Cazmanian_minx's MFi3 diary

cazmanian_minx

Doing a quick fly-by to say that the final scores on the doors for 2010/11 are a turnover (ex VAT) of £101,923.40 :D:D:D:D:D

abouttimetoo

Go Caz, Go Caz, Go Caz, Go Caz, Go Caz, Go Caz, Go Caz, Go Caz, Go Caz, :j:j:j:j:j

Congratulations Caz, I know how much you wanted to smash through that 100k figure, and you did by a good bit

Regards
ATT

cazmanian_minx

Oh dear, it's all going a bit pear-shaped really. Not the mortgage reduction, which is still ticking along nicely (although not on track to hit the target I gave for the challenge), but finances in every other respect are fairly tight right now.

The reasons? I totally screwed up my business cash flow. Not *entirely* my fault; I have a supplier whose terms are 50% up front and 50% on delivery, I ordered £10k of stock from them, thinking that since they normally take 3 months+ to manufacture and ship a £2k order I'd have time to get the second £5k together. Nope, they did it in 7 weeks and then hit a problem with their country's export officials which meant they needed to prove they'd received payment for the whole order before their customs department would process the export. So I had a mad scramble to magic £5k out of nowhere, which I only managed by a) not paying myself for April, b) lending the business £1k out of my personal account overdraft facility and c) sticking the VAT bill on a credit card, hence things are a bit tight all round especially since that order and another overseas order are going to arrive about 2 days apart at the end of this month and the VAT, duty and freight are going to be about another £3k.

On the bright side, it's all stuff that I've proved sells well, I've sold my tiny share portfolio to cover the gap (I have no savings for the first time in 10+ years which is a bit scary) and I've learnt an important lesson about placing large overseas orders without having the cash on hand to pay for them

I shall keep plodding onwards!

abouttimetoo

Hi Caz

We've not heard from you for a while, hope you are ok?

How are things going?

Regards
ATT

cazmanian_minx

abouttimetoo wrote: »

Hi Caz

We've not heard from you for a while, hope you are ok?

How are things going?

Regards
ATT

Hi ATT and anyone else reading,

I have a very large post-wedding financial hangover, but it was worth it

I've updated my sig, nearly 12.5% or 1/8th of the mortgage paid off now, which isn't bad going for 3 years and 2 months. The business is still going well, for some reason my toolkits are selling like the clappers on Amazon - I started using their fulfilment service and they managed to shift 50 in a month for me! I've still got some business debt hanging around, but sales are going well enough that it'll be gone fairly soon.

Personal debt - bit of a different story I have about £9,800 to pay back (the only reason I can't give you the exact figure is that I haven't had a bill from the wedding photographer yet, but I know roughly what it'll be). It's mostly at low interest rates, the list is as follows:

£3,750 - Braemar loan - 0% (life of loan) - £250 per month.
£1,000 - Tesco card - 0% (March 2012) - £35 per month
£1,778 - Post Office card - 0% (May 2012)* - snowballer
£3,917 - Egg card - 3.9% (April 2012) - £85 per month

* £900 at 0%, the remainder at 15.9%, hence this being the snowball card. Once it gets to £900 I'll make sure I have enough put away to pay off the Tesco card when the rate expires and then go after Egg.

And yes, I know that's £10,445, but I have £1700 in cash, of which about £1100 is due to the wedding photographer.

Anyhoo, I'm using YNAB to try and get on top of it and my budget isn't balancing, plus I'm going to have an expensive month because my neighbours didn't get enough off their fields this year to let me have my winter hay in exchange for helping bale it, so I need to buy 100 small bales from someone ASAP (hay's scarce up here this year) which will be about £300 and then Merlin needs his front leg scanning and x-raying as well. Poor boy has got a DDFT injury (Deep Digital Flexor Tendon), he's on 2 months of restricted movement (he'd go so nuts stabled for that long that the vet agreed he could stay turned out on a tiny fenced off bit of field) followed by 6 months of turnout after which he *might* be rideable again, but the vet isn't optimistic - and we need the scans and x-rays done to find out how bad the damage is. He's insured, but after 2 vet visits and lots of anti-inflammatory drugs I've only clocked up £130 in bills which is nowhere near the excess (£500), so not sure if I'll be claiming at all, as the scans will be £2-300.

So I'm not quite up a certain creek without a paddle, but being rapidly carried towards the entrance of it if I don't do something! I've got a couple of bits of camera equipment I never use which I can eBay - that should bring in the money for the hay at least. It's at times like this that I thank my lucky stars I'm self-employed, because I can simply knuckle down, work more hours, list more stock and up my income relatively easily, which is what I intend to do for the next few months I'll try and keep updated here while I battle the current. Actually thinking about starting a new thread, as this one's got a bit unwieldy and starts off relating to my old flat.
Caz x

cazmanian_minx

Fresh start, new thread

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3458797