Returning to MFW, my elusive unicorn!

coldcazzie

End of bill paying OP was £49.73.
Cashed out £5.03 from Prolific and OPed that too

2021 OP running total: £404.62

coldcazzie

Yikes it has been a wee while.

The thing I was being vague about earlier on this year is that I got referred for a diagnosis, and received said diagnosis at the beginning of Sept... ADHD and likely autistic. An awful lot of things have been explained and suddenly life makes a lot more sense.

Haven't made any OPs since the last one, so my final total for the year is £404.62.

About a week after my last post my neighbour reversed into my car, so I took it to a body place to have that and the scratch from the gas meter box done at the same time (neighbour paid for the damage he did) ... and while I was reversing into their teeny tiny car park I SCRATCHED THE CAR AGAIN ON A FENCE POST!!! Couldn't believe it!! They say things come in threes, right?? But it wasn't extra to have that fixed as it was right next to the gas box scratch so they did them at the same time. They've done a great job, and I haven't scratched it since, so yay.

Instead we apparently moved on to kitchen appliances. The fridge freezer has been slowly dying for some time so end of October we decided to invest in a new one. Ordered it, approx £400. Delivery arranged. Then delivery was delayed by a week. Then it was delayed by another 3 weeks. The reason? It wasn't in stock. Now bearing in mind we had chosen it specifically because it was listed on their website as being in stock, we were pretty narked. Cancelled it and ordered another from a different supplier, which was delivered 2 days later. Woop! Knew we couldn't make any OPs while paying it off - they were both bought out of our 'buffer' money so that needed to be built back up to £1000 again. That's fine, all being well, we'll be back to normal by the beginning of Jan 2022, and we can start making OPs again!

Then the dishwasher broke while we were waiting for the ff to be delivered. So we bought a second hand one on ebay for £100. Not ideal but washing up is our absolute worst chore. I'd rather live without a washing machine than without a dishwasher, so we weren't willing to wait for a better one. Picked it up, put it in, gotten used to it. It's a bit smaller than the old one and doesn't have a countdown timer/ending beep (these are v useful for ADHD brain). Only an extra £100, probably not that much of a delay in the plans.

EXCEPT at the beginning of December the oven died. Well okay, fine, it's been playing up for a good couple of years, so I suppose that's not really that surprising, annoying as it is. So. New oven. £270. The temperature lines make no sense, the trays have lips on the front so you can't easily slide stuff in and out. Annoying. But, on the other hand, it cooks stuff brilliantly and it's so quiet! Overall, better than an oven that doesn't oven  

EXCEPT (you didn't think it was over did you?) then the washing machine broke. Quite spectacularly too - a series of loud thumps during the spinning, followed by fireworks from the motor, and the electrics for the whole house tripped. Cue all the teens on the stairs looking through the banister like "my computer died...." and the house alarm going off. Thankfully next door very kindly let us finish washing the load of clothes in her washer. We waited a week or so, and then bought a new one in the Boxing Day sales - another £400 ish. It was delivered on Thursday.

ALSO on Thursday, Himself and I got positive LFTs, so the drivers dropped it on the edge of the patio and ran off rather than bringing it in the house, but mostly I'm just glad they were willing to deliver it at all.

So yeah. We're in isolation until the 10th, no OPs since September and I'm thoroughly fed up of things breaking. But we've had 3 appliances break now (ff doesn't count as although it was replaced it hadn't technically died before we bought the new one), so that's it, right? RIGHT?! *sobs into mug of tea*

Merry New Year everyone!  

Baileys_Babe

Great to hear from you @coldcazzie such a lot has happened since your last update.

Sorry to hear about the positive LFTs. Hopefully, your isolation will not need to be 10 days if you test negative on days 6 & 7
 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-stay-at-home-guidance/stay-at-home-guidance-for-households-with-possible-coronavirus-covid-19-infection

Not long until you can rebuild the buffer and resume overpaying.

I hope you all recovery swiftly with no long term effects.

Wishing you all you wish for yourself in 2022.

coldcazzie

Just checked the accounts in the banking app so I can update my signature and apparently we've been charged £4.44 interest today.

coldcazzie

Forgot to mention, also one of our cats has been diagnosed with an aggressive tumour which appeared at the beginning of September. It's growing right next to his eye, which makes complete surgical removal impossible as to get enough excess tissue around it to "ensure" they'd definitely removed all of it they'd basically have to remove half his head, and if they're not going to remove all of it there's no point to doing the surgery. So we are enjoying what little time we have left - it is growing very fast - and making plans to bury him under a tree in the garden when we eventually decide his quality of life has deteriorated too far.

coldcazzie

Baileys_Babe said:

Great to hear from you @coldcazzie such a lot has happened since your last update.

Sorry to hear about the positive LFTs. Hopefully, your isolation will not need to be 10 days if you test negative on days 6 & 7
 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-stay-at-home-guidance/stay-at-home-guidance-for-households-with-possible-coronavirus-covid-19-infection

Not long until you can rebuild the buffer and resume overpaying.

I hope you all recovery swiftly with no long term effects.

Wishing you all you wish for yourself in 2022.

Thank you I plan to LFT on Tuesday and hopefully it will be negative as I am supposed to go on call on Wednesday! I have back up, but still! So far our symptoms have all been fairly mild, no worse than a cold, so hoping we get through it quickly and easily! 

coldcazzie

coldcazzie said:
Thank you I plan to LFT on Tuesday and hopefully it will be negative as I am supposed to go on call on Wednesday! I have back up, but still! So far our symptoms have all been fairly mild, no worse than a cold, so hoping we get through it quickly and easily! 

Well it definitely wasn't negative, but I still have symptoms so that's not really a surprise. Nothing major, just sniffles and a bit more lethargic but that's enough to know I'm still not right.

Teens' PCRs both came back positive (unsurprisingly) so I have rung college this morning and left a message excusing both of them until next week. 12yo started with symptoms and had a positive LFT yesterday so is booked in for a drive thru PCR round the corner this morning.

Tried to ring the orthodontist too but they don't open til 10 on a Tuesday apparently, so can't do that yet. 17yo was supposed to be having her braces taken off on Thursday, but now that will be delayed. She's a bit gutted which is fair enough I think!

Also put a call in to the vets to get hold of some painkillers for the cat. Have a friend on standby to go collect them for us, so just waiting for them to ring back and confirm they've got them in and I'll pay over the phone.

Himself got paid on Friday, and I paid myself on Friday too. As of September I've changed the way I pay myself (that is for another comment). The first half of the money shuffle didn't start until today though, and the CC bill goes out tomorrow, so I'm going to do the second half now.

I've had to tweak our SOA quite a bit, so I will share that here in a bit, as well as snagging the first post of the next page for an official diary update.

coldcazzie

Paying myself

This financial year has been the first one where I feel like my business has actually done well. Previous ones have been a mish mash; I've never made a loss, but the profits have always been small, enough to pay myself a bit of pocket money, but not enough for me to feel like the business was properly worthwhile. [Given that I've been in business 10 years, that is pretty damning!] But this year has been great so far. I've set myself a target of taking £10k before expenses, and I'm on track to meet it.

With this in mind, I changed the way I paid myself. Previously I set myself a small sum which would be paid out monthly, regardless of what work I did. That meant I still felt like I was contributing to the household and actually earning, even when I was having a bit of a lull (the nature of the work means lulls are inevitable).

Because this year has seen a higher level of takings, and I am trying to move to services which are all year round rather than only certain months, I've changed it so that I am now tracking exactly what work I've done and paying myself whatever that thing is worth. Cue new spreadsheet haha and  I've got a savings space in my business account into which I put each little bit when I earn it, and then pay it into our joint account at the end of the month. I'm also now paying my mileage monthly; before this financial year I was paying it quarterly.

I have mixed feelings about doing it this way - I feel like I'm being properly paid for the work I'm doing, which is good. I have strong beliefs about people being paid properly for doing a job. And I've spent so long working hard but not really getting much financial return that this is rather refreshing. The flip side is that it varies each month, depending on what I've got going on that month, and I hate variable paychecks - I find them really anxiety inducing - which is why I did away with that originally.

I'm going to reassess at the beginning of April, and see how I feel then.

coldcazzie

So, wrt the original post-new-ff plan, we would have been right on track for getting ourselves pretty much square this month. Bit frustrating that that is not going to stick - by my spreadsheet predictions, unless I have a big pay month then we'll be square again by May.

That does not, however, take into account the fact that Himself is getting a pay rise - he's been put on the on-call rota, and also his manager said he's on the wrong level ? and should be one level higher, and that they will be backdating it to the summer which is when he should've gone up. So with that in mind perhaps it'll be sooner. Or perhaps it'll take them until May to get that sorted who knows. I'm not considering it done until it's done, y'know?

My friend picked up the meds for the cat (not that he's very happy about it, but we are just trying to get as much time with him as we can at this point). Another friend has been shopping for us to Ald1 this am, so I've put that away and transferred her some money over. Not leaving the house at all is hard. At least in lockdown we could still go for walks and go shopping.

Baileys_Babe

coldcazzie said:

At least in lockdown we could still go for walks and go shopping.

I was about to suggest doing some gardening then I glanced out the window and reminded myself that the ground is frozen, everything is covered in the merest sprinkling of snow, but not enough snow to have fun in 🤦‍♀️

Wrt your pay, could you do a blend of the two approaches and pay yourself a set amount each month but if you work over a set amount of hours you are paid more?

I understand how difficult fluctuating paychecks can be OH pay can + or - 30℅ but there is no pattern which makes budgeting harder.