More 30 Day Bloggers

Whilst I’ve been taking part in the blog challenge I’ve ‘met’ some really nice people who have some interesting blogs that are well worth a read. Below are a small selection of them, to find out more search the #30dayblog hashtag on twitter.

• Top tips for the first time mum from @catdoran

Ranging from hormones to stocking the freezer, read it here

• Top tips for making home bath bombs

A good idea for those first time mums (from @bathbombbiz) who want to relax after a long day, read it here

• A day in the life of Telford Wills and Probate

Most people will put off writing a will, but it’s better to have it sorted well in advance. Have a read about a day in the life of @telfordwills a blogger who writes wills

• How to feel a look amazing

These tips from @rosa_lingerie, well worth a read for any woman or a man wanting to treat his wife/partner

As mentioned above, search for the #30dayblog hashtag and you’ll find lots more bloggers from all walks of life blogging varied and interesting content.

Can a match mend a door?

This may seem like a bizzre topic, but I thought I’d write about it anyway.One of the doors in our house has been progressively coming off it’s hingest to the point where it wouldn’t close as it was catching on the door frame. We’ve endlessley tightened the screws in the hinge which have solved the problem temporarily, but after a couple of days we’re back to square one.Eventually I decided to ring a local tradesman who has done some work for us before and asked if he could find time to come over and see if he could fix the door. He replied ‘well I could, but it I’ll give you a tip; use match sticks, it’s all I’d do if I came over’.

Match Sticks? And then he explained what to do…

Take out the screws and put some match sticks in the hole (take off the head first!) and then put the screws back in. Some may need more than one match stick. The wood from the match sticks gives them something to bite onto and also fills up some of the hole.

10 mintues later and we’ve now got a door that closes better than it has done since we moved in 4 years ago, and it didn’t cost a penny!

Twitter or Facebook; The result is in?

After looking back over my recent blog posts the most popular by a long way was the ‘Twitter or Facebook’ post. Some comments that came through were that ‘Facebook is more inclined towards games’ and ‘I struggled with Twitter at first’. Personally I don’t really like Facebook for business, but for keeping in contact with your friends it’s very useful.

If you are using Twitter for business it can be tricky to get your head around how best to use it for your business (hint, follow @markshaw), but once it clicks it’s really very easy to do.

One of the easiest things to do is build up a massive list of people you are following, which is great to keep up to date with things, but it also has the opposite effect that your timelines become meaningless. If you use something like Tweetdeck the constant audiable alerts drive you crazy if you follow a lot of people. How best can you get around this problem? Simple, build lists!

Lists are easy to create (see here) and offer another alternative to following people. You create lists based on various interests; I have them for the 30 day bloggers, businesses based in Yorkshire, influential people, ‘Dragons’ and people who take part in the #watercoolermoment discussion each day. You can view them publicly by visiting my twitter page.

The advantage of this is 2 fold. First of all you do not have the problem of a massive timeline with lots of tweets, so you can only follow people that will add value to your twitter feed; it might be fantastic to know what Lady Gaga is having for breakfast, but does it add value to your business? Secondly, it’s easy to load up your list and see what is happening/has been happening over the last few hours for that particular list category. It saves a lot of time because you know that if you visit your list titled ’30 day bloggers’ you will be able to see what people taking part in the challenge have been posting.

Another way I have found to keep informed is to create an account at paper.li and create a newspaper. Think it’s hard? It’s not. The intial groundwork takes some time, but once it is going it’s a piece of cake. What does Paper.li do?

Paper.li organizes links shared on Twitter and Facebook into an easy to read newspaper-style format.

Create your account and then you can either create a newspaper based on people you follow, or by lists that you have saved, or by a hashtag or another search. The paper is then published at a time each day that you specify for you to read (and anyone else if you make it public). Why go to the trouble of creating it if you aren’t going to make it public?I have 2 papers which are published each day; one based around my timeline and another based around businesses based in Yorkshire which is generated from one of my lists. These papers are fantastic ways to keep up to date with things and saves you a lot of time going through your timeline as all the best posts are included in the paper. I have mine set to publish around tea time so that I can catch up on what’s been happening after tea, but not waste a lot of time doing so.To go back to the initial question: Facebook or Twitter? In my eyes it’s a no contest, Twitter every time.

What do you think?

How Did It All Begin?

Day 14 of the blog challenge and I’ve been tasked with explaining how I got into doing what I do!

Many years ago I played a lot of sport, but injury forced my to quite. At the time I worked in a job with crazy hours (4am start) so that I could finish at lunctime and head off to the gym in the afternoon. After quitting sport I was left with a huge hole in my day after work, so I decided to make use of the time and give myself some better prospects.

My father ran his own book-keeping/accountancy practice at the time, and I’d always had a head for figures so it seemed like the natural thing to do. I selected a course that seemed best suited to my needs and began to study hard in the afternoons.

Fast forward a few years and I have passed my exams and have a full time job working in a finance department, yet I wanted to use my new skills more so decided to set up my own business alongside my main job. I was open and honest with my employer about what I was doing, and assured them that it wouldn’t interfere with my daytime job. The plan is to eventually work part-time during the day once I have built up my business to a level to allow me to do so. The next logical step is full time self-employment.

Of course there are problems that have been encountered along the way. The two hardest to begin with were staying awake during the afternoon and adjusting back to studying as it had been around 4 or 5 years since I had left school. The main problems I face now are attracting new clients and marketing my business. It’s tough to keep the work/life balance in balance and some evenings I’ll come home from work to find myself working until 10pm. But I enjoy it so it’s worthwhile.

How did you come to be in the industry you are?

Money’s Too Tight to Mention

Day 13 of the blog challenge is to pick a song title and write a blog about it. I thought that Money’s Too Tight to Mention by Simply Red was rather apt considering the current financial climate.

People are finding that their disposable income has dropped considerably over the last few years, despite what the government tell us. There are all kinds of ways people can save money: changing supermarkets (we now shop at Aldi and have halved our food bill), walking instead of driving where-ever possible, don’t ‘eat out’ as much, cut down your mobile phone contract to a sim-only deal. The list goes on…

But how about ways to make more money? I’m not talking about over-time at work but setting up your own back room business. You may have skills to do something yet have never taken the plunge into going it alone. Working for youself alongside your main job is time consuming and your leisure time will decrease, but if you are working at something you enjoy then surely it’s worth it? And the extra money will always be helpful.

A few businesses that you could start up and run from your back room are:

• Artist – Caricatures, sketches, watercolours etc…
• Graphic Design
• Web Designer
• Greeting card design
• Author
• eBay Trader
• Mobile phone applications developer

I’m sure that there are others that you can think of that I’ve not mentioned – if so add them to the blog via a comment.

All of these home businesses could be set up for little or no cost at all. If you’re reading thing blog then I assume that you already have a computer, so you’re halfway there to trading on the internet. If you enjoy drawing or painting, why not try and turn some of your works of art into extra cash for yourself? The extra income may take the place of the bonus or pay rise that you didn’t get from your employer because they are having to save money too.

Don’t forget that you will need to register with HMRC if you do decide to trade self-employed. If you need any help with setting up and your financial affairs RS Book-Keeping can help you every step of the way.

I hope that this post has given you something to think about, there has rarely been a better time that now for small businesses to start up. So if you have the idea and the skills, what are you waiting for?

Blog Round-Up

The first few days of the 30 Day Blog challenge are now complete. Rather than forget about some of the post I’ve already made, here are some of the more popular posts from the past few days, including a guest blog by Telford Wills & Probate.

Tax Return Fines Set to Rise

Ways to Save Money for Your Business

Bookkeeper in Pontefract

Why Do I Like Bitsy?

Last Will & Testament; have you made yours?

Semi-Real RAF Bomber Command Story

I’ve been very fortunate with the guest blogging challenge and had 2 offers. This time from my friend Kieran Marshall who has submitted a semi-real article based around the D-Day events in 1944. His own challenge was to write an essay containing the line ‘I was in the right place at the right time’….

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The weakening rays of the soft summer sun slowly slid down the horizon. The sky turned a wonderful pink. The clouds, carried away by the wind, slid effortlessly across the still skies. The day couldn’t have been perfect. Yet it could….

The year was 1944. War waged on in the air, ground and sea. Men were murdered by men. Boys stood up to the might of armies and were destroyed. Youth disappeared in the muzzle flashes of war. We were lucky, I suppose. I was a rear gunner in a Lancaster. The job was extremely lonely and perishing cold. All I saw was where we were. The comfort of the quadruple 0.303in machine guns cheered me up a little.

As the day drew to a close, we were ordered into the bombproof briefing room. The paint peeled away from the steel, revealing shiny pieces of pure stell.

Idle chit-chat carried on until the squadron commander walked in. He was tall with a bushy brown moustache. His uniform was spotless as his shoes sparkled in the dim, bare light

The intimidating black velvet curtain slowly pulled away. We were expecting a
long haul of six to seven hours. We expected the long, thin red ribbon to stretch to Hamburg.

But we were wrong. The squadron leader, S/Ldr Adams, saw the three hundred-odd faces stare back in amazement. We would go to the coast of France, drop our deadly cargo, then return. The flight time was expected to be 3 hours.

The briefing was quickly over, so I shall not bore you with the details. The heavy feet of men echoed around the vast expanse of the airfield. Our flying gear was dragged on, weighing us down rapidly.

Then we had to wait for two hours. Those few hours always seemed to be the longest. Tonight though, it seemed quite fast. Always a bad sign…..

The crew climbed aboard the great lumbering Lancaster. The precarious yellow ladder slowly bent every time some weight was put on it. While the crew went right, I turned left to enter my ‘house’

The turret was barely big enough for me. All around was protective Perspex. The frame was angular and unwelcome. But the guns in front of me were welcoming. Like seeing an old friend, the guns were beautiful

The starter motors clicked on the engines. Soon, the roar of the four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines filled the airframe, vibrating everything. But I couldn’t see them, only hear and feel them in every bone and organ in my body

The roar rapidly evolved into a crescendo. The ‘Lanc’ surged seemingly forward and lumbered into the air. The WAAF’s waved us away, their hair floating in the gale caused by our engines

The monotony of scanning and searching the skies began. Left, right, up, down, left and back right. My eyes flicked around the dark skies, hunting for the ‘Hun’

We bombed a coastal gun battery. The light flak had hosed up to us, but that was it. Suspiciously quiet that. I wondered why..

None of us knew there was an enemy aircraft below us. The first I knew was the
blasting cannons. The skipper screamed, ‘Abandon aircraft at once! Abandon aircraft at once!’

I had the best chance at surviving. The turret turning around and I rolled out of
the blazing aircraft. The wing was lit up with the fire and vivid red flames. It soon
exploded, leaving an acrid smell of pork in the area

Floating down in my parachute, I had a really important thought. ‘I’ve missed my own wedding!’ I was due to ‘tie the knot’ on 7 June, 1944. Tonight was the 6 June The icy cold depths of the English Channel lay below me. Vast and dark, I hit the water. I banged on the parachute quick release and inflated my life-vest. Then I realised I couldn’t swim.

I floated around for a while, and then when I thought I’d die in the freezing cold
night, I was knocked unconscious by a boat.

I came to, the sound of gunfire reverberating in my head. This, I was told, a tank
landing craft going to the beaches of France. ‘The liberation of France and Europe – The Second Front!’ called an American. Moments later, he was blown to pieces by a landmine. Sand, dust and body parts flew up into the sky. Poor bloke

The door of the boat flapped open as the tanks began to roll. The engines purred as the guns glorified the air with a bang.
As soon as the last part of the track splashed onto French sand, the door snapped shut and we reversed out of hell. The engine of the boat roared out as we headed for the white cliffs of Dover

When I returned to dry land, I was hurried into hospital under protest. Blood stained my arms, legs and face. That boat did quite a bit of damage when it hit me.

I wanted to see my crewmates. But every time I asked they came up with various
excuses. After three days, I had enough. I asked the pretty nurse, Siobhán, whether they were dead. They were and she started blubbering and crying. Her ponytails, tied beautifully, hung down almost in respect of the dead as she ran away from me

As for me, I was saddened. We had been a crew for four years. I guess I must have been in the right place at the right time. No, I was in the right place at the right time.

Tax Return Fines Set to Rise

You may or may not have seen the news that HMRC are now going to bit hitting people who file their tax return late (or not at all) a lot harder. To read a little bit more about it see this link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12997974

At the moment I doubt that any of us have money to burn, so the easiest and quickest way to avoid these fines is to get your tax return filed as soon as possible. If you do not have the time to compile it yourself it will save you a lot of time, effort and now money to employ someone to do it for you. For a comparitively small fee you can give them all your documents for the tax year and let someone else have the hassle and stress of preparing the tax return for you. All that is left for you to do is pay your advisor and the tax due to HMRC, how simple is that?

You may be surprised at how many people there are in your local area that will offer these services to you, so it should be quite easy to get a few quotes to choose from. If you cannot find anyone nearby who you wish to work with, some businesses (RS Book-Keeping included) offer to work remotely so geographical differences are not longer an issue.

There really are no excuses now if you file your tax return late and the severe fines which you will face are a clear indication that you need to sort out your tax return sooner rather than later.

Last Will & Testament: Have you made yours?

Day 11 of the 30 day blogging challenge asked that we find a guest blogger for our blog. I’m pleased to say that Ruth from Telford Wills and Probate has taken the time to write one for me….

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Hi to everyone reading this on Rob Scott’s blog!

As part of the 30 day blogging challenge a guest blogger was required to show case someone else’s blogging so here I am! I am hopeful that Rob will reciprocate when I reach day 11 of the challenge too though not actually asked him yet! Does a (not so) subtle hint work?! [Not a problem ed.]

So who am I? Wife, mother of four (all aged 8 and under), Blackpool FC fan, cricket fan, homebaker, (like Rob’s wife) a lover of house programmes that my husband doesn’t understand why I watch and finally a “work from homer” having set up my own business last year.

In my professional capacity I am a Legal Executive and specialise in Wills, Lasting Powers of Attorney and estate administration – not the most exciting of topics to be blogging about BUT is something that so many of us decide not to do right now as it’s such a horrible thing to think about.  But I am going to talk about it anyway simply because I feel it’s something too many people put off until it’sjust too late.

Did you know that the vast majority of people in England and Wales do not have a valid Will? They either think they’re too young, have nothing to leave, have no one to leave it to, think that the people they would want to get it all would get it anyway even if they didn’t make a Will or that they are invincible and nothing horrid will ever happen to them. Trouble is that unfortunately this is just not true!

If you’re over 18 you are not too young (ESPECIALLY if you have children – do you know that if both parents die without appointing guardians for their children, the children are taken into care and the Courts decide where and with whom they will live? Not a nice thought for the poor orphaned children who will be grieving enough.

If you think you have nothing to leave but do the lottery, what happens if you win the lottery on Saturday night and get knocked down by a bus on Sunday morning? Who gets your millions then?

If you think you have no one to leave it to, I am sure you can think of a list of people you’d rather inherited your hard earned (albeit small or even not so small) fortune rather than the government and the Queen (who will get it all if you have no family who would inherit under the intestacy laws if you have no Will).

If you think the people you want to inherit will do so anyway under the intestacy laws so you don’t need to bother with the cost and hassle of making a Will, think again! In today’s modern society with step-families, unmarried couples etc. the laws have yet to change to match society. It could be that the ones you love actually end up with nothing and could lose their home. By putting your wishes into a Will you are protecting the ones you love.

And if you think you’re invincible? I wish you were but sorry the hard truth is that you are not and one day the horrid Mr Reaper is going to get you. Hopefully though this won’t be for a long time!

I don’t really want to scare you into making a Will but please give it some serious thought, if not for yourself, do it for the people who will be left behind, they don’t want to end up clearing up your mess!!

If you have questions or want some advice, please have a look at our website (www.telfordwillsandprobate.co.uk) and contact us.

And now, lecture over, go and enjoy the beautiful sunshine that we have been blessed with today! Thanks for reading and thanks especially to Rob for allowing me the opportunity to blog to his followers/readers.

Take care,

Ruth

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Thank you for the blog Ruth, a very thought provoking piece.

Should you wish to create your Will, contact Ruth via the above website, or via twitter @TelfordWills

Bookkeeper in Pontefract

If you are looking for any book-keeping or accounts work carrying out and your business is based in and around the Pontefract area (or anywhere), please contact me sooner rather than later!

I offer a winning combination of expertise and and experience for sole traders and small businesses all with helpful advice and a friendly, efficient service as standard.

Now that the 2010/11 tax year has ended it makes more sense to sort out your financial affairs out NOW whilst things are still fresh in your mind. By leaving it until the end of the year you run the risk of forgetting something important. The sooner you have your accounts prepared, the sooner you will know what tax you will need to pay at the end of the year.

By employing a professional to compile your accounts you will have peace of mind that your accounts will be compiled correctly, and it also gives you time to focus on running your business.

RS Book-Keeping can help with all your book-keeping and accountancy needs at extremely competitive rates, contact me today to see how I can help you

http://www.rsbookkeeping.co.uk