Goal achieved!

Great news today as I have achieved my USB turntable goal (£60) with the help of another Amazon sale, and I also got paid so have moved my overtime pay into the ISA.

I have uploaded a new product to my store, so just waiting for that to be tested now, which will probably take a week. I already have some ideas for my next project too, but will give myself a bit of a break first.

I'm about 75% of the way through listing my comics. That's really a longer-term project as I will need to advertise them and can't expect a quick return. I registered a good domain name for them so hopefully once I've sold the bulk I can then turn around and sell the domain for a profit!

I also have a £40 profit pending from a nice little loophole I was told about last week, so once that's in the account I will be adding it to the next fund, which is the camera. Hopefully I should be able to fund that by the time we go to Kefalonia in September!

Image credit: Zela

Confusing turn of events

When I spoke to littl'un last night on our regularly nightly phone call, he said that he had been talking to his head of year at school, and the school have decided to put litt'un onto alternative curriculum.

I had never heard of this but it's basically a system where kids who have special educational needs and behavioural challenges are put on a different learning program where they purely concentrate on english, maths and science, but also do a lot of vocational-type stuff.

This is basically a last-ditch effort by the school not to fail the pupil completely. Like they're saying "Ok, there is absolutely no chance that you are going to pass any GCSEs the way you're going, plus you're disrupting all the other kids, so let's cut out losses, concentrate on what's possible, and try to keep you occupied in the school system instead of excuding you."

This is effectively what I was going to be aiming for in his last year anyway as I had made up my mind that when he came to live with me for his last year of school I would get him a tutor for maths and english and just concentrate on trying to get him a pass in those subjects. Obviously this system would be way better as he would not have any other lessons, plus he would have far more individual help and support from the teaching staff.

The staff appear to be aware that his dad cannot be counted on for support at home, from what was said.

The major hurdle for me is that this means he would have to stay in Cardiff until he's finished his GCSEs, which is an extra year before he comes to live with me :(

My chances of getting him on this program within my hometown are minimal; this program, from what I can tell, is decided on where there's a history of bad behaviour and achievement within the school. It's also linked to the local area since they have ties with local colleges and businesses for the vocational stuff, and different schools run their programs in different ways. So he's not going to be able to just turn up here and be able to go into something like this. And obviously, once he's on it, he'll have to stay on it - he can't go back to regular schooling after doing this for a year.

Ex doesn't yet know about this - littl'un hadn't told him when we spoke last night, he was waiting for his dad to just get a letter about it. I'm going to wait until he's had that, and then ring and talk to him about it.

I'm also thinking that I may take a couple of days off in half term (mid-Feb) and go down for a couple of days and talk to Ex then, in detail, about him supporting littl'un through this. My major concern is littlun's relationship with his dad's new partner: so far this has been very adversarial, so I need to somehow convince ex to tackle her attitude and make sure littl'un doesn't have any easy excuses for, e.g., not doing homework.

I've got to be sure this is going to work for two years. Then he can come to me afterwards. I suppose if the worst came to the worst and he still failed, I could get him up here and with some private tuition arrange for him to re-sit them privately. It's expensive, but it could be done.

I've got to do the thing that's best for him. But bloody hell, I miss him so much already. Another 2.5 years :( This was what was really firing me up to pay off my debt quickly. Now that's going to be gone. I've got to keep the focus on and concentrate on keeping it going so that I'll have savings by the time he comes to me. Sigh.

Photo credit: ba1969

Busy busy busy

It's been really busy at both my jobs for the last week or so.

We've been having a lot of system problems at my full time job which have taken a lot of time to resolve, and really slowed us down.

Online, two of my colleagues have been off sick and another has been out of town, so I've been pretty busy there, too. I've been trying to work on my new store product, and I've got quite far, but I just have little nagging things to fix now before I package it all up.

I have a full weekend off this week so I aim to get it all finished then.

In other news, I spent £19.95 today on an ornamental indoor fountain, primarily for the benefit of my cats!! I find it pretty easy to be frugal on my own behalf*, but much harder to stop spending on my loved ones. It's hard for me to let go of the belief that spending money on someone shows your love.

*Nowadays...

Photo Credit: hbrinkman

Interesting article

Stanford magazine has a very interesting article about neurochemistry and how it affects our shopping habits.

The Lurgey

I've been down for the last few days with a horrendous cold and cough. It's been so bad that I had to take last Thurs and Friday off work, which I hate doing, but there was just no way I could function. I spent about 20 hours out of 24 in bed from Thursday to Saturday.

Thankfully I was feeling a lot better yesterday, and am well enough today to return to work. But it does mean that I've fallen behind on my creative project, and with my comic listings.

On the plus side, I completed my tax return for last year, and should be due a rebate of over £600. I'll be diverting about £100 of that to pay for a new external hard drive which I need urgently - having run out of space on my other one! - but the remainder will be going in my ISA, I think, because I reckon next year's tax will leave me with a bill, as my self-employed earnings have gone up significantly for 2008-09.

The light at the end of the tunnel

Some fantastic news to start the year.

This morning I went to the bank and paid £2260 off my loan.

This puts me at 45% of my 2009 payoff target (5k) already!

I asked the nice cashier lady to check what the balance on this loan was. There was then some faffing about as she couldn't initially work out how to access this info, and then she had to confer with a colleague as to whether the amount shown would include the payment she'd just recorded, or not. Poor thing, she already looked to be having a hot flush and my request really didn't help! However, I cannot feel guilty about this as I am in too good a mood, since my capital on the loan is now down to £13481!

I am a bit crap about working out APR and so on, but basically this loan was over a 7 year term, and I took it out last December (consolidation of other existing debts and better interest rate.) So within the first 13 months I have paid off 36% of the total value of the loan, when I would normally expect it to be around 20%... I think. No... wait. Damn. Like I say, I'm not totally sure of myself when working out APR and I don't have the documents with me to check the exact interest rate on it. But, whatever the exact amounts, I'm bloody happy!

I am now seeing that light at the end of the tunnel. In fact I can see it in my mind's eye so vividly that it's almost a physical picture! I've stopped thinking of debt as being a permanent state and just an extra expense every month to live with, and started seeing it as a temporary, unwelcome state of affairs which I can actively manage.

Obviously this isn't a regular month's payoff! This is an accumulation of several months' saving, Xmas bonus, money I'd budgeted for Xmas but didn't spend, and my online December pay. I won't be able to do this regularly! However, I'll be keeping the pressure on myself and not getting complacent. My budget for the rest of this year plans for £500 overpayment a month, except for September (holiday in Kefalonia) and December (Xmas budget.) Hence, my goal for this year being £5k. I shall be doing my utmost to exceed that goal by as much as I can!