Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Business’ Category

Wendy’s about to make a start on Mums Finance after finding out that there’s money in tham thar hills, especially if you’re writing a finance related blog.

I imagine that it’ll be a day or two before she gets going in that we don’t even have the software loaded nor the database set up as yet. She’s busy picking out a new template for it at the moment though.

Sometimes I think we’re getting a bit carried away with the blogs but then we look at the money flowing in from them.

As it’s the start of the B&B/self-catering marketing season, I’ve made a start on trying to drum up some more entries for our various listing sites.

Usually, the rule of thumb is that you get about 1% return on any marketing so, in theory, I need to send out 100 invitations just to get one new entry. That’s certainly been the case with any previous e-mails I’ve sent out but for a variety of reasons the return on this particular e-mail has already passed 3% and there’s probably another week or so before the responses will start to really peter out.

How come? It’s combination of reasons. The listing is free which should improve the response although it hasn’t done so in the past but perhaps the bigger reason is that I gather that a lot of people haven’t had a great year with their properties so they’re probably taking up more marketing opportunities now than they would do otherwise (funnily enough, the sites have been pulling in much more business than expected this year).

Anyway, if you’re looking for a good freebie listing for your B&B/inn or self-catering place you can sign up at Our Inns.

I’m reliably informed that the place to go locally to launder some money is a small bank branch in a town just over the border.

Or at least that’s where my informant banks his cash.

The only problem with his choice is that he’s in France and the bank is in Spain. No problem with the currency but what he’s not taken into account is that all European countries have a co-operation agreement in place which means that this bank account will be reported automatically to the French authorities.

I suspect that it will take quite a long time before that attitude of money becoming invisible when you use a bank just over the border changes. It’s been pointless for the Germans to drive over to Luxembourg with a suitcase of cash for quite some time (a very popular pastime apparently).

Anyway, if you’re considering a spot of money laundering, you’ll usually go rather further than just over the border these days.

We are just rubbish at choosing accountants. It’s not that we don’t ask for recommendations because we do.

It’s that the first accountant recommended as “brilliant” to us turned out to be fine when they did the work but they just never got around to it with us.

The second came with an even more glowing recommendation and indeed she was that good. What she didn’t tell us was that she was going to be leaving the firm just a matter of months later and that the firm (apart from her) left quite a bit to be desired.

In fact they were so bad that when she left they never even bothered to open the files on her clients that she, of course, left behind. Net effect of that was that we (ie all such clients I imagine) only found out about her departure when we started getting threatening letters from the tax people saying that they were going to apply all kinds of penalties.

That was in September of last year. They finally completed the 2005 accounts just a few weeks ago (ie two years late) and still haven’t completed the 2006 accounts which is, of course, bringing in more penalty notices and quite laughable demands for money.

There’s something of a growth market in mortgage and loan quotation services at the moment both in America and here in the UK.

That’s indicative of quite a lot of shifting around in the interest rates and deals available so even if you’re not actively considering home loans, it’s a good time to have a quick look. Mortgages are usually by far the largest single expense and therefore even quite a small percentage reduction in the payments can have quite a large effect on your lifestyle. Something as small as 1% of a difference soon adds up: much better to have that money in your pocket than the banks for sure!

Loans are another flavour of the month thing too with Christmas being so close (one month and 10 days to go!). Rather than dump the whole lot on the credit cards, it’s probably better to put some thought into it as it’s easy to save quite a bit with some of the current deals (from 4.9%!).