April has disappeared and I have barely even noticed its passing.
I haven't bothered doing a weekly update because there hasn't really been anything to update. Like a lot of people, I'm saving a shitload of money because I'm not driving, I'm not going anywhere, I'm not doing anything. By the end of the month my spending was something like £250 below my budget. I basically spend about £50 on my weekly shop for me and my daughter and that's it. I occasionally buy something for the house from Amazon. Like I have a leaking pipe and needed some materials to repair it with.
It's great but is it worth reporting? It's all artificial. I'm only saving money because of circumstances, I've not done anything to "earn" it. There's no real opportunity to do anything particularly productive.
A few people at work have been furloughed. I get the feeling that there was more to it than simple lack of work. The people chosen, if someone asked you who were either the most lazy or least competent in the place you'd probably choose them. One of them, worryingly, had had mental health issues in the past and mentioned to his line manager that he hadn't been doing too well in the last week. And, sure enough, by coincidence he was the first furlough announced.
That really spiked my anxiety and depression when it happened. There was a little bit of relief when the Job Retention Scheme was extended to the end of June. That relaxed me. But it still hasn't eased the low level anxiety that I've got burning in the background. I deal with it by just not thinking about it.
I don't know if "depression" is really what I've felt. It's more a general melancholy brought on by the loss of liberty, the endlessness of it, the uncertainty, the lack of anything to differentiate one day from the next. I'm filling my time with housekeeping and jobs that don't really need doing. Minor repairs. Tidying. A lot of exercise, I've been training really hard.
I think the key to this is remembering that tomorrow is not today. We tend to get into the mental habit of thinking that how today goes is the template for the future. But it isn't, we learn to deal with things, situations change, we make progress. That really keeps me going.
Not looking deeply at the news helps keep my mental health in check. I don't need to read the biographies of the dead that sites like the BBC love to post. I get it that some people see this as humanising the Covid victims but you have to ask what it is doing to you mentally. Especially when they love to post about the people that don't fit the normal victim profile. When fit and healthy people, people who look not dissimilar to you, are dying then that sets my nerves on edge.
Everyone says "wash your hands" but we need to bring that same hygiene standard to our minds as well. You need to be aware of where your attention is. It might seem disrespectful to the dead but you need to ask yourself: is reading all this stuff helping? The same with posting to social media: is what you write helping either you or others? Usually the answer is "no".
I had a month long break from Facebook and I've applied that principle to anything I post or get involved in. Is it helpful? Is it funny? Is it useful? If not, then I don't bother. I don't need to reply to other people. I don't need to get into discussions about who thinks who is right.
I listened to a financial podcast the other day. The guy on it said the best thing to do in situations like this is to over-react but not panic. I think what he was trying to say is that panicking means making decisions where your judgement is clouded. Over-reacting means taking steps that are maybe more aggressive than they need to be but done with conscious thought and planning.
I think I've done that. My "over-reaction" has been shut down all unecessary spending. It's fairly easy because there's nowhere to go and nothing to do. But my outlook right now is to act like I have already lost my job. I've been through my monthly bills and I know what my spending is. I know what I need to pay and when I need to pay it. I am trying to set aside cash as much as I can. I've rebuilt a decent stash of food in my freezer after the disaster a few weeks ago. Maybe it isn't the most nutritious (a lot of Aldi frozen stuff) but it's food and isn't what I'm going to be living off forever.
If I am wrong then so what? It doesn't hurt to have pared everything down to the minimum. If I am right then I am starting from a better position.
Mentally, that will be the real challenge. It makes me wonder about what this will do long term. After the last recession and then through a divorce I did the same thing. I got into the habit of being extremely tight with money and it took me a long time to get out of that. For the last year (at least) I was financially back on my feet and didn't need that same level of extreme money-saving but I just could not snap out of it because I'd been living it so long. I had to literally remind myself not to be so mean and spend a little cash now and again. Like when I was out with my daughter or on holiday or something. Yes, you can afford to go into a cafe without it bankrupting you...
And now I am back in that mindset. I don't know, I think because the circumstances I've been living in (job worries, lack of money, lack of opportunities, etc) that this hasn't been much of an adjustment. The only thing that I've really struggled with so far has been the lack of physical touch. I'd been single for a while and just got around to getting back into dating again when all this happened. Knowing that it will be a long time before people are going to start feeling like they can be physical with another person, especially a stranger, really bothers me.
But like I said, tomorrow is not today.
Showing posts with label managing money. Show all posts
Showing posts with label managing money. Show all posts
Sunday, May 3, 2020
Wednesday, March 11, 2020
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.
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.
Wednesday, February 5, 2020
Weekly Update: 5th February 2020
Finally reached pay-day. It seems like a fucking long trek between my last pay and this one. As far as I know, I've managed to make it without blowing any of my direct debits. But it has been hard work.
For starters, I'm still cold. I'm not convinced about my strategy of using electric heaters just to heat up individual rooms that are being used rather than running the central heating. It works great in my daughter's room, she's got an oil filled radiator in there and running it on half power with the thermostat on halfway means her room is comfortable.
I've accepted my bedroom is unheated and, therefore, really fucking cold. It's probably a good thing that I'm not sharing it with anyone at the minute because I doubt anyone in their right mind is going to put up with those conditions. Except for maybe some survivalist nut, I don't know. On the plus side, I'm actually sleeping better. When I was trying to keep it warm over Christmas I found I was waking up all the time. With it being cold, I tend to sleep right through.
The fan heater in the living room doesn't even make a dent. It takes the chill off and that's about it. I still remember being a kid in Scotland and getting up in a freezing house in the morning. I used to eat my breakfast sitting in front of a calor fire. Thirty years on I would have hoped that my life had moved on from that but apparently not.
Unless I light the woodstove then the living room is still like a fridge. I've got pretty good at managing it now and I can get by on 2-3 logs a night. By that reckoning, I've got about another week of wood. I'm going to do a meter reading tonight as well and see what sort of impact running electric heating has made on my bill. If it's less than an extra £50 (what Calor gas was costing me a month) then it's fine. Fuck it, spring will be here soon.
I started using an app called Chip. I've mentioned it before, it squirrels away a few quid here and there from your current account as the month goes on and it sees how you are spending. Last month it put away £109 for me and I didn't even notice it. The reason I mention it is that I finally got my £10 welcome bonus that I signed up with.
I'm still ploughing on with matched betting despite the hassle and, in my opinion, fairly low reward. I think I'm up to about £60 of free money and god knows how much cash tied up in accounts. I've taken a 10 day trial of Oddsmonkey today and just when I went to use it tonight the website is on its arse. Great.
Once again I managed to come in under budget on my weekly spending. I think there have been two things that have helped. The big one is cutting back on my supermarket spending. I do most of my spending in Aldi now and only go to the bigger shops for stuff I can't get there. I've swapped a lot of the branded products that I normally bought, like laundry liquid and shower gel, to Aldi's own brands. Nobody has died yet so can't complain. I actually quite like the smell of their laundry liquid. Algodon or something? Whatever.
The other thing has been trying to cut my fuel costs. I'm regularly averaging 5-6mpg more on my daily commute now that I've got used to my new car. That's good, I was shitting it that I'd bought a car that was pissing money down the bog. I'm also trying to not use my car as much. I've been walking and cycling to local places that I would normally have driven to. Taking my lunch to work has cut down on my trips at dinnertime as well. If I don't take anything? Fuck it, go hungry. It's not the end of the world and strangely I think my energy levels might stay a lot more steady over the day.
So that's it. One of my financial aims for this week is to start rounding up my spending. For example, if my shopping comes to £15.70 I'm going to round it up to £16 and stick the 30p in the savings pot. I'll give it a week and see how I get on. There's a new bank, Monzo, that does that automatically but I figure I can do it just as well myself. Will it make a difference? I don't know. I'll see over the course of the week.
I've saved £36.53 on my weekly budget this week. That brings me up to £151.19 now. Chip has £109 in the savings account and there's maybe £50-60 in the matched betting fund. So that's quite a healthy little pot that I've managed to build up in just a month. If I can do that every month then I'll be happy.
For starters, I'm still cold. I'm not convinced about my strategy of using electric heaters just to heat up individual rooms that are being used rather than running the central heating. It works great in my daughter's room, she's got an oil filled radiator in there and running it on half power with the thermostat on halfway means her room is comfortable.
I've accepted my bedroom is unheated and, therefore, really fucking cold. It's probably a good thing that I'm not sharing it with anyone at the minute because I doubt anyone in their right mind is going to put up with those conditions. Except for maybe some survivalist nut, I don't know. On the plus side, I'm actually sleeping better. When I was trying to keep it warm over Christmas I found I was waking up all the time. With it being cold, I tend to sleep right through.
The fan heater in the living room doesn't even make a dent. It takes the chill off and that's about it. I still remember being a kid in Scotland and getting up in a freezing house in the morning. I used to eat my breakfast sitting in front of a calor fire. Thirty years on I would have hoped that my life had moved on from that but apparently not.
Unless I light the woodstove then the living room is still like a fridge. I've got pretty good at managing it now and I can get by on 2-3 logs a night. By that reckoning, I've got about another week of wood. I'm going to do a meter reading tonight as well and see what sort of impact running electric heating has made on my bill. If it's less than an extra £50 (what Calor gas was costing me a month) then it's fine. Fuck it, spring will be here soon.
I started using an app called Chip. I've mentioned it before, it squirrels away a few quid here and there from your current account as the month goes on and it sees how you are spending. Last month it put away £109 for me and I didn't even notice it. The reason I mention it is that I finally got my £10 welcome bonus that I signed up with.
I'm still ploughing on with matched betting despite the hassle and, in my opinion, fairly low reward. I think I'm up to about £60 of free money and god knows how much cash tied up in accounts. I've taken a 10 day trial of Oddsmonkey today and just when I went to use it tonight the website is on its arse. Great.
Once again I managed to come in under budget on my weekly spending. I think there have been two things that have helped. The big one is cutting back on my supermarket spending. I do most of my spending in Aldi now and only go to the bigger shops for stuff I can't get there. I've swapped a lot of the branded products that I normally bought, like laundry liquid and shower gel, to Aldi's own brands. Nobody has died yet so can't complain. I actually quite like the smell of their laundry liquid. Algodon or something? Whatever.
The other thing has been trying to cut my fuel costs. I'm regularly averaging 5-6mpg more on my daily commute now that I've got used to my new car. That's good, I was shitting it that I'd bought a car that was pissing money down the bog. I'm also trying to not use my car as much. I've been walking and cycling to local places that I would normally have driven to. Taking my lunch to work has cut down on my trips at dinnertime as well. If I don't take anything? Fuck it, go hungry. It's not the end of the world and strangely I think my energy levels might stay a lot more steady over the day.
So that's it. One of my financial aims for this week is to start rounding up my spending. For example, if my shopping comes to £15.70 I'm going to round it up to £16 and stick the 30p in the savings pot. I'll give it a week and see how I get on. There's a new bank, Monzo, that does that automatically but I figure I can do it just as well myself. Will it make a difference? I don't know. I'll see over the course of the week.
I've saved £36.53 on my weekly budget this week. That brings me up to £151.19 now. Chip has £109 in the savings account and there's maybe £50-60 in the matched betting fund. So that's quite a healthy little pot that I've managed to build up in just a month. If I can do that every month then I'll be happy.
Wednesday, January 29, 2020
Weekly Update: 29th January 2020
This is always the worst week of the month. It's the countdown to pay-day and it's when I start to get worried about whether or not I'll have enough in my current account to cover all my commitments. I've been especially worried this month after a. the shit show of last month and b. my outgoings have gone up with buying a car. I don't have any padding, I blew all my cash savings last month trying to cover all my post-Christmas direct debits so if it goes tits up this month then I am in the shit because I have no bail out.
I'm usually fairly organised about stuff like this. I made a table that works backwards from pay-day. It's a countdown that shows me what my balance needs to be in order to make it to the end of the month safely. But it still doesn't stop me worrying about it. All it takes is a couple of bad experiences to imprint that fear into you.
When my partner and I split up in 2014 I hit a similar rockbottom. It was maybe worse because I had all the expense of setting up a new home on my own with about three weeks notice to prepare for it. I reckoned at the time I was maybe around four weeks away from declaring bankruptcy. Even now, six years down the road and with being in a totally different place financially, I am still terrified of opening my bank account homepage. When I am entering my password and waiting for the page to load my anxiety is through the fucking roof.
Weirdly, I get paid on the 4th of each month. I don't know why. But according to my table, I've got about £300 in cash in my current account and about £200 in direct debits until the 4th. In theory, I'm going to make it with 100 quid to spare.
There are a couple of apps that I've started using that have really helped. One is Chip. I think I might have mentioned it in a previous post. You register your bank account on it, it says it uses AI to analyse your spending and works out how much money you can set aside. Every now and again you get a message saying that it's moved ten or fifteen quid into its holding account. So far this month it has put away £83.50. It's my money, I've not magiced it out of anywhere but it is nice to know that I've got a little pot sitting there. It's my first month with it so I've been keen to see how it actually pans out, whether it would blow my budget or not, but it seems to be working OK.
The other is Money Dashboard. You register your bank account and credit cards and it shows you an instant snapshot of what each account balance is. It's not fantastic, it's a bit slow to update, but it's useful to have. My main current account is a bit shit, it's a long log in process and the site isn't optimised for phone or tablet (and there is no app). I'd avoid checking my account regularly because of that (and partly because of my anxiety as mentioned above), Money Dashboard makes it less hassle. Open the app, refresh the display and there it is.
I know there is a lot of fuckery with apps like these. They are free. Why is that? The obvious answer is that your data and spending habits are a commodity. I can only assume that my spending behaviour is being sold on for some sort of analysis. In all honesty, I'm a skinflint twat so I doubt my data has much to offer. But it is important to bear in mind.
The other financial news was finally getting a new credit card. For years I never bothered applying because I would always get turned down or hit with a massive interest rate. So I just gave up and managed without. That's probably worked in my favour, I've not had any searches, no hits on my credit record. Out of interest I did a soft eligibility check and Virgin offered a Mastercard with 24 months zero percent on balance transfers and a £7000 credit limit. It shocked me as I thought my rating was in the bog.
I've got an Amex card with £1500 on it. I've been paying 50 quid a month and it barely makes a dent. At 0% interest then I'd clear it in a couple of years by just paying an extra tenner a month. Seems like a bargain so I transferred the £1500 to the new card. I'm doing fuck all else with it, I don't even carry it with me. The card stays in my finances box where it belongs. A credit card with plenty of space on it is a poison. It's like a cheap whore sitting in the corner of your living room all day, every day. I'm really ambivalent about having it, on the one hand it means I get to clear one of my existing cards but on the other it's a temptation I just don't need. Too easy to say "I'll stick it on the good credit card and sort it out later". "Later" never comes.
I'm still doing good on not spending a load on food shopping. I've done my own lunches for work every day except today. I was lazy, I wanted an extra ten minutes in bed.
Matched betting is still ticking over. The profits are hardly rolling in. A couple of quid here, a couple of quid there. Still unimpressed. I think the excitement of tracking down the right deal is more enjoyable than the tiny amounts of money being made.
This week's spending is £25.07 under budget so that is me up to £114.69. I don't know if I will sustain that this week. I'm going to see my parents this weekend with my daughter and that's a 400 mile round trip on top of everything else. I hardly see them because of the distance and they hardly see my daughter so I can't complain about it.
I've got another job interview next week. Supposedly pays decently but it's a bit of a trek and looks like harder work. One of my big gripes about where I am is that I don't feel valued. To my mind, if I have to work harder for more money in another job then that isn't them valuing me more, that's just me working harder. Kind of defeats the purpose of swapping jobs so I think I've written it off in my mind already.
I'm usually fairly organised about stuff like this. I made a table that works backwards from pay-day. It's a countdown that shows me what my balance needs to be in order to make it to the end of the month safely. But it still doesn't stop me worrying about it. All it takes is a couple of bad experiences to imprint that fear into you.
When my partner and I split up in 2014 I hit a similar rockbottom. It was maybe worse because I had all the expense of setting up a new home on my own with about three weeks notice to prepare for it. I reckoned at the time I was maybe around four weeks away from declaring bankruptcy. Even now, six years down the road and with being in a totally different place financially, I am still terrified of opening my bank account homepage. When I am entering my password and waiting for the page to load my anxiety is through the fucking roof.
Weirdly, I get paid on the 4th of each month. I don't know why. But according to my table, I've got about £300 in cash in my current account and about £200 in direct debits until the 4th. In theory, I'm going to make it with 100 quid to spare.
There are a couple of apps that I've started using that have really helped. One is Chip. I think I might have mentioned it in a previous post. You register your bank account on it, it says it uses AI to analyse your spending and works out how much money you can set aside. Every now and again you get a message saying that it's moved ten or fifteen quid into its holding account. So far this month it has put away £83.50. It's my money, I've not magiced it out of anywhere but it is nice to know that I've got a little pot sitting there. It's my first month with it so I've been keen to see how it actually pans out, whether it would blow my budget or not, but it seems to be working OK.
The other is Money Dashboard. You register your bank account and credit cards and it shows you an instant snapshot of what each account balance is. It's not fantastic, it's a bit slow to update, but it's useful to have. My main current account is a bit shit, it's a long log in process and the site isn't optimised for phone or tablet (and there is no app). I'd avoid checking my account regularly because of that (and partly because of my anxiety as mentioned above), Money Dashboard makes it less hassle. Open the app, refresh the display and there it is.
I know there is a lot of fuckery with apps like these. They are free. Why is that? The obvious answer is that your data and spending habits are a commodity. I can only assume that my spending behaviour is being sold on for some sort of analysis. In all honesty, I'm a skinflint twat so I doubt my data has much to offer. But it is important to bear in mind.
The other financial news was finally getting a new credit card. For years I never bothered applying because I would always get turned down or hit with a massive interest rate. So I just gave up and managed without. That's probably worked in my favour, I've not had any searches, no hits on my credit record. Out of interest I did a soft eligibility check and Virgin offered a Mastercard with 24 months zero percent on balance transfers and a £7000 credit limit. It shocked me as I thought my rating was in the bog.
I've got an Amex card with £1500 on it. I've been paying 50 quid a month and it barely makes a dent. At 0% interest then I'd clear it in a couple of years by just paying an extra tenner a month. Seems like a bargain so I transferred the £1500 to the new card. I'm doing fuck all else with it, I don't even carry it with me. The card stays in my finances box where it belongs. A credit card with plenty of space on it is a poison. It's like a cheap whore sitting in the corner of your living room all day, every day. I'm really ambivalent about having it, on the one hand it means I get to clear one of my existing cards but on the other it's a temptation I just don't need. Too easy to say "I'll stick it on the good credit card and sort it out later". "Later" never comes.
I'm still doing good on not spending a load on food shopping. I've done my own lunches for work every day except today. I was lazy, I wanted an extra ten minutes in bed.
Matched betting is still ticking over. The profits are hardly rolling in. A couple of quid here, a couple of quid there. Still unimpressed. I think the excitement of tracking down the right deal is more enjoyable than the tiny amounts of money being made.
This week's spending is £25.07 under budget so that is me up to £114.69. I don't know if I will sustain that this week. I'm going to see my parents this weekend with my daughter and that's a 400 mile round trip on top of everything else. I hardly see them because of the distance and they hardly see my daughter so I can't complain about it.
I've got another job interview next week. Supposedly pays decently but it's a bit of a trek and looks like harder work. One of my big gripes about where I am is that I don't feel valued. To my mind, if I have to work harder for more money in another job then that isn't them valuing me more, that's just me working harder. Kind of defeats the purpose of swapping jobs so I think I've written it off in my mind already.
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