At Least I Still Have Roman!

Today has been a really good day and a really bad day at the same time. I managed to speak to Jennie from the Rottweiler Welfare Association who has told me that she is in contact with Just Giving and hopes to get the paperwork over to them this week so that I can set a page up so watch this space on that one! I also called the British Red Cross to see if I can set a page up on Just Giving to send any donations to the Italian Red Cross through them. I was told that the appeal for L’Aquila is still open so it should be ok but they should ring me back tomorrow to confirm. Fingers crossed I may be able to get both remaining charities sorted this week!

I also managed to speak to the estate agents today and got some proper figures off them. There have been over 3000 searches on Right Move that have resulted in my house coming up on the results but, unfortunately, only about 50 click throughs. Out of those 50 there has not been a single viewing. I have been advised that this means the public obviously think the house is overpriced so I will need to drop the price. Richard, the guy at the estate agents, recommended dropping it from £105k to £99,950 so that it falls into a lesser value bracket.

This is really not good news as my financial commitments with the house total £100,500 so it looks like I will have to pay to sell the house – crazy! Still, I just want rid of it now as I am sick of living such a limited life so the sooner it goes the better. I could leave it on at £105k but if it takes another 6 months to sell then it will cost me £6k in the meantime to pay the mortgage and outstanding loans so I would be even further out of pocket and it would really mess with my plans.

I am going to phone the estate agents back tomorrow and ask them to drop it to £99,950 in the hope that we can get things moving as quickly as possible but I am preparing myself for losing money - £105k would have meant I broke even as I paid £89k for the house, just under £15k has been spent on the house and the fees to sell are just over £2k! Blasted credit crunch! Why couldn’t it have waited until next year?

Still, such is life and I guess I will just learn a lesson from this. My life has been so hard since the start of February trying to manage the money and I have often had as little as £20 a month to live on but I didn’t mind whilst I thought I might get a little back at the end of it all. Now I am left with the realisation that all that struggle has been for absolutely nothing. Well, nearly nothing, at least I still have Roman!

On a positive note I now only have 11 working days to go until I finish and then the preparations for my trip can start proper. It will be full steam ahead from then and I will be getting in touch with as many organisations as possible to try and get the sponsorship going.