Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Update 11th July 2020

I started my new job on Monday. I'd been furloughed for about a month and pretty much on the day I got the news I was offered another job. I accepted it and kicked back for what I thought was going to be a nice easy month.

Only it wasn't. It's been one of the most stressful periods of recent years. I'd go as far as to say I ended up in maybe the deepest depression I've been through since the end of my marriage. I don't really know why.

I'm not someone who defines themselves by what they do for a living. I couldn't give a fuck about it so it wasn't that. It wasn't the financial implications, I was only losing a couple of hundred quid that is easily made up for by not going anywhere or doing anything right now. Plus I knew I had a new job starting.

I still can't figure out what caused it but I ended up in a spiral of sadness, depression and anxiety. It peaked on Saturday when I just couldn't cope with my daughter. Nothing to do with her or what she was doing. It was entirely down to me and my inability to react properly. I got out the house on Sunday, had a bit of a day out and some fresh air and it really helped but it still hit me hard on Sunday night.

But once I got Monday out of the way I could feel myself coming out of the other side. I'm starting to feel OK again. I think I'd just got myself into a state of terror about starting the job. Being one of the few people to get furloughed at my old place had a real impact on my self-esteem. I think I kept telling myself I wouldn't be able to do this.

I've only been here three days now but I've still got that anxiety, that sense of impostor syndrome. I'm terrified about fucking this up and getting "found out". In my head I am shit at my job and I am going to screw it up. I'm going to get in trouble. I listen to myself and look at the way I've just described it and I'm a little boy again, not doing it right and not knowing what "right" is. I guess I'm just reliving my childhood angst over and over.

I realised tonight how unnatural this financial helplessness is. If you imagine how we lived thousands of years ago, or even now for the few tribal people left in the world, every human on the planet had the means to fend for themselves. That might be through hunting, fishing, foraging or even a little bit of subsistence farming but you still knew that, no matter what, you had the ability to survive whatever life threw at you.

The idea of being worried about your future must have been very alien. Right now, thousands of us are looking at not being able to cope, not being able to provide and, sadly, not being able to survive. Because the means of providing for ourselves has been taken out of our hands. It would've taken some natural disaster to put our ancestors in a position that  they might not have access to the resources they needed. There was always something you could do.

Now? We are reliant on employers. We are reliant on social security. We are reliant on the goodwill of organisations that do not care about us and certainly do not have our interests at heart. That is not how we are meant to live.

In other news... My child's school sent me a massive bill for out of hours care with a demand for payment. The bill was wrong, they screwed up. I've been getting hassled for months for payment, I've refused to pay until they fixed it. Finally, after the head got involved, the bill was corrected. From nearly £500 down to £100. Not so much as an apology, all I got was an email trying to blame me for their mistake.

And that's school administrators for you. A group of self-important arseholes who wouldn't be tolerated in the private sector you would be hard pressed to find. Medical receptionists, maybe. They are all cut from the same cloth.

Anyway, I'm sad that my child's time at this school is coming to an end but I'm happy to never deal with the twat of a bursar, or "secretary" as the rest of the world calls the job, again. I know it is petty and serves no purpose but I'm going to leave payment right until the very last moment just to irritate her.

I mentioned previously that I felt my weekly shop was getting out of hand. I'd stuck with the whiteboard idea: when I run out of something (or getting close to it) I stick it on the whiteboard. If it is not on the board when I'm doing my shopping list then it doesn't go on it. It brought my spend down by about £20 this week. I'm happy with that and hoping I can maintain that for the rest of the year, even when lockdown ends.

I've been looking into financial protection on credit card purchases this week. Months ago I bought myself a new pair of Meindl walking boots. Exactly the same boots I'd bought in 2012 and wore until they fell apart because seven years of regular wear seemed reasonable for the money. Because of lockdown I never really got to use them and the first time I went out in the rain my feet were soaked. Not happy.

So I sent them back to the retailer under warranty. Obviously, I was outside the refund period so they said they'd look at them. That was two weeks ago. I've not even had so much as an acknowledgement from the retailer. I know they were delivered but had no word from them. I'm a bit pissed off about that.

So I started looking at what my options are. There is a thing I never knew about: Section 75 refunds. If you buy something costing more than £100 and it turns out to be either faulty or misrepresented then you can raise a Section 75 complaint with the credit card company. They will then investigate and pursue it.

The nice thing is that there is no time limit on it, unlike the distance selling laws. So I'm covered. But you need to have tried to reach a resolution with the seller. That's my next step. I'm going to give them a nudge next week.

I'd prefer to be refunded. I used to be a big fan of Meindl but the boots are clearly not the same quality as the original pair I had. They feel cheapened. A lot more plastic-y. Just don't feel as robust.

Hopefully I'll get refunded. They cost me £130. I pay about £6 a week to my credit card to clear the debt for them and I've paid off maybe half of the debt. So in theory a refund would give me about £60 to transfer to my savings pot.

With the new job I've come to realise just how important my savings pot is. I did some numbers and I need to be putting away a lot more to reach my target. I think I need to be more aggressive. I also think I need to bite the bullet and pay into a pension. It means a loss of cash in the short term but it also means free money long term as my employer matches whatever I'm depositing. I think it might be a more efficient way of building up a pot of money than trying to do it on my own. I've got about three weeks to think about it and do some research.

I'm missing not having a holiday this year. It's never anything extravagant, usually a cheap cottage on part of the Scottish coast that doesn't get a lot of tourists. But my daughter likes it, we spend some time together riding bikes and walking on the beaches. It's lovely, last year's was maybe one of the nicest holidays I've had in my life. I'm sad I won't get that this year but it means I save a bit of money. It's always a struggle finding the cash for it and ends up with September being a very lean month as I pay off what I spent in August. In fact, I only just paid off an afternoon of paddleboarding a couple of months ago.

One thing to come out of this is how I've rounded down what I think is important. All the stuff that I thought I was missing out on because I couldn't afford it seems irrelevant now. In fact, it seems like something I don't even care about. More and more, the bullshit of modern life seems increasingly irrelevant to me. The idea of living off grid somewhere becomes more appealing. I can't remember if I've said this before but if I didn't have a child I'd be living in a van right now. I'm feeling pretty alienated and disenfranchised by our society. Lockdown has made me realise how little I actually enjoy what passes for "normal" life.

Thursday, July 2, 2020

Update 1st July 2020

Fucking July.

This blog seems to have turned into me mourning the passing of time every month. As usual, not a lot has happened. I'm coming to the end of my furlough period before starting my new job.

Financially, it has not been any different to normal. I'm 20% down on my income but I'm not spending anything, I'm not going anywhere. I haven't really worried about it but I have made an effort to be a bit more careful.

Over the last few months I've done a single weekly shop. It was coming in around £55 and that was including the essentials plus a few little treats that I felt I could afford because I wasn't doing anything else. But over the last few weeks it was starting to grow, I think it got up to £80 one week.

Why was that happening? I realised I was just thinking "fuck it". I'd see something I fancied and it went in the trolley. I suppose I was guilty of trying to buy/eat my way happy. Now, most of the time I eat really healthily and take a lot of exercise. That is not a product of lockdown, that was just normal life. At the start of lockdown I lost a load of weight and after four weeks I had abs for the first time in my life.

But I had that same "fuck it" attitude after that. I have realised how slack I was getting with my discipline, how apathetic I was becoming. It wasn't just that I was believing I was giving myself treats, I was giving up a little bit. Looking after myself physically and financially was becoming less important as the year disappeared into the fog of nothingness.

I need to do something about that. One thing I need to stop now is my bloated shopping list. I realised that pre-lockdown, when I could just nip to the supermarket at lunchtime for whatever I needed, I was maybe spending less. That doesn't make sense, I should have been spending more because I had less of a handle on how much I was buying.

But I think what happened was that I was buying stuff as I needed it. When I go once a week there is a big element of buying stuff either because I think I need it but don't, I want to be prepared and might not get a chance for another seven days or I pretend "it's a treat". So what I've done is be more organised. I have a whieboard in my kitchen and when I run out of something (or know I'm close to running out) it goes on the board. When I do my shopping list on a Tuesday then only what is on the board goes on the list. I am only buying stuff I am running out of.

I might stick a couple of other things on there if I can make a case for it but the vast majority is replacing what is needed. It has worked for the last couple of weeks that I've been trialling it. It has got my shopping down to normal levels and this week I think I came in about a tenner under my average.

Now that I think about it, that average is just a guess. I think I might start tracking it a bit more accurately so that I actually know what the average is and can relate any drift from that to something specific.

I've been keeping an eye on my savings and what has been happening. I've kept up my monthly payment into the fund during this and I am glad I have. The fund has started to recover and is hovering between 2-3% down which is a lot better than the 25% down it was in March. It's sat at this before for a long time before turning positive. At the start of the year it had climbed to 10% up so I'm not too pessimistic for it long term. I don't need the money right now, depending on what happens in the economy that may change.

Chip has started to make savings for me again. It did £41 in June after doing nothing for all of May and most of April. It's not much but it's stil £260 in the pot. I know it is my money but I doubt I would have been disciplined enough to make the savings on my own.
I'm pissed of with the AA. I took out a car insurance policy with them based on a £40 repayment through Topcashback. The AA declined the payment. Again. This is maybe the third or fourth time I've bought products from them based on generous cashbacks and every single time it has been declined. In total, it's maybe £200 that I've lost out on. So if you use Topcashback then the AA is one to avoid.

That's it for financial stuff. Mentally, I've been up and down. Last week was really shit. I had waves of anxiety about starting the new job and it stopped me from really enjoying this period of paid leave. This is a massive opportunity that I want to make the most of: a month paid to do nothing. But I just could not enjoy it for the anxiety. I kept thinking "I'm running out of time" and it made me either do nothing or fill my day with shitty little insignificant jobs so that I could feel that I was making the most of it. It just left me feeling more and more that I was wasting my time.

I've been a bit more chilled this week. I decided to not do anything, not make a list of jobs to do each day and do what I felt like. It has been much better and I've enjoyed much more of my time at home. There has been the odd day where I felt that I was freaking out. Saturday, especially. I didn't sleep well and woke up tired out. I had my daughter that day and it was hard going. All I wanted to do was find a corner and not do anything I had to think about.

This week has been nicer. I write another blog about the outdoors and places I go and I've finally managed to finish a big piece I've been working on forever. I went out on my bike a couple of times and went for a nice walk yesterday. I've found getting out now and again clears my head. Stuck at home it is easier to disappear into your own mental world. Going out grounds me a bit.

I've found a great channel on Youtube by a woman called Abbie Barnes. She does films about her long distance walks. They are interesting enough but what I really like is that she has a lot of mental health issues that she's really honest about. I've watched a few of her films and really like them. She's in her twenties but I still find them quite relatable.

I'm in a better headspace about starting the new job. A big part of me would love to stay on furlough and just fill my days with stuff I want to do. But considering I've had a month to fill my days with stuff I want to do and not actually managed it then why would another couple of months be any different? And looking at how fast time is passing, October would be on top of me very quickly. In fact, the next few months are going to be critical for anyone on furlough. This is when businesses are starting to have to contribute more and more to the scheme. Free holiday no more. I doubt many companies will keep people on even when they are asked to contribute just a couple of hundred quid a month. we're already seeing big redundancies being announced on a wider scale.

I know I've made a good decision but I'm scared of a lot of things. That I might fuck it up. That I might be shit at it. I might not be able to live up to what they expect of me. And just the general worries about starting anywhere new.

I've got a few days left so will try to enjoy them as much as I can without pressuring myself.