cutting down on spending

I've been working on a Mod Podge craft project for the past few weeks, doing one bit at a time while watching True Blood or Grey's Anatomy online in the evenings. It's not the finest craftsmanship, but I'm happy with it all the same.


I bought the drawers second-hand from the Camberwell market ages ago and started painting it red. I wasn't feeling that so I used found papers to decorate the drawers instead. The top left and right are layers of vintage pattern paper. The diamond blue pattern was part of the packaging for something I bought. The blue is from the cover of a vintage book we were going to give away, and the bottom drawer is covered with pages from another vintage book.


It's going to be a totally new thing for me to actually have desk storage. Not sure how I'll best use it yet.

I've just realised how much I've bought online in the past couple of months. Books and stationery and tape and things.

mouse pad from My Favorite Mirror

tape from Nothing Elegant

Pricing Your Craftwork from Fishpond

lacy bird bowl by Prince Design UK

And that's only a portion of my purchases. I thought I was doing well because I carefully considered each purchase, and nothing I bought was a waste, but that's not good enough for me. In the interest of saving money and reducing environmental impact, I want to do better. I've been reading a book called Budget Wise, Dollar Rich, borrowed from the libary like a good little saver.


Looks a bit spammy, doesn't it? Despite that, it's really helpful. Now that Tim isn't working (for money, anyway) I'm paying the large bills, so I've made a budget for Heidi & Seek and for home. It's all well and good to make a spreadsheet with the best of intentions, but although I've done that in the past, I haven't enforced what I've written down or monitored how I was doing. I've never been in much debt, and I always pay off my credit card during the interest-free period, but I've never consistently put money aside for savings either. Except when I was saving for a holiday, but that was different. Single life living at home with your parents is so different.

Anyway, my plan of attack now is this:

• I withdraw in cash a certain amount at the start of every week, and must only use this to pay for things. Just before I withdraw the next week's allowance, I put the leftovers of the previous week in a jar. Any additional money I get, like gifts or random cash goes in this jar too. My motivation for keeping my spending within my allowance is seeing this jar's contents grow. It'll pay for extra more expensive things, or is there if I feel I deserve a treat. I might allocate 20% of the jar to 'treats' and the rest to savings, and then deposit it at my bank when it gets big.
  
• I've made my allowance quite low because I want to try to make do. Since we're vegetarian our meals don't have to cost much. Our pantry is full of things we keep accumulating but don't seem to use, so I want to see how far I can take what we already have and only buy the basics week to week. They will easily fit within my allowance.
  
• I'm doing a similar thing with Heidi & Seek, because sometimes I can get carried away with buying supplies or whatnot. Some months my expenses are sky-high and some months it's very little. I'm setting a monthly allowance for Heidi & Seek, except at the end of the month, the money left will be topped up instead of taken out, saved and completely replaced.
  
• For Heidi & Seek purchases that I don't need immediately, like certain books and equipment, I'm putting aside some money each month into a linked online account, and I can only buy them when I have enough in that account.
• Then of course I've made the standard annual tables of bills and other required expenses, but there's not much I can do about most of those. I cut my mobile phone plan from $50 to $20, and I'll see if there are cheaper options for the rest, too.
  

The good thing about this cash system is that I can see how much I've spent that week without having to keep a tally (although I'm being anal so I'm doing the tally anyway). And I can still buy the things that mean a lot to me, but not just 'when I feel like it' and not all at once. I have to save up and to really consider where I want to spend my money.

Do you budget or have system that works for you?

frustrations and stepping up my game

I can be a very impatient person. I also have the tendency to want to take on the world. These traits can make me frustrated because a) inevitably, things I want don't happen right away and b) high expectations lead to overwheming feelings.

Tim is returning to study postgrad law in August, which I am utterly proud of him for. Though it means he can only manage three days of work per week after then. He currently manages a bookshop that's so hectic the job can't be done in three days a week. The best offer they could give him instead was a hefty pay cut and a demotion (which, if I may say, I find quite ridiculous given his experience and skill there). In any case, he resigned and will no longer be working there in four weeks time. This is worrying in two ways: what if he can't find another job, and even if he does find one, how will we manage without a steady full-time income?

The best way out is for Heidi & Seek to start earning a steady income to make up the difference. I really don't want to have to start applying for jobs elsewhere, because as bloody difficult as it is to run your own business, at least it's mine and runs on my own terms. It's flexible for when I have to be home for Ellie, and since I work from home I don't need to waste time commuting. I don't want to put it on the backburner, as it inevitably will be if I get another job.

So, I've been trying to figure out how to step up my game. I worked out how much I'd need to sell per week and per month, and honestly, the figure feels so far away it's not funny. I'm half moping at the futility of it all and half planning (and continuing to sew winter stuff in between) because I can't get these issues out of my head. Things I want to do:

• Get to know my market better. This is the one that's troubling me the most, and also what I think is the most important. There is a difference between the things I make and the things people buy, and I have no real idea what that is. I just guess and experiment, and while that's cool some of the time, it's not good enough for every time. I'm not sure how to go about this yet.
  
  The survey I put up a while ago wasn't as helpful as I anticipated, maybe because I didn't ask the right questions. I need to understand the difference between people saying 'that's cool' and people actually buying something. Maybe it would help to study what things of mine have sold quickly and gotten attention, and try to mimic their features in new pieces, but that's harder than it sounds: How do I know if something sold because that one customer liked it a lot but most people wouldn't?
  
  
• Post new listings every day. I've been good with this the past couple of weeks, though to be honest I'm not sure it's helped sales. But I do think in theory it's better to give lots of choice. What do you think?
  
  
• Open up my Made It shop again. I'm trying to make enough winter stock so I can fill my Made It and Etsy shop. I'd like to try Made It again because it's smaller, therefore easier to get seen, plus it's local and I seem to have gotten mostly Aussie sales recently.
  
  
• Start doing a market. This idea freaks me out a little because it's new and I've never done one before. Plus it involves me spending a whole lot of time finding display things, making signs, arranging the stalls, and so on and so on. But, given my previous income calculations, I don't think I can rely solely on online sales.
  
  
• Work on wholesale accounts.
  

Wow, I'm not sure if I feel better for having written that all out or worse for the sheer amount of work I have ahead of me.

P.S. Heidi & Seek is in the new Frankie mag, out tomorrow (squee!). Check it out, there's also details to enter a competition to win one of five Heidi & Seek tops! I don't have a scanner, but I'll try to grab a picture of it soon.

accounting

This is what happens when you haven't touched your accounts for a few months.


And that's not including all the online transactions I've made.

The reason I've been putting it off is because for the first half of the financial year I kept my accounts in MYOB. When the trial version ran out I decided I wasn't going to pay $170 or something for it when there are open source options for free, and when my accounts are completely basic. (I think that my accountant won't be pleased, but I'll deal with that when tax time comes.) But that means I need to re-enter all my info into the other program.

I've been using Gnucash for personal accounts for a while, and it does small business, too. It's reasonably easy to use and shows all the reports I want. The only problem with it is that when I try to print something, it freezes. This is okay for my near-paperless office (just got the receipts, which I'm required to keep) and if I really want to print something I can print screen and move it to Photoshop, to do with what I will.

Sigh. Back to it..