Caz counts it down

cazmanian_minx

I'm totally demotivated today. It's so dark here that I need the lights on and two of the spots have blown - the two nearest my desk, so I'm working in a kind of murky cave.

Mr Minx caved last night and switched the heating on - normally it's him who's roasting and me who's in six layers and still shivering, so I hope he's not coming down with something.

I sold a book on Amazon yesterday, so that'll be another £5.58 to the overdraft when it pays out. Depending on what the VAT bill from TNT is, I estimate I need about another £1200 this month before I can think about making a payment to the business card, so hopefully one will go through next week.

cazmanian_minx

I had a bugrit moment and made a payment to the card anyway Here are this week's scores on the doors:

last week/this week/ + or - amount)
Business
Overdraft: -£1863.96 / -£3121.21 -£1257.25
Barclaycard: -£3500.00 / -£3000.00 +£500.00

Business total: -£5363.96 / -£6121.21 -£757.25

Personal
Overdraft: -£2400.00 / -£2515.00 -£115.00
Egg card: -£3295.00 / -£3295.00 no change
Dental loan: -£500.00 / -£250.00 +£250.00
Barclaycard: -£2869.11 / -£2883.90 -£14.79

Personal total: -£9064.11 / -£8943.90 +£120.21

Grand total: -£14,428.07 / -£15,065.11 -£637.04

That almost exactly reverses last week's reduction, and I did spend about £2,500 on stock, so it's not too bad really.

cazmanian_minx

I'm doing quite well on the Christmas shopping front this month. Mr Minx was so depressed when we decided to skip Christmas stockings last year that I've agreed to reinstate them, so I'm trying to fill his as cheaply as possible without it looking cheap, if you see what I mean. So far I've found a book he wanted brand new on Amazon for £2.83 (RRP £8.99) and then I got an email from Bill Bailey's website saying they were clearing out a lot of their merchandise at £1 a throw, so I've got him a t-shirt.

The great success this morning was a present for my niece though. Boden sent me a letter with a £10 gift voucher code and a promotion code for 15% off and free delivery. I read the Ts and Cs very carefully and nowhere did it say there was a minimum spend, so I scuttled off to the Boden website (via Quidco of course ) and had a look at what was available for a tenner. Not a lot for adults - couldn't even get Mr Minx some socks for his stocking! - but there was a range of kids' tops which the 15% code and the sale brought down to £10.20 from £16 and the £4 delivery charge was waived, so my niece has a lovely long sleeved top in her favourite colour for 20p (Yes, I will get her something else as well!).

I'm mildly concerned about my business Amazon income. All the toolkits and quite a lot of the tools have now gone and when I checked how much was due to disburse on Tuesday, the answer was 89p :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek: That's quite a drop in income from the £600-£1200 I've been getting, so I need to make it up or stop selling on Amazon, as I have to pay for the £25 a month pro seller fee somehow. I've checked if anyone is selling the BeadSmith tools on there and they are and at prices I can match, so I shall save some money, fire up my BeadSmith account and import some.

I've also taken out a Terapeak subscription again. This is a really handy website which processes eBay sales data - it has access to all eBay's data and you can research products to see how well they sell, competitors to see what's selling best for them, best selling items in a category and so on. It'll help me make some wiser buying decisions I hope, and more than pay for its £16.50 a month cost.

The expensive month isn't going to be quite so expensive, as the one place that sells rubber matting locally didn't have the type I wanted in stock and only had 3 sheets of the one that was in stock. They've got some of the thinner stuff on order for a customer and say I can go and have a look at it when it arrives next Saturday before he picks it up, if it's what I'm after they'll order me some. £35 a sheet, which is considerably better than the £70 I paid for the stuff in the existing shelter, but whether it's as hard-wearing will remain to be seen. Should be OK with a thick layer of shavings and unshod horses I think.

hillside777

Keep up the good work!

Just a short post. I'm still reading and enjoying your posts every day but hardly get a chance to post myself.

Sorry to hear about the fall in your Amazon sales.

tessasmum

Thanks for the hint about Boden - I got one of those vouchers as well and hadn't bothered to look at the website as I didn't think there would be anything I could get almost for nothing, but I too have found a top for 20p which will be lovely for my daughter! Thanks v much xx

cazmanian_minx

Glad to have been of help, Tessasmum

I am sooooooooooo knackered right now. Since it was a nice dry day and I needed to be out in the fields to keep an eye on Mr Minx, who was fitting onduline sheeting to the new field shelter roof, I decided to tackle the more inaccessible bit of the field that I daren't go on when it's wet - it's a steep slope that gets to about 1 in 3 in places and although the horses clamber up and down it quite happily, I stay off it if there's a chance that I'm going to skid and end up in a crumpled heap at the bottom with a wheelbarrow-load of muck on top of me

TEN barrow loads of horse manure later :eek::eek::eek:, all of which had to be pushed back up the hill to the muck heap (a new muck heap will be started at the bottom once the ex-vegetable patch fence has been removed!), my glutes had had the work out of the century and I could barely move! Despite that, I still managed to stagger up and down the village at slightly faster than a walk to complete my first week of training for the half marathon I'm planning to do in March.

Today's MSE (Money Saving Experience) - Mr Minx forgot that he'd built a 15ft long roof on the 13ft long field shelter and hadn't ordered enough onduline. I pointed out that he didn't need quite so much overlap on the long slope and if he cut some of the sheets in half he'd have more than enough, so instead of needing to buy another three sheets of onduline, we only need to buy one more ridge piece So the roof is very nearly complete and he's put up all the guttering and hooked up the water butt again as well. It's starting to look really good.

hillside777

Well done on your achievements today. :j

I hope you're having a relaxing evening and a cup of tea, or maybe something stronger.

cazmanian_minx

Ah, nothing stronger than water for me, or perhaps a glass of orange juice if I'm pushing the boat out No reason other than I've never liked the taste of anything alcoholic or tea or coffee, though I did find out a few years ago, when I had a minor operation for something else, that I have a scarred liver, which might explain my aversion to alcohol. Mr Minx swears he only married me because I can always drive home after a good night out

I made a bit of an error with the Amazon calculation, it's actually NEXT week it's due to disburse, not tomorrow, so it's not going to be as drastically horrible as I thought, but it's still pretty bad. I've got a dilemma at the moment, I really need to get some stock on order, but I also need to get rid of this last £3k at 20%. The cashflow situation isn't too bad at the moment, the £687.57 to Royal Mail, the £960 to the VAT man and the ~£400 import VAT on the chains are all covered and I've got £450 towards paying me on 1st November - so I need to take at least £1050 between now and 31st October, which should be achievable. Of course, I could place the BeadSmith order on the business credit card - I'll probably have to anyway, it gives better protection for overseas transactions, but I'd rather the money was there to pay it off straight away rather than running it up again. Anyway, eBay's giving business sellers 50,000 free listings over the next few days, so I shall get as much of this stock that's lying around listed as I can and see what that does to sales.

On the domestic front, I have homemade soup defrosting for lunch and a wholemeal loaf cooking itself in the bread machine, so the thought of that will get me through the morning

cazmanian_minx

I spent most of yesterday afternoon armed with the BeadSmith trade price list, Amazon and my spreadsheet which calculates profit on the various selling platforms I use. Unless I spend about £5k in one go, it's not going to be worth it - I'd need to spend about £3k just for the profit margin to cover the costs of import. So that's that one down the drain.

I need to order from my cord, leather and suede supplier in India though, that's a factory that I deal with direct and they make excellent quality stuff. Sales have been down recently thanks to Royal Mail making it uneconomic to send reels of stuff through the post, so I'm going to be ordering in 100 metre reels from now on instead of 10 metre, will give customers a choice of 1 metre, 2 metre or 5 metre lengths and will cut from the reel and send it flat at large letter rate. They've got some fabulous nappa leather folded bolo cords in mixed colours and much as I'd love to take every colour combination they do, I'm restricting myself to black and white, red, white and blue and red, white, green and yellow. I need about £1500 (assuming they haven't put their prices up since January) but I'm not sure I'll be ordering it this side of Christmas

I don't feel like I've made much progress this month. Microsoft Money is telling me that there's £350 more in my overdrawn current account than there was at the end of last month, but with the car service tomorrow I suspect that's going to disappear plus a bit more.

hillside777

I know what you mean about not making much progress this month. I know I've gone backwards.

It's a good idea about cutting the cord. This will save quite a bit in postage otherwise you're paying £2.20 per packet :eek: which takes all the profit.