Insanity

Yesterday was THE insane day to top all days. Our colleague died yesterday morning in the carpark, someone well-loved, and it hit so hard that everyone went home. We opened the store entirely with other stores' colleagues, none of whom knew how things work or where anything is, so it was a day of being their support, just me and Blondie, plus a team of borrowed cashiers with the line of Christmas shoppers never-ending.

Seeing him choked up as he had to tell me what had happened... and yet he then had to go and smile at every pissy customer who wanted a refund, and then he had to have that same sad conversation again as each colleague arrived and most of them opted not to stay. I couldn't go home and leave him with that on his own. Life is unfair, but there's nobody to blame and you realise that this is just the way things are.

I stayed home today even though they probably would have appreciated me there today... and I think I needed it, because I didn't even wake up until lunchtime. 😴

Four phone calls to main bank and finally got someone to process a withdrawal from my loan overpayments. I'm done with messing about to save interest, it's bitten me in the arse with that repayment-order fiasco... not a huge expense in the scheme of things but complicated to keep on top of. So I'll just revert to being boring, paying as much extra as and where I can. My passport is allegedly in transit to me and soon I'll look at booking the tickets for my trip.

Dilemma is an idiot (this is not news) as she has spent money she did not have, leaving us unable to pay for an urgent repair and requiring everyone to send urgent funds. This is embarrassing, and we're lucky the contractor didn't just up sticks and go home. These urgent requests aren't easy for me to jump to, either, because I don't generally keep any real savings in my account - I prefer to just keep bill money aside and have extras sat in my loan until I need to redraw it. Sigh. I'd love to oust her and I've offered to take on the management next year, but it remains to be seen whether all the owners will agree.

Banking, Basket Weaving

Or: doing busywork which serves no actual purpose but pays a reward. Today I moved money between accounts six times to get my £175 switching bonus, because it had a minimum deposit requirement, and as far as I know there's no rule against moving the money straight back out again. Once I get that switch bonus I'm switching that bank for a further bonus. I have also arranged another switch elsewhere, which should net me a further £200.

Domesticity: I used up mushy peas, leftover frozen veg and other assorted bits of scratch and made a large batch of chunky chicken soup. It is not a taste sensation, but it's healthy and edible and filled me up. I have also procrastinated on the clean laundry which desperately needs sorting and putting away.

Coffee is planned for next week with one of my old workmates, for a long-overdue catch up 😊

I feel slightly guilty today as I've opted for another day off work instead of working six days this week. I really shouldn't feel this way with the mammoth hours I put in last week, but here we are. As penance I am doing some surveys and playing Yahtzee for cash. Except someone should have slapped the developer as they've added so many weird and bizarre changes to this game that I can barely follow how to actually play 💁

Facepalm

The reason that bank chopped down my available credit is thanks to an idiotic "order of repayments". In theory the bank puts repayments onto the most expensive debt first, but in this case, they wiped out my long-term interest free account instead of the one about to expire... leaving me with interest-bearing debt. So for two months I've been paying interest on that entire amount and paying only the minimum on the card automatically. Kicking myself right now. But hey, at least it's the card with the reasonable interest rate compared with all the others, and so far it's only cost me about £20 in total.

Anyway, onwards and upwards I suppose. I cracked the magical 48h mark last week at work and the first thing I've done with that pay packet is to establish my £500 buffer, which hasn't been in place for a while. The second was to throw every extra penny at interest-bearing debt. Next week should let me throw quite a bit more at it. I am grateful all over again that I get paid weekly.

I am considering ditching my gym membership as I've used it so little over the past month. Mainly this is down to me getting more exercise at work. It's lower-quality exercise though and my heart rate isn't as good as it was... I am toying with the idea of buying an exercise bike, but first I need to tidy up my clean clothes and get rid of the sofa, which takes up far too much space and only gets used for, well, clean clothes 😁

Day off today after a 50h week and my boss actually tried to get me to work tonight... somehow, I managed to politely decline.

Lunch: sausages and vegies in spring onion and garlic sauce, with rice. Amazing comfort food.

It Awakens

The Australian Passport Office, that is, just to tell me my photo isn't suitable. I dutifully took a new one myself, as instructed. (Why did I bother paying a shop to take them professionally when both the APO and the Finnish Embassy said it was both poor quality [meaning that the auto gates won't work for me at passport control] and in the case of the APO, it doesn't even pass their specs?) They have now replied a second time and said it's still not suitable because the image is reversed due to being a selfie. FFS. I flipped it and sent it straight back, not sure why they couldn't do that their dang selves, but we'll see if they now complain that I've used an "edited" image.

I am currently disappointed in my body which is not cooperating with what I want it to do, mostly thanks to being old. 😂 Part of the annoyance is that my right ankle still gives me trouble after a long workday on my feet, and it's been like this for two months. I am quite sure that the cure would involve staying off my feet... so I guess this is my new normal, since I'm working six days most weeks right now and it's heading into Christmas. Sigh, I'm sure I put in an order for a new body about six years ago! 😏

Duh moment x3: I left the house too late for the library (needed to print a document) then still didn't arrive at the second library in time 😒 so I decided that since I'd used the local shop's carpark naughtily for nothing and driven for nothing, I'd buy myself a lottery ticket. I get home and it's not the ticket I wanted 😒 so I had better win several million pounds this week... on the upside I did get a shop refund done successfully, so at least I am partially adulting.

Devastated: one of my card issuers has just knocked a huge amount off my available credit. 😞 I just... this is going to throw so many plans into the bin. Ugh, ugh and double ugh. I had wanted to use that card to book the tickets to go to Australia. Ugh. I'm going to need to completely rethink how I finance it now. Beyond frustrating. 😞😞😞 It seems like I'll need to cross my fingers that overtime doesn't suddenly end 😞

Doing the Sums

I had my first day off in ages (I slept twelve hours, thankyouverymuch) and when I woke up my first thought was that I wanted to figure out my exact current debt.

My memory is a bit hazy of the time I bought this flat because, honestly, money was flying in all directions at once. There was also the enfranchisement cost. But if I figure it correctly...

£40k purchase price - from a £25k loan and approx £15k in savings
£5k legal and moving fees

£45k total (position: -£30k)

and since then

£12k enfranchisement and re-roofing
£57k total (position: -£42k)

Current debt: -£28,600

This means I'm £13k ahead on the debt over two years. Not quite the earth-shattering achievement I had hoped to see, but this is where we are (especially since the ongoing maintenance is not in these totals and still needed to be paid). I am still calling it a win. The flat has gained in value, it's currently worth about £23k more than I have spent and would be about £58k more than I've spent with a few completed improvements.

Also done today was to actually look at all the cards and sort out when the interest-free offers end and what spending on the cards actually costs me. I have a little bit of some balances currently attracting interest and that's my first priority when the "overtime paycheques" come in. Bonus news: based on my maintenance contribution being correctly (re)calculated based on the size of my flat, my contracted hours are now sufficient to cover my minimum expenses. So once I get on top of the latest budget blowout, all my overtime will just be a bonus to pay down the debts faster 😎

This afternoon's goals: finish level 15 of a game that pays me £25, clean my kitchen and sort out my clean clothes. Let's see how those go 😁

An Alexander Day

My day. Today this was me.

I am being dramatic, of course, because I didn't have nearly as many things go wrong as went wrong for poor Alexander in the storybook. But I got to the end of the night and thought... blechhhhh. A volatile customer got very shouty for no reason at all, and instead of just letting Blondie handle her complaint, I tried to apologise to her, and then she shouted more.

I am fortunate that two other customers witnessed everything and told Blondie what had actually happened in the beginning (I was blameless) but he didn't need rescuing, he's a damned good manager, and now it's going to investigation. I know I'll come out of it ok, but I let my colleague down. Sigh.

On the plus side, it reminds me to recognise peoples' achievements and to speak up when they have done well. It is so easy to forget, or to only speak up when something needs improvement.

A direct debit came perilously close to bouncing this week. It was loan repayment week, which is the biggest bill I have, and there wasn't the funds. I had to grab bits from all over (mostly from survey programmes which had reached payout) and I made it, just. But still, not comfortable, so I will keep doing as much overtime as I can, to try and get ahead of expenses again properly.

I did buy more staples during the larger staff discount days though. Lots of loo roll is now stashed 😁

Extreme Laziness

I carefully wrote up all the things I wanted to achieve over this past week and in total, I have only cleaned my kitchen. I have excelled in my laziness and that includes eating. I did eat all my prepped salads, I just ate other things with them, and I haven't been to the gym in a week.

Dilemma is being as shit as ever, wanting to pay out thousands more on a third temporary roof repair (we have one apartment which is an annex and wasn't covered by the "whole new roof" which we just completed on the main building). The owners revolted and we're now arranging a new roof for that annex. Dilemma also didn't bother to redo our slabbed back patio, which we requested in March, so we had it done ourselves. All up this is £700 for my share which I hadn't reckoned on needing. So I've put in lots of extra work hours lately.

Blondie thinks I've gone insane because I'm there more than he is. He's my new favourite supervisor now though, he trusts me do what needs doing, I look after things when he's on break, and he doesn't glue me to the till.

Sixteen weeks now waiting for my Australian passport 😞