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.
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