Caz counts it down

gallygirl

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

That said, it's £80 that could be used for something else....

Yup, like an osteopath or physio to start correcting what damage you've done :eek:. Get yourself a bed dear :T.

cazmanian_minx

Nah, the osteopath is only £35 a session here I did wonder about buying two seats on the coach so I could stretch out sideways though - but the idea of a bed is really much more appealing.

brizzledfw

Am with GG..look after yourself!

cazmanian_minx

OK, OK, you guys win, a bed it is Not that I can book it yet, as their booking system only goes up to May 18th.

Another transcription file has bitten the dust and I've gone over that 2% hurdle. It's taken me a month to get this much done, so just another 4 years and 1 month of transcribing should see me clear :eek: :rotfl:

It's coming up to year end and my takings for the bead business have dipped back to being a smidge under last year. Less than 1%, but it's still annoying. Fingers crossed for some really big sales over the weekend!

cazmanian_minx

Scores on doors - being a business owner, I'm backwards to most other people, they always look much better a couple of days before the end of the month!

Business
Overdraft: -£-8307.52 / -£7524.26 +£783.26

Business total: -£8307.52 / -£7524.26 +£783.26

Personal
Egg card: -£4930.00 / -£4930.00 no change
Barclaycard: -£2225.00 / -£2225.00 no change
Nationwide card: -£2430.00 / -£2405.00 +£25.00

Personal total: -£9585.00 / -£9560.00 +£25.00

Grand total: -£17,895.52 / -£17,084.26 +£808.26

That's just under £2,000 to the good in two weeks, but it's mostly going to be gone again by the middle of next week after VAT, Royal Mail, supplier and (hopefully!) me all get paid. However, if I look at just the personal debt, it was standing at £10,260 at the beginning of the year, so at least I've got rid of £700-worth of the stuff.

I've decided that I'm going to use my transcription money in the following order:

1. Pay for travel down to see Mum (this is actually a bit up in the air at the moment, as she's waiting for the results of a scan she had last week - worst case scenario is that we'll have to cancel the holiday because she'll be needing treatment, but I suspect if it was what we fear then they would have called her back in ASAP, so fingers crossed it's nothing serious.)
2. Fill my YNAB buffer.
3. Make overpayments to the cards.

I'm essentially going to use the YNAB buffer as an emergency fund - when full it'll be £2000 and if I need to dip into it then the overpayments just stop until it fills again. Sorted. Since the horses are (touch wood!) coming out of the expensive half of the year (last hay pick up is going to be next weekend), it should fill fairly fast.

cazmanian_minx

It's the usual Saturday here. I had £90 left in the budget for the Tesco shop and with coupons I managed to get it down to £67. The rest of the day has involved cleaning, laundry, shovelling manure and playing Criminal Case on Facebook.

cazmanian_minx

I think Scottish Hydro has just emailed me the most convoluted bill in the history of power usage! It's eight pages long and goes like this (slightly condensed version!):

Here's your electricity statement for the period 19 September 2013 to 24 March 2014.

Total from last statement - we owed you: £56.65 credit

Your payments 19 September to 24 March: £1024.00 credit

Your charges:

19 Sep 2013 to 14 Nov 2013
Heating control energy 992 kWh at 8.24p £81.74
Standard energy 567 kWh at 18.5p £104.89
Discounted standing charge 57 days at 14.09p £8.03

15 Nov 2013 to 19 Dec 2013
Heating control energy 608 kWh at 9.84p £59.83
Standard energy 348 kWh at 18.5p £64.38
Discounted standing charge 35 days at 14.09p £4.93

VAT at 5% on charges of £323.80 £16.19

Total £339.99

20 Dec 2013 to 23 Mar 2014
Heating control energy 3582 kWh at 9.84p £352.47
Standard energy 2291 kWh at 18.5p £423.83
Discounted standing charge 94 days at 14.09p £13.24

24 Mar 2014 to 24 Mar 2014
Heating control energy 28 kWh at 9.34p £2.62
Standard energy 17 kWh at 18.5p £3.14
Discounted standing charge 1 day at 14.09p £0.14

VAT at 5% on charges of £795.44 £39.77

Total you owe us £86.55

Anyway, the nice thing is that since we're not £360 in debt to them like we were this time last year, they're putting our direct debit down from £172 to £147 on 1st May. Mr Minx is going to carry on paying the same amount each month and the surplus £25 will go into a white goods replacement fund.

cazmanian_minx

Huh, I wrote an update last night, hit Post Quick Reply and got a message to say the forum was down for maintenance, so it was lost.

The reason I was updating so late is that we had to take the dog for an emergency vet visit - she'd managed to get some weedkiller on her paws and the irritation was driving her so nuts that she was belting around the sitting room, scrabbling frantically at anything rough to try and scratch her pads Washing her feet in cold water helped a bit, but she was still licking them madly so we rang the vet for advice and they said the running round sounded a bit odd and to bring her in for a check over. Long story short, she's fine, but I am not looking forward to getting the bill! I also had to fill the car up - I was going to come into town today and do it and I had enough fuel to get in, but not home again. I think I'll cheat and put that through my accounts as an April transaction though

In other news, although the weekend's bankings weren't fantastic, there was enough to cover that supplier payment due on the 2nd - however it only left me £9.50 to pay myself with today. Amazingly, my lovely customers appear to have stepped into the breach at just the right time and I think this morning's bankings are going to be higher than yesterday's with about £80 of credit card payments still filtering through the system.

So I'm not quite sure how I did it, but I've managed to get through that tight spot without having to resort to a credit card :j

mfmaybe

I don't think it's luck really. Sure, you are at the mercy of the sales, but you are very sure of where you are in a cash flow scenario, and in a business like yours that is so important. Glad the dog is ok. They do love to worry us. I hate using weed killer for just that reason but sometimes it has to be done

cazmanian_minx

Turns out it wasn't actually weedkiller! I did wonder, because it never affected the other dogs. I posted about our vet visit on Facebook and a friend of mine, who also has a black working cocker spaniel, said that *exactly* the same thing happened to hers, in fact they thought the dog was having an aneurysm because the symptoms were so violent and lasted so long, but it turned out to be a reaction to standing on baby nettles that were hidden in long grass. Well, what do we have stacks and stacks of around here at the moment....? She trod on one outside the hay shed this morning and immediately dropped to the ground and licked her paw. The friend says that wiping her feet with bicarbonate of soda in water will put her right almost instantly

Bankings were so good this morning that I managed to pay myself £400 I've shuffled cash around so that there's enough in the bills account to cover all the DDs due on the 5th, there's £230 in the food budget for the month, £90 in the horse budget for the hay at the weekend and £100 in the dog budget for last night, though I'm hoping it's not going to be anything like that much.

Year end today and I'm nearly on top of the accounts. I've put in my mileage for the year and the £5 a week I claim for using my house as an office. All I'm waiting for are two eBay customers to pay, the eBay March invoice and the Streamline March invoice and then that's it, accounts done for the year. Once I have those, I can put in the VAT refund claim. I ran a quick calculation this afternoon and it's looking like £3670 coming my way

Somehow I also managed to find time to do my transcription shift and had a 46 minute focus group (higher rate) with nice clear audio and a reasonably interesting topic, which always helps.

Onwards and upwards. I'm feeling pretty positive about things tonight.