Merry Christmas!

December has been a ridiculously busy month, so I haven't had time to update this blog until now. Work has been extra manic with all the flu-induced staff shortages, uni deadlines have loomed, and somehow I've managed to organise everything in time for Christmas (although it's all a bit of a blur, so I may have Santa to thank for that). However, I have managed to rack up some extra cash from all the overtime (always a silver lining). The total now stands at £3733.87, which is a bit more than I was aiming for by this point.

Christmas is always a dangerous time of year for my bank balance. I've never had trouble talking myself out of buying pretty heels or new dress (although there have been incidents where I've bought a gorgeous pair of eskimo boots from French Connection with the sole (haha) purpose of spending the night parading up and down in front of the mirror in them only to get a refund the next day). But I get a massive kick from splashing out on presents for other people (unresolved control issues maybe) and it's a real struggle sticking to a budget. This year I've been good though. I had a list by November with prices and shops, and spent a couple of weeks looking for all the best deals (no last minute panic buying). I managed to find most of the gifts online, so got a few £££ back on TopCashBack (I've used it for 2 years now, so happy to link them - although they should really pay me for the free ad) as well as various online discounts (I'll add a link on the side for the website I use). I should also note the money saved on travelling around shops in person, as most items were free delivery. I actually came in £3 under the budget I had set myself, so feeling very smug! And everyone was happy, so declaring it a victory.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and best wishes for 2013! 

A New System?

Following on from a debate we had at work this week, I'm going to add a more interactive post this month. Mainly because I'm curious to know what other people think (partly because I only have a few minutes in which to update this blog)!

Is the current economic system broken? Does capitalism work any more in today's world? Is our current system even true capitalism any more, considering that many people start life with a huge advantage over other humans? What alternatives are there aside from a communist, socialist approach? Would you endorse socialism? Why? WHY? Or would you do away with an organised system entirely and go back to anarchy in the wilderness?

(oh, and I've added a couple hundred £££ to the pot!)

November Update

It's been a very long month, but have managed to add another couple of hundred to the kitty and now nearing the £3k mark. December will be expensive so I'm not expecting the total to increase much until the new year, but any extra will be a bonus.

On the down side, we have just been informed that the flat we currently reside in is likely to be sold in the next year. So now we have even more reason to save like crazy!

Only The Selfish Give To Charity

This post does what it says on the tin. Only selfish people give their hard (or not so hard) earned cash to charitable causes. That includes buying gifts for family and friends, giving spare change to random strangers in public, that direct debit you set up a few years back donating regularly to the NSPCA, buying copies of Big Issue on the way home after a day at the office... All completely selfish acts!

Humans are biologically engineered to act in a way that benefits them the most. There is very little we do in our everyday lives that is not intended to bring us some kind of personal gain. You smile at people in the street hoping they will spread the happiness a bit and make your local environment easier for you to live in (whilst hoping people think you must have a great life to be so positive first thing in the morning and feel just that tiny bit jealous). Known for your generous nature at work? More cakes = more positive gossip = more likely you'll get promoted, or at the very least find it easier to control your minions once you get that promotion. You go along to support that environmental campaign to save the earth: in order to feel like you might have some sort of control over the future and pump up your ego. Not to mention that small fear you harbour that if you don't help to fix things, then it might get inconvenient when you're in old age and have to live in a flooded, burnt out, crowded bio-dome with no fuel and diminishing food supplies. You choose not to have kids to help decrease the global overpopulation (yeah, everyone knows it's because the brats are so damn expensive, noisy, time-consuming and waaaaay more selfish than you are - can't have that). Bought shares in that sustainable tech firm (more likely to make a high profit: ethical-companies-make-more-money). Splashed out on expensive jewellery for your wife's birthday (hoping for kinky sex later on).

Everyone acts in a completely selfish manner. And for good reason. A human wouldn't last very long without the basic desire to survive, and everything we do involves some sort of calculated risk that gives us a sense of whether the action we are about to take will help to prolong our life or in fact decrease it. But it does have the knock-on effect of benefiting other people. So don't feel guilty.

Keep giving and keep feeling smug. Everyone's a winner!

October Update

Not much to tell in terms of finance. The extra hours at work have made it difficult to fit in degree study, but it will pay off at the end of the month when I see my pay-slip. Last week I sat down and calculated how much I was spending on regular non-perishable items every year and managed to get a year's supply at a massive discount. I can't fit much else under the bed now! I'll have to write a separate post on this, as it's something many people (especially women) would benefit from.

In the meantime, I've added a bit more to my total and have updated the Fortunometer accordingly.

Happy saving!

September Update

Managed to get a few extra hours at work, which equates to a few extra pounds in the bank! It's only temporary, it will help me reach my goal a bit quicker. Very happy!

Christian Grey - my new role model!

I'll admit I wasn't an initial fan of the Fifty Shades series. I read the blurb and heard everyone's opinions and had no interest in the novels to begin with. I reluctantly gave in once I grew tired of feeling like the odd one out and a colleague loaned me the first book to read on holiday. I was surprised to find that the novel did have some plus points after all.
I won't waste blog space with a critique of the writing, storyline, dialogue or characters. I think they have been picked apart enough by other people (and I haven't written a proper book review since the failure in junior school that was 'Fascist Undertones In Peter Rabbit'). Besides, none of that interested me. What did catch my attention was Christian Grey's enormous... bank balance! Yep, the guy is a self-made billionaire (apparently) and has access to the sort of wealth that only the Warren Buffetts and Bill Gates of this world get to experience first hand. He is also barely a year older than me.

As I continued to read through Fifty Shades, I began to care less and less about the relationship (the main plot) and focus more on the kind of lifestyle that Grey seems to be living. The expensive toys obviously stand out (helicopters, flash cars, gliders), but they are just pretty accessories. I also had a look at the Escala penthouse (you can see the real thing here if you're feeling nosy) and can't say I'm impressed. But take all that away and you're left with the one thing that his extreme wealth does offer - control.

I guess the whole series is about control in some form or another (being that it's an S&M romance). But taking the focus off the sex and nice gadgets, Christian Grey has almost complete control over his environment. He owns his company, so sets his own hours, working location, decides which people surround him on a daily basis. He has the freedom to walk away from his job entirely if he wants to. He has control over people's lives (most notably his submissives). He even attempts to control global issues - his obsession with wiping out poverty-induced hunger.

I like this. I wouldn't mind a bit more control myself. Not having to orientate my life around paying the bills would be a good start! So I'm using Fifty Shades as a motivational tool for the time being. If I feel like giving up then I just have to re-read a couple of chapters to remind myself how much easier life could be with a bit of money.

Now I just need to work out how the hell Christian Grey got that rich in the first place!?

Have Job, Will Save

I'm back in the game! I should start off by giving everyone an update on my situation. After sending out well over 300 CVs and chasing agencies and employers for months on end, I decided to take a gamble and move to a less-crowded area of the UK in order to find work. It was getting ridiculous putting in so much time and effort for minimal results (3 interviews in the space of a year) and there is a well-known saying that if you want a different result then you shouldn't repeat the same process. So I upped sticks and left my home town, my family and my friends for a completely new location in the middle of nowhere.
It was scary and lonely at first, but I had the added support of my boyfriend (who was in a similar boat). I should point out that one of his major personality traits is a ridiculous level of enthusiasm that is hard to resist, and we managed to convince ourselves over the course of one weekend that moving was the best decision. We had no accessible savings, nowhere to stay (we slept on a sofa for the first month) and didn't know if we would find work. But it wasn't much different to our situation back home. It just had more potential and that was enough!

My boyfriend managed to bag a job immediately (cheeky git that he is) and began work on the Monday. I applied for 3 jobs the first morning we arrived and got a call the next day requesting an interview. The following Tuesday I had a permanent job!

The first 2 months salary went towards sofa rent (we paid the owners part living costs), hiring a large van to move our belongings from one side of the country to the other and then 2 months rent for our new flat. After that was set up fees (a cheap bed and other furniture, work clothes due to me putting on weight whilst unemployed and then losing it again, and other random initial costs). We moved in over Christmas and by the end of March I was back to saving again.

So... current savings total is £2006 (£2k of this has recently moved to a 2 year bond, so I can free up my £5640 ISA allowance for this year). I should note that my boyfriend and I keep our finances separate and currently have no plans to combine them. Rent is split equally and we have split bills so that we pay roughly the same each month towards the flat. We have very different diets (mine is close to T-Total vegan whereas he loves JD and steak), travel needs (he has a car and drives for a living, I have a 3 hour commute by bus/foot), and attitudes to spending/saving remaining income (he mostly spends, I mostly save) so these are paid for individually as this works for us both and neither feels we have to compromise. I will therefore not be including his savings here.

Most larger bills for the rest of this year are already budgeted for, so I am hoping that I will be able to dedicate a higher percentage of my salary to savings for the next few months. I plan to include a breakdown of typical monthly expenditure in the next entry so everyone (myself included) can see where my money is going and where I could make further cutbacks.

Monthly Budget

In my last post I mentioned I would be adding a breakdown of all my income and expenses for an average month. I was going to wait a couple of days, but I figured I should just get to work while I'm in the zone! So, here goes...

INCOME

£955 (Salary after tax and pension contributions)

EXPENSES
 
£250 (Shared rent)
£100 (Income tax)
£130 (Bus fare commuting to office - This is the one thing I would change about my job, as I realise it eats into a large part of my salary)
£50 (Water, gas, electric, TV, internet, phone)
£10 (Clothes/Accessories/Toilettries - I can never buy highstreet clothes to fit properly and generally either raid charity shops and adjust the items or just make my own from scratch. Slow or non-perishable toilettries I buy in bulk at the start of the year as this gives me a huge discount)
£10 (Mobile PAYG)
£20 (Work expenses such as clothes, makeup, work socials, cakes on birthdays, etc - basically anything that I wouldn't otherwise spend money on)
£10 (University fees - 90% of my degree is paid for through grants due to my low salary, so I only pay a top-up amount. I dropped out of a regular 'brick' uni in London back in 2004 due to the massive costs. I couldn't work enough hours around my classes to cover the bills and back then you couldn't get a student loan to cover everything as they assumed your parents gave you money. So this time around I am distance studying with optional lectures so I can hold down a 9-5 job simultaneously)
£40 (Christmas and birthday presents, socialising and other random expenses - the majority of this goes on presents)

£955 - £620 = £335 left for savings

So that's an idea of where my money goes each month. There are obvious areas where I could cut back on expense, such as commuting costs to and from the office. If I didn't enjoy my job or work with such a great team, then it would be an easy decision to just look for somewhere closer. But I never wake up in the morning dreading my job, which is a big deal to me when most of the people I know have to drag themselves out of bed! Plus the organisation is very flexible about working hours (something I'm not used to) and that makes it easier to fit in any exams or projects I have to complete for uni. So for the time being, I'm content to deal with the longer days and just use the travel time to sleep or study.

I don't think I can cut back much more on rent without sacrificing security/privacy. I don't live in an expensive area (I could move closer to the city where I work to save on travelling, but rent would go up to rebalance that) and our flat is just big enough for the two of us not to feel claustraphobic.

We are getting rid of Sky when our contract runs out in October. We are both studying the harder parts of our degree now, so won't have much free time to sit and rot in front of the box in the evenings/weekends. We pick up enough channels on freeview to keep us entertained and have iPlayer, Youtube, etc to catch up online (not to mention the numerous DVDs, games and books in the flat that could be picked up and dusted off).

In a couple of years I will have graduated, so the monthly £10 (£120 a year) on university fees will go towards savings. Until then, I can't really decrease this.

The other major increase to my savings would be to maximise my income. I currently only work 4 longer days per week rather than 5 to save on bus fares, but I have requested more hours at work to bump this up enough to justify the extra day. I could then get a monthly or yearly ticket and save more money than the cost of commuting for an extra day. So I will wait to hear back on this. Until then, I will look into making additional income through other means. If anyone can suggest any (legal) methods then I would love to hear them!