The final money post
Quite a while ago I started writing the story of us getting on our feet financially as it happened. Turns out, the same thing that got us into the mess stopped me from writing about it: money bores me.
It has been a year and a third since I posted any updates to our story. It’s safe to say this section is dead. Here’s one last update
- We have paid off nearly half our £10,000 debt
- We are living within our means
- We use our credit cards very little and pay off the balance completely every month
- We are setting aside the correct amount money for taxes on our self-employment income
- We still don’t have a functional budget
- We are not yet saving or investing.
So, we are a ways down the road to financial health, and we have a quite a way to go.
I got bored typing that.
22 January 2010 Jeff Gill
tags: money
Coming soon
I’m pleased to announce the cutest part of our journey to financial health:
You can hang ‘em up way up high.
You can sit ‘em on your thigh.
You can hang em from your belt.
They are cute and made of felt…
owls.
They will be on sale in a couple days. I’ll let you know.
28 September 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: money
Let's call this one Hope For The Future (because the present doesn't look too good)
Friday was fun. That was the day that I discovered that once again I messed up my tax payments. HM Revenue & Customs sent me a lovely little document explaining how I need to give them £800 now and another £1,000 in January and another £700 in July, bless them.
It’s not their fault. It’s mine. It’s also my fault that we have debt to pay off and that we have a £600 monthly deficit that we are trying to overcome. It’s my fault that my family is facing some very difficult months as we tighten everything to try and get back on track.
Probably the worst thing about this situation is how slow I am to change. I have been actively working on clearing up my financial mess for a year and only now have I started planning and budgeting! (Insert pejorative exclamation here.)
Probably the best thing is that I know it’s all my fault. That fact really gives me hope. I’m not at the mercy of weather or spiteful little deities or a Curse of Finance (Lay your hand on the television and say the name of Cheee-susss and send your biggest cheque to me and you will be fuh-REE-ah, my brother!) I’m just an idiot with money. And I can do something about that.
Here is one of the things I am going to change: in the past, when our income has increased, our lifestyle has always ‘improved’ to use up that increase. I think it is like that for a lot of people. I have known for years that my lifestyle should be beneath my income, but when it comes to what I have actually done my reasoning went like this:
- Hooray! More money!
- Now I can finally buy ____
- Ooh, shouldn’t I start saving?
- Yes, but I’ve been so poor for so long. I can’t be expected to keep living like this. I deserve a reward.
- Of course I do! I’ll start saving and investing soon.
- Yeah, right.
- Repeat.
Not this time, buddy. I don’t care how cheap and tight and stingy I feel like I am being, our lifestyle is going to improve more slowly than our income increases.
28 September 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: cost-cutting,
debt,
depression,
failure,
money
Prodding
I realised about a month ago that the only connection between one’s income and one’s expenditure should be that the latter is less than the former.
Well, obviously. Everyone in the world knows that. Come back when you have something worth writing about.
But here is the important thing. In order for that to happen, unless you have more income than you are actually able to spend, you have to have and use a Budget. I kind of knew that I should have a budget, but I was very intimidated by the idea, so I didn’t.
Fortunately, this summer life conspired to make something else more intimidating than having a budget.
- My graphic design work mostly dried up, so we were making less money.
- The government decided that since we made ‘so much’ money in 2007-08 we did not need any tax credits for 2008-09.
- Our car became desperate for a new clutch.
- Christine became desperate for a new tooth, and the NHS dentist, who is being funded in part by the tax credits the government decided I don’t need, decided that a new tooth was too much work and she would just pull the old one out. In January. Oh, and please notice the sign at reception: toothache, no matter how bad (yes, even if it is so bad that that ibuprofen, paracetemol, and codeine combined don’t help at all) is NOT a dental emergency. We went private, of course.
All those fun things together mean that right now our income is about £500 per month less than our expenditures. I refer you to paragraph one. Something has to change. Several somethings, actually.
- We are putting a real, working budget together with the help of Steve Houghton our pastor and financial guru.
- We are cutting expenditures with a very big, lifestyle-altering knife. (Yes, I did miss my after church pints on Saturday and Sunday. I also knew that miss counted for my family’s fiscal well-being, so I was fine.)
- We are working hard on three things to increase our income. They will be announced here soon.
In conclusion, I am grateful that the government decided to stop giving back some of my money. It turned out to be the pointy tip of the cattle prod which drove me into the livestock transporter called Budget, so that I could get moo-ving down the highway of Financial Freedom and one day arrive in the green pastures of Fiscal Well-Being*; i.e. I am making my sure my expenditures are less than my income.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
*I’m on a budget now, so I can’t afford good metaphors.
22 September 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: budget,
cost-cutting,
money
The ongoing journey to freedom
Are you reading Paul and Sonya Armstrong’s blog posts about how they are getting out of debt yet? Start now!
We tried numerous times to curb our spending; sell things we didn’t need, look at our budget (bought books on budgets and management of money, software and programs). And it came in spurts. When the bills piled up and we felt like we were breaking, we got “real serious” about our spending. But we’d go right back to our pattern. I’d get something at McDonald’s or Chick-Fil-A or Wendy’s for lunch, I’d buy a CD, something for my camera, get office supplies; Sonya would buy inexpensive shoes for the kids, clothes at Target, we’d eat out every now and then (to be with friends, etc). Little things. None of them wrong, but it gave us a small excuse to avoid real change. Change that went beyond numbers. We resisted a first step in a real direction toward change.
At the heart our problems was fear…
27 August 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging,
cost-cutting,
debt,
failure,
money,
quotes
Stupid, evil credit cards 3
The credit card has to be sorted and not with little minimum payments that are half interest, so I took advantage of Barclays kind offer of a year of no interest on balance transfers. We now have three credit cards – imagine the trouble we could get ourselves into! But we won’t. We haven’t made a single credit card purchase since I posted this, and in 11 months (not twelve) we will be free of credit card debt.
14 June 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: debt,
money
Money inspiration
If you are struggling with debt and money and all that, please read this post by Paul Armstrong and this post by Sonya Armstrong. You are not alone, and there is a way out, even if it isn’t quick or easy.
28 May 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: debt,
money
Sorted
I’ve worked one evening a week for four weeks on keeping track of our finances. I’m caught up, and I have a simple system in place that will allow me to keep on top of our finances at a cost of about one hour per week. It’s taken a lot of work, but I feel more in control than I have in a long time.
28 May 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: accounting,
money
If it was amateurcrastination I would not have to take such extreme measures
The credit cards are sitting unused in a Very Inconvenient Place, but we are not rich yet and the overspend hasn’t been paid off.
I blame it on the lack of a proper budget.
I’d like to blame the missing budget on Alistair Darling, but it’s my fault. Cha-Ching’s sexy factor is not enough motivation for me to sit down and sort out the money once a week, so I have resorted to this: Tuesday evening is now the Sacred Hour of Finance.
That is why tonight, even though I’m tired, even though I have a very busy week, even though I have a logo presentation on Thursday that is no where near done, I am sitting down tonight, as I will every Tuesday night, to Manage My Money.
What’s that you say? Is it possible that my writing this blog entry is a delay tactic?
Impudence!
Cheek!
Maybe just a small delay tactic.
6 May 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: money
Stupid, evil credit cards 2
I wrote before that our two iMacs were on a 12 MONTHS INTEREST-FREE ON BALANCE TRANSFERS credit card from MBNA. Those twelve months ended near the beginning of March. Because I am working hard on managing our money, I set a date two weeks before the 12 months ended, and I paid off the card on that date.
I was obviously not pleased then when I opened my latest statement to find that I have been charged enough interest to wipe out half the interest I earned by the smart thing I did.
When I called MBNA to ask them to clear up the obvious mistake they had made, I was informed that ‘12 months’ doesn’t actually mean 12 months. In my case it turns out that ‘12 months’ meant 11 months and two days.
I said to the call centre person, Doesn’t it seem little dishonest to offer me 12 months with no interest but only give me 11 months and two days? And they said, and I quote: Blah blah blah blah policy blah blah clearly stated blah blah blah nothing I can do blah blah get off of our free phone line, you worthless piece of lichen.
The moral of this story is that credit card companies (and, even more so, insurance companies but you knew that already) are Evil.
Always assume the headline is a lie.
Always read the fine print.
21 March 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: debt,
money,
stories