Cazmanian_minx's new MF diary

coldcazzie

Happy Christmas other Caz

cazmanian_minx

Last Friday felt like Thursday, this week I've managed to miss Friday altogether!

Another £50 transferred to the emergency fund (will update sig next week when the mortgage gets paid), but other than that no movement in the financials.

Happy new year in advance, hope everyone has a good night

cazmanian_minx

Happy Friday everyone (see, I'm back knowing the days of the week again, despite it feeling like Wednesday because Mr Minx only went back to work two days ago!)

Egg card (or Barclaycard as I suppose I should call it now) is down to £3,800.60 and the mortgage was paid this week - I was surprised how much of a difference having that £4k in the offset has made; the daily interest plummeted from £5.44 to £5.29. Oh, and we now owe less than £125,000 :j:j:j:j:j:j:j:j

I've done my annual budget in YNAB and it just about balances, though if I want to be debt free by the end of the year, I need to find an extra £250 a month. The 2012 SOA looks like this (in YNAB order so apologies for the jumbled categories):

Teeth loan: £250.00
Dogs: £100.00 (fingers and paws crossed this is an overestimate)
Horse: £150.00 (ditto, but I need to build up some money in his pot for buying hay come autumn)
National insurance: £12.50 (£10 some months)
Income tax: £365.41 (will drop after July as this year hasn't been as good)
Groceries: £350 (for both of us, but Mr Minx pays me back half of each bill)
Dining out: £20
Mortgage: £737.08 (if we ever have a real crisis, this can be dropped to £192.00)
Electricity: £98.00
Mobile phone: £4 (Mr Minx pays the landline & broadband, I top up £10 every 3 months)
House insurance: £10.00
Council tax (includes water): £112.00
Dentist: £20 (Highland Dental plan - gets me 2 checkups & 2 hygienist visits per year, any work needed is free)
Gifts: £30
Optician: £7
Entertainment & cash spends: £50.00
Sky: £60.25
TV licence: £12.12
Diesel: £80.00
Car insurance: £14.00
Car servicing/MOT: £40.00
Car tax: £11.00
Emergency fund: £50.00
Interest payments: £40.00

Total: £2623.36 against income of £2000 from my business, £570 from Mr Minx towards his half of the bills which come from my account and £175 groceries contribution. It does look tight, admittedly, but the dogs and horse figures are over-estimates - usually the dogs come in around £20-£60 depending on if worming's due or it's a vaccination month (Mr Minx pays for their food, I cover vet bills) and Merlin between £50 and £120 depending on whether it's a farrier or vaccinations month. The teeth loan finishes in November which will be a big help to cash flow.

cazmanian_minx

Another Friday rolls around, another £100 nibbled off the debt pile. It's so frustrating not to be able to throw more money at it, but that tax bill is looming over me. Still haven't decided whether to take the extra money out of the business or go into my overdraft. The business can't really afford it either, though sales have picked up a bit this week from their post-Crimble slump.

abouttimetoo

Hi Caz

Well done on the nibbling, every little helps!

It's good that business is picking up again, I know economic times are tough but you've been going for a few years now, do you use your historic data to help you with your business sales projections?

How the weather up there now?

Regards
ATT

cazmanian_minx

abouttimetoo wrote: »

Hi Caz

Well done on the nibbling, every little helps!

It's good that business is picking up again, I know economic times are tough but you've been going for a few years now, do you use your historic data to help you with your business sales projections?

How the weather up there now?

Regards
ATT

I do, but it's not been a lot of use this year - one of my best selling items (accounting for about £3k a month turnover) was necklace chains. I used to sell a pack of 50 16" silver plated trace or curb chains for £17.99, 18" for £20.99 and 24" for £25.99 and they flew out. Then, out of the blue, last March the supplier put the prices up to £35+VAT per 100, £42+VAT per 100 and £52+VAT per 100 and to be honest, the quality of the clasps wasn't good enough that I could justify putting the prices up that much to my customers, so I stopped selling them. I've now spent about £500 getting samples from various manufacturers and putting them through nickel testing at the Assay Office, so far every 'nickel free' sample I've been sent has failed. I do have high hopes for the current one in testing though, the company is the same one that got the Kate Middleton/Diana engagement ring replicas to the UK market within 48 hours of the engagement being announced and I don't remember seeing any headlines about ASDA customers coming out in horrible rashes! Fingers crossed.

I actually think I'm going to have to change direction a bit with the business - gemstone beads just aren't selling that well at the moment. With the economy as it is, people are all about the cheap and cheerful, so once Chinese New Year is over (everything's shut down over there until the week after next) I'm going to order a shedload of acrylic beads which I can do in packs of 50 for £1 and still make reasonably decent money on. Watch this space...

As for the weather, if I tell you that I was woken up at 3am and 4am by my car alarm going off because it was hailing so hard, does that answer your question?? :rotfl:

Anyway, it's Friday, so it must be update time. Another loan payment made, which is always a nice big chunk gone. Only 10 payments left to go now, it'll be great to see the back of that in November. It's so frustrating to have enough cash sloshing about in the accounts to pay off one and a bit credit cards, but knowing I can't touch it because of the tax bill :mad: Still, the budget seems to be working - the animals have been particularly helpful by only running up a bill of £16.50 between them this month (2 bales of shavings for Merlin), but I've just had to buy a new roof for the field shelter, which will be £110 when the bill comes due on Mr Minx's account at the builders' merchant next month. Mr Minx is accepting payment in kind for the labour

GDB2222

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

Sky: £60.25

Umm, I can see how you can shave £723 a year off your spending.

Freeview carries an awful lot of channels these days.

cazmanian_minx

GDB2222 wrote: »

Umm, I can see how you can shave £723 a year off your spending.

Freeview carries an awful lot of channels these days.

Ah, but not Sky Sports, without which Mr Minx couldn't follow his beloved Leeds Rhinos. And if we didn't have Sky Movies I dread to think how much he'd be spending on Blu-Ray discs every month!

GDB2222

They seem to have become a monopoly in the sports

abouttimetoo

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

I do, but it's not been a lot of use this year - one of my best selling items (accounting for about £3k a month turnover) was necklace chains. I used to sell a pack of 50 16" silver plated trace or curb chains for £17.99, 18" for £20.99 and 24" for £25.99 and they flew out. Then, out of the blue, last March the supplier put the prices up to £35+VAT per 100, £42+VAT per 100 and £52+VAT per 100 and to be honest, the quality of the clasps wasn't good enough that I could justify putting the prices up that much to my customers, so I stopped selling them. I've now spent about £500 getting samples from various manufacturers and putting them through nickel testing at the Assay Office, so far every 'nickel free' sample I've been sent has failed. I do have high hopes for the current one in testing though, the company is the same one that got the Kate Middleton/Diana engagement ring replicas to the UK market within 48 hours of the engagement being announced and I don't remember seeing any headlines about ASDA customers coming out in horrible rashes! Fingers crossed

I actually think I'm going to have to change direction a bit with the business - gemstone beads just aren't selling that well at the moment. With the economy as it is, people are all about the cheap and cheerful, so once Chinese New Year is over (everything's shut down over there until the week after next) I'm going to order a shedload of acrylic beads which I can do in packs of 50 for £1 and still make reasonably decent money on. Watch this space... .

Good luck with that Caz, that's certainly a big hike in what your costs were and it's outrageous that the nickel free items are not what they purport to be and that you have had the expense of disproving it

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

As for the weather, if I tell you that I was woken up at 3am and 4am by my car alarm going off because it was hailing so hard, does that answer your question?? :rotfl:

:eek::eek: Yikes, yes, that definately does answer my question

Anyway, it's Friday, so it must be update time. Another loan payment made, which is always a nice big chunk gone. Only 10 payments left to go now, it'll be great to see the back of that in November. It's so frustrating to have enough cash sloshing about in the accounts to pay off one and a bit credit cards, but knowing I can't touch it because of the tax bill :mad: Still, the budget seems to be working - the animals have been particularly helpful by only running up a bill of £16.50 between them this month (2 bales of shavings for Merlin), but I've just had to buy a new roof for the field shelter, which will be £110 when the bill comes due on Mr Minx's account at the builders' merchant next month.

Mr Minx is accepting payment in kind for the labour

Cazzzz, you are making us blush, you go girl, good to see you and Mr Minx are still in honeymoon phase