Sally's Journal

So, I made an offer on someone’s facebook to share some of my experiences of trying to manage money while being, frankly, appalling with the stuff. I have shit impulse control, I can’t count properly due to dyscalculia, I have hypomanic spending sprees and I also get easily distracted and forget about stuff I’m meant to do.

I’m a total financial disaster area.

I have, however, spent a fair bit of time trying to get myself down to ‘financially incompetent’ as opposed ‘horror show’. I’ll never be up there on moneysavingexpert.com, but I have gone from ‘my bank account has its own scorched earth policy’ to ‘I have savings sometimes, for short periods of time’. I’ve not bounced a direct debit in over five years, or gone into unauthorized overdraft and I finished last month with £50 spare in my account until payday.

Yes, I was still in my overdraft at that point. Shush.

So what I’m saying is that I’m not offering expert advice on how to be really good at this stuff. I’m offering a crazy person’s guide to being functional. Basically, How To Fake It Until You Make It (the money edition)

This process, by the way, is based on three principles which I use relentlessly.

1) If it’s automated, you can’t screw up by forgetting about it.
2) Big things are hard to focus on. Small things can be devoured.
3) Use your powers of distraction for good.

So, let’s start.

( Read more... )

I've just taken a new fixed rate mortgage with Abbey.

I had to hand over a cheque for £924. I am staring in blank horror at my bank balance. And on top of that, my mortgage will still be going up by £90 come August.

However, I am informed that in the time it has taken me to decide whether to accept Abbey's offer on a new fixed rate, the rates on offer have got worse and my 5.8% interest rate is half a point lower than the next best offer available via Abbey right now. It's also fully portable so if I move house I can take the mortgage with me, and I can overpay by up to 10% every year.

*sighs*

At least this is one less thing to worry about. My mortgage is now fixed for another two years. I know how much I need to pay, I know that my house won't get taken away from me. And that makes me feel a bit better.

There's a next step to come somewhere. I just need to work out what that is.

I just received a letter from Nationwide.

Well, I received two letters from Nationwide. One was offering me an £850 overdraft, four months after they withdrew my overdraft facilities with two weeks notice and tried to sell me a loan to cover it.

The other was informing me that from the 1st November, unauthorised overdraft would work a different way. Apparently, the minute you go into unauthorised overdraft, you get charged interest at a rate of 9.9% and 'all other preferential rates are withdrawn', with the implication being 'in perpetuity'. So, if you take the £850 overdraft and go £1 overdrawn, from then on in you have a new interest rate on your entire overdraft.

Honestly, I think I preferred the £30 bank charge.

So very very unimpressed with Nationwide. I need to change banks, so badly, and it's so much dam work*


*By which I mean 'damn work if you're as incompetent and slightly scatty as me'. I know that most people can manage to change bank accounts quite easily.

I hate debit cards!

Or rather, I hate the way that they market themselves as being an easy way of taking money out of your bank account, but then act just like cheques and lurk, waiting for your bank account to empty, before leaping in and sucking you dry.

Or, in other words, I just had £40 leave my account over a week after I put two restaurant meals for me and pierot on my switch card. This is after I checked my bank balance yesterday, checked that I had no more direct debits coming out, and took £20 out in cash to last me until the end of the week when my allowance goes in, leaving a small cushion in my current account. The net result is me going £10 into an overdraft that I don't have. I managed to call up the bank, whimper, and get an emergency £50 overdraft added to my account, but I'm still not happy and I'm unconvinced that this won't do bad things to my credit rating.

At least Nationwide seems to have stopped taking £30 bank charges for unplanned overdrafts. I may lose £12 or so, but I can live with that.

It's just so damn frustrating when you try and budget and these things still happen.

I've been told there is no good time for a laptop to break.

I know there isn't.

But two days before the deadline of my final project is a pretty bad time.

( Read more... )

Is that me?

In other news, I have updated surinen with some chirpy stuff about college today - it was my first day back from the easter break, and was an exceedingly good and productive day. I now have a final project for my PGDip, and it is one which makes me very happy.

I also read about the woes of a director friend of Hugh's which rather put my financial worries in perspective. I have £50 per week to live on throughout May. I thought that made me mostly rather poor. She is trying to get by on close to £1 per week, and eating nothing but oatmeal right now. I am having to cut back on take out, and buy big bags of cheap pasta from tesco. There's a big difference. It must be said, I'm less than impressed with the behaviour of Boggleit as well.

Oh, and while I'm writing ( have a BPAL review )

I remember last night talking to someone (unless I was hallucinating) about Typhoid Mary.

Well, I've found the wikipedia entry about her, which also has quite a good explanation on disease carriers - those who can be infected with a disease without showing any symptoms.

I'm also pondering something I've read in various places, which is that most people in the UK are only two pay cheques away from being homeless. I've discussed this with pierot and ksirafai in the past, and they've disagreed with me. Jez, in particular, feels that you'd have to be quite uninformed about your rights for that to happen to you. While I can see the truth in this, going through my own current financial situation I think I can see that losing two pay cheques might not cause outright homelessness straight out, but it must make it so much easier in the long run to wind up homeless or in trouble, as you delay paying bills, maybe fall into arrears with your rent which you then can't afford to pay back even if you do get a new job/salary, mess about with your credit rating, which then makes it harder to get any loans or anything which could get you back on track.

I'm nowhere near that state - I'm just realising that in putting off bills, having to use my credit card due to lack of income etc, for the time period where pierot was starting a new job, I've now got a slighly uncomfortable backlog of bills that I didn't have before. Considering how comfortable I was at the start of July of this year, that's slightly scary, and it's made me feel rather more sympathetic to those who do get themselves into a real state.

( This )...is what my brain looks like today. All cluttered up with broken bits that just seem to be reinforcing the other shards and splinters.

And I know the broken bits are all dead wood, stuff I need to just clear out, but it just seems very difficult today.

The particularly annoying bit is that I know that many many people I know are having a far worse time than me at the moment. I'm just people-stressed, and money-stressed, and game-stressed and change-stressed, and somewhere along the line, I've started to crack along the joints.

And in a less metaphorical and more literal way, I got a parking ticket this morning coz I forgot to move my car last night, and now do not have the petrol money to go and see my li'l sis and her new house in Hertfordshire.

This makes me decidedly unhappy.

Good morning all.

First of all, a summary of my holiday as I fear LJ entries were rather sparse while I was out there. It was a rebellion against the computer kind of thing.

( Australia - the summary )

*exhales*

Anyway, in other news, I'm in a good mood today. This may seem peculiar, as I've been up and down like a kite for the last two weeks. It turns out that what I've really been stressing about (and it's a definite peculiarity of the Sally-brain that she often doesn't know what is making her stressed and ratty, even while she is bursting into tears over chipped nail varnish) was related to the gentle pokings at mortgages that jez and I have been making, and a broker who apparently can't use e mail for anything other than leaving cryptic messages such as 'urgent - phone me now' or 'there is a problem' or 'you're going to die'. OK, I may have been exaggerating that last bit, but not by much. I got home, called her, and found out that actually the urgent problem was that she couldn't get hold of me by phone. Despite me saying I was in Australia. Despite me leaving her my e mail address.

Damn her. And her little dog too. However, all is now well. I'm home. I'm fed (and I've found a really nice cafe in Greenwich that does fantastic organic scrambled egg) and I'm bathed. The world is a better place. I'm pondering my holiday, being impressed by how much more glamorous Australia looks in molez's photos, and sorting out my life determinedly.

( Sorting out my life )

It's weird how little things can just set you up - for better or worse - for the whole day.

Like today. I was fine when I left the house. I was motivated. I was chirpy. I get confused on the trains and wind up having to pay a £20 fine for not realising that my oyster card only words on tubes, buses and the DLR within London and not the overland rail.

I come into work feeling twittery and scratchy and grouchy because of this and I've been in this vile mood all day. I am completely non-motivated, I don't want to be here, and I'm convinced that everything is going wrong. I notice all my mistakes and I don't notice the stuff I get right.

Equally, I remember the days after I got my exam results last year. Nothing could touch me. Nothing could bring me down. It was all going to be fine.

I'm also pondering the very great truth of something sea_of_flame said a while ago. It's surprisingly how expensive it is to work. I mean, I was earning nothing before this week. But I was spending very little as well. I sat at home. I'd eat a bowl of cereal, or something I cooked at home. I'd be careful with the ingredients. Basically, I was living on very little.

Working this week should be bringing in money. But it's costing me as well. I'm spending approximately £5 per day on travel (not including my special bonus this morning). I'm spending close to a fiver on lunch every day - just for a drink and some food, because nowhere can one buy a cheap sandwich around Vauxhall. I buy a newspaper or a magazine to read on the way home. And somehow my money seems to be trickling away. Bah. And humbug.

As some of you may notice, my outlook on the world is dark and gloomy today.