Caz counts it down

cazmanian_minx

Ooooh, some horrible scores on the doors today, but it's an investment in the business, or so I keep telling myself.

(last week/this week/ + or - amount)
Business
Overdraft: -£-4155.93 / -£5809.59 -£1653.66

Business total: -£-4155.93 / -£5809.59 -£1653.66

Personal
Overdraft: -£3156.92 / -£3454.89 -£297.97
Egg card: -£3115.00 / -£3115.00 no change
Barclaycard: -£2734.89 / -£2734.89 no change

Personal total: -£9006.81 / -£9304.78 -£297.97

Grand total: -£13,162.74 / -£15,114.37 -£1951.63

This is one of those weeks where I'd probably better take a look at where it all went. The business account is easy:

eBay fees: £289.05
Royal Mail: £559.77
eCommerce software: £23.99
UK supplier: £218.83
Hong Kong supplier: £2285.52

Total: £3377.16 - so to only be £1653.66 more overdrawn than last week isn't bad.

Personal account however....

SIL's birthday present: £30
Tesco: £14.58
Diesel: £26.26
Dog food: £16.18
Tack shop: £39.00 (new girth for Finn and some garlic)
Car insurance: £159.00
Interest: £46.95

Total: £331.97, offset by £34 from Mr Minx for last week's shopping. There wasn't too much of that which wasn't necessary - the garlic, I suppose, and I could have bought a cheaper girth.

This morning's irritation is courtesy of RBS's online banking system. I'm trying to send payment for yesterday's overseas order and it's refusing to recognise the SWIFT code. I've checked with the supplier and with HSBC (the receiving bank) that it's correct and even RBS's online chat team (who were extremely helpful, it has to be said) said I'd got it right when they looked it up in their directory, but the computer simply isn't having it, so I'm going to have to do a 52 mile round trip into town to do it over the counter.

cazmanian_minx

I still haven't managed to pay that supplier! To cut a very long story short, I couldn't get the details off my computer before I had to leave yesterday (.pst file locked up and needed a reboot to free it and the PC froze during the reboot), so figured I'd grab the form at the bank, fill it in at home and then drop it off this morning when we were in town. Wrong - they don't have forms any more, they just do it over the counter. And I couldn't spend that long in the bank today because we had the trailer hitched up to collect hay and there's nowhere in Thurso near the bank we could have parked it (Mr Minx would have just gone around the block while I dropped the form in). I think I'm going to have to see if they'll let me PayPal it, though they don't normally accept PayPal over US$2000.

We had a bit of a high spend in Tesco today - £126 :eek: but I'd got that down from £145 using coupons and the fridge was virtually empty this morning.

cazmanian_minx

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

I tapped all my details into the Nationwide soft search credit card form a moment ago and it came back with £2800 at 19.9% on their 20 month 0% balance transfer offer. According to the threads on the credit card board, this is borderline for being accepted, so I didn't carry on to the full application. It would have been nice to empty that 16.9% old Egg card though.

I wrote that on 25th February. Buoyed by my success with RBS, I decided to give Nationwide another go - I put in exactly the same details and this time it came back with £2800 at 9.9% on their 20 month 0% offer. I clicked through to the full application and have been accepted in principle, subject to me sending them acceptable proof of identification :j:j:j:j:j:j:j:j

Once the balance transfer goes through, the personal debt list will look like this:

Overdraft: c. £3500 at 19.9% (snowball debt)
Barclaycard-that-was-Egg: £415 at 16.9%
Barclaycard: £2695 (paid it today) at 6.9% for life of balance
Nationwide: £2741.85 (inc. 1.55% BT fee) at 0% for 20 months, 9.9% after

It's going to save me just under £40 a month in interest It's going to be tempting to snowball that £415 though, just to get rid of it and close the card.

brizzledfw

Well done Caz

cazmanian_minx

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

This morning's irritation is courtesy of RBS's online banking system. I'm trying to send payment for yesterday's overseas order and it's refusing to recognise the SWIFT code. I've checked with the supplier and with HSBC (the receiving bank) that it's correct and even RBS's online chat team (who were extremely helpful, it has to be said) said I'd got it right when they looked it up in their directory, but the computer simply isn't having it, so I'm going to have to do a 52 mile round trip into town to do it over the counter.

I am a first class, Grade A, world beating idiot :o:o:o:o:o:o:o

I had another go at making this payment online this morning and it still wouldn't recognise the SWIFT. Mumbling curses under my breath, I decided the best thing to do was sign up with xe.com and use them to make the transfer instead. The second page of the sign-up screen asked which countries I'd be making transfers to. India - tick. USA - tick. China - tick. Hong Kong - tick.....hang on a moment....

I may have actually slapped my forehead.

Yes, the SUPPLIER is in China, but their bank account is held at a branch of HSBC in Kowloon and Kowloon is in Hong Kong. Went back to RBS, put the destination country in as Hong Kong instead of China and it went through with no problems at all.

Like I said, Olympic-standard muppet

Sales over the weekend have been good, I transferred £600 out of PayPal this morning, there's more to come from credit card payments and some lovely person has spent £230 this afternoon

cazmanian_minx

Hooray - nearly £400 banked this morning, so that's all March's bills covered and anything more I make this month goes towards paying down the business overdraft (Or getting a cushion of cash for when I'll have to close during the last week of April while I'm away).

Even better, I ran a VAT calculation this afternoon and with 12 days of my financial year left, the VAT man owes me £197. Unless I have some bumper sales over the next fortnight, there won't be a balancing payment to make and I'll have April and May with no VAT direct debit. In theory, this should mean that the direct debit for next year goes down, but I'll need to put a bit of cash aside each month because I hope that sales are going to carry on going back up.

cazmanian_minx

Another good day of sales, another £200 in the bank

The owl beads that I mentioned on 9th March have arrived, which is remarkably quick from China. I've phoned the Sheffield Assay Office and ordered some nickel swab tests which I hope will be here Friday or Saturday. Really, really crossing my fingers that these pass because they're a) adorable, b) amazingly detailed and c) more steampunk than I thought they'd be and I think they'll sell really well.

gallygirl

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

Really, really crossing my fingers that these pass because they're a) adorable, b) amazingly detailed and c) more steampunk than I thought they'd be and I think they'll sell really well.

"scuttles off to look up steampunk on the world of google"


Oh yes, that will be great, steampunk is very popular :rotfl:.

cazmanian_minx

Aha, I've managed to extract the URL for the picture This is them:

cazmanian_minx

I had to go into town today, as mother-in-law had parted company with her (fourth) cleaner and was getting stressed about the state of her house. Since she likes her house to be cleaned to the standard of your average operating theatre and my field shelters are probably cleaner than my house, it could have been a disaster, but in the end it was fine I did the heavy bits, like cleaning the bathrooms and hoovering, and she did all the delicate dusting. Fortunately she has a new cleaner coming round for an interview next week, so fingers crossed this will be a one-off.

It did give me a chance to get a few things in town though. The first stop was CLB, the local agricultural store, for a sack of Speedibeet (unmolassed sugar beet) and three birthday cards. I must check when I last bought beet, I don't think it was this year and both horses have it daily. Then it was off to the vet to discuss options for flea and tick treatment. Our little diva of a dog decided that having Advantix put on her neck was far too like having an injection and ran off screaming the last time we tried it! She is now fitted with a Seresto collar, which wasn't cheap at £32 but will last her 8 months and caused absolutely no upset at all. Result