Confessions of a house hoarder

cazmanian_minx

It's Saturday, right? Just checking.

I'm honestly not sure where this week has gone, but I've had a blast. Cheltenham was great; didn't make a huge amount of money (I worked out it was something like £164 if I included all the Cheltenham-related casino offers and still had £30-worth of free bets to add on at that point) but learnt an awful lot about betting on horses, so all good

In between flitting from bookie to bookie and sobbing every time the crowd roared the winners home (hormonal week!) I had another two quick turnaround files from NEL, one due back this morning and one due on Monday, both at £1 a minute, so I have £112 coming in from those two alone. Also managed to get files back to Journalist #3 and Journalist #1 (x2), so the queue has gone down a bit, but I still have 22 minutes of quick turnaround plus another 123 minutes for NEL and 52 minutes for Journalist #1.

We finally have heating on down the road, which is a big relief. The happy news is that our heating engineer thought to check the oil tank before switching on, because there was a lot of water in it from condensation over the year it had been unused, and once that was pumped out there was only about 2" of oil left. I have a delivery coming early next week and we've turned all the thermostats down, so hopefully we won't run out.

Mr Minx and I both have next week off (or as much of a week off as I can get with the aforementioned transcription queue!) and are going to blitz the downstairs to try and get it all sanded, plastered and painted before the oak flooring gets laid.

cazmanian_minx

I seem to have spent all day plastering and all evening typing every day since Sunday! We're making progress, albeit slower than hoped. I think if we can get the plastering done by the time the floor goes down, we'll be doing well.

Big massive financial spanner dropped in the works though, in that I've been told it's going to take about 6 months to purchase the land the house sits on, and that's if everything goes smoothly. That means no mortgage and I have a £2,420 0% balance expiring next month and a £5,510 0% balance expiring on 1st July. Slight panic stations! However, the MSE eligibility checker told me I had a 90% chance of getting the Tesco 24 month 0% no fee balance transfer card, so I just walloped in an application on the off-chance, and they've very kindly given me a £3,250 limit, meaning I can transfer £3,050.

So I've taken £2,350 off the first card (on the grounds that I need to make a payment to it in the next few days anyway) and £700 off the other, and I hope that in three months' time the first card will give me another transfer offer. If it doesn't, its standard rate for me is only 9.9%, which is considerably better than the 19.9% the other card will go up to, so I may just transfer it anyway and then wait to see whether that triggers a 0% cash transfer on the second card.

Off to Londinium to see some friends tomorrow - we're meeting up for afternoon tea in Westminster on Saturday, which is probably going to be about the safest place in the capital right now!

cazmanian_minx

Back from a great weekend away - I know it doesn't exactly help with getting the houses paid for, but it does wonders for my sanity!

Usually I pay my cards as soon as the statements generate, but I've been late this month thanks to getting paid a bit later than usual by a couple of clients, so I've done them all today (bar one, where the direct debit has already been requested) and have now paid off a massive quarter of a percent of the holiday debt :rotfl:

I did have a nice surprise on Friday, an ALCS payment I wasn't expecting (this is the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society and is payment for photocopying and audio-visual use of everything I've registered with them as published under my name). I also came home to a nice surprise of three eBay sales, because I'd not relisted any of the beads that ended before I went away and only had four active items. All back up and running again now, so hopefully some more sales to come - I've shifted about 150 strings of beads now, but still have a lot more to go.

AlexLK

The card juggling sounds like a nightmare. :eek: Hopefully it will be over soon, though.

Glad you had a good time away.

FacelessNumber

Wow, you have lots going on! I'm subscribing with interest to see how the renovations go and how you manage the finances. We're quite into renovating and doing things ourselves too but currently are only working on out own house!!


I'll be heading over to the blog too, to have a read!

mfmaybe

http://www.primelocation.com/for-sale/details/42995565?tmad=c&tmcampid=35&utm_campaign=buy-alert&utm_content=contact-type-listing&utm_medium=email&utm_source=alert#XDJaEXMf5Q8OXcrE.97

So I saw this and immediately thought of you. Which is very stereotypical "southener" of me as I actually have no idea if it's anywhere near you. Even though I'm from NE Scotland and travel up to the NW highlands regularly, they are still a gazillion miles from you and I unashamedly don't know my geography at all. Still, peruse at your leisure

cazmanian_minx

Thanks, mfmaybe Helmsdale is about 50 miles south-east of me, but that's crofted land and crofting law says you have to live within 32km of your croft.

I have had one heck of a week. I've done two files for NEL, three files for Journalist #3, three files for Journalist #5, one enormous 105-minute file for Large Agency and one file for Journalist #1 with another one to do over the weekend and a third due in. Plus squishing in a few hours for Mr RPC. I'm kind of hoping the 6 hours of focus groups I quoted for don't materialise because I'm a bit swamped at the moment!

Mr Minx has had a financial rush of blood to the head, paid off the remainder of his car loan early and started transferring the amount he was paying each month into his offset savings account, because an inheritance from his aunt has taken his current account balance over the £20k Santander pays interest on. Long may this last!

AlexLK

Glad to hear things are going well for you.

DebtFree2012

Yoo hoo! I'm back Looking amazing, how fabulous is all of this? I'll be joining you again.

cazmanian_minx

Quick fly-by posting to say work is manic, but I'm winning (down from 7 hours of transcription to do on Sunday to just 79 minutes left and I've invoiced £250 this month already!), the house is progressing slowly (I'm trying to do an hour's plastering every morning when I go down to feed the sheep), we've settled the vehicle question and found a solution that means we can still pick up plasterboard sheets ourselves but I don't have to drive a very large van as my day-to-day transport, and we've found yet another house we want to buy! This one would really be a perfect addition to the holiday cottage portfolio - if anyone here is a Top Gear fan and remembers the episode where Jeremy Clarkson drove a Land Rover up a big hill at the top of Scotland (and got stuck a couple of times), it's in the village at the bottom of that hill, which is about 15 miles away, and the views are outstanding. However, the price of £130k for a 5-bed house reflects the amount of work it needs! Mortgage payment out today and interest stayed under £100