Caz counts it down

A question about : Caz counts it down

Hi everyone, I hope you don't mind me joining in here - I've been lurking for a while, but it's reached the point where I need to 'fess up to owing rather more money than is comfortable and actually doing something about it.

I'll be 37 in eight and a half weeks and I live on the north coast of Scotland with Mr Minx, one horse and one pony, one of which only arrived a fortnight ago (yes, I know...he was a gift and they're kept at home, which makes them far cheaper to run than children!). I'd like to get this sorted out by the time I'm 40 which gives me 1,149 days to Do Something.

Because of my location (slap bang in the middle of nowhere - it's a 52 mile round trip to the nearest small town and a 220-mile round trip to the nearest place with 'normal' high-street shops), things like mystery shopping and extra part time jobs aren't an option. I'm self employed, working from home selling beads and jewellery-making findings over the internet and as a sole trader my business's debts are also my debts, so I need to get both paid off.

At its worst, back in March this year, my total business and personal debts stood at Ј27,560.88. Today I'm down to Ј21,710.37, broken down as follows:

Business
Overdraft: -Ј1910.01 (6.5%)
Barclaycard: -Ј8999.00 (20.9%)

Business total: -Ј10,909.01

Personal
Overdraft: -Ј3620.69 (19.9%)
Tesco card: -Ј1608.91 (part at 15.9%, part at 17.1%)
Egg card: -Ј3521.76 (16.9%)
Dental loan: -Ј1250.00 (0% - yes, really)
Post Office card: -Ј800.00 (18.9%)

Personal total: -Ј10,801.36

Grand total: -Ј21,710.37

So I need to pay off Ј18.90 a day to meet my challenge BEFORE thinking about the added interest. It's not going to be easy...

Best answers:

• So, as part of the flickering 'I need to sort this' lightbulb moment, I opened a new account with First Direct and switched all my direct debits over to them (and they gave me Ј100, which was nice of them). That's my bills account, I pay Ј1500 a month into it from the business account and anything over Ј100 left at the end of the month gets transferred to the personal current account to go towards the overdraft. Food, fuel etc. etc. still comes out of the Personal: Overdraft account, but looking at the interest rates, I'd actually be better off spending on the Tesco card which is 15.9% for purchases wouldn't I? I have tried to get another 0% balance transfer card, but have been turned down by two different lenders in 3 months, so I'm going to have to discount that option for the moment. There's quite a lot of headroom on the Post Office card and I got very excited when a balance transfer offer fell out of last month's statement, but when I rang them up they said I didn't qualify at the moment because I've only just finished a 0% offer with them.
  However, if my accountant doesn't get my tax return submitted fairly soon, I'm going to have to make a payment to HMRC of just under Ј2,200 at the end of July - if she can get the return in before then, she can apply to the revenue to have the payment reduced (or, hopefully, cancelled completely) because my business profit for the year just ended was down Ј7k on the previous year, so I'm overpaying on tax.
  My contribution to the debt mountain today is to write to Intelligent Finance and try to get them to reverse the penalty charge and extra interest they've added on to my mortgage for a late payment - somehow between them and First Direct's easyswitch team, they managed to screw up the direct debit for the mortgage and didn't try to take it from either current account (funds were available in both to cover it). First Direct has sent me a copy of their audit trail, but I'm not sure it actually proves what they say it does, so I'm going to photocopy it and send it to Intelligent Finance and try and get them to sort it out between them. I'd like to have the late payment mark removed from my credit record as well, it's the first one on there in 13 years and I'm actually more annoyed about that than the tenner!
• Letter written, fingers crossed....
• Good luck will be folloeing your diary if you dont mind Look forward to reading
  *subscribes*
• I've realised that IF hasn't actually applied the penalty and interest to the account, even though the letter they sent said it would be added on 22nd June. Maybe they've accepted it wasn't my fault? Hopefully they'll reply to my letter and confirm it.
  It's Mr Minx's birthday today and he's already had his present (a limited edition bottle of whisky), so the only gift-related spending was taking him to lunch at the pub in the next village. We also went into town for the weekly shop where I spectacularly failed to be MSE-savvy by forgetting to take the Ј3.44 Tesco Price Promise voucher with us. Never mind, it doesn't expire for a few more weeks, so I shall put it in my wallet when I'm next in the annexe.
  Today's spends then:
  Bird seed for mother in law (she's paid Mr Minx back and he's told me to add it to his half of the shopping bill, so I'll get this back) - Ј12.99
  20kg bag of micronised linseed (for the horses, this will last about 6 months. I've previously had to buy it at Ј13.99 for 7.2kg plus Ј9.99 delivery on eBay) - Ј25.00
  Canter mane and tail (new pony has dreadlocks which aren't shifting) - Ј7.90
  Tesco shop (really the only choice up here, there's an incredibly expensive Co-Op or a tiny LIDL where most of the food is off. Mr Minx will pay me back half of this) - Ј89.90
  Lunch at the Strathy Inn for two (including Craig's famous Orkney fudge and whisky cheesecake. OMNOMNOMNOMNOM.) - Ј27.40
  Total: Ј163.19 with Ј57.94 due back from Mr Minx
  I foresee an interesting week ahead, as my 85-year-old mother in law (henceforth known as MIL) who finds Jilly Cooper a bit racy, has bought the first two Fifty Shades books. If you hear the sound of eyes bulging out of a head, don't worry, it's her
• Good luck Caz I'm sure you can do it.
• Good luck Caz you seem to be motivated and determined, it'll just take a little bit of time but hopefully before the big birthday.
• I'm in the living room twiddling my thumbs as Mr Minx said last night he wanted a lie in, but he's having sinus problems at the moment and the snoring was so bad that I decamped to the spare room. I remembered to take my dressing gown with me but not anything else, so my feet are FREEZING and I can't go and get clothes without waking him up. Unless I want to go and muck out the field in my wedding dress or a velvet evening dress, both of which are in the cupboard in the spare room
  So I've been sorting out my signature and have joined in with the Payment a Day thread - Ј1.39 from the First Direct account to the personal overdraft, which makes the 'amount available' on the overdraft online banking end in a 5.00. I have a feeling all my PaDs are going to be to round off balances for a while, but every little helps.
  I was thinking yesterday about weight and debt. I know that a lot of people find that their weight gets out of control when their finances get out of control, but for me it's the other way around - if my finances are good I'm usually overweight and if I'm in debt I'm slim. At the moment I'm very in debt, so just out of curiousity I tried on two pairs of size 8 jeans in Tesco yesterday - the bootcut fitted perfectly and the slouch were TOO BIG!!!! I've never been a size 8 in my life!! I think I've figured out why it works this way for me though; I was a fat kid, got teased about it and a lot of my self-esteem is tied to my weight. When my weight is up I tend to hermit, when I'm hermitting I'm not spending anything. As soon as the weight starts to come off, I have a L'Oreal 'I'm worth it' moment and start treating myself. So one of my challenges as I shed ЈЈЈЈЈЈs of debt will be not to regain lbsssssssss of fat in the process.
  Mr Minx has been half-killing himself at work recently and is in dire need of a break, but we only have Ј240 in the spare change joint bank account (our holiday fund) which is not going to get us even a weekend away in a posh hotel, let alone the 10 days in somewhere tropical he'd really like. (He refuses to go camping after 13 years of it with his ex and after taking him to a 4* hotel in Mauritius for our honeymoon last year, he's got a taste for luxury - my bad...). So I'm heading off to the comping board to try and win us a holiday. Wish me luck
• Good luck Caz ... I will be following you ! ( I feel like a stalker now-lol! )
• I should have said earlier, thank you to everyone who's commented, it's really lovely to have some support
  I'm in a FANTASTIC mood this morning because I fired up the office computer to find an email from my accountant and now instead of having to pay the Inland Revenue Ј2,200 at the end of the month, THEY owe ME Ј80 It's a huge, huge weight off my mind and I shall be very careful about putting the money aside over the next six months so I don't have this kind of panic again come the end of January (though to be fair, I was putting it aside until it got spent on the dogs' vet bills ).
  Yesterday was a no-spend day, they're actually quite easy to do up here because if you don't get in your car or shop online there's nowhere to spend your money. What are the rules surrounding NSDs anyway? For example, today the direct debit for the TV licence has come out and I have to ring the oil company and pay their invoice for the heating oil we had delivered last month, but I won't be spending on anything else - so are those exempt because they're bills and can I claim today as an NSD as well?
  I've entered competitions to win holidays in Mauritius, the Seychelles, L.A., Texas, Bulgaria (not so sure about that one!), Portugal, Hawaii and a cruise in Norway, as well as a lot of Scottish short breaks. Fingers crossed
• I agree, regular bills don't count with me, nor does diesel as that is an unavoidable expense.
• OK, I'm not going to count the TV licence, but I will count the oil since it's not a regular expense - only the annexe building where I work runs off an oil fired boiler, the main house has a wood burning stove, three night storage heaters and four panel heaters (no mains gas up here) and now that Mr Minx has fitted a shower he likes in the main house, he's not in here every day having a Man Shower in the power shower! I just have the heating on for 15-30 minutes morning and evening to keep the system ticking over and stick on extra sweaters the rest of the time, so 500 litres of oil lasts us about a year and a half and we take turns to pay for it. (And is why I got a shock at paying Ј329 this time round when the last bill for the same amount was Ј194!!!)
  Business is ticking over nicely, for the quiet time of year. All the money taken over the weekend is in my account now and I've got Ј770.87 from eBay and my own website. The Amazon money turns up in a lump every fortnight with their (very high!) fees already deducted, so they sent me Ј623.97 yesterday as well and the business account is looking relatively healthy with nearly Ј2,500 available before I hit the bottom of the overdraft limit (at only 6.5% I tend to utilise it as much as possible because it's so much cheaper than most of my other debt). That said, I've got Ј550 due to a supplier, Ј680 to Royal Mail for last month's postage, Ј94.50 to BT for the last quarter's broadband (another downside of living where we do - those headline 'broadband for Ј6.99 a month' offers aren't available in our area), about Ј350 to eBay and another Ј75-ish to various companies for the business phone line, the credit card processing, the website shop software and the payment gateway (the bit that transfers card information securely between the website and the processor). And I need to order stock from two suppliers today as well, though one of them is on account and won't be due for payment for 30 days.
  Anyone reading here from the MFW blog may remember my intense irritation with one of my UK suppliers for doubling the price of one of my best-sellers (necklace chains), making them so expensive that I had to stop stocking them, and the subsequent joy when I finally found a factory in the Far East that sent me a nickel free sample that was actually nickel free. Well, I still hadn't got the money together to order from them when I received an email from the company in Hong Kong who makes my charm bracelets, showing off their newest item - a snake chain. I immediately wrote back and asked them if they could make me trace or curb chains, they got a sample done for me over the weekend and I'll be ordering from them instead It's a huge relief because I can be certain that they'll be good quality and plated well (the plating on the sample I got from the other factory wasn't a good colour and they wanted to more to make it a bright silver). Now I just need to magic up another Ј3k to place an order...
• Ј1.40 on a magazine, so no NSD today (I got hooked on Closer a few years ago - it's the only one I buy).
  I've been good today and started auctioning off my returns box. I sorted it out last month into 'unopened' (which all got put back into stock straight away), 'broken' (which all got chucked - very little, thankfully) and, by far the biggest pile, 'opened but as new or still sellable' - this is things like reels of cord where the wrapping has been removed and maybe half a metre of a 10 metre reel has been used or the packaging is damaged but the contents are fine. I've got 9 items photographed out of I dread to think how many and 5 of them listed. It's going to be a long job!
  I've also taken my three evening dresses out of the cupboard in the spare room and put them on eBay on my personal account. They're old - all mid-90s Monsoon dresses - but classic styles and with 99p starts for dresses which all cost around Ј100 originally, I'm hopeful that they'll sell. I've got a load of sheet music to put on as well, but I have a few friends who are professional singers and may want the choral stuff, so I'll make a list tomorrow and offer it to them first.
  Since no-one has called or emailed to say I've won a holiday yet, I'm back off to the competitions board for the rest of the evening
• OK, place your bets now on whether the payment I've just made to the Post Office card actually makes it - the last time I tried to pay them electronically they never got it thanks to me misunderstanding an early version of NatWest's online banking system and putting 'POST OFFICE CARD' in the reference box instead of my account number The First Direct system is a little more straightforward, so fingers crossed and I've made a note in my diary to check it's been credited on Friday.
  Not a lot to do today except list more auction stock, so I may be popping back on here fairly frequently, unless they finish shearing early at the farm and come to do the flock next door today - I've promised my neighbours I'll go and help roll the fleeces (and probably get told to jump up and down in the wool sacks - as the youngest and lightest it's easiest for me to climb up the frames and get in!).
  Two of my Monsoon dresses got bids this morning
• 36 pieces of sheet music sold to a friend for Ј20
• OOOOH, I got a PM from the MSE forum team saying I might have won one of the copies of Polish for Dummies They're sending them to three times more people than prizes because they've found so many people don't answer and the first 10 to email in with their forum name and address will get the prize. Fingers crossed I'm one of them, the message said I'd know in about 2 weeks
  OK, it's not a holiday, but at least now if I win one to Poland I'll be able to make myself understood
• Truly an enjoyable read, I'll be following this diary with great interest
• I've been thwarted in my attempts to skive off this afternoon.
  I'm really not feeling like working, so I told myself that I was going to have an afternoon off and headed over to the Big Fish Games website to download one of their hour long trial games to amuse myself. Picked a brainless match-3 game (I'm not even feeling alert enough to play a hidden object!) and thought I'd be good and list the five auction items I had sitting on my desk while it was downloading. Did that, went back to the download and it's one I've played before so it's just showing up as 'Trial expired' - that'll teach me to try and be lazy
  Finn, the pony, arrived with a bit of a rash on his bottom which I thought I'd got rid of, but it came back last week, so it's being attacked with green gooey gunge again. He was eyeing up the gate post with intent to scratch when I came back from dropping the orders at the post office, so I grabbed the pot and went to re-gunge him. There's a spot on the back of his left thigh where if you scratch it for him, he'll stick his head in the air and flap his top lip at you - he quite often does it when I'm shoulder-deep under his tail greasing his thighs, so you can imagine how my reputation is in the village right now I must try and get some video of it though, because it's very funny to watch.
• Morning!
  We did end up shearing last night, 96 sheep, one shearer and me and my two neighbours shifting sheep and baling fleeces. All good fun, even if I did end up covered in wool and sheep poo! I'm back in the same clothes this morning, despite being a bit niffy, as I want to go and get my bottom field sprayed while the weather's nice, so as soon as this morning haar lifts I'll be strapping on my Ghostbusters back pack with something deadly to thistles, docks and bracken in it (though pretty much everything deadly to bracken is now illegal - thank you EU, you've just condemned most of the grazing land in the Highlands )
  Another NSD yesterday, so that's 2/31 for July now. The 5th is when the biggest lump of money comes out of the bills account, as the mortgage is paid (it went through successfully today, thank goodness) - and LOOK at that outstanding balance figure in my sig: Ј121,002.68. Even though it's a low rate debt at 1.6%, how am I going to be able to resist making a rounding payment on that for Payment A Day???
  And I did manage to get some wobbly phone footage of Finn the pony pulling faces, so if you want to see how much pleasure a simple scratch on the back of the thigh can give:
  https://youtu.be/T4BXFty_gCg
  (This is why my reputation is going downhill in the village - I was scratching him there, but he does the same thing when I'm in up to the elbow under his tail to grease the chapped skin between his thighs, usually with his willy stuck out as well, and that's guaranteed to make someone drive past )