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.
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