I'm trying to get back into the habit of uploading a weekly update. It's about time I got back into a routine.
So this week I got my car insurance renewal through from the RAC, my current insurer. £800. No surprise, everyone knows your current insurer knocks the arse out of the renewal every year. They know a ton of people will just accept it and let it auto-renew. And they know another ton of people will phone up and try to bargain. And miraculously they always seem to manage to cut it in half, a special deal just for you, just for today, so that you couldn't possibly turn it down. I don't know what their retention rates are but it must be high.
It pisses me off. I just want to be able to buy a service and that's it. I don't want to have to haggle, I don't want to sit through a script where someone in a call centre pretends to talk to their supervisor about discounts. I just want to know what I'm paying without having to do this tedious fucking dance. And it is everywhere now as well. It used to be car insurance and everyone just accepted that's how it was. But it's mobile phones, it's broadband, it's buying a fucking couch. I don't want to do it, it doesn't build loyalty, it makes me want to just get it over and done with.
As usual, I just do a search on Confused and go with the lowest deal. I never even bother going through the hassle of calling them that may or may not result in a few pennies saved. But the one thing I always do is I go through Topcashback. There is usually a kickback on the insurance search providers (they are all much the same) so I get a quote through that first. But I always check cashback offers for the lowest insurer as well. If they have a better deal then I'll dump the search provider and do the policy direct. If not, I go through Confused (or whoever) and get their cashback instead (usually about £40).
I had a look at my savings today. I'd been regularly pumping what I could into fairly conservative index tracker funds through an ISA with Hargreaves Lansdowne's. At the start of lockdown about 20% got wiped off the value. Now, they are only down 6%. A small loss is good news. Most financial bloggers say hold on to your shares through shitty times unless you really need to sell so that's what I've done. It was tempting to just move it into cash to minimise the loss but I'm going to plough through for the minute. I've also switched my monthly deposit from all trackers to half trackers and half bond funds for a bit more conservatism right now.
Chances are I won't be making my usual £165 deposit next month anyway. As far as I know I am still on track to be furloughed. And I am still super-angry about the whole thing. As far as I know, I am the only one right now. And, everyone else seems crazy busy right now as well. So everybody else has too much on but they can't find anything for me to do?
You can't help take it personally. It has soured my relationship with the company. I'm actually finding it really hard to work with other people there this week. I'd forgotten how many people are competing for the next rung on the ladder. And you see it now, so many people trying elbowing each other out the way to get recognition. Sending emails at stupid hours. Messages where senior management are copied in unnecessarily so that they get to be seen. Working well past reasonable hours all for free. The way things are you can't blame them but I guarantee that senior management are going to take advantage of the goodwill generated by this self-inhterest.
Me, I just want to get the fuck out now. I think I'd happily eat the 20% pay hit to not be working amongst them. But what worries me is that if you are first on furlough then you're probably first in the queue for redundancy when they realise that long term the company is now too big. Even with the government funds they still have employer's NI to pay so there is still a cost in me being on the books. The ax will fall eventually.
The thing is, they told me it could have been anyone. But everybody knows there are people who it won't be and I'm not on that list. On the plus side, it is pushing me into other things. I've been learning to code for the last year and I'm nearing the end of the course (I will post about it separately) so the time is coming when I will be able to start looking for work as a junior developer. And the other positive is that I saw an ad for a job the other day that could have been written for me. They're looking for my specialism which is in short supply, they are offering a similar salary and it's only a couple of miles away (I could probably cycle it). I contacted the recruiter and I've got a video interview next week.
Mentally, I've not been doing well this week at all. Monday I was pretty depressed. Tuesday, I veered between anger and depression. My phone died on Monday as well, five months outside of warranty. So now I'm back to using a ten year old phone. I don't really care, I'm not into technology. It's just the principle of it. It cost me £100 seventeen months ago and now it's going to cost me another £100 if I want to replace it.
But that's somewhere else I can save a little bit of money when I go on to furlough. I'm only paying £13 a month for a pay as you go SIM card with Vodafone. But if I'm not working and not going anywhere then I don't need much mobile data. I can swap to a lesser deal on Giff Gaff for about half of that. So I save £6 a month? Well, that's £1.50 a week I can spend on something else. A little treat for my daughter or something.
I had a lot of optimism at the start of the year. I thought this was when things were going to turn around. I guess a lot of people thought that. Right now, I'm just trying to maintain that optimism. I'm trying to be disciplined with household chores. I'm being mindful when doing tasks, take pleasure in doing it and experiencing it. I'm still working out hard and I'm probably in the best physical shape I've been in for a while.
My ideal scenario is that I get offered that job next week, I get a couple of weeks on my arse on furlough while everything is finalised and then I tell where I work to go fuck themselves finally. If it doesn't happen? Then there's going to be something else. There has to be. I just need to keep reminding myself that.
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