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.