Cazmanian_minx's MFi3 diary

cazmanian_minx

Cleared the Barclaycard completely this morning however I've promptly spent another £3,500 on more stock. This isn't quite as nuts as it sounds; it's for the product that I sell most of (brings in about half my turnover) and last year the supplier went out of stock mid-October and didn't get any more in until the week before Christmas, which was an absolute disaster for me. I now have nearly 20,000 in stock in various lengths and finishes (they sell in 5s or 50s) and I'm hoping that'll last me through because the supplier is already out of stock again on some of it and may not get another delivery this year.

So the business spending is more or less over for the year. Just a couple of small top-up orders from UK suppliers, import duty to pay on one last overseas order next month and the VAT bill (£515) and that's it.

On the personal spending front, all the expensive horse stuff is bought now (touch wood!) and his day-to-day running costs aren't that bad. It's about £6 for a 20kg bag of sugar beet shreds and he's made one last three months so far with enough for another 10 days or so in the bottom (good thing, there isn't any to be had up here until the end of the month). Chaff is about the same and I still have 3/4s of a dustbin full. He's being expensive on the shoe front, he over-reaches slightly and has had a front shoe off approximately once a fortnight - he has over-reach boots, but he's prone to mud fever so I can't leave them on in the field. He's podgy enough that I haven't had to start feeding him hay yet and when I do, my neighbours are giving me haylage for the winter in return for the 10 hours of hard labour I did in their fields helping them bring it in - they're lovely His field shelter has had ultra thick rubber matting put down which will save on bedding too.

So hopefully the spending is now more or less over (other than getting my teeth fixed, which I'm hoping I can do on their 0% finance plan) and the saving can start again.

cazmanian_minx

Gosh, no update for a month, where's the time gone?

The good news to report is that I've not only got all the card balances paid off (apart from the 0% Egg) but the business overdraft is paid off as well, so I now have no interest-bearing debt other than the mortgage again :D:D:D The only payments due between now and December 10th are 1) supplier - £550, 2) Barclaycard - £4622 and 3) me - £1800. To do it without going back into the business overdraft means taking £311 a day and I've been averaging £650 a day since the beginning of this month:eek::eek::eek: so hopefully I'm going to go into the new year in a strong financial position.

Time to get that offset moving back in the right direction

SmlSave

:T Well Done! :T

cazmanian_minx

Oh dear Gods, the postman has just delivered a big envelope from my accountant containing my accounts and tax return. That's all the offset bar £400 disappearing on 31st January then...

Oh well, look on the bright side, it means the business is doing well!!

cazmanian_minx

Another month, another mortgage payment - SO close to having 10% paid off now!

I've been exceptionally good and done all the Christmas shopping out of my bank account rather than whacking it on the Tesco credit card like normal - only food and fuel goes on that now. Even the business account is in credit, so much so that I've been able to transfer £2000 over to the offset savings account It might not be in there for too long - the VAT bill due at the end of Jan/beginning of Feb is going to be a monster - but every little bit helps, right? At least it means I'm finally back down under my starting figure

baffcat

Okey kokey, Miss Minx. Where are you?

I've finally scratched that itch, and it was not seeing updates on your thread.

Hope you're okay. As I've said once before, I don't post but I'm always lurking.

Baff

abouttimetoo

baffcat wrote: »

Okey kokey, Miss Minx. Where are you?

I've finally scratched that itch, and it was not seeing updates on your thread.

Hope you're okay. As I've said once before, I don't post but I'm always lurking.

Baff

Me too Caz, I miss your updates, hope you're ok

cazmanian_minx

Oh gosh, it's been a while hasn't it?? Life has been rather busy...let me go and update my sig...ouch, that was painful

OK, well, the good news is that this month's mortgage payment took us over the £15k paid off mark and the 10% paid off mark :T:T:T:T:T The bad news is that I was storing my tax bill savings and my VAT bill savings in the two offset accounts (I put personal savings in the offset current account and business savings in the offset savings account) and I've been very bad about replacing them.

Bad Minx, I know, but there are three reasons:

1) In January the owner of the horse I have on loan decided she would like me to keep him, so I bought him from her which put a bit of a dent in the finances.

2) Business has been going really well, so I'm putting nearly all the profits back into more stock - I've ordered nearly £18k's-worth this month :eek::eek: and the first batch won't turn up until the end of April, which leaves the cashflow squeaking a bit.

3) The wedding's only five months away and people are starting to want paying for things.

I suspect this year is going to be a bit of a write-off as far as reducing the mortgage over and above our built-in overpayments go, but we keep on keeping on

My current challenge is to get as much cash into the business as I can before my year end on 31st March - when I did my accounts on Friday, my annual turnover was £97,400, which gives me 13 days to take £2,600 (ex VAT). I know turnover = vanity, profit = sanity, cash flow = king, but I SO, SO want to get to £100k it's not true!! I'm going through all those dusty boxes in the far corner of the stock room and auctioning off the contents on eBay, made about £80 on 20 items so far I've also started selling on Amazon which has been very successful, so I need to build on that - I'm going to start using their fulfilment service on a trial basis, as that would allow me to order even bigger quantities of stock knowing that I can store it in their warehouses and get it shipped back to me if I misjudge how much will sell on each platform.

And on a personal note, I ran my first ever half marathon last weekend in a time of 2hrs 21 mins 31 seconds, which I was really chuffed about given that a) I'd expected to do it in about 2 hrs 45 mins and b) it was in Inverness and snowing/sleeting at the time!

Off to go and dig the vegetable patch now and wait for the low tide caused by this supermoon to see if I can get into the inlet on the beach where all the driftwood collects with a quad and trailer...

abouttimetoo

Hi Caz, congratulation on the marathon front, go you

Life sounds very busy for you and you are doing amazingly well with your business, I can completely understand your wish to hit the £100k turnover, I'd be exactly the same and it's also a lovely round number too isn't it

TallGirl

Nice to hear from you again sounds like you made the right choice when you started the business. Also lucky on the home front thought weddings are expensive.

Keep in touch.