May was a weird and busy month. I had a friend stay with me for two weeks, I bought two office-styled chairs from Staples, a new laptop, and I booked a trip to the USA on my brand new credit card. Shocking behavior all around, really.
So, my cash flow was positive - but just barely. +£5.36 in May. However, for the amount of stuff we got (most of it actually paid for by other people, it has to be said - why did I manage to get such great parents AND such great parent-in-laws?) I’m actually quite pleased.
Monochrome Rainbow made a horrifically low £15 profit in May. Again, that’s chalked up to having a friend stay for two weeks, and doing about a billion other things. June should be better - I’ve got £98 descending into my bank account in the next 5-7 days, and a further two jobs scheduled to pay me this month.
Also, of course, by the end of June I should be full-time employed by the council. Touch wood. This might be mean either scaling back MR expectations, or starting to outsource some of the work. We shall see!
I read a lot of advice aimed at improving your money situation. Saving money, earning money, running a business, etc.
One thing I have noticed, over and over again, is that the tips make no sense if you are already poor. If you’re well-off and wasting money, yup, useful stuff. But things like “Eat less take-away’s and restaurant meals” are of no use to those who are counting pennies to try and afford a side to their sliced cabbage.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not that poor. I shop at Waitrose, and buy cheesecake sometimes. I do want to increase the gap between what I earn and what I spend. But being told to cut sky television from my budget is not helpful. Yes, if I was wasting 50 quid a month on sky, it would be.
Apply for, and get, my permanent job at the council.
Find, and move to, a cheaper apartment.
Apply extra money to driving lessons.
Pass test, apply extra money towards car fund.
Go on initial counselling course in either October or April (preferably October, but depends on finances)
Work and study for next n years.
Get a part-time job and set up an independent practice.
Eventually move to a completely independent position.
In the meantime - travel around the UK as much as finances permit, do web design et al work on the weekends, save as much money as possible (none at the moment, because our income matches our expenses pretty much… not each and every month, but on average), spend lots of time with friends and family, grow veggies in an allotment, read good books, take long baths, eat good food.
My job might go live tomorrow. Maybe. Or next Thursday.
It will be weird to adjust to a monthly pay-cheque after being weekly for so long.
If/when I get the job, I’m registering for my first course to become a counsellor. It’s nice to have made a decision I will stick with. Asking people to decide what they want to be at age 18 is stupid.
I’m mad about student loans. All student loans are meant to increase by inflation only - so the interest matches the inflation rate. The idea being that it will always cost the same. Well, guess what? No inflation - but a little bit of deflation. -0.4%. Did the government shrink student loans? Only if you got them before 1998! Which I didn’t. Thanks government.
At least I’m starting to pay it off now. I’m going to fund the counselling completely up-front, which is partly why I’m giving myself a nice long time-frame to get the degree. I’m looking forward to it, though sad that my part-time job went full-time, as otherwise it would have been perfect.
I was thinking about America, and how completely insane my time there was. I did so many crazy things, like we would decide randomly to drive to Las Vegas on a Sunday night, get distracted at Milwaukee, and end up in Canada instead. I lived everywhere from a Florida mansion to an Ohio trailer, from a Californian ultra-modern bungalow to a rotting house on a hill surrounded by forest and abandoned fridges.
I haven’t blogged properly in a long long time. I used to write all the time, but that was probably because I had lots of time and few priorities.
Life is much much busier than I thought it could get right now. I’m working full-time, running a side-business, attempting to be a half-way decent friend and attempting to cook lots of good food from scratch. Also play video games. And read. And watch weird TV shows from America.
I spent today answering the phones, pinning up posters about Swine Flu and how to wash your hands, and minuting a meeting that lasted an hour and a half. This weekend I’m painting the bathroom. Next week I’m applying for a job and going to the hospital.
Everything is so condensed together. It’s 10.40 right now, and I need to get up at 5.30am, so I really need to sleep. Sleep is good, and I miss it. I also miss having only 9 hours of lectures a week.
P. had a bunch of his friends over after work last night. He finished at 2am (ish), so I didn’t know until I went crawling blearily downstairs and into a kitchen full of strangers.
Money money money. This is going to be a quick post, since I have about a million things to do.
Alright:
I had a positive cash flow of about £1,200. Accurate figure? Can’t give it Cha-Ching tells me £1,225, so we’ll go with that.
Monochrome Rainbow made £389.20. Hurrah!
Right now I am so close to being debt free I can taste it. My Overdraft is at -73.60. If I can save up enough to get through the first week of next month, then I’ll be home and dry until the next tax payment is due (ha!).
Right… off to make dinner, and do some cleaning. Yay for weekends!
Yep! It’s the 1st of April. All Fools Day. The perfect day to celebrate being sensible and frugal. Or something.
A few notes:
Cash-flow for the month was +£230.81. Wow! How’d they do it? Well, quite easily given a holiday from paying Council Tax (which now starts again - boo) and a ton of overtime. It took the overdraft below £700 for a few days - until my phone bill, council tax and tv license all got taken out today…
We ate really really well, but spent too much money. Again. Shoot.
Monochrome Rainbow was paid £376.68, but the profit was just £325.80. However - it’s the end of the financial year! So my end of 08-09 business earnings were:
Total Income: £6,549
Profit: £6,097.76
Net Income: £4,878.20
We celebrated Mother’s Day in-style at a fancy hotel restaurant, where I had some delicious mushrooms on toast as a starter (I ate other food as well, but that starter was really good!)
I exercised a lot more this month - doing various yoga, weight-lifting, sit-ups, dance videos and so forth. There seems to be no change in my actual level of fitness, but I don’t actually know how to measure it. I feel good about it though.
Easter weekend is going to be fun - Katie and Basil are visiting, and I’m planning various escapades, including an easter egg hunt and a picnic.
Pay day tomorrow! It’s not quite the end of the month, but we’re running at +£186 cash flow so far - and I’m off emergency tax. Partly this is due to the ‘holiday’ on my council tax payments, which resume next month, but it is still a nice feeling.
I’m considering getting a John Lewis credit card, to put grocery shopping etc on and then pay off each month. You get food vouchers for it, which are useful, although the rate is pretty poor (same as Clubcard) - but we have to buy food anyway, so we might as well get a penny back for every pound we spend. The main reason, though, is to build my credit rating - since the ‘Recession’, it seems some of my friends from a similiar age group who have never had credit cards/car loans etc are having problems qualifying for things like apartments, mobile phone contract plans, mortgages, etc etc.
Plus, since my Overdraft is at the maximum it can be, I’d like the extra credit handy in case of dire emergency, although I have no intention of using it. Safety nets, and all that.
I know how quickly credit cards can spiral into panic driven chaos and bankruptcy, but I think I’m mature enough to handle it now.
I can’t believe it’s been almost a complete month since I last posted in here…
Quick update; I’ve been working hard - first I had a crazy-difficult time-consuming Rockschools project, and then a crazy-difficult time-consuming other website project. Somewhere in all that I managed to exercise (most) days this week. Now I’ve landed another web design project, and I have a full week of overtime. Madness!
On the plus side, money money money.
Now I’ve got permission to repaint my bathroon, a project of a kind I’ve never attempted before. Well - I have painted a wall before, but it was a giant anime picture of the God of Destruction, complete with crazy grin and hair. Oh, and sparkly magic painted on with nail polish.
Yeah - I don’t think my landlord would be impressed.
So, somehow I’m going to have to learn some basic DIY decorating skillz, and hopefully not drip paint all over the tiles and the bath.
Cha-Ching tells me £1,225, so we’ll go with that.