Caz counts it down

cazmanian_minx

Library's been, so here are the month-end scores on doors for my personal debt.

Debt 31st March 30th April

Overdraft £3668.71 £3558.61 -£110.10
Egg card £3115.00 £400.00 -£2715.00
Barclaycard £2695.00 £2655.00 -£40.00
Nationwide £0.00 £2741.85 +£2741.85

Total £9478.71 £9355.46 -£123.25

Going back in the right direction - BUT that £123.25 isn't enough to cover the tax bill due at the end of July, let alone the 1/12ths of annual things like car insurance, road tax etc. etc.

It seems I have two options here - 1) start paying myself that extra £250 again even though the business can't quite justify it at the moment or 2) pay my tax bill out of the business account come July and treat it as extra drawings (my annual bonus, if you like). For now I'm going to say it's option two and wait to see what the sales are like when the new big stock orders arrive.

cazmanian_minx

Guess what arrived in today's post?

Dear Ms Jones

I'm writing to let you know that we've just introduced some more flexibility into our 0% offer. You can now use it as a balance transfer or to transfer money directly into your bank account - or even a combination of both.

etc. etc. etc. No response to my complaint letter yet. So I thought I'd see what happened if I rang the number on the letter, fully expecting to do battle with the call centre again, only to get through to an extremely helpful lady who put the whole thing through for me in under five minutes :D:D:D:D:D:D:D

I'm not counting my chickens quite yet, the money hasn't appeared in my account (they say it will be there by close of business tomorrow), but it's looking promising :j That means that my current account gets to stay £41 in credit so I'm not going to be completely shot of the overdraft for another month or so, but at least I'm not going to be paying £35 in interest every month either.

The debt list now looks like this:

NatWest: £0.00 (19.9%)
Barclaycard-that-was-Egg: £400 (16.9%)
Barclaycard-that-was-Egg: £3087 (0% until August 2014, 16.9% after)
Barclaycard: £2655 (6.9% life of balance)
Nationwide: £2741.85 (0% until November 2014, 9.9% after)

Next steps - get the NatWest account permanently into credit (and try to save something towards that tax bill so I don't have to take too much out of the business) and then attack that £400 on the B-t-w-E card.

And in a further money-saving twist to the day, the farrier charged me a tenner less than usual because Merlin only need rasping, no trimming. I did try to pay him the full amount because M has a split in his back foot that Robbie very carefully filed out to try and stop it cracking again and that took as much time as trimming him would have, but he wasn't having it, so I said thank you very much and kept my £10!

JustAboutThere

Isn't it weird how one person says 'no' and another something completely different, even though they work for the same organisation. Good to hear it looks like it will work in your favour.

Put the extra £10 towards the tax bill (or treat yourself to something).

Saw the last episode of The Following last night (don't know if you continued watching it. A little ho hum. I worked it out that, for me, the early good episodes were because of the tenseness (sp?) between Kevin Bacon and James Purefoy. When they weren't together, it didn't click. I had heard that there was a Series 2 in the offing though.

cazmanian_minx

Yes, I watched the last one over lunch today - I'll be interested to see how it picks up in Season 2. With that and Person of Interest both finished I have hardly anything on Sky+ at the moment, which is unfortunate as I've got a lot of time to spend in front of the telly bagging beads coming up! I'm wondering if it's worth recording the new Hannibal series which starts on Monday. Revolution didn't grab me.

I got a half price code for Big Fish Games in my email today, so I've spent £3.79 on the last game in the Puppet Show series and the rest will go to the tax bill

cazmanian_minx

Oooooh, now, just to throw something else in the hopper, Quidco has wrestled the cashback for Jura's insurance out of the company for me and has emailed to say that £73.57 is on its way to my current account. With Mr Minx paying half the shopping again and some eBay money, it's *just* possible that I might be able to keep the current account in credit for May. Watch this space....

The test order for the new product line has shipped and because I spent over US$300 they should have upgraded it to UPS, so with a bit of luck it'll be here about Wednesday. The glass beads are due to ship Friday or Monday and will be here Thursday or Friday next week. The enormous order of new stock from China is due to dock in Felixstowe on 14th May, so will be here around the 21st, and I'm waiting on the paperwork for the Hong Kong order so I can calculate roughly when that will be here - typically, it's stock in that one that I'm getting loads of enquiries about.

Life is about to get very busy, particularly since the farrier took one look at my manure bricks yesterday and told me I'd make an absolute fortune if I could produce them on a commercial scale. I've looked into it before and I can, with fairly minimal start-up costs (about £25k), but someone in America has patented the process, so I need to find out if it's just patented in the USA or whether it's worldwide and if it's worldwide, what exactly has been patented.

cazmanian_minx

Humph, they didn't upgrade me to UPS, but it's coming EMS trackable so I can watch it travel across the world. It left Shanghai last night, I expect it'll probably touch down in Koln, Germany later today.

Anyway, it appears to be Friday again, so here are some scores on the doors. All change this week

(last week/this week/ + or - amount)
Business
Overdraft: -£-7070.45 / -£7374.92 +£304.47

Business total: -£-7070.45 / -£7374.92 +£304.47

Personal
Overdraft: -£3508.52 / £0.00 +£3508.52
Egg card: -£400.00 / -£3488.00 -£3088.00
Barclaycard: -£2655.00 / -£2655.00 no change
Nationwide card: £2741.85 / £2741.85 no change

Personal total: -£9305.37 / -£8884.85 +£420.52

Grand total: -£16,375.82 / -£16,259.77 +£116.05

It's so, so nice to see that overdraft gone and I'm going to do everything in my power to keep it that way. After the cashback and the eBay money from the DVD, the balance is now £132.79 and there's another £4 on its way from my spread betting account which has been sitting in there for months. At the moment it's not going to happen, so I need to get my butt into gear and list more stuff on eBay. Planned spends from that account for this month are as follows:

Food: £160 (after Mr Minx has paid back his half)
Fuel: £75
Bag of Speedibeet: £13
Interest: £34
Birthday present for niece: £35
Total: £317.00

So I need to find another £181 from somewhere. Time to get turfing out the cupboards

cazmanian_minx

I misread the order - they don't upgrade to UPS, they upgrade to EMS or DHL from China Air Mail, which is exactly what they've done, so I can't grumble It does mean the order will be 1-2 weeks rather than 5 days though, so I might as well stop hitting refresh on the tracking system...

I've just had a good result from some good customer service - a customer won an auction for 5 pendant beads, the winning bid was 58p and she got in touch today to say she thought she'd better let me know that the loop had broken off one of them, but no need to do anything about it. I refunded her 12p via PayPal and sent a message back to say that I didn't like to see any customer out of pocket because of me misjudging packaging or Royal Mail treading on something - and she sent me a lovely message to say thank you and promptly ordered £16-worth of stuff

I always try and treat my customers the way I'd like to be treated in their shoes and it's nice to see that it does pay off.

cazmanian_minx

£90 in Tesco yesterday AFTER £16.50-worth of coupons , but Mr Minx got a bit over-excited in the cheese section and I'm experimenting with primal/paleo eating and trying to find something I can eat for breakfast without feeling sick, so there were quite a few expensive bits in the trolley. (I tried going back to my normal breakfast of oats, hot water, an apple and some cinnamon and by 11am I was grouchy and starving).

In comparison, today has been - well, not a No Spend Day, an actual Made Money Day. My Joules dress and 8 of the 9 books I had listed on eBay sold for a total of £29.44 and two of the winning bidders have already paid I took Finn for an hour's hack this morning, we went up the hill and out of the gate onto the main grazings which we've not done before. Apart from one slightly exciting moment where he decided that a small puddle was Very Scary and had to be cat-jumped instead of walked through (my back muscles are NOT happy this evening after that one!), he behaved himself pretty well - though I've discovered that there's a fine line between giving him enough rein to allow him to balance himself scrambling up and down the hills and enough rein that he stops dead and starts munching! He's not the most polite pony to hack out, put it that way

cazmanian_minx

It might have been a bank holiday, but Mr Minx had a normal working day so I put my nose to the grindstone and got all the weekend's orders packed up and dispatched - including one lovely lady who spent £420 :j:j:j

I now have a rough schedule for incoming stock:
End of this week: small test order of new product line
End of this week/early next week: glass beads
c. 21st May: large order from China
c. 28th May: chain and findings order from Hong Kong

- which is quite nicely spaced out. The next large order will be leather, suede and cotton cords from India, though I may have to put some more charm bracelets on order straight away because I'm getting a couple of messages a day asking when I'll have more stock and I've only got 3000 coming in. I think about 1000 of those are already spoken for :eek:

cazmanian_minx

The test order is in the Customs Clearance department at Parcelforce and I have a tracking number for the glass beads

I had a reply from Barclaycard to the letter I wrote. It said that I did have a bank transfer available and to take advantage of it all I had to do was call the customer service number given and.... and then it gave me instructions on how to do a balance transfer from a credit card :mad::mad::mad: Since I've now got what I want, I'm not sure whether I should just leave it or whether I should write a letter to the Chief Executive's office and tell them they need to improve their customer service.

I've got to go into town tomorrow as my rear left tyre is looking rather flatter than all the rest - hope it gets me there I shall take it to see Sandy at the tyre centre to see if it's something that can be repaired, like a puncture, or whether it's terminal faulty valve and I need a new tyre. Fingers crossed it's a cheap fix.