First real week of the UK lockdown. I saw it announced on Monday night and I just shook my head. How stupid are people? You brought it on yourselves and honestly, I'm really glad they did it. At the weekend I left the house to buy some milk (and waited til late on Saturday evening when I knew the shop was quiet) and Sunday I went for a walk just out my front door. I never saw a soul, presumably because all these morons were travelling all over the fucking country.
The longer this progresses the more I despair of some people. I wanted to see my parents. I wanted to go somewhere nice. But I didn't. And this is what annoys me, probably the vast majority of people did the right thing and sat on their arses and it came down to a bunch of bellends to fuck everything up.
Rant over. This is supposed to be my weekly update. There's a few things I want to talk about that cropped up. The first is the possibilit of losing my job. I work for a supplier to the NHS, not a vital supplier but a supplier all the same. I'm probably in a better position than a lot of people but losing my job is still a possibility.
That kind of uncertainty puts my anxiety through the roof so I've learned that the best cure is to gather intelligence and make a plan. My big worry is losing my home. I rent so there's no mortgage holiday for me. I'd be reliant on benefits. First step was to try to find out what I'd be entitled to. There are various calculators suggested by the gov.uk website. Trouble is, they aren't particularly easy to use, especially if you aren't in the benefit system and don't know what is what. The one I found my way around suggested that I could get £272 a week, so about £1088 a month. Take off rent and council tax and that leaves £360 a month to cover everything else. Not the end of the world but not great either.
The next thing I wanted to do was understand what outgoings I had other than rent and council tax. This included utilities, road tax, car insurance, car loan and card payments. Worryingly, that comes to £650, so £290 short before I even buy any food.
It got me thinking that I need something just to protect my rent. If I could do that then it makes everything else possible. I'd looked at income protection insurance in the past but I'd rejected the idea because I was planning on switching jobs and there's always an exclusion period built into the policies. But right now I'm not moving so a policy might be a possibility.
But it was a struggle finding anything. It seems the entire country has had the same thought and the insurance companies pulled the ladder up. No deal. Some sites were closed. I applied to a couple and got rejected. I got an email on Friday that the last one I tried had actually accepted my application. I've not had any paperwork through so we'll see.
But... I actually got some good news. When I was going through my monthly outgoings I came across a monthly payment for £29 that I'd missed. I'd no idea what it was for so called the company, gave them the reference and it turned out to be an unemployment policy that I'd taken out during the last recession. Entitlement of £500 a month if I lost my job and the policy is still in place. I can't believe it, it really is such good luck. On the downside, I've paid about £3500 in premiums over the years. The benefit could be anything from £500 to £6000. Normally, I hate insurance policies like these as they prey off fear but for once I'm very grateful for it.
Spending, I've spent fuck all this week. I did my weekly shop on Monday and that's it. I bought some compost and some veg seeds which came to 20 quid. Usually that's enough that I'm self-sufficient in tomatoes, cucmbers and salad for most of the summer and into the autumn. I bought a packet of bacon from the local butcher as a treat. I've done about 10 miles in my car since Friday. I've not been anywhere or done anything.
Mentally, getting out of work and staying at home has helped my mental health massively. I was very anxious this time last week, I was getting really short-tempered at work and, stupidly, I got to the point I was threatening to walk if they didn't stop fucking around over working from home. On the downside, I'm finding working from home a lot harder than I was expecting. There are no distractions, no one to talk to so the days are really long. It's lonely. I'm surprised at that as I'm quite a self-reliant person. And it's boring. I thought I'd love having so much more time but having all that time to fill can be a curse.
But mostly, I'm feeling good. I think I've got stuff under control at the minute. I'm feeling OK about work for the next month or two. I'm working out hard and eating really well, I'd lost six pounds over the last couple of weeks and look like I'm still losing fat. I'm aiming to have a six pack by the end of this. I'm posting my daily workout on Instagram if anyone cares, I try to tailor it for people with minimal equipment and no access to a gym. Working out is maybe the best thing I've found for controlling my depression. It's @skintlife_2020 on Instagram. I don't do any other social media.
As I've been working from home I've been thinking about ways to save money and help you cope mentally. I'll draft these up over the coming days and post.
Showing posts with label skint. Show all posts
Showing posts with label skint. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 25, 2020
Thursday, February 27, 2020
Weekly Update 27th February 2020
So back into the long pull towards pay day. Like every month, I've got the usual paranoia about whether or not I'm going to have enough spare cash to make it. I've mentioned before that I've got a day to day countdown of how much I need to have in my current account to meet my direct debits. But I never trust it and I do the same thing every month. It gets to this time and I shit myself that I've not got enough. It kind of looks like I am going to make it. Just. Whatever, doesn't matter how much I scrape by with as long as I make it.
Every month. I just can't seem to ease off and relax and have faith that it will happen. Every month my anxiety shoots through the roof. But I suppose I am lucky, my anxiety is just in the last week. People live with this every single day. I guess for a while that was me but slowly, like over the course of years, I've managed to stretch it out so that the anxiety only happens in the final week. I suppose that is something.
I keep hoping for good news. I keep believing some day my luck is going to change. I did a PPI search just before the deadline last year and I keep thinking I am going to come home and there is going to be a nice, fat cheque waiting for me. It's dragged on and on, apparently there are two accounts that qualify but I've still not heard a thing.
Instead, I came home the other day and it's a final demand for my tax bill. I don't know why but every year I have to do a self-assessment. Again, that is another thing the blows my stress levels through the roof. I work a normal, PAYE job. Straightforward. For some reason I cannot figure out they change my tax code every year and every year I seem to end up under paying when I submit the assessment.
Most years it hasn't been a problem. I'm usually a few hundred quid under. I have a direct debit set up to the government and pay a little every month. But not this year. This year they are up one their hind legs and making final demands for the same few hundred quid. And instead of just letting the direct debit run like always you have to go through a big fucking palaver on the website. OK, it's maybe not that complicated but it's the wording of it. It is written basically as if you are asking them to consider being merciful and you have to acknowledge your unending gratitude to these cunts.
There is a real change in tone when it comes to tax. The cynic in me suspects the change in government. They are not going to chase Amazon or Virgin, they are going to fuck you and me. You can really see it coming in anything that involves you interacting with the government about anything financial. It doesn't bode well, it feels like we are headed to a good old fucking on the village green.
I've run out of credit on my daily credit card again as well. It happened with about 10 days to go and I'm not really sure why. I suspect I might have underpaid last month. So while I was celebrating having a little more cash in the bank that month I was actually headed towards maxing out my card. I've been having to pay for food and the basics of daily life on my debit card. Cash straight out of my bank. Hence why the panic about having enough til the payday.
I've fucked up this week as well. I've been coming out of the depression I was in last week. I was feeling in a celebratory mood so been buying lunches every day. Not much, maybe 3 quid a day, but it still mounts up. Food is how I medicate my moods sometimes. It's the thing that surprises most as I tend to eat really healthily and I'm fanatical about exercise. But I also know I do that as I have a really addictive personality and if I didn't I would be a fat fuck.
Last week seems like a lifetime ago. My depression phases are always like that. After my divorce it was long, sustained lows but now it tends to be 3 or 4 days, maybe a week, of intense low followed by a clear ramping up the other side. When I climb out of the pit it always feels like it was a very long time ago and I don't know what the fuck I was ever complaining about.
Work is still pissing me off and I am still on the lookout for a new job. I have grown to fucking despise the place. My salary hasn't changed in six years and now I'm being moved to a new location about 15 miles further away. It's not everyone, just a handful of people and I am one of that handful. It is going to cost another 20 quid a week or so in fuel. It also fucks up my childcare obligations as I can't make my drop off and pick-up times any more. I'm looking at either cutting my hours (and therefore salary) or paying for extra childcare.
Not a fucking question about whether this causes me problems, whether it is manageable. Just told to live with it or fuck off. And sure enough my contract has a clause in it that allows for this.
I fucking hate these people. I am paying for four millionaires to get richer. There will be no thanks. I might get another £50 Amazon voucher (I buy fuck all from Amazon) but that's it.
So at the moment I am doing my best to find another job that pays better and treats staff better. But I can feel myself teetering on another depression over it because those two things don't seem to exist in the same place.
Every month. I just can't seem to ease off and relax and have faith that it will happen. Every month my anxiety shoots through the roof. But I suppose I am lucky, my anxiety is just in the last week. People live with this every single day. I guess for a while that was me but slowly, like over the course of years, I've managed to stretch it out so that the anxiety only happens in the final week. I suppose that is something.
I keep hoping for good news. I keep believing some day my luck is going to change. I did a PPI search just before the deadline last year and I keep thinking I am going to come home and there is going to be a nice, fat cheque waiting for me. It's dragged on and on, apparently there are two accounts that qualify but I've still not heard a thing.
Instead, I came home the other day and it's a final demand for my tax bill. I don't know why but every year I have to do a self-assessment. Again, that is another thing the blows my stress levels through the roof. I work a normal, PAYE job. Straightforward. For some reason I cannot figure out they change my tax code every year and every year I seem to end up under paying when I submit the assessment.
Most years it hasn't been a problem. I'm usually a few hundred quid under. I have a direct debit set up to the government and pay a little every month. But not this year. This year they are up one their hind legs and making final demands for the same few hundred quid. And instead of just letting the direct debit run like always you have to go through a big fucking palaver on the website. OK, it's maybe not that complicated but it's the wording of it. It is written basically as if you are asking them to consider being merciful and you have to acknowledge your unending gratitude to these cunts.
There is a real change in tone when it comes to tax. The cynic in me suspects the change in government. They are not going to chase Amazon or Virgin, they are going to fuck you and me. You can really see it coming in anything that involves you interacting with the government about anything financial. It doesn't bode well, it feels like we are headed to a good old fucking on the village green.
I've run out of credit on my daily credit card again as well. It happened with about 10 days to go and I'm not really sure why. I suspect I might have underpaid last month. So while I was celebrating having a little more cash in the bank that month I was actually headed towards maxing out my card. I've been having to pay for food and the basics of daily life on my debit card. Cash straight out of my bank. Hence why the panic about having enough til the payday.
I've fucked up this week as well. I've been coming out of the depression I was in last week. I was feeling in a celebratory mood so been buying lunches every day. Not much, maybe 3 quid a day, but it still mounts up. Food is how I medicate my moods sometimes. It's the thing that surprises most as I tend to eat really healthily and I'm fanatical about exercise. But I also know I do that as I have a really addictive personality and if I didn't I would be a fat fuck.
Last week seems like a lifetime ago. My depression phases are always like that. After my divorce it was long, sustained lows but now it tends to be 3 or 4 days, maybe a week, of intense low followed by a clear ramping up the other side. When I climb out of the pit it always feels like it was a very long time ago and I don't know what the fuck I was ever complaining about.
Work is still pissing me off and I am still on the lookout for a new job. I have grown to fucking despise the place. My salary hasn't changed in six years and now I'm being moved to a new location about 15 miles further away. It's not everyone, just a handful of people and I am one of that handful. It is going to cost another 20 quid a week or so in fuel. It also fucks up my childcare obligations as I can't make my drop off and pick-up times any more. I'm looking at either cutting my hours (and therefore salary) or paying for extra childcare.
Not a fucking question about whether this causes me problems, whether it is manageable. Just told to live with it or fuck off. And sure enough my contract has a clause in it that allows for this.
I fucking hate these people. I am paying for four millionaires to get richer. There will be no thanks. I might get another £50 Amazon voucher (I buy fuck all from Amazon) but that's it.
So at the moment I am doing my best to find another job that pays better and treats staff better. But I can feel myself teetering on another depression over it because those two things don't seem to exist in the same place.
Wednesday, January 22, 2020
Weekly Update: Matched Betting
This week I gave matched betting a go. It's everywhere, damn near evey financial blogger goes on about it and is either selling you their product or an affiliate link to someone else's. I'm not going to do that.
Matched betting is, at its, simplest, taking advantage of all the free bets that online bookies give you to sign up as a new customer. Coral is the site most suggest you start on: they give you 20 quid in credit if you open an account and bet £5. BUT... you can't just withdraw that 20 quid in cash. You have to gamble it. Matched betting works by offsetting that bet with another one on another site. So if Man U is playing a match, you bet your £20 of credit on them to win. On another site you "lay" the bet: you do a matching bet that they won't win.
In theory, that means win or lose you make back that £20 credit in cash. In theory. Bookies are not daft. Someone, somewhere, needs to get a cut and the blogs suggest counting on getting about 75% of the free credit back in cash. And by working your way round all the online bookies then you can earn from £800 to £2400 depending on who you read.
The reality is that I've made about £7 profit so far this week. Better than nothing, a couple of pints for free. But I've also got £50 of my own cash tied up in bookie's accounts to leverage that. Not so great. And it has probably taken me an hour a day of work to achieve that. A pound an hour? Is it worth it? I don't know. I'll see.
My first mistake was making my first deposit with Coral by using Paypal because I had £50 in it from some Ebay selling. And I didn't read the T&C's, because only deposits made with a credit or debit card qualifies for the £20 credit. I only found this out after making my first bet. Duh.
My second mistake was trying to do it on the cheap. The "lay" bet, the bet you make that something won't happen, is an expensive bet. A simple £10 bet could require you to have £40 in your account for an easy 3/1 flutter (because you lay the bet on a betting exchange rather than a true bookie; don't ask me, I have no idea how or why this all works). By keeping my bets small and my exposure small I ended up with really small margins on the maths behind extracting the free cash.
Whatever, the end result is that I really don't think it is worth my while. Most bloggers seem to rave about it and I wonder if that is just so you'll click through their affiliate links. I'm going to give it another couple of goes but I'm really cynical.
You make money but it's hassle and you also open yourself up to a big loss if you screw up the calculations or the betting process. Ask me again in a few weeks.
On the heating front, only heating the rooms I am using with an oil filled radiator is working well. I'm going to do a meter reading tonight and see how it has impacted my electricity bill. The wood I bought from a local sawmill is top notch. Burns well and heats the place nice. I posted on Instagram my views on firewood merchants. A bigger bunch of utter fucking chancers I am yet to meet outside of used car dealers. The amount of shit I've wasted money on in the name of "premium seasoned hardwood logs" is shocking.
This week's budget saving is £19.52 which brings me up to £89.62 since the start of the year. The Chip app has auto-saved about £20 for me. I also got £75 compensation paid into my account this week from the AA because I complained about shit service I'd received. Starting to feel like I'm in control of my finances after Christmas but this is also the shittest period of the month in the run up to pay day.
Matched betting is, at its, simplest, taking advantage of all the free bets that online bookies give you to sign up as a new customer. Coral is the site most suggest you start on: they give you 20 quid in credit if you open an account and bet £5. BUT... you can't just withdraw that 20 quid in cash. You have to gamble it. Matched betting works by offsetting that bet with another one on another site. So if Man U is playing a match, you bet your £20 of credit on them to win. On another site you "lay" the bet: you do a matching bet that they won't win.
In theory, that means win or lose you make back that £20 credit in cash. In theory. Bookies are not daft. Someone, somewhere, needs to get a cut and the blogs suggest counting on getting about 75% of the free credit back in cash. And by working your way round all the online bookies then you can earn from £800 to £2400 depending on who you read.
The reality is that I've made about £7 profit so far this week. Better than nothing, a couple of pints for free. But I've also got £50 of my own cash tied up in bookie's accounts to leverage that. Not so great. And it has probably taken me an hour a day of work to achieve that. A pound an hour? Is it worth it? I don't know. I'll see.
My first mistake was making my first deposit with Coral by using Paypal because I had £50 in it from some Ebay selling. And I didn't read the T&C's, because only deposits made with a credit or debit card qualifies for the £20 credit. I only found this out after making my first bet. Duh.
My second mistake was trying to do it on the cheap. The "lay" bet, the bet you make that something won't happen, is an expensive bet. A simple £10 bet could require you to have £40 in your account for an easy 3/1 flutter (because you lay the bet on a betting exchange rather than a true bookie; don't ask me, I have no idea how or why this all works). By keeping my bets small and my exposure small I ended up with really small margins on the maths behind extracting the free cash.
Whatever, the end result is that I really don't think it is worth my while. Most bloggers seem to rave about it and I wonder if that is just so you'll click through their affiliate links. I'm going to give it another couple of goes but I'm really cynical.
You make money but it's hassle and you also open yourself up to a big loss if you screw up the calculations or the betting process. Ask me again in a few weeks.
On the heating front, only heating the rooms I am using with an oil filled radiator is working well. I'm going to do a meter reading tonight and see how it has impacted my electricity bill. The wood I bought from a local sawmill is top notch. Burns well and heats the place nice. I posted on Instagram my views on firewood merchants. A bigger bunch of utter fucking chancers I am yet to meet outside of used car dealers. The amount of shit I've wasted money on in the name of "premium seasoned hardwood logs" is shocking.
This week's budget saving is £19.52 which brings me up to £89.62 since the start of the year. The Chip app has auto-saved about £20 for me. I also got £75 compensation paid into my account this week from the AA because I complained about shit service I'd received. Starting to feel like I'm in control of my finances after Christmas but this is also the shittest period of the month in the run up to pay day.
Tuesday, January 7, 2020
Hot and Cold (mostly cold): Fuel Poverty
You can go about your day and not really notice that you are skint. But when you come home to a freezing cold house then there is no getting away from it. If you have to ask "should I be warm or not?" then there is no avoiding how skint you are.
On the nights that my daughter isn't here I don't put the heating on. I put a fleece on instead.
I'm lucky that I've got a woodburner, I can light that and heat just the living room and it doesn't really cost an awful lot. It gets hot fast and stays warm all night.
When my daughter is with me then I have to put the central heating on. Part of that is obviously wanting her to be comfortable. But the other big part is that I don't want her seeing that I have no money. I hate weekends when I've got her because if we are home then the heating is on. It's one of the things I really hate. It's maybe one of the most demeaning things there is. You can eat cheap. You can buy decent clothes second hand off Ebay. You can bike or bus where you need to go. But the one thing you can't really do much about is heating.
What really brings it home to me is that my house isn't on mains gas. It runs off propane tanks and they are a total ballache. For starters, they cost a fortune. At the minute, the cheapest round here is about £64 for a 49kg bottle (the big, tall ones). Then add a delivery charge to that which is another £5-10. Plus you've got to be here for them, so if you're working full time then you are screwed.
So maybe 75 quid plus time off work for a bottle that'll last 5 weeks if I'm careful with it. Careful means using it only for heating so no hot water. If I want hot water to do the dishes I boil a kettle. When it's bath night for my daughter we go to the local pool for a swim instead. That is about £60 a month just for gas, electricity is another £35. In my old house I paid around £50 a month for both, here it costs nearly double and that's not even using it as much. If my house was as warm as it should be I'd be looking at about £120 a month easy.
I went into my daughter's room one morning during the Christmas holidays and she was asleep with her coat on and her hood up. It breaks my heart and I don't really know what to do about it. It feels like living in another time when I'm hoping for spring to come and things will warm up.
One thing that has really helped is trying to cut down draughts. The stairs are in the living room so any heat just vanished upwards. I put up a curtain across the top of the stairs at the weekend and that's helped a lot. You can actually feel a definite temperature drop when you go through it now. It's a pain in the arse, I'm convinced I'm going to break my neck one day, but I think it is worth the effort. The night after I did it was actually the first night I'd felt warm all winter.
The back door is also off the living room so I put a pair of curtains over that as well to try to make some insulation, too. It's making the place a bit claustrophobic but if I stay warm then I can live with that. I'm in the arse end of nowhere so there's nothing to look at anyway except trees.
The bastard gas also ran out at the weekend. I absolutely fucking dread when it happens because it is such palaver trying to get a refill. If I could just chuck a bottle in the back of the car then it would be fine. But they weigh about 100kg when full so no chance of moving it. I've got a small one, 19kg, that I could swap for a full one but they are loads more expensive and I'm lucky if it lasts two weeks.
I'm doing an experiment to see if electric heating is going to work out cheaper. I've got a little fan heater that I use to take the chill off the living room and I bought an oil filled radiator for my daughter's room today. It was only 30 quid from B&Q and they have a 5% deal at Topcashback (which I'm a big fan of) right now. Came to £28.50. It's on the low setting which seems to warm her room up nice and according to the Bulb (my electricity supplier) website it will only cost about 9p per hour to run at night. A quick calc looks like about £7-8 a month. That has to be cheaper than gas if it works.
I'm lucky enough that the house came with a wood-stove in the living room. When I'm here on my own I use that. I make a rule that I don't light it before 8pm and if I haven't lit it by 9pm then I don't bother. It is only small but it kicks out a decent amount of heat and holds it well. Most of the time I light a small fire and just let it burn down and that's enough. I sit right next to it like I was a Victorian peasant.
Doing some exercise is good, too. When I come in from work and the house is freezing then I do a workout and have a quick shower. With your blood moving you don't notice the cold for maybe an hour or so. Usually I'll be in the kitchen making tea anyway.
Being cold is shit. It really is. It definitely is one of the worst parts of having no money.
On the nights that my daughter isn't here I don't put the heating on. I put a fleece on instead.
I'm lucky that I've got a woodburner, I can light that and heat just the living room and it doesn't really cost an awful lot. It gets hot fast and stays warm all night.
When my daughter is with me then I have to put the central heating on. Part of that is obviously wanting her to be comfortable. But the other big part is that I don't want her seeing that I have no money. I hate weekends when I've got her because if we are home then the heating is on. It's one of the things I really hate. It's maybe one of the most demeaning things there is. You can eat cheap. You can buy decent clothes second hand off Ebay. You can bike or bus where you need to go. But the one thing you can't really do much about is heating.
What really brings it home to me is that my house isn't on mains gas. It runs off propane tanks and they are a total ballache. For starters, they cost a fortune. At the minute, the cheapest round here is about £64 for a 49kg bottle (the big, tall ones). Then add a delivery charge to that which is another £5-10. Plus you've got to be here for them, so if you're working full time then you are screwed.
So maybe 75 quid plus time off work for a bottle that'll last 5 weeks if I'm careful with it. Careful means using it only for heating so no hot water. If I want hot water to do the dishes I boil a kettle. When it's bath night for my daughter we go to the local pool for a swim instead. That is about £60 a month just for gas, electricity is another £35. In my old house I paid around £50 a month for both, here it costs nearly double and that's not even using it as much. If my house was as warm as it should be I'd be looking at about £120 a month easy.
I went into my daughter's room one morning during the Christmas holidays and she was asleep with her coat on and her hood up. It breaks my heart and I don't really know what to do about it. It feels like living in another time when I'm hoping for spring to come and things will warm up.
One thing that has really helped is trying to cut down draughts. The stairs are in the living room so any heat just vanished upwards. I put up a curtain across the top of the stairs at the weekend and that's helped a lot. You can actually feel a definite temperature drop when you go through it now. It's a pain in the arse, I'm convinced I'm going to break my neck one day, but I think it is worth the effort. The night after I did it was actually the first night I'd felt warm all winter.
The back door is also off the living room so I put a pair of curtains over that as well to try to make some insulation, too. It's making the place a bit claustrophobic but if I stay warm then I can live with that. I'm in the arse end of nowhere so there's nothing to look at anyway except trees.
The bastard gas also ran out at the weekend. I absolutely fucking dread when it happens because it is such palaver trying to get a refill. If I could just chuck a bottle in the back of the car then it would be fine. But they weigh about 100kg when full so no chance of moving it. I've got a small one, 19kg, that I could swap for a full one but they are loads more expensive and I'm lucky if it lasts two weeks.
I'm doing an experiment to see if electric heating is going to work out cheaper. I've got a little fan heater that I use to take the chill off the living room and I bought an oil filled radiator for my daughter's room today. It was only 30 quid from B&Q and they have a 5% deal at Topcashback (which I'm a big fan of) right now. Came to £28.50. It's on the low setting which seems to warm her room up nice and according to the Bulb (my electricity supplier) website it will only cost about 9p per hour to run at night. A quick calc looks like about £7-8 a month. That has to be cheaper than gas if it works.
I'm lucky enough that the house came with a wood-stove in the living room. When I'm here on my own I use that. I make a rule that I don't light it before 8pm and if I haven't lit it by 9pm then I don't bother. It is only small but it kicks out a decent amount of heat and holds it well. Most of the time I light a small fire and just let it burn down and that's enough. I sit right next to it like I was a Victorian peasant.
Doing some exercise is good, too. When I come in from work and the house is freezing then I do a workout and have a quick shower. With your blood moving you don't notice the cold for maybe an hour or so. Usually I'll be in the kitchen making tea anyway.
Being cold is shit. It really is. It definitely is one of the worst parts of having no money.
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