Caz counts it down

MessyMare

Hope you have a lovely time :)I've been lurking on your thread following your progress as you're living my dream (the bead business bit!) I've moved into a slightly different arena for setting up business (I will do it, one day, I swear...just got to get the debt gone) but I'm jumping up and down on your sidelines cheering you on!

cazmanian_minx

Michael McIntyre was fantastic, there were a few moments during the second half where I was laughing so hard that tears were pouring down my face - if there'd been room to do this :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:in my seat, I would have been! It'll be interesting to get the DVD of the big arena show at Christmas and see how much of the material makes it into the final show.

Confession time: we are actually back down the road again on Monday to see Al Murray, which was our original annivesary treat before I got the Michael McIntyre email And this time I must have been first on the button on Ticketmaster, because we are row A, seats 12 and 13 - bang in the middle of the front row! I think there's no way to avoid getting picked on, so I'll be wearing my pink Hackett t-shirt with Best of British printed across the front (99p off eBay!) and going with the flow It's not our actual anniverary until the 13th.

A bit of accounting help needed please, dear readers. Since our neighbours had gone out by the time we knew we were staying overnight, I had to leave a message on their answerphone asking them if they'd feed the horses for me and they pinged me on Facebook later in the day to say 'No problems, could you please pick up the fly sheet we had on order at the saddlery as we've just had a call to say it's here?' So I paid for the fly sheet on a card and they gave me cash this afternoon. In an ideal world I'd just pay the cash into the account and balance it off that way, but the nearest NatWest branch is several hundred miles away in England, I don't think you can pay cash into a First Direct account and if I pay it into my business account and then transfer it a) my accountant will have kittens and b) I'll get charged for doing so. I need to account for this £44.95 coming out though - I could mark it as a cash withdrawal, but that's going to put me over my cash withdrawal budget for the month. Thoughts?

Wordsmith

Do you mean your personal budget for cash withdrawal? If so, I'd treat it as a cash withdrawal, go over budget, then adjust your budget for next month - purely to avoid any charges.

Otherwise, I'd bung it in the business account and just contra the in and out entries. Your accountant can hardly object - it's your account.

I'm glad you had a good time away. Sounds fun!

cazmanian_minx

Wordsmith wrote: »

Do you mean your personal budget for cash withdrawal? If so, I'd treat it as a cash withdrawal, go over budget, then adjust your budget for next month - purely to avoid any charges.

That's what I've done in the end. The problem with putting it through the business account is that I'm VAT registered and in the unlikely event of a VAT inspection, I'd have had to explain why I hadn't declared that £44.95 on the VAT return - hence the accountant would have (rightly) got wound up about it.

The 5th is mortgage day for us and IF has kindly applied the interest already, though the payment won't credit until tomorrow. We're now at 17% paid off and next month will see us go under £120k which is very heartening.

Since I'm rapidly running out of headroom on the Tesco card, I've had to use the overdraft over the weekend, but a PIN reminder for the next least expensive card has arrived, so I can put the next couple of months of spending on that and by then the personal overdraft should be looking a lot healthier.

Had another good result with the Tesco shop this week:

Sub-total: £79.22
Multibuy savings: -£1.98
Total to pay: £77.24
Coupon: -£7.00
Coupon: -£5.00
Coupon: -£2.00
Coupon: -£0.08
Coupon: -£0.40
Total: £62.76


Nothing back on the price promise this week though Mr Minx has already transferred his half back in, so we're all square.

I've started doing Swagbucks with the aim of making enough in Amazon vouchers to do the Christmas shopping. Since it's an American company I'm assuming I don't have to declare it for VAT purposes, just income tax, but I'll double check with my accountant as I suspect it may depend on how their UK subsidiary is registered.

I've also been reading an eBook about self-publishing on Kindle and it's made me think that I should really get writing again. I've mentioned this elsewhere on MSE, but not here yet - I'm a published erotica writer and with the hype around 50 Shades it's probably a really good time for me to take it up again. There are an awful lot of people writing erotic romance, but not so many writing erotic crime and thrillers and that's what I want to do - think Stephanie Plum with a little bit less comedy and a lot more sex! Something to fiddle about with anyway (no pun intended!)

cazmanian_minx

...and in an absolutely beautiful piece of synchronicity, I just got a survey for 70 SwagBucks on buying erotica :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Wordsmith

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

I'm a published erotica writer and with the hype around 50 Shades it's probably a really good time for me to take it up again. There are an awful lot of people writing erotic romance, but not so many writing erotic crime and thrillers and that's what I want to do - think Stephanie Plum with a little bit less comedy and a lot more sex! Something to fiddle about with anyway (no pun intended!)

Have I mentioned I'm an editor? You know, just in case you need one.

cazmanian_minx

I shall bear that in mind Wordsmith, thank you!

It's been quite a successful evening here; my Textbroker article has been accepted and all four items I had listed on eBay have sold :j The GameBoy Advance game went for £11.00, the two PC games £16.90 and £5.30 respectively and I even managed to sell my old film camera for £4.70. Two winners have paid already, which is even better

cazmanian_minx

43 orders to go out today, which is pretty good for August :j:j And I'm only £800 away from being able to order that stock from Hong Kong :j:j

I've now finished the second lot of antibiotics and everything has cleared up except for the sore throat. It's definitely not as bad as it was a couple of days ago when I had to take painkillers to be able to eat supper, but that's four weeks of enlarged tonsils now They're barely noticeable today though, so fingers crossed this is the last of it

cazmanian_minx

Afternoon We had a great night watching Al Murray last night and yes, we did get picked on, but that's mostly my fault for mentioning the writing!

All four eBay sales have been paid for and posted off, so that's £32.57 from Mr PayPal as today's PAD. I'm absolutely FUMING with Amazon, however. Today should have been my fortnightly disbursement day, when the money Amazon's taken on my behalf gets sent to my bank account (minus their fees), so I was expecting to come home to an email that told me a little bit over £1000 had been transferred. Instead I got an email that said access to my account had been limited due to the credit card attached to it expiring and would I please log in and update the details. I did so, got a thank you message, but instead of immediately disbursing my funds I have to wait ANOTHER FORTNIGHT because I didn't have a valid card on the disbursement date :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad: I wouldn't mind if I'd owed them money, but the account is over £1000 in credit and the card expired on 31st July so they could have emailed me sooner and given me the chance to update it before disbursement day.

Seriously not happy about that one, especially since it means I'll have to delay ordering that stock from Hong Kong for another couple of weeks.

cazmanian_minx

It's official: I have no idea what the-Barclaycard-formerly-known-as-Egg is playing at. After making me pay twice in one month for July, today's statement says they don't want another payment until 3rd September. However, now that I'm paying them out of cleared funds rather than from the overdraft, it makes sense to pay card bills as soon as the statements appear doesn't it? As it's however many days less interest charged on the amount paid. I'd made today's PAD before I had this blinding revelation(!), so I'll pay T-B-F-K-A-E tomorrow. I pay the Tesco and Post Office cards as soon as I get the statements, I don't quite know why it's taken so long for the penny to drop with this one

In other news, I AM FEELING BETTER :j:j:j:j:j 24 hours with no lumpy throat now, so I think I can safely say that I've beaten off the lurgy and I hope that's it for at least another 6 years.