Saving money when working from home

So week one of working at home done for me. A few things I've been thinking about over the last seven days that might be useful. The big thing is that I'm not using my own power, heat and internet as opposed to my employer paying for it so I'm going to start with the financial aspects then maybe look some of the mental wellbeing points I've come up against.

Save, Save, Save

Looking at some of the numbers that have made it to the news and it's pretty apparent that the chance of a recession has become very real. Now is the perfect time to start ratcheting back your spending. Normal life is on hold and the opportunity just is not there for any of the big draws on your spending. You can't go to the pub, you can't go to restaurants or the cinema, you don't (or at least shouldn't) have much chance of any social life. There's no point booking a holidaybecause even without the travel restrictions there's nowhere to go.

Then there's commuting. Unless you're someone that still has to go to a workplace then, again, make the most of this. You aren't spending money on fuel or public transport. Some companies are offering to refund unused season tickets and passes. You aren't putting any wear on your car and MOT's have been extended by 6 months.

If you are sensible then you should already be giving yourself a weekly allowance that you need to keep within. If you are really sensible then it makes sense to cut that allowance back. What am I going to spend money on other than a trip to the supermarket now and again?

The money that you are not spending needs to go to good use. The two main choices are either as cash or to reduce debt (or a combination of both). Each have their own advantages. If you use this money to pay down debt going into a recession then it puts you in a better position. And if you need some emergency spending then your credit line has a little bit more capacity in it. Equally, cash has advantages. There are a lot of things you can't pay with a credit card, like rent, mortgage, childcare, that kind of thing so having some extra cash in the bank makes sense. Cash is also something they cannot take away from you. There is the chance that if you have, say, a credit card that you aren't using but keep for emergencies then it isn't unknown for the company to reduce your credit limit. I had a card that I kept clear in case I ever got hit with a big bill, never looked at it for a couple of years until one day I did and saw they'd reduced my credit limit from a few thousand to a few hundred.

It's up to you. Most financial bloggers say pay debt first but personally, I like cash. My own strategy right now is to pay down a little more but I want most of it going into savings.

Reduce

Go through your spending and make a list of all the things you can pull the plug on right now. We all have a ton of non-essential stuff. I might be skint but I've got a monthly charity donation, I'm a member of the SNP and have monthly membership subs for that. I've got a Netflix subscription that's "only" 6 quid a month. If I dumped all these little discretionary commitments then that frees up £25-30 a month. Most people probably have more. Subscriptions are the way of the world now, especially with things like entertainment but it seeps into everything. Everybody wants you to take that monthly plan and it's a massive black hole for your money if you allow it.

I'm not saying dump them now but you need to know a. What you can get rid of and b. How much that saves. If conditions worsen then you know where you can liberate a little more money from. Personally, though, I'm dumping what I can right now and those savings are all going into the pot.

Staying Warm

The big thing I noticed on my first day was how cold I was when I was working from home. If I'm at home normally then I'm doing stuff and I never notice it. But sitting at a desk all day then I get really fucking cold. Now, obviously there is the discomfort of that but it also puts an unnecessary load on your immune system as well which you really don't need.

The first move is obvious. Put some extra layers on. There's a limit to that, though. My hands get cold and working with gloves at a computer isn't practical.

Another thing I found is: choose your workplace wisely if you can. One side of my house gets the sun from morning until about 1pm and the rooms on that side are really warm. I put my computer right in my front window and I've timed my day to make the most of it, start at 7am and I've done a good 5-6 hours before it starts to get cold.

At some point you need to put the heating on. My recommendation is: only heat where you are working. Central heating is fairly efficient when you are heating the whole house but do you need the whole house to be warm?

At the end of Monday I was so cold that I went to Screwfix and bought a little fan heater. You can pick one up for a tenner. I have it on the lowest setting, pointed straight at me, so it's only burning maybe 17p an hour and I don't run it the whole time.

Power

Get yourself on the lowest electricity deal you can. Now is also the time to do a price comparison and switch if you can get a better deal. Nobody knows how long this will go on for so get the best electricity rate there is.

Again, don't use power in rooms you don't need to. I've got a habit of just automatically switching on the toilet light when I go in that I've forced myself to stop. If it is daytime then you can probably do without lighting.

Internet

Same goes for broadband. Scout around for the best deal. And, importantly, talk to your current supplier. I'm with Sky and every time I tell them I'm leaving then miraculously they find a way to bring my bill down. Every time it ends up beating the best deal I can find.

Another tip, do a line check. Sky have a service check feature on their website, I'd guess most others do too. I checked mine last week and it turned out that the speed can be improved by an engineer's visit rather than upgrading my package.

Telephone

You do not need the data that you think you need. Even at the best of times. But right now you're going to be connected to the wifi 95% of your day at least. I always aim for the least amount of data I can get away with, I think I pay for 6gb and never come close to that limit. You do not need massive or unlimited allowances right now. Unless your broadband shits the bed but I'd wait until that happens before looking at upping my phone's data allowance.

I almost never make calls these days unless it's to companies, amongst friends and family it's almost exclusively text. Again, if you're at home on wifi then use a messaging service like WhatsApp and you won't touch your text allowance.

If you need to make calls for work then it might work out better to use the landline. Check your broadband package to see what you've got and compare it to your call allowance on your mobile.

Food & Drink

One of the big benefits is that I've no excuse for not making my own lunch now. Buying shit I don't need was always my downfall. Take this time to get into the habit of meal planning, batch cooking and making the most of the freezer.

I use my teabags twice. It's not just money-saving, I want to avoid needing to go out so if it makes my teabags go further then great.

I also make two brews at the same time. One in my normal mug, one in an insulated one for later. Boiling a single cup of water seems inefficient so I do twice what I need and save the other half. I've read about some people that make a big pot of tea or coffee in the morning and either put it in a flask or just reheat it in a microwave later.

Working Hours

When I start work I set a countdown timer for 7.5 hours (my contracted day) and I pause it when I take lunch or have any longer breaks (like the days my daughter was here). It is way too easy to over-work or lose track of time. I also physically unplug everything at the end of the day so there is no temptation to go back and work some more later. Keep really good track of your hours worked and what you were doing, I keep a written diary. People will take this chance to screw you, I guarantee it.

Personally, I found I do a lot more at home than I do in the office in the same amount of time so I have zero guilt about doing this. And time is money, if it isn't in your pocket then it is in someone else's.

I think that's about all the money saving stuff I can think of right now. I'm going to do a post on the mental wellbeing aspects later.

Weekly Update 25th March 2020

First real week of the UK lockdown. I saw it announced on Monday night and I just shook my head. How stupid are people? You brought it on yourselves and honestly, I'm really glad they did it. At the weekend I left the house to buy some milk (and waited til late on Saturday evening when I knew the shop was quiet) and Sunday I went for a walk just out my front door. I never saw a soul, presumably because all these morons were travelling all over the fucking country.

The longer this progresses the more I despair of some people. I wanted to see my parents. I wanted to go somewhere nice. But I didn't. And this is what annoys me, probably the vast majority of people did the right thing and sat on their arses and it came down to a bunch of bellends to fuck everything up.

Rant over. This is supposed to be my weekly update. There's a few things I want to talk about that cropped up. The first is the possibilit of losing my job. I work for a supplier to the NHS, not a vital supplier but a supplier all the same. I'm probably in a better position than a lot of people but losing my job is still a possibility.

That kind of uncertainty puts my anxiety through the roof so I've learned that the best cure is to gather intelligence and make a plan. My big worry is losing my home. I rent so there's no mortgage holiday for me. I'd be reliant on benefits. First step was to try to find out what I'd be entitled to. There are various calculators suggested by the gov.uk website. Trouble is, they aren't particularly easy to use, especially if you aren't in the benefit system and don't know what is what. The one I found my way around suggested that I could get £272 a week, so about £1088 a month. Take off rent and council tax and that leaves £360 a month to cover everything else. Not the end of the world but not great either.

The next thing I wanted to do was understand what outgoings I had other than rent and council tax. This included utilities, road tax, car insurance, car loan and card payments. Worryingly, that comes to £650, so £290 short before I even buy any food.

It got me thinking that I need something just to protect my rent. If I could do that then it makes everything else possible. I'd looked at income protection insurance in the past but I'd rejected the idea because I was planning on switching jobs and there's always an exclusion period built into the policies. But right now I'm not moving so a policy might be a possibility.

But it was a struggle finding anything. It seems the entire country has had the same thought and the insurance companies pulled the ladder up. No deal. Some sites were closed. I applied to a couple and got rejected. I got an email on Friday that the last one I tried had actually accepted my application. I've not had any paperwork through so we'll see.

But... I actually got some good news. When I was going through my monthly outgoings I came across a monthly payment for £29 that I'd missed. I'd no idea what it was for so called the company, gave them the reference and it turned out to be an unemployment policy that I'd taken out during the last recession. Entitlement of £500 a month if I lost my job and the policy is still in place. I can't believe it, it really is such good luck. On the downside, I've paid about £3500 in premiums over the years. The benefit could be anything from £500 to £6000. Normally, I hate insurance policies like these as they prey off fear but for once I'm very grateful for it.

Spending, I've spent fuck all this week. I did my weekly shop on Monday and that's it. I bought some compost and some veg seeds which came to 20 quid. Usually that's enough that I'm self-sufficient in tomatoes, cucmbers and salad for most of the summer and into the autumn. I bought a packet of bacon from the local butcher as a treat. I've done about 10 miles in my car since Friday. I've not been anywhere or done anything.

Mentally, getting out of work and staying at home has helped my mental health massively. I was very anxious this time last week, I was getting really short-tempered at work and, stupidly, I got to the point I was threatening to walk if they didn't stop fucking around over working from home. On the downside, I'm finding working from home a lot harder than I was expecting. There are no distractions, no one to talk to so the days are really long. It's lonely. I'm surprised at that as I'm quite a self-reliant person. And it's boring. I thought I'd love having so much more time but having all that time to fill can be a curse.

But mostly, I'm feeling good. I think I've got stuff under control at the minute. I'm feeling OK about work for the next month or two. I'm working out hard and eating really well, I'd lost six pounds over the last couple of weeks and look like I'm still losing fat. I'm aiming to have a six pack by the end of this. I'm posting my daily workout on Instagram if anyone cares, I try to tailor it for people with minimal equipment and no access to a gym. Working out is maybe the best thing I've found for controlling my depression. It's @skintlife_2020 on Instagram. I don't do any other social media.

As I've been working from home I've been thinking about ways to save money and help you cope mentally. I'll draft these up over the coming days and post.

Making stuff last: learning from a lost generation

When I was a kid, everyone's grandparents lived through the Second World War. Now, there can't be many people under 35 who grew up with either parents or grandparents who lived through that kind of hardship. Most people just have no idea what financial difficulty is. You saw that last week: the poor don't panic buy. I'd guess mostly because you can't. But equally, if you are living with little or no spare cash then you just know better. Welcome to the daily life of thousands of people in this country where uncertainty, lack of resources and lack of access to just the basic necessities of normality is how they live every single day. The people who panic-bought are some of the most privileged people on the face of the planet. And, arguably, some of the softest.

I grew up with grandparents who lived through the War and parents who grew up in the post-war shortages. That experience lived with them for a hell of a long time. Even in the 1980's when I was a kid, where the world was full of "greed is good" affluence and surpluses, that memory of austerity lived large in our lives. I still remember going on holiday and my dad keeping a ledger of what we spent so there would be no shocks when we got home. Now, I find myself doing that when I go on holiday with my own daughter.

For the vast majority of people in this country, we have been able to forget how to live with hardship. You see it everywhere and the atrocious behaviour of great swathes of society just highlight that. We forgot how to be frugal because we thought affluence would go on forever. Whatever else happens in the next 12 months, I hope that lesson is learnt by society. I know it won't be, though.

Anyway, rant over. This blog post is inspired by that generation that lived through the War. They didn't panic buy because there was nothing to panic-buy. So what did they do? They made do. And that is what this post is about. Making do.

The easiest way to have enough to last you is not to go out and buy it. The easiest thing to do is make what you have go further. One of society's big mental sicknesses is that we have no idea what a portion size is. That's clear from the level of obesity and all that brings. So...

LESSON ONE: YOU NEED A LOT LESS THAN YOU THINK YOU NEED

That starts with food. We eat too much. And when you eat too much you also think you need too much. This wasteful, expensive and denies resources to people who need it. Just cut back what you put on your plate. Hunger will kill you but feeling hungry won't. There are tons of ways to make yourself feel satisfied without piling your plate up.

Add a bit more fat. Pour some olive oil over some green veg or toss a knob of butter on. Bread and pasta fills you but an hour later you're hungry again. Fat makes you stop eating sooner and keeps you going longer. A rasher of bacon will keep you going longer than a bowl of cornflakes.

Drink more fluids. It's an old cliche but a lot of the time when you are hungry, you're just thirsty.

Or just get used to it. "Hungry" is not "hunger", you can't die from a feeling. If you got your nutrients and got your calories then live with it. It won't kill you. Be comfortable with a little bit of hardship. (Because there is a lot coming our way so you better get used to it now)

Get into calorie restriction or intermittent fasting. This is maybe one of the few things that has real evidence for significant long term health benefits and god knows we could all do with that right now. Skip breakfast and you automatically end up with 18 hours between meals. You might feel hungry but the health benefits are major. I'll leave you to do your own reading.

But it isn't just food. You can just use less all over the place. Here are a few tips that I use:

• buy one of those skin scrubber things. They look like a ball of net curtain material. Use it in the shower, you put a small blob of shower gel in it and wash with that. You get a ton more lather than you get with just using your hand and shower gel goes a hell of a long way. Just stick it in the washing machine every now and again

• if you take sugar in tea or coffee then try this. Stir it. Yep, as simple as that. Stir it a lot longer than you do normally and I guarantee you'll notice your drink becomes a little too sweet.

• laundry liquid and powder. Manufacturers love you to use more and those scoops and balls are sized so that you'll rattle through it. I'll use half or even a third of what the label says depending on what I'm washing and I have never noticed any difference.

• washing up liquid. Same thing, we grab the bottle and squeeze. Make an effort to squeeze a hell of a lot less. Again, you don't need anything like you think.

• if you aren't leaving the house then go without. I'm working from home so haven't shaved in a week. And I hate to say it, if you cut back on deoderant and you smell a little stronger than usual then who cares? And if I run out then I'm not going out just to get it. Time are tough.

• do what everyone's dad says: put a fucking sweater on. We're all going to be at home a lot more. Where I was using someone else's power and heating, I'm now using mine. Put on a fleece first.

LESSON TWO: SAVE STUFF

One of the main reasons I didn't panic buy was that I have a hell of a lot of food in the freezer. Freezing leftovers and stuff headed for it's use by date is basic. And if it needs repeating, if it hasn't come from an animal then forget what the date on the packet says. It's good until it either looks or smells bad. We need to stop wasting things. If you have too much and you have to throw it out then you really need to be ashamed of yourself. There's an old African saying, the best place for extra food is in my neighbour's belly. Failing that, the best place for extra stuff is in some kind of storage or preservation.

• Instead of panic-buying milk, or wasting milk that is going out of date, freeze it. Here's what I've been doing: you get a litre of milk and you pour 330ml into three freezer bags. Tie a knot in the bag, put it inside another bag and stick it in the freezer. The great thing about this is that you can mould it to whatever space you have free. Bottles take up too much room. To defrost, put the bag in a bowl in the fridge. DO NOT LEAVE IT OUT TO DEFROST, it will go bad. And make sure you double bag it, old milk WILL contaminate anything it touches.

• Veg doesn't freeze very well and it's pretty bulky so I batch cook it into a big vegetable stew, portion it up into bags and freeze that. Takes up less space and fits anywhere like milk does. Defrost and use as a base for other things like curries.

• Learn traditional preserving techniques. Pickling is great, especially if you were stupid enough to clear the shelves of eggs. A glut of fruit and veg is perfect for chutney making. My favourite is ferment preservation. Basically storing fruit and veg in brine and letting its natural bacteria preserve it. I regularly make sauerkraut and fruit kvass. They take a bit of getting used to but I love the taste, earthy and acidic. I've got a big jar of salted citrus fruit that I made myself. These might not save a huge amount but they're fun experiments and you can end up with some lovely products.

• My parents and grandparents always used rags for cleaning. Old clothes, especially cotton, are great for cleaning rags. I have a bag of my daughter's old school socks in the shed that I keep for wiping up stuff, painting, etc.

• I have a wood stove and I save the bark from the firewood. It usually flakes off when chopping it. I keep it indoors in a mesh bag to let it dry out. Use it as kindling, either on its own or mixed in with dry wood. Stove always has charcoal in it which is great for kids' art projects. Amazon boxes make good fire lighters.

• I save egg boxes to start my tomato seeds off in. Last summer was shit but most summers I'm self-sufficient for tomatoes and salad.

• Anyone who grew up watching Blue Peter always had yoghurt tubs to hand. When my ex-girlfriend's dad died she found hundred of margarine tubs in the attic he'd saved for using for little jobs, mixing paint, storing nails, that kind of thing. Vitamin pill pots are brilliant for storage.

LESSON THREE: ALTERNATIVES

Find sustainable alternatives for things that are finite.

• kitchen roll. I bought a big pack of microfibre cloths from Screwfix for a couple of quid and I use one or two of them every day instead. Just chuck them in the wash at the end of the day. Same with dish-towels.

• I invested in a Karcher steam cleaner a few years ago and it probably paid for itself in cleaning products not bought. It's sometimes a lot more hassle than spraying a chemical everywhere but at least I don't have that shit in the air. They are expensive but you can get them cheap on Ebay. Buy a decent make, though.

• Get rid of your tumble-drier. It's a pain hanging clothes on a drying rack, especially in winter, but it saves a hell of a lot of money. You can buy heated racks or ones with a built in fan heater that are really cheap to run. Or just get a little oil filled radiator, stick it under the rack and chuck a cotton sheet over it all to make a warm tent. Works fine (just keep an eye on it).

• I use stainless steel wool balls for washing the dishes. Every now and again soak it in some bleach. I get through maybe two or three a year at most, they will last forever. Word of caution, when they fall apart you can get slivers of metal stuck to plates and utensils. Don't push them this far.

There are a shit load of things if you just stop and think: what else could I be using now? If you find yourself throwing out items after just one or two uses then you need to source something else. It's better on the wallet but it also helps the environment.

These are the basic principles I use all the time. Use less, reduce waste and find sustainable alternatives to disposables. It's no coincidence that these are exactly the same principles that are promoted to help the environment. In the developed world waste hurts us both economically and from what it does to our environment.

If nothing else, just cut down on stuff. Do not try to buy your way out of hardship.

Weekly Update 18th March 2020

What a fucking week.

It is totally crazy and I'm really having a hard time dealing with it. I realise that I'm drifting away from personal finance and into mental health more so I'm going to pull it back first.

Work have actually been incredibly good at pulling a strategy together to get everyone working from home. This is great. Apart from the safety aspect, it represents that, for now at least, they have a commitment to continuity. Almost all of our projects are to the NHS and despite everything else, these still need to keep going. They might slow down but hopefully they will keep going. As opportunistic as it sounds, there may even be additional stuff that we get involved in as a direct result of coronavirus. I'm not looking to profit, I'm looking simply to stay employed. If that can happen then fantastic.

My savings got hammered this week. I've not got a huge amount, I've been squirreling away £150 a month for the last couple of years. I had around £3200 put away. I'd followed all the advice that said, put into tracker funds because they grow well and they're safe as houses. Tracker funds buy blocks of shares in the FTSE100 companies. They are great because you are buying into solid companies for low amounts of money and you don't have to think too much about the technicalities of share dealing. But this week they got hammered. My £3200 nest egg turned into £2500. The "smart" advice is to hold on and ride out the volatility but watching very hard won savings vanish is tough.

I think I have probably blown my budget for the week, too. Like I said in my previous post, I haven't done any panic-buying. I already have about 3 months food stashed in the freezer that I built up over the last year or so. But I don't want to start eating into that. If the shops have stocks then I want to make the most of that. I also realise that I didn't have much stashed for my daughter who is vegetarian. So, as much as I didn't "panic buy", I did a bigger than normal shop this week.

The thing that worries me is getting vegetables. They don't freeze well if bought fresh and with being at work it wasn't practical to buy pre-frozen. So I just bought a bunch of the veg no-one was going crazy over and I'm going to cook that into a basic stew. I'll portion that up and freeze so that I can at least have a base for maybe chilli or spag-bol for my daughter.

Working from home will probably bring a lot of savings as well. I'm not spending £25 a week on fuel. I'm not putting miles on my car. There's no opportunity for spending money at dinnertime. At weekends I'll usually have a trip out somewhere and maybe go walking or visit a castle (I have an English Heritage membership) or do something active but cheap. I rarely spend much, occasionally a pint or a cup of tea, and the main cost is fuel. That's going to be gone.

I'm probably going to cash out my matched betting pot. I don't know if there is much opportunity to pursue it right now. I did a tally tonight and there is £250 cash tied up in it, £140 of which is profit. I'd rather have the cash in my bank in case the bookies fold.

I've also just realised I've got about £150 in John Lewis vouchers that I've earned through cashback. It's harsh but they might end up being a casualty and I don't want to lose the vouchers.

Today I started looking at buying an income protection policy. I'd looked at it a while ago and held off because I was looking for a new job. There's usually an exclusion period on the policies so it made sense not to bother if I was going to be moving anyway. For what I wanted, £1500 a month, it was coming in around £38 a month.

To be honest, I can't really afford £38 a month when I'm already cancelling everything that I don't need already. But if I am going to be working from home then the saving in my fuel costs will pay for it. But the big unknown is whether or not it's worth the paper it is printed on. A lot of insurers' websites are saying no new applications being accepted. I tried calling them and they said they did not know if it was even going to get processed as they've been overwhelmed by applications.

I had a look at the benefits calculator at [entitled to] just to see what I'd be looking at if I lost my job. £272 a week, a little over a grand a month. I pay £625 in rent, there's a chance I could make that work on its own if I cut everything back, make some deals with companies I owe money to, etc. I've got a little cash and whatever my index funds are going to be worth.

I think what has really hit me (and presumably everyone else) so hard mentally is the suddenness with which it hit. We all watched it in China like it was a spectator sport. There were daily stats on what was rising and what was falling. It was an event.

But from the moment that coronavirus touched down here it all kicked in in what feels like days. I'm sure it must have been weeks since the first cases but all the escalation feels really fast. It's a fucking lot to deal with.

There is the basic existential worry. What is going to happen to me and those that I love? Pure and simple, will we survive? That's got to be everyone's first thought. But then comes everything else.

There's the practical shit like being indoors for an unknown period of time and all the preparation involved. There's what is going to happen with work. What about money? How do I survive financially? One of the really saddest facts about the way this has unfolded is that I bet a hell of a lot of people are more worried about their financial wellbeing than physically. There are times I am more worried about keeping a roof over my head than anything else. School closures, working from home, cancelled travel. The list goes on.

Now, most of that is financial and some smug bastard is probably going to say "you just need to get your priorities right". Well, for most people that is their priority. We don't live in a wonderful, egalitarian paradise where we all pull together to make sure our neighbour isn't living a harder life than us. Sorry, but capitalism doesn't stop for a virus. If you can't pull your weight you are dumped on the heap as fast as if it was a mediaeval plague outbreak. Evictions and repossessions aren't stopping just because of a pandemic.

Maybe when we are all living in isolation we'll be able to take some time and deal with everything. I know I need that. More than likely in a couple of weeks things will have settled down and we have a better idea of what the next year will look like. Maybe we get a sense of normality back.

Weirdly, I have kind of enjoyed the mobilisation stage of the last week. You hear people who have served in the military talk about that. You're doing stuff, you are being proactive. You are raising the defences and filling the sandbags. Night-time is what scares me. That's when I stop having things to do and the nightmares start. Literally. My anxiety has rocketed and my sleep app says I'm getting about 60% sleep quality and around 6 hours in bed.

There were a couple of nights I got caught in the whirlwind of cycling between social media, links, the news, Google and back again. I was fucking terrified. One night I was in tears. It worries me about spending the next few months in isolation. My social circle is small enough as it is and I'm liable to not see anyone for long periods of time. Strangely, if I was in the woods in a tent I'd be happy, it's the fact that I'm having to do isolation but whilst doing all the shit of daily life as well that is freaking me out.

I made the decision to quit social media. Specifically, Facebook. There was shit everywhere that we don't need to see or hear. There's a guy at work who is obsessed with all that "friend-of-a-friend" horsehit conspiracy theory crap who insists on showing it to me. I don't care and I don't want to know. I want to treat my mind with the same level of hygiene as I do my hands. I am still using my Instagram account because I can post what I like without having it come the other way.

In order to keep my mental health on an even keel I am working out every day. I've been posting my daily workout on Instagram. I don't know if anyone reads it or follows it but it's a discipline I want to keep up, especially if I am at home alone for long periods.

Tonight I needed to get the house tidy(ish) because the landlord is sending an energy performance surveyor round tomorrow. I put the radio, listened to some music and got on with it. Later I ventured out into Zombieland to get a Mother's Day card and when I got home I watched some comedy and finished my blog. I feel so much better tonight than I did last night or the one before. I've avoided the media as much as possible. There is nothing new to be said. It has been my least anxious night so far.

Well, I'm tired and I think that will do me for this week. I suspect my posts will increase in frequency and I'm considering doing a podcast. This is really for my own sanity and just gives me a way to vent.

Why I Did Not Panic Buy

There is one simple reason I didn't panic buy. I didn't need to.

I'd bet a lot of people who live through hard times on a daily basis didn't, either. We're used to resources being tight. Panic buying is a privilege of the affluent. I'd love to be in a position that I can just run out and buy a van load of shit I didn't need yesterday and probably don't need today either. But I'm not.

For the past few years I've been living in a state of not knowing what next month brings. There were weeks when I thought I was days away from bankruptcy. I'm in a position that I know that if I lost my job then I'd be screwed financially.

So you take a few little steps when you don't need to. In the supermarket and you see a few chicken fillets in the reduced section? You can either buy them and stuff yourself silly or you can buy them and stick them in the freezer. I do the latter.

For the last few years I've been squirreling stuff away whenever I've seen cheap food. If I've got leftovers it goes in the freezer. The times I throw away food are the days I feel like I've lost points in the great game of life. To the point that I now have two freezers full to the brim.

In the north there is a supermarket chain called Booths. Booths is an upmarket shop, makes Waitrose look like Lidl. There's not much I can afford to buy in there regularly. What makes them great is that they have a fantastic reduced section. Hit the right time and all the leftovers from the butchery and fishmonger counters are piled into the fridge, usually with a massive discount. I've filled the freezer with venison, pheasant, ribs of beef, loins of pork that were all going for peanuts. When I go to my local butchers I maybe buy an extra chop or a few sausages. All goes into the freezer.

A lot of financial advice sites say have three months cash in the bank. But do they ever say have three months food in the freezer? It's the same thing, saving a little something for a rainy day.

I'm not some crazy prepper. I'm not waiting for the end of the world, it's losing my job (or the ability to work) that I'm preparing for. It just so happens that when what seems like a miniature apocalypse happens like the covid-19 outbreak I can draw on that.

It's not just food. I decided to stop using disposable shit months ago. I bought a massive pack of microfibre cloths from Screwfix so I wasn't reliant on kitchen roll. I use one or two fresh every day and then they go in the wash when done. Same with teatowels. Same with lots of other stuff. I fucking hate all the shit that marketers pretend we need. Here's an example, in Lidl last night I saw a woman with about 40 tubes of Berocca. No, apart from what the fuck are you going to do with 40 tubes of Berocca, what does it actually do? If it was a viable anti-viral don't you think they would be raining it out of the fucking sky on people? But no, the marketers make you think this crap does some good.

The other reason I didn't panic buy is that I'm not a prick. There's no two ways about it. If you panic-bought, you're a prick. I get it, if you've got a baby or a sick relative or whatever, maybe there's no harm in being prepared. But if you're some arsehole filling your car with bog-rolls then you don't really have an excuse.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just trying to feel like I'm in some sort of control to make myself feel better. I don't care, I've not panic-bought anything. Cut it out, you aren't being heroic, you're just being a prick.

Coronavirus 15th March 2020

I think this is maybe the strangest time that I have ever lived through. I went on my trip to Scotland last week and the world seemed fairly normal. I came back and the apocalypse seems to have happened. It's surreal.

From the outset I wanted this blog to be about both recovering from financial problems and about the effect that money has on mental health. In the last few days, I've seen both suffer.

For years I've always thought that being alive here and now is maybe one of the best times and places for it to happen. The world is safe, stable and fairly comfortable. And you just assume that it is going on forever that way. When 9/11 happened the think that made me really sad was that my parents had to watch that. They had both been children during the Second World War, the most destructive era of modern history. 9/11 was the end of the big span of peace that had come out of that. And bad as it was, and all the subsequent attacks have been, I never once felt like my entire way of life was under threat. And I never once felt like that would ever change.

Like everyone, you just think that progress goes on forever. Then Covid-19 happens. It's a surreal situation that most of Europe is shut down and that here you can see shelves stripped of goods in supermarkets. It feels like we are really living through something major, some massive event that is totally changing our way of life like 9/11 never did.

Financially, it's terrifying. It's not unlikely that workplaces are going to close. There might even be mass redundancies. I don't know what effect illness is going to have on my pay. I don't think I can afford two weeks of statutory sick pay. If my daughter has to stay home from school then what happens? How do I manage that with work? They've said that for the moment they will give full pay for a government-advised self-confinement of two weeks. But what if I have to do that twice? Once for her, once for me? Nobody even knows if you can be reinfected if you get hit. What happens then?

It's crazy but for most of the people I've spoken to it is the financial aspect that worries them more than health. That is the fucking world we live in and if you want to see symptoms of a sick society then there you go. People care more about being able to pay the bills than they do about survival. We don't have our priorities wrong, society dictates our priorities. How many landlords or banks or creditors are going to say "yeah, fine, you just take your time and get well again before you worry about payment"?

You know exactly what is going to happen. People are so shit-scared of losing money or endangering their jobs that they are going to try to plough through. Instead of taking time at the first signs or symptoms, they are going to wait until they cannot get out of bed but have spluttered over half the office in the meantime.

Where I work everyone could easily work from home. Each person could pick up their PC, plug it in somewhere in the house and work quite happily. But no. The directors are not shitting it that their workforce might be wiped out by one person's sneeze. They are more scared that someone might be watching Bargain Hunt instead of working. We are going to penny-pinch our way into a total fucking disaster of endemic disease and recession. Every single SME I have worked for behaves in exactly the same way. Maybe in the tech or creative industries things are different but in traditional employers, they just cannot get away from that miserly, conservative attitude and a belief that every employee is out to fucking rob them.

I've put my job search on hold for the minute, too. It's madness to swap, walk into somewhere where I might be on probation, won't have any entitlements to company benefits and might not even have any security. Where I work is a supplier to the healthcare industry. OK, we don't do drugs and equipment but it is still some fairly important stuff. Stuff that still needs to be done. It might contract, that possibility exists, but for the minute it seems a safer place to be than anywhere else that was on offer.

Mentally it has been taking its toll. Honestly, I freaked out last night. I got caught up in just a whirlwind of what might happen. I got stuck in a cycle of reading the news, searching the internet, reading social media, back to the news, repeat. My anxiety rocketed and I got myself really terrified. I had nightmares, a lot of them, and slept really badly.

The news is dog shit. When it was something happening somewhere else we treated it as entertainment. Reality TV. We were quite happy to be spectators on the crisis in China and Italy. There were play by play reports, what figures were rising, which stats were falling. It was like a fucking sick sporting tournament.

But when it hit here it all changed. The analysis just seems to have gone and the news report changed from the big picture to this zoomed in, tight focus view of events that were happening. Here's who died, here's how many are sick. The thing I have to keep reminding myself is that these numbers mean nothing. There is no context, nobody explains a damn thing. What do these numbers mean? Nobody seems to want to publish anything like that or even look at it.

It just adds to the horror. Without meaning, it is deaths and sickness and terror. Perfect food for anyone with anxiety.

So what to do? I don't know. There's a book I love called Tribe by Sebastian Junger which is about how groups of people triumph in bad times. I keep thinking about what Junger says: everyone expected those who survived WW2 to be deeply traumatised and for there to be a generation with mentall illness. There wasn't, it just didn't happen. People rose to the challenge and flourished in amongst hell. Mental illness dropped during the Blitz.

I was also reading about the five stages of grief recently. Denial, when you pretend it isn't happening; anger, when you rage against it; bargaining, when you try to talk or buy your way out of it; depression, when it all hits home; and acceptance, when you finally reconcile the reality of it. I look back at my progress over the week and I've definitely worked through those stages and am sitting at the depression stage. Acceptance, maybe, is next.

What can you do? I've been thinking about ordering some St John's Wort. It's worked in the past for me as an anti-depressant. It gives me just enough of a little fire of happiness and confidence in the back of my mind to get through whatever shit was coming. I've done cycles of SJW when I knew a particularly hard time was approaching and it almost always works.

I've been really mindful of fitness and nutrition. I've been working out hard every day and really upped my intensity. I do the Crossfit WOD each day and supplement it with other stuff so I'm getting about 40 minutes of hard exercise. I'm also eating as healthily as I can, cut out shit and sugar and eating simple, non-processed food. A little bit of meat, a lot of vegetables and plenty of fats.

I'm making an effort to get off of the news cycle and keep away from social media. I think my blog is a good outlet because it is one way. I can write what is on my mind and I don't have to read through all the other shit. I'm restricting my news exposure as well. It just ramps up my anxiety. I found this during the financial crisis of 2008-2010. I religiously listened to PM on Radio 4 on the way home every night. I got balls deep into what was unfolding. But I also had a new baby and a wife who also had her own issues as well. Terrible combination as it drove me out of my fucking mind with stress. I can see that same cycle happening again and I need to avoid it.

I've been choosy about what I watch on TV. I don't watch much at the best of times but now I'm really picky. Nature programmes. Comedy. Art and history on BBC4. BBC Scotland does some really good reality TV, like the lives of people on fishing boats and farms and that kind of thing. I don't want to watch drama or anything dark. I want to see the good in the world.

I fucking hate uncertainty at any other time. I freak out in situations where I have no control. So I try to make myself feel that I have as much control as possible through attending to things like hygiene, cleaning the house, etc.

I will not lie. I am incredibly scared. I kind of live alone (apart from the few days I have my daughter) and this fucks up social interaction. I'd just thought I wanted to join Match or something and meet a woman as I'd been single too long. But I don't see many women being eager to date during an epidemic. There's going to be a lot of loneliness and it is in the loneliness that I feed my anxiety. The pornography of news and science websites. Of ruminating. Loneliness is not something I figure is going to go away any time soon. Probably get worse.

All I can hope for is that some good news breaks in the next few days.

Weekly Update 11th March 2020

I've still not managed to get back into the swing of keeping up the blog. I missed last week's update. I was getting a load of hassle from my ex and just couldn't be arsed doing anything on Wednesday.

I managed to get a little bit of a holiday. I knew I was going to have some free time coming up this week so I've been putting money aside every week just to cover a few days away. Nothing fancy, just a road trip round Scotland. I got myself a little kitty of £120 which covered a couple of nights in hotels and then for the rest of the time I was planning on camping.

Well, that was the plan anyway. The weather was shit and I hadn't counted on all the campsites still being closed until April. So instead of two nights in a tent I had one night in a B&B and called it quits after that. Meant I spent a bit more than I wanted and had to cut the trip short but equally I probably enjoyed that one night (it was in a cosy little pub in the arse end of nowhere) a hell of a lot more than two nights being cold and uncomfortable.

I'm really glad I did it. While I was away I realised I had a little bonus coming: I've overpaid my council tax. I don't know if this is a national thing but where I live the year's tax is divided up into ten payments. I know I've already paid for them throughout the year already but it kind of means you are getting February and March for free. I pay manually rather than by direct debit and I just paid last month's without thinking and have £120 set aside for this month as well. So I actually have a little bit of extra cash to spend.

This was a really nice thing. Instead of constantly being worried about how much I'm spending I can live a little. My tastes are pretty simple so wasn't spending that much anyway. I took my mountain bike and my kayak so once you're somewhere you can use them it doesn't cost any more. I have an English Heritage membership card that also means I can get into Historic Scotland sites for free, too. I can get away with hardly spending anything over the few days. But it was nice that I could go into a cafe for some lunch. One night I pushed the boat out and had sit-in fish & chips! Another night I went for a curry and a couple of beers.

I know this isn't exactly luxury travel but it was fantastic to not have to worry. I didn't have to think: “can I afford to do this?”. For a few days it reminded me of what my life used to be like. I just drifted round, having adventures here and there and then moved on. It's been one of the nicest trips I've had in a long time, didn't cost much and really helped my mental health.

I realised a few things when I was away. I'm reading a book called Civilized to Death by Christopher Ryan. It's basic message is that civilisation is bullshit and that all the problems we face (anxiety, depression, obesity, poverty, etc) all stem from living within the boundaries of civilisation. Ryan presents quite convincing evidence that our ancestors would have lived much happier, healthier and more co-operative lives than we do now. It's really made me question all the bollocks that we get sold as a society. I went into a supermarket for the first time in a week and was overwhelmed by how much processed shit is on the shelves. Sugar and grain and cheap fats. All the stuff about coronavirus, that's a side effect from living in ways that are not how nature intended. Crowded, poor, no separation between us and domesticated animals. It's eye-opening but it's also a bleak view because there is no way out. You can't return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

The other thing is how place affects my mental health. When I'm outside, doing stuff, wandering and having adventures, I couldn't give a fuck. I feel great about myself. I like myself, I think I'm funny, good-looking and attractive. But it's when I'm back in “normal” society that the rot sets in. It took me about 10 minutes of being in a big town to feel out of place, lonely and kind of a loser. I guess that's because the values you are forced to live by in these environments make you feel like that. If you aren't a 21 year old, skinny, blonde girl with trendy clothes but are, in fact, a 40-something guy with nothing better to wear than a t-shirt and jeans then your value in that world is pretty low. I guess more and more I am starting to realise that the construct of our world, from social media to the crap we're told to buy, to our politicians in it for gain to the idiots panic-buying toilet rolls, is a big, fat con.

The last thing is realising how disappointing living in the English countryside actually is. I left the city in 2007 to live with my girlfriend who was from a rural area. It sounded ideal. Perfect. Who wouldn't want that? The reality is that for ordinary people, living in rural areas is a massive struggle. In Scotland, there are still areas of genuine wilderness that could pass for Alaska or the wilds of Canada and there are still real communities of people living and working there. But in England those places died decades ago. Where I live, rural towns and villages are just either commuter dormitories or collections of Airbnb cottages. They are no longer communities of people and families who all have some kind of relationship with each other.

I lived in a village that was literally 20 houses strung along a road and a little primary school in the middle of it. I spent a year there and never had a conversation with a single one of my neighbours. I used to see the guy next door every morning. We parked next to each other and left at the same time. I'd say hello to him. Not once did ever look my way. The school had no connection to the village, everyone was middle-aged and their kids were too old to go so all the pupils were from surrounding villages. One day I came out to find my car had been keyed, presumably because I'd parked it where a parent usually dropped his kid off.

Scotland is changing. The communities are starting to get taken over by blow-ins running B&B's and “art galleries” (shops selling over-priced shit) or, worse, holiday cottages. I stopped in a little place I'd first visited a few years ago. It used to be quite lively but now it was dead. As I walked around I noticed every second house had a key-safe by the front door. Fucking Airbnbs.

Anyway, I've kind of been in a good mood today. It's been nice having a day off to sort all the shit out after coming home. I still feel good about myself despite all the panic over coronavirus. I honestly don't know what to feel about it. I want to believe that it's going to be alright but I also know I have a lot to lose. I'm worried for my parents, both in their 80's. It breaks my heart that there is a good chance that I could lose them this year. I'm worried for my daughter. I'm worried for me. And I'm worried for the aftermath. The economy is tanking and there's a good chance this is going to kick off another recession. In many ways, I fear that more than anything. The way I'm feeling I'd be pretty happy with the collapse of society and a return to hunter-gathering. I could survive that wasy.

But it won't be that. It'll be the 2008-onwards financial crisis all over again. I don't know that I could go through that again. I had a nervous breakdown, I came close to suicide and it ended my marriage and that was all as a result of the stress of trying to keep it together in that economic turbulence.

On a macro level, I need to keep a tight rein on my finances again. This week has been nice but it's been a bit of a gift. I need to remember that I'm still financially on my arse. To bring me down to earth the engine management light on my car has just come on. From internet searches, pretty much all the fixes are costly. It could be a £400 fix, it could be a £2000 fix. Just when you think some stability creeps into your life you get reminded of reality.

Not sure where my matched betting is sitting. I need to do a tally. Kind of lost track of my weekly savings so starting that again at zero.