Caz counts it down

cazmanian_minx

Not a bad day, we had a stack of vouchers to use at the supermarket and got an £83 shop down to £66

I've spent the afternoon making a bracelet


and writing a blog post about it - I've shared on the business Facebook page and Pinterest, so hopefully it'll generate a little bit of traffic. I'm slowly starting to understand how to use social media a little bit better; the Facebook page is getting more views and I'm getting a few re-pins on Pinterest which is great because I only started using that recently.

Time to stop work for the day and put my feet up on the sofa with the Saturday Telegraph crossword I think

brizzledfw

Looks lush Caz. You have of me thinking re some HM Xmas presents...but will have to work on my knotting skills!

X

cazmanian_minx

We've had some *horrible* weather here today. Amazingly the horses were both dry when I went out to them this morning, but it had been raining and windy overnight and Finn was so pleased to see me bringing his rug that he virtually did his own straps up Merlin was less impressed and trotted back up to the top field when I went to put his on, so I took it back down to the shed. As I was putting it away I heard a ZZZZZZIPPPPPPPPP noise - the kind of noise that a Weatherbeeta rug makes as its pony wearer decides to limbo dance under the electric fencing into the part of the field that's resting and therefore has long grass :mad: It had started raining heavily by this point and in the hour it took me to re-jig the fencing arrangements so I had enough tape to do a double strand at that point, catch Finn and put up said double strand, I got soaked even in waterproofs.

By 5pm Merlin had had enough of being Mr Macho and let me take him to his shelter, squeegee him off and give him a rub down with a towel. He had Finn's fleece drying rug on for quarter of an hour (I'm watching a few on eBay for him but no joy yet) and then that got swapped for his high neck turnout - I got a nose bump for my trouble, which is about as affectionate as he gets, bless him.

Nothing financial to report unless you count bagging up more alphabet beads while watching the Hickstead Derby!

cazmanian_minx

I was hoping that the horrible weekend weather would make for bumper sales as everyone stayed in and browsed eBay, but it wasn't to be - I only banked £300 this morning

The good news is that the flatbacks are on their way (minus the sheep, which I'm gutted about because those were the ones I most wanted to see! They'll follow later) and I'll get the tracking number tomorrow when it reaches Hong Kong.

In the meantime, I'm playing about with beads and small plastic boxes and putting together Amazon-friendly kits. Need to get some 8-per-sheet printer labels though, just to finish them off nicely with my logo on the top (and my website address on the bottom )

cazmanian_minx

I had a bit of a lazy week with the manure spreading last week and only did 12 barrows, but it really is making a difference.

This has been resting for 4 weeks and has had manure on it for 2.5 weeks:


This is a bit of the same field, also rested for 4 weeks, but hasn't had manure spread on it yet:


Quite a difference and without having to fork out for fertilizer as well

I chased up a credit note I was due from one of my suppliers today and was told that they'd had a look through my invoices and realised I was due more postage refunds than I'd applied for (I think they're wrong, but I'm not complaining!). They're going to sort it out for me and have told me not to pay them any more money until they get their records straight - fine by me!

Knit_Witch

Sounds as though things are going well

cazmanian_minx

Incoming flatbacks! They left Hong Kong at 4am this morning and arrived in Germany 45 minutes ago With a bit of luck they'll overnight to East Midlands Airport and I should get them around Tuesday.

There'll be no scores on the doors tomorrow morning as Saturday is, I believe, my first anniversary of starting this diary (where has the time gone???) so I'll do a week, month and year round-up then.

brizzledfw

Caz..how could you deny us ). Oh well we will have to wait I guess!

Amazing the difference to that grass btw

cazmanian_minx

One of my husband's favourite sayings is 'He lie like hairy egg' and that's what I appear to have done yesterday because I've just realised that since my personal current account is in credit and will stay in credit after the Saturday shop, I CAN do scores on the doors for week, month and year today! Here we go....

(last week/this week/ + or - amount)
Business
Overdraft: -£-8307.96 / -£8436.69 -£128.73

Business total: -£-8307.96 / -£8436.69 -£128.73

Personal
Overdraft: -£3.41 / -£0.00 +£3.41
Egg card: -£3350.00 / -£3350.00 no change
Barclaycard: -£2575.00 / -£2575.00 no change
Nationwide card: -£2685.00 / -£2685.00 no change

Personal total: -£8613.41 / -£8610.00 +£3.41

Grand total: -£16,921.37 / -£17,046.69 -£125.32

Bit disappointed to have slipped back into the £17ks, but it's been a hell of a week for spends on the business account. £30 to SagePay for my payment gateway, £445.24 for the resin flatbacks (now on their way from Inverness to Thurso for delivery Monday :j:j), £108.94 to RBS for the last quarter's interest, £16.50 to Terapeak and £717.50 to Royal Mail for last month's post.

Anyway, moving on, personal debt figures for June:


Debt 31st May 30th June

Overdraft £324.67 £0.00 -£324.67
Egg card £3420.36 £3350.00 -£70.36
Barclaycard £2615.00 £2575.00 -£40.00
Nationwide £2714.44 £2685.00 -£29.44

Total £9074.47 £8610.00 -£464.47

Though I must confess that the overdraft being £0.00 is a *bit* of a cheat because there's some money in there from Mr Minx for my birthday present and it's going overdrawn again as soon as that's paid for

Anyway, onwards and downwards to the first ever ANNUAL scores on the doors :beer::beer:

Debt 29th June 2012 29th June 2013
Business
Overdraft: -£1910.01 -£8835.91 -£6925.90
Barclaycard: -£8999.00 £0.00 +£8999.00

Business total: £10,909.01-£8835.91 +£2073.10

Personal
Overdraft: -£3620.69 £0.00 +£3620.69
Tesco card: -£1608.91 £0.00 +£1608.91
Egg card: -£3521.76 -£3350.00 +£171.76
Dental loan: -£1250.00 £0.00 +£1250.00
Post Office card: -£800.00 £0.00 +£800.00
Barclaycard: £0.00 -£2575.00 -£2575.00
Nationwide: £0.00 -£2685.00 -£2685.00

Personal total: -£10,801.36 -£8610.00 +£2191.36

Grand total: -£21,710.37£17,046.69 +£4663.68

To be honest? Not as good as I'd hoped I suppose if I hadn't borrowed the extra £5k for the business it would be down to £12,046 and £9663 paid off and I'd be feeling a lot better about it. As it is, I'm in the quiet months for the business (it'll start picking up again in August) and all that money is tied up in newly bought stock which is only just starting to translate into sales. I suppose I hoped that the new stock would be like waving a magic wand over the business and suddenly I'd have more sales than I could cope with, but it hasn't quite worked like that!

Two happy things to report though - I think I mentioned here that I'd booked my first ever print advert for the business and put a discount code on it so I could see if I got any new customers from it. The magazine went on sale 2 days ago (at least that's when I got my subscription copy) and I had a sale using the code this evening The other happy thing is that the NatWest bank statement came through and my next interest payment is 69p

Anyway, I said on day one of this diary that I wanted to get my debt paid off by the time I was 40 (I think we can discount the over-optimistic 'end of this year' back in January.....!). I've got 786 days left and I need to pay off £21.69 a day of capital to make it - so the rate has actually gone UP from a year ago :(:( On the bright side, everything is shifted onto better interest rates now. Apart from £263 at 16.9% on the Egg card, everything else is 6.5% or lower, a lot of it interest free. Which is a good thing because over the last 12 months I've paid out £1297.79 in interest and balance transfer fees on the personal debts :eek::eek::eek: and £763.27 on business ones :eek::eek: for a total of £2061.06 :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek: To put it into perspective that would have paid for both my horses for 19 months and 3 weeks :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

brizzledfw

Thanks for the scores!! Amazing to think what you have 'wasted' in interest...I was the same! Scary when you look at it in an annual basis and not just weekly or monthly. Anyway...I think you're doing very well...especially when you consider how erratic your income can be...you're making huge progress and keeping your business vibrant at the same time! Well done!