I’ve had a rather interesting first full week of giving up lazy. For those of you who are new to this blog, I wrote about my outrageous February spending. I had a lot of takeaways. I got Ubers a few times. I didn’t cycle in spite of the fact I got my new bike nearly a month ago. It was outrageous, shameful and unsustainable. I decided on Shrove Tuesday that I was going to give up [being] lazy for Lent. Continue reading
I went for a quick drink with a mate of mine that I haven’t hung out with for ages. She wanted to know about love, and work and life in general. Somehow we got onto the topic of aiming for early retirement. Her response was a sigh and “you bloody millennials and believing that you can retire early! The only way you can retire, is to keep working till you’re 65.” She’s worked in finance her entire career and has no faith in bonds, stocks or property as a vehicle for long term passive income. She might be right but the only way we can find out is if I keep aiming for FIRE so I’m not giving up yet.
I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago with one of my more frugal friends. We used to live together and she was my saving grace when I needed someone to help me manage my finances. Let’s call her Sasha. Sasha lived in the smallest room in our 3 bed house, paying less rent and owning the least amount of stuff. She shops at Lidl – she swears by their cheap organic produce – and cooks a lot of her meals at home. She spends only on what matters to her – food, relationships, craft beer and travel – and buys good quality clothes and shoes in order to get durability and long wear out of them. She shops for deals and has a decent source of passive income. In our conversation, she revealed me that for the last 2 and a half years, she’s been putting away 50% of her salary in her pension.
Yay, the longest month of the year has ended. We get paid before Christmas day in December. That, coupled with January’s 5 weeks, always meant that it was a broke week to ten days at the back-end of the month traditionally.Last year, I had already borrowed money from at least one source by this point. In light of all the depressing news in the world right now, I’ll cling onto this positive. I could have gone on a couple more weeks into February without being paid. Continue reading
I should probably stop saying that I’m taking part in the uber frugal month challenge. Nothing about the last 10 days (since my last update) is particularly frugal. It’s been weeks one and two at my new job so there have been many lunches with colleagues. I’ve also struggled to manage my energy in the afternoons and succumbed to the temptations of a coffee and lemon drizzle pick-me-up at my nearest Benugo.
I’m 15 days into my uber frugal month and I’m going to be honest, I’m failing. I suppose I’m not just failing, as my last update showed, I’m failing hard. I’ve taken Ubers, I’ve bought clothes, I’ve bought lunch and takeaway repeatedly. I bought an awesome pair of yellow sneakers that I totally adore but given that it’s been raining a lot, they might not have been the most practical purchase. Essentially I’m pretty sucky at being frugal.
So last time out, I explained how I got into (and stayed in) debt. I’m getting my act together. I tracked my spending. I’ve written out my goals. I crated a budget. And, this month I signed up for The Frugalwoods’ uber frugal month (#ufm2017) with an aim to reset my hedonistic spending and establish an ideal (baseline) for my desired level of frugality. Continue reading
I like introspection and challenges. I can’t seem to give my best unless I have stretch targets. I’m equally scared of failure and not so bothered by it (because anything in the direction of my target is better than where I started). New Year’s is always an extra special time of year in this regard, since everyone knows that the end of the year is meant for reflection and challenging oneself with New Year’s resolutions.
So I tracked my spending pretty diligently from mid-August until the end of December (my end of December was the 25th because my months currently start on payday while I try to get a month ahead on my bills). I haven’t shared my findings in a single post yet, mainly because for the first 6 weeks I was tweaking my tracking. The last three months, I’ve been more consistent. Here’s what the last quarter of 2016 looked like.
I have directorship in a company that my friend set up so that we could take advantage of tax laws and pay less tax. Due to my financial ignorance (and desire to remain stupid) all these years, I had never really done more than ask a few contractor friends here and there about what it was like to work as a contractor. When my friend took the plunge last year, all I bothered to ascertain was that he pays a flat rate 20% corporation tax on the money he earns as opposed to the different tiers, maxing out at 40% for his income bracket. Continue reading
Diary of a reforming spendthrift 