So back into the long pull towards pay day. Like every month, I've got the usual paranoia about whether or not I'm going to have enough spare cash to make it. I've mentioned before that I've got a day to day countdown of how much I need to have in my current account to meet my direct debits. But I never trust it and I do the same thing every month. It gets to this time and I shit myself that I've not got enough. It kind of looks like I am going to make it. Just. Whatever, doesn't matter how much I scrape by with as long as I make it.
Every month. I just can't seem to ease off and relax and have faith that it will happen. Every month my anxiety shoots through the roof. But I suppose I am lucky, my anxiety is just in the last week. People live with this every single day. I guess for a while that was me but slowly, like over the course of years, I've managed to stretch it out so that the anxiety only happens in the final week. I suppose that is something.
I keep hoping for good news. I keep believing some day my luck is going to change. I did a PPI search just before the deadline last year and I keep thinking I am going to come home and there is going to be a nice, fat cheque waiting for me. It's dragged on and on, apparently there are two accounts that qualify but I've still not heard a thing.
Instead, I came home the other day and it's a final demand for my tax bill. I don't know why but every year I have to do a self-assessment. Again, that is another thing the blows my stress levels through the roof. I work a normal, PAYE job. Straightforward. For some reason I cannot figure out they change my tax code every year and every year I seem to end up under paying when I submit the assessment.
Most years it hasn't been a problem. I'm usually a few hundred quid under. I have a direct debit set up to the government and pay a little every month. But not this year. This year they are up one their hind legs and making final demands for the same few hundred quid. And instead of just letting the direct debit run like always you have to go through a big fucking palaver on the website. OK, it's maybe not that complicated but it's the wording of it. It is written basically as if you are asking them to consider being merciful and you have to acknowledge your unending gratitude to these cunts.
There is a real change in tone when it comes to tax. The cynic in me suspects the change in government. They are not going to chase Amazon or Virgin, they are going to fuck you and me. You can really see it coming in anything that involves you interacting with the government about anything financial. It doesn't bode well, it feels like we are headed to a good old fucking on the village green.
I've run out of credit on my daily credit card again as well. It happened with about 10 days to go and I'm not really sure why. I suspect I might have underpaid last month. So while I was celebrating having a little more cash in the bank that month I was actually headed towards maxing out my card. I've been having to pay for food and the basics of daily life on my debit card. Cash straight out of my bank. Hence why the panic about having enough til the payday.
I've fucked up this week as well. I've been coming out of the depression I was in last week. I was feeling in a celebratory mood so been buying lunches every day. Not much, maybe 3 quid a day, but it still mounts up. Food is how I medicate my moods sometimes. It's the thing that surprises most as I tend to eat really healthily and I'm fanatical about exercise. But I also know I do that as I have a really addictive personality and if I didn't I would be a fat fuck.
Last week seems like a lifetime ago. My depression phases are always like that. After my divorce it was long, sustained lows but now it tends to be 3 or 4 days, maybe a week, of intense low followed by a clear ramping up the other side. When I climb out of the pit it always feels like it was a very long time ago and I don't know what the fuck I was ever complaining about.
Work is still pissing me off and I am still on the lookout for a new job. I have grown to fucking despise the place. My salary hasn't changed in six years and now I'm being moved to a new location about 15 miles further away. It's not everyone, just a handful of people and I am one of that handful. It is going to cost another 20 quid a week or so in fuel. It also fucks up my childcare obligations as I can't make my drop off and pick-up times any more. I'm looking at either cutting my hours (and therefore salary) or paying for extra childcare.
Not a fucking question about whether this causes me problems, whether it is manageable. Just told to live with it or fuck off. And sure enough my contract has a clause in it that allows for this.
I fucking hate these people. I am paying for four millionaires to get richer. There will be no thanks. I might get another £50 Amazon voucher (I buy fuck all from Amazon) but that's it.
So at the moment I am doing my best to find another job that pays better and treats staff better. But I can feel myself teetering on another depression over it because those two things don't seem to exist in the same place.
Thursday, February 27, 2020
Wednesday, February 19, 2020
Weekly Update 19th Feb 2020
I know, I skipped a week. I didn't do any update and not done any other blogging. It's been a difficult couple of weeks. I've been struggling with depression and anxiety over the last couple of weeks and I honestly could not be arsed writing a single word.
A lot of stuff has been piling up on me. Being skint, that's the obvious one. I think back to ten years ago and it's like a different age. I had money. OK, I wasn't Jeff Bezos. I was on a decent salary, my debts were low and I didn't have much by way of obligations. A lot of shit happened in between. Becoming a father, getting divorced, taking a job I fucking hate just so that I can be there for my daughter. But it is still hard to believe that the life I lived then and the life I live now were the same.
I've been doing a lot of thinking. I'm not materialistic, what I miss was not worrying. I think that is it, really. It's the terror of logging into my bank account. It's whatever bill is coming up the road at me that I have no way of paying. It's having to say no to simple stuff like buying my daughter a £2 toy in a shop because that's how fucking critical my weekly budgeting has become.
That worry really affects me. I think I am one of those people that is naturally prone towards depression anyway but that lack of control, of being unable to manage my own destiny, really brings it on.
I don't know if this is an aspect of being skint but I also don't ever seem to have time. I'm constantly going from one thing to another, school, work, cleaning, cooking, shopping. No matter how organised I try to be I always feel like I am in a serious time debt. There's no let up. Again, when I had money I don't remember being this pressed for time. I don't know why being skint should have any affect. But it does. Just as I have no money, nor do I have any time. That just adds another layer of anxiety on to the depression I've been experiencing.
I think tiredness is a side effect of that lack of time. Whenever I get to a point in the day when everything is done I just want to switch off and zone out. I end up watching shit TV and I fucking hate TV. It's one of my mental state barometers: if I'm watching a lot of TV then you can bet that my happiness level is in the toilet. I am constantly tired and just cannot work up any motivation for things that are not essential to keeping all this going. Blogging is one of them. Seeing friends. Eating right.
I just don't feel like I've been looking after myself. I look grey, my hair is scruffy. I've got a skin abscess on my back that's appeared this week and it's fucking agony. I love to stay fit and I've just been going through the motions. Bare minimum of effort. This is something I need to sort out. I both look and feel like shit at the moment.
February is always a reflective month for me. All the January excitement has burnt itself out and I've fallen back into the same old same old rut. I went to see my parents at the weekend. They are both in their 80's and when I go and see them now it feels very autumnal always. I know their era is coming to an end and I think I've been mourning that for years before it's even happened.
And that also means I've been getting old. I am not where I thought I was going to be at this stage of my life. Going home reminded me of how many dreams and ambitions that I had that I ended up trading for a relationship with someone who, now, I absolutely despise. I chose not to pursue the things I wanted to do because I thought being with this person was more important. And now I wouldn't piss on her if she was on fire. So that leaves me wondering what the fuck it was all for.
The ambitions I have now are so unassuming. They are the most unambitious ambitions imaginable. I don't know if they are even dreams or if they are just "making the best" of the situation. There's a file on my laptop with a list of stuff that I "want" to do. But I have no real connection to any of them. The fire I used to feel isn't there for it. I think I'm scared because I know that I'd need to sacrifice to make any big changes in my life.
I think one of my big problems is that I don't treat myself with the same compassion that I treat other people. Am I as skint as I think? Am I really that much of a scumbag? Do I need to be freezing in my house? Do I need to feel like shit? Or is all this just a story I've told myself that I am now starting to believe?
Either way, I know that if I am writing my blog then I've come out of the other side of this blue period. If I am starting to do stuff again and fix stuff and take action then I am on the up-swing.
My mental state is always as cyclic as this. The storm has threatened for a while. Sorry for none of the usual stuff this week. There's no personal financial breakthroughs here. Fuck knows if I've made any savings as I blew my budget with the 500 mile trip to see my parents and with it being school half-term this week as well. What the fuck happened to playing with your friends or watching telly? When did school holidays become this arms race of constantly having to find activities and places to go? That's so ironic, that we have all this opportunity for stuff to do and none of it is as satisfying as simple stuff.
Back to normal service.
A lot of stuff has been piling up on me. Being skint, that's the obvious one. I think back to ten years ago and it's like a different age. I had money. OK, I wasn't Jeff Bezos. I was on a decent salary, my debts were low and I didn't have much by way of obligations. A lot of shit happened in between. Becoming a father, getting divorced, taking a job I fucking hate just so that I can be there for my daughter. But it is still hard to believe that the life I lived then and the life I live now were the same.
I've been doing a lot of thinking. I'm not materialistic, what I miss was not worrying. I think that is it, really. It's the terror of logging into my bank account. It's whatever bill is coming up the road at me that I have no way of paying. It's having to say no to simple stuff like buying my daughter a £2 toy in a shop because that's how fucking critical my weekly budgeting has become.
That worry really affects me. I think I am one of those people that is naturally prone towards depression anyway but that lack of control, of being unable to manage my own destiny, really brings it on.
I don't know if this is an aspect of being skint but I also don't ever seem to have time. I'm constantly going from one thing to another, school, work, cleaning, cooking, shopping. No matter how organised I try to be I always feel like I am in a serious time debt. There's no let up. Again, when I had money I don't remember being this pressed for time. I don't know why being skint should have any affect. But it does. Just as I have no money, nor do I have any time. That just adds another layer of anxiety on to the depression I've been experiencing.
I think tiredness is a side effect of that lack of time. Whenever I get to a point in the day when everything is done I just want to switch off and zone out. I end up watching shit TV and I fucking hate TV. It's one of my mental state barometers: if I'm watching a lot of TV then you can bet that my happiness level is in the toilet. I am constantly tired and just cannot work up any motivation for things that are not essential to keeping all this going. Blogging is one of them. Seeing friends. Eating right.
I just don't feel like I've been looking after myself. I look grey, my hair is scruffy. I've got a skin abscess on my back that's appeared this week and it's fucking agony. I love to stay fit and I've just been going through the motions. Bare minimum of effort. This is something I need to sort out. I both look and feel like shit at the moment.
February is always a reflective month for me. All the January excitement has burnt itself out and I've fallen back into the same old same old rut. I went to see my parents at the weekend. They are both in their 80's and when I go and see them now it feels very autumnal always. I know their era is coming to an end and I think I've been mourning that for years before it's even happened.
And that also means I've been getting old. I am not where I thought I was going to be at this stage of my life. Going home reminded me of how many dreams and ambitions that I had that I ended up trading for a relationship with someone who, now, I absolutely despise. I chose not to pursue the things I wanted to do because I thought being with this person was more important. And now I wouldn't piss on her if she was on fire. So that leaves me wondering what the fuck it was all for.
The ambitions I have now are so unassuming. They are the most unambitious ambitions imaginable. I don't know if they are even dreams or if they are just "making the best" of the situation. There's a file on my laptop with a list of stuff that I "want" to do. But I have no real connection to any of them. The fire I used to feel isn't there for it. I think I'm scared because I know that I'd need to sacrifice to make any big changes in my life.
I think one of my big problems is that I don't treat myself with the same compassion that I treat other people. Am I as skint as I think? Am I really that much of a scumbag? Do I need to be freezing in my house? Do I need to feel like shit? Or is all this just a story I've told myself that I am now starting to believe?
Either way, I know that if I am writing my blog then I've come out of the other side of this blue period. If I am starting to do stuff again and fix stuff and take action then I am on the up-swing.
My mental state is always as cyclic as this. The storm has threatened for a while. Sorry for none of the usual stuff this week. There's no personal financial breakthroughs here. Fuck knows if I've made any savings as I blew my budget with the 500 mile trip to see my parents and with it being school half-term this week as well. What the fuck happened to playing with your friends or watching telly? When did school holidays become this arms race of constantly having to find activities and places to go? That's so ironic, that we have all this opportunity for stuff to do and none of it is as satisfying as simple stuff.
Back to normal service.
Wednesday, February 5, 2020
Weekly Update: 5th February 2020
Finally reached pay-day. It seems like a fucking long trek between my last pay and this one. As far as I know, I've managed to make it without blowing any of my direct debits. But it has been hard work.
For starters, I'm still cold. I'm not convinced about my strategy of using electric heaters just to heat up individual rooms that are being used rather than running the central heating. It works great in my daughter's room, she's got an oil filled radiator in there and running it on half power with the thermostat on halfway means her room is comfortable.
I've accepted my bedroom is unheated and, therefore, really fucking cold. It's probably a good thing that I'm not sharing it with anyone at the minute because I doubt anyone in their right mind is going to put up with those conditions. Except for maybe some survivalist nut, I don't know. On the plus side, I'm actually sleeping better. When I was trying to keep it warm over Christmas I found I was waking up all the time. With it being cold, I tend to sleep right through.
The fan heater in the living room doesn't even make a dent. It takes the chill off and that's about it. I still remember being a kid in Scotland and getting up in a freezing house in the morning. I used to eat my breakfast sitting in front of a calor fire. Thirty years on I would have hoped that my life had moved on from that but apparently not.
Unless I light the woodstove then the living room is still like a fridge. I've got pretty good at managing it now and I can get by on 2-3 logs a night. By that reckoning, I've got about another week of wood. I'm going to do a meter reading tonight as well and see what sort of impact running electric heating has made on my bill. If it's less than an extra £50 (what Calor gas was costing me a month) then it's fine. Fuck it, spring will be here soon.
I started using an app called Chip. I've mentioned it before, it squirrels away a few quid here and there from your current account as the month goes on and it sees how you are spending. Last month it put away £109 for me and I didn't even notice it. The reason I mention it is that I finally got my £10 welcome bonus that I signed up with.
I'm still ploughing on with matched betting despite the hassle and, in my opinion, fairly low reward. I think I'm up to about £60 of free money and god knows how much cash tied up in accounts. I've taken a 10 day trial of Oddsmonkey today and just when I went to use it tonight the website is on its arse. Great.
Once again I managed to come in under budget on my weekly spending. I think there have been two things that have helped. The big one is cutting back on my supermarket spending. I do most of my spending in Aldi now and only go to the bigger shops for stuff I can't get there. I've swapped a lot of the branded products that I normally bought, like laundry liquid and shower gel, to Aldi's own brands. Nobody has died yet so can't complain. I actually quite like the smell of their laundry liquid. Algodon or something? Whatever.
The other thing has been trying to cut my fuel costs. I'm regularly averaging 5-6mpg more on my daily commute now that I've got used to my new car. That's good, I was shitting it that I'd bought a car that was pissing money down the bog. I'm also trying to not use my car as much. I've been walking and cycling to local places that I would normally have driven to. Taking my lunch to work has cut down on my trips at dinnertime as well. If I don't take anything? Fuck it, go hungry. It's not the end of the world and strangely I think my energy levels might stay a lot more steady over the day.
So that's it. One of my financial aims for this week is to start rounding up my spending. For example, if my shopping comes to £15.70 I'm going to round it up to £16 and stick the 30p in the savings pot. I'll give it a week and see how I get on. There's a new bank, Monzo, that does that automatically but I figure I can do it just as well myself. Will it make a difference? I don't know. I'll see over the course of the week.
I've saved £36.53 on my weekly budget this week. That brings me up to £151.19 now. Chip has £109 in the savings account and there's maybe £50-60 in the matched betting fund. So that's quite a healthy little pot that I've managed to build up in just a month. If I can do that every month then I'll be happy.
For starters, I'm still cold. I'm not convinced about my strategy of using electric heaters just to heat up individual rooms that are being used rather than running the central heating. It works great in my daughter's room, she's got an oil filled radiator in there and running it on half power with the thermostat on halfway means her room is comfortable.
I've accepted my bedroom is unheated and, therefore, really fucking cold. It's probably a good thing that I'm not sharing it with anyone at the minute because I doubt anyone in their right mind is going to put up with those conditions. Except for maybe some survivalist nut, I don't know. On the plus side, I'm actually sleeping better. When I was trying to keep it warm over Christmas I found I was waking up all the time. With it being cold, I tend to sleep right through.
The fan heater in the living room doesn't even make a dent. It takes the chill off and that's about it. I still remember being a kid in Scotland and getting up in a freezing house in the morning. I used to eat my breakfast sitting in front of a calor fire. Thirty years on I would have hoped that my life had moved on from that but apparently not.
Unless I light the woodstove then the living room is still like a fridge. I've got pretty good at managing it now and I can get by on 2-3 logs a night. By that reckoning, I've got about another week of wood. I'm going to do a meter reading tonight as well and see what sort of impact running electric heating has made on my bill. If it's less than an extra £50 (what Calor gas was costing me a month) then it's fine. Fuck it, spring will be here soon.
I started using an app called Chip. I've mentioned it before, it squirrels away a few quid here and there from your current account as the month goes on and it sees how you are spending. Last month it put away £109 for me and I didn't even notice it. The reason I mention it is that I finally got my £10 welcome bonus that I signed up with.
I'm still ploughing on with matched betting despite the hassle and, in my opinion, fairly low reward. I think I'm up to about £60 of free money and god knows how much cash tied up in accounts. I've taken a 10 day trial of Oddsmonkey today and just when I went to use it tonight the website is on its arse. Great.
Once again I managed to come in under budget on my weekly spending. I think there have been two things that have helped. The big one is cutting back on my supermarket spending. I do most of my spending in Aldi now and only go to the bigger shops for stuff I can't get there. I've swapped a lot of the branded products that I normally bought, like laundry liquid and shower gel, to Aldi's own brands. Nobody has died yet so can't complain. I actually quite like the smell of their laundry liquid. Algodon or something? Whatever.
The other thing has been trying to cut my fuel costs. I'm regularly averaging 5-6mpg more on my daily commute now that I've got used to my new car. That's good, I was shitting it that I'd bought a car that was pissing money down the bog. I'm also trying to not use my car as much. I've been walking and cycling to local places that I would normally have driven to. Taking my lunch to work has cut down on my trips at dinnertime as well. If I don't take anything? Fuck it, go hungry. It's not the end of the world and strangely I think my energy levels might stay a lot more steady over the day.
So that's it. One of my financial aims for this week is to start rounding up my spending. For example, if my shopping comes to £15.70 I'm going to round it up to £16 and stick the 30p in the savings pot. I'll give it a week and see how I get on. There's a new bank, Monzo, that does that automatically but I figure I can do it just as well myself. Will it make a difference? I don't know. I'll see over the course of the week.
I've saved £36.53 on my weekly budget this week. That brings me up to £151.19 now. Chip has £109 in the savings account and there's maybe £50-60 in the matched betting fund. So that's quite a healthy little pot that I've managed to build up in just a month. If I can do that every month then I'll be happy.
Running a car, saving money
I think my second biggest expense is probably running a car. The really annoying thing about that is that 70% of that goes to just getting to and from work. It pisses me off just how much I spend to enable myself to, basically, work for a couple of millionaires. I have to have a house near where I work. I have to have a car. I have to have a particular set of clothes that I wouldn't wear under any other circumstances other than maybe weddings and funerals. Seriously, when the fuck do you ever find yourself thinking "I know what I'll wear to the pub, a nice suit"?
Anyway, running a car costs a lot of money. Public transport here is non-existent: to do the 11 mile commute I'd need to cycle to the station, get at least two trains and then another 15 minute cycle on the other side. That's at least a 90 minute commitment before I even get into the shit-show of dropping off and collecting my daughter at school.
There are obvious things I try to do to keep costs low. I always buy a used car. Sure, I'd love a swanky, brand-new car straight off the lot. I've done it once and it was a financial disaster. After six years of instalments on my flash £20,000 car I now had something that was worth £1500. Eighteen and a half grand down the drain. It was nice to have a brand new car but eighteen and a half grand nice? I don't think so. A new car is only new for five minutes.
I also like buying sensible cars. At the minute, I've got a Skoda Octavia. It's practical, reliable and cheap to run. It doesn't turn heads but I don't care. What it does is save me money and provide a damn good service. When it does 60+ miles per gallon it makes me happier than some wank-machine that does 20.
I work the price comparison websites when it is insurance time as well. A couple of times my renewal has actually been the best price (that was with Co-op) which surprised me so maybe the market is finally becoming more competitive. But I still do comparisons. I also check which insurers or comparison sites will give me some money through Topcashback. If there is only a few quid in it then I'll go with the one that does cashback.
But how do you actually budget your costs for car ownership?
You need to know what your fixed and variable overheads are. Fixed overheads are the things that are not going to change. Your monthly finance payment, your road tax and your monthly insurance premium. These are simple to deal with, I know how much they are and I just set aside the right amount from my monthly salary. Easy.
Variable expenses are harder to account for. These are the things that vary depending on how much you drive. Do more miles, pay more money. Simple. Except that it is hard to predict. The way I do it is to work out exactly how much each mile I drive costs and then just count up how many miles I've driven (or planning to drive) this week.
Start with fuel. I always do a full tank when I fill up. I get roughly 600'ish miles from a tank so I generally fill up when I've done about 450 miles. So divide the cost of the tank of fuel by the number of miles you've driven. This gives me a price per mile and at the time of writing that is sitting at about 12.2p per mile. For the rest of the week I will knock off 12.2p for every mile I do from my weekly allowance.
Drive 100 miles, that's £12.20 off my pot of cash for the week. To make life easier, at the start of the week I make an allowance for my commute. That comes to 26 miles a day including the school run, 130 miles a week. I knock off 130 x 12.2p (£15.86). I know that I only need to account for anything over and above that 26 mile a day allowance.
Next thing is maintenance. Most cars have a fixed schedule for servicing and for bigger things like timing belts or gearbox services. If my car needs serviced every 10,000 miles and I know the service costs about £250 then that's another 2.5p per mile to add on. Timing belt is every 60,000 and is about £500 which is about 0.8p per mile. So looking at around another 4p per mile on top of whatever the fuel costs are. Usually at the end of the month I transfer whatever the maintenance costs are into a separate bank account so that I've got it safe if needed. It generally works out well so far.
What this doesn't cover is unexpected things like breakdowns. I know I should set some money aside for this but I end up never doing it. I think I need to make this one of my financial goals for this year. I don't want to get into the reactive mindset of "I've got the good credit card for emergencies". I want to have the emergency fund already there.
The final thing I do to try to save a little money is to just drive better. I've been really surprised how much a difference it makes just driving with a bit of thought. Not accelerating into red lights or queuing traffic, not hammering it up hills. That kind of thing. Just driving at the speed limit works as well. There are tons of websites on "hypermiling" if you want to go down the rabbit hole.
For me, I've found the best things are just be alert and show some common sense. Trying to drive so you rarely have to brake. Maintaining a steady speed so you aren't going up and down the gears. For urban driving I've found third gear is what wipes out my fuel efficiency so getting into fourth, and preferably fifth, as soon as possible and staying there is key. On the motorway just dropping to 60mph hikes up the fuel efficiency. In hill stretches I've found dropping to maybe 58 on the way up and 65 on the way down gives me the best balance of fuel consumption and journey time.
I like to turn regular journeys into a game where I see how good I can get my consumption on the trip computer. I don't care if I'm driving like an old man. Old men are usually good at saving money.
Anyway, running a car costs a lot of money. Public transport here is non-existent: to do the 11 mile commute I'd need to cycle to the station, get at least two trains and then another 15 minute cycle on the other side. That's at least a 90 minute commitment before I even get into the shit-show of dropping off and collecting my daughter at school.
There are obvious things I try to do to keep costs low. I always buy a used car. Sure, I'd love a swanky, brand-new car straight off the lot. I've done it once and it was a financial disaster. After six years of instalments on my flash £20,000 car I now had something that was worth £1500. Eighteen and a half grand down the drain. It was nice to have a brand new car but eighteen and a half grand nice? I don't think so. A new car is only new for five minutes.
I also like buying sensible cars. At the minute, I've got a Skoda Octavia. It's practical, reliable and cheap to run. It doesn't turn heads but I don't care. What it does is save me money and provide a damn good service. When it does 60+ miles per gallon it makes me happier than some wank-machine that does 20.
I work the price comparison websites when it is insurance time as well. A couple of times my renewal has actually been the best price (that was with Co-op) which surprised me so maybe the market is finally becoming more competitive. But I still do comparisons. I also check which insurers or comparison sites will give me some money through Topcashback. If there is only a few quid in it then I'll go with the one that does cashback.
But how do you actually budget your costs for car ownership?
You need to know what your fixed and variable overheads are. Fixed overheads are the things that are not going to change. Your monthly finance payment, your road tax and your monthly insurance premium. These are simple to deal with, I know how much they are and I just set aside the right amount from my monthly salary. Easy.
Variable expenses are harder to account for. These are the things that vary depending on how much you drive. Do more miles, pay more money. Simple. Except that it is hard to predict. The way I do it is to work out exactly how much each mile I drive costs and then just count up how many miles I've driven (or planning to drive) this week.
Start with fuel. I always do a full tank when I fill up. I get roughly 600'ish miles from a tank so I generally fill up when I've done about 450 miles. So divide the cost of the tank of fuel by the number of miles you've driven. This gives me a price per mile and at the time of writing that is sitting at about 12.2p per mile. For the rest of the week I will knock off 12.2p for every mile I do from my weekly allowance.
Drive 100 miles, that's £12.20 off my pot of cash for the week. To make life easier, at the start of the week I make an allowance for my commute. That comes to 26 miles a day including the school run, 130 miles a week. I knock off 130 x 12.2p (£15.86). I know that I only need to account for anything over and above that 26 mile a day allowance.
Next thing is maintenance. Most cars have a fixed schedule for servicing and for bigger things like timing belts or gearbox services. If my car needs serviced every 10,000 miles and I know the service costs about £250 then that's another 2.5p per mile to add on. Timing belt is every 60,000 and is about £500 which is about 0.8p per mile. So looking at around another 4p per mile on top of whatever the fuel costs are. Usually at the end of the month I transfer whatever the maintenance costs are into a separate bank account so that I've got it safe if needed. It generally works out well so far.
What this doesn't cover is unexpected things like breakdowns. I know I should set some money aside for this but I end up never doing it. I think I need to make this one of my financial goals for this year. I don't want to get into the reactive mindset of "I've got the good credit card for emergencies". I want to have the emergency fund already there.
The final thing I do to try to save a little money is to just drive better. I've been really surprised how much a difference it makes just driving with a bit of thought. Not accelerating into red lights or queuing traffic, not hammering it up hills. That kind of thing. Just driving at the speed limit works as well. There are tons of websites on "hypermiling" if you want to go down the rabbit hole.
For me, I've found the best things are just be alert and show some common sense. Trying to drive so you rarely have to brake. Maintaining a steady speed so you aren't going up and down the gears. For urban driving I've found third gear is what wipes out my fuel efficiency so getting into fourth, and preferably fifth, as soon as possible and staying there is key. On the motorway just dropping to 60mph hikes up the fuel efficiency. In hill stretches I've found dropping to maybe 58 on the way up and 65 on the way down gives me the best balance of fuel consumption and journey time.
I like to turn regular journeys into a game where I see how good I can get my consumption on the trip computer. I don't care if I'm driving like an old man. Old men are usually good at saving money.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)