposit to 10% (from 7%) and broker says he should have no problems finding a mortgage from a prime lender. :j :j :j :j

I've also been sent a 0% BT offer from my NatWest card and did wonder about stoozing it into the offset account, but 5 minutes with the calculator showed me that the interest saved on the mortgage would be less than half of the balance transfer fee (3%), so not worth doing.

There's a postal strike due at the end of this week, which is going to be tough for business - I'll alter my despatch email to say, in big black letters, THERE'S A NATIONWIDE POSTAL STRIKE ON, PLEASE ALLOW AT LEAST 10 DAYS FOR YOUR ITEM TO REACH YOU, but I'm sure at least 10% of buyers will still send me complaint emails. I think sales will probably be down a bit, but I'm going to use the time productively and try to get my website shop up and running so I can iron out any problems before the Christmas rush hits towards the end of the month. I'm hoping the website will increase sales dramatically and I won't have eBay fees to pay either, so profits should go up and therefore mortgage overpayments

Caz

Kaz2904

Yay, you're doing well aren't you! At least you are going to use the time productively.

cazmanian_minx

The broker rang with bad news this morning - OH has been turned down again :mad: However, the lender was kind enough to say why: apparently there's a £3,000 unsettled default on his credit record.

Now, this is odd. Because OH applied for his credit record with all three agencies back in May when his responsibility towards his ex's mortgage ended, and everything was 100% fine apart from Experian picking up information about someone else with the same name who'd lived in the same block of apartments. He's applied for a fresh set of credit records today and once they arrive we'll be able to sort it out - we have a few theories about what it might be and all of them can probably be sorted out with a single phone call and a request to update records.

The broker has said it's not a problem as such, he can still get OH a mortgage, it's just that if it can be sorted out he can go with a prime lender, if it can't, it'll have to be sub-prime.

I'm having an absolutely stonking week on eBay. Normally I take £800-£1,000 a week, but I'm 2.5 days into my financial week and I'm already at £660! It could be everybody rushing to beat the postal strike I suppose, but the last post for the day has gone and it's showing no signs of slowing down!

On the downside, my printer packed up today - 2 weeks outside its warranty period :mad: It's only an intermittent fault at the moment, but an extremely annoying one when you have to turn it off, wait five minutes and turn it back on to reset it every 10 sheets or so. I've bitten the bullet and bought myself a laser printer, which is being delivered tomorrow. In true MSE fashion, I got it through Quidco and it's going to dramatically lower my printing costs - a £38 toner cartridge will print 2000 sheets and I can start buying economy 5-star brand laser printer address labels at £4.39 for 400 instead of having to have Avery Inkjet ones at £19.99 for 400. :T So every cloud has a silver lining in the end

I've put another £200 into my savings account today and it's brought my interest-bearing amount to under £23,000 :T My AQA and Quidco money should arrive tomorrow; those can be transferred straight in there as well and that'll top my savings back up to £5,000 with a bit left over for a small mortgage overpayment - though I'm thinking that it might possibly be wiser to keep it in the savings account until we're 100% certain OH has got a mortgage... I'm also due the money for the transcription job on October 6th (and believe me, I shall be chasing that one up on October 7th if it hasn't hit my account - magazines are notorious for being late payers!) and I've noticed that the university I transcribe for still hasn't paid me for two short files I did in the last week of August. It's only a tenner, but it's the principle of the thing. Their payments usually come in around the 8th, so if it's not here by then, I need to email them too.

Busy, busy, busy...

Caz

Kaz2904

Keeping my fingers crossed for you two.
Do you have any idea what sort of interest rate you would pay on an overdraft on your buisness account?

Really hope you get loads of sales over the next few weeks.

cazmanian_minx

Kaz2904 wrote: »

Keeping my fingers crossed for you two.
Do you have any idea what sort of interest rate you would pay on an overdraft on your buisness account?

Really hope you get loads of sales over the next few weeks.

I checked last night - 5.9% over base rate :eek: :eek: :eek: Maybe not such a good idea then!

I spent last night researching overseas suppliers and think I've found one in India. They make absolutely beautiful glass beads at a fraction of the price I can buy them for in the UK and they seem reputable enough. I was getting all excited at their offer of free shipping for a 2000kg order until I stopped to think about where I'd actually put 2 metric tons of beads in a one-bedroom flat :rotfl: One for the future though, when I have my own warehouse!

Caz

cazmanian_minx

Mystery solved on the OH's credit report. Callcredit has a Goldfish card from 2000 marked as going into default for £3,020 in December 2001 and marked as settled in January 2002.

OH can't even remember having the card, let alone getting into difficulties with it, but that aside, why aren't the lenders picking up the S on the file the month after the D?

On the plus side, there's nothing but big green ticks for the last 18 months - I'm so proud of how he's done since he decided to get a grip on his money rather than it having hold of him.

Caz

cazmanian_minx

The mortgage payment went out of my account this morning, so I logged into IF to check the balance and PM'd TallGirl. Interest was £118 this month, that's nearly £4 a day. Not a huge amount, but big enough that I mind losing it each day.

I've updated my sig so it represents the MFi3 start date rather than the beginning of the year and taken out the offset savings since they're going to disappear into the new house shortly (I hope!) Working on the theory that I need to pay off £11k each year, I need to find another £5,327.68 by April 1st 2008 - less than I've paid off so far, BUT quite a lot of that came from existing savings. It should get easier in years 2 and 3 as I'll be paying less interest though, so if I'm a little behind at the end of year 1, it's not a total disaster.

Caz

catshark88

Caz,

Have just logged on to catch up with forum news. Really sorry to hear of your mortgage hiccups, hope they are sorted soon. Great that the business is going so well though.

A distant relative died last week and I have a bin liner FULL of cds to ebay/ amazon. This is my comeuppance for being so slow to put things on auction sites. If you ever wondered who bought those boxes of "100 hours of classic country music" and similar cds, I now have the answer!