organize my finances

Organising finances isn’t something that can be done in one fell swoop. It needs regular tweaking, like checking a couple of times a year that you’re getting the best deals for electricity and phone. I’ve pretty much learned to do this, and subscribing to moneysavingexpert emails keeps it in the forefront of my mind.

Considering the battering that my finances have taken this year, I do need to keep at this, but having is sitting there on my list going a bit curly around the edges isn’t helping.

I am thinking I might add a new finance-based goal, more about reducing outgoings while maintaining as fulfilling a lifestyle as possible.

Took about half an hour, research included.

Go me.

Times is hard. Actually, they’re not yet, but they might be at some point in the future, as it’s going to be a bugger finding a job that paid as well as my previous one – despite the galling fact that seven years after I graduated from university I still didn’t earn enough to have to start paying off my student loans. Still, I’s rather be poor and happy than rich and miserable any day.

The main problem is the flat I bought just under two years ago. Christ, it’s become a bit of an albatross. Neither Lucy nor I want to live in it any more, and I couldn’t afford to live in it alone even if I wanted to stay in it. Besides, I’m not sure I want to remain in the northeast. Employment-wise, there are probably much better opportunities for me elsewhere.

So it looks like doing it up a bit and renting it out might be the best – or maybe the only – option. I would find somewhere hopefully smaller and cheaper to rent by myself, probably in the same area for now, but maybe elsewhere in the future. Parents aren’t mad keen on the idea. Based on their experience – which is one friend of my dad who’s had a bad time with tenants – it’s too much hassle. They think I should grit my teeth and stay there. But they live in a beautiful converted farmhouse on top of a Yorkshire hill. They know nothing of living in the ghetto. They chuckle fondly at the neighbours when they come to visit, like they’re a form of village-idiot entertainment. But they don’t have to live with them. They also think that going back to renting myself would be a step down. They think if I really want to go, I should sell up and buy somewhere else but I don’t know where I want to be, that’s the whole point. I’d be freeing myself to go wherever I want. I’d get an agency to look after the flat. Someone else would be paying the mortgage for me. I’d still be a property owner and the place would still be gaining in value, but I wouldn’t have to live there.

So, in a week or so I have an appointment with a mortgage advisor. It’s time to remortgage anyway, my deal is coming to an end, and I’m hoping I can save some dollar on the payments and on the insurances. While I’m there, I’m going to discuss renting out with them, because I think the mortage options might be different.

It’s bloody scary. But it’s perfectly viable and may well become financially and emotionally necessary. I just need to work out how to do it.

..but hopefully cheaper in the long run. I got a loan from my bank the other day and paid off my credit card and overdraft. The interest will be less, and I hope it will also do my credit rating the world of good. God knows it could do with it.

My fridge-freezer, less than a year old, is giving up the ghost. The fridge part is now no more than an expensive and rather stinky cupboard, and I suspect that the freezer is about to become the same. I’ve spent the last few days searching for the receipt, and I can’t find it anywhere. I went on a wild goose chase calling Comet which was where I thought I’d bought it, but they had no record of my purchase. I’ve now found the delivery slip – turns out it was from Currys, the shop next to Comet – and I had to order a bank statement from the month in which I thought I bought it, and find the transaction which I thought might be the right one… I rang the engineers, who said they needed a receipt, so rang Currys back again and arranged for them to send me a duplicate receipt so that I can call the engineers again and get them out. God, what a palaver. If I’d been an organised anal person instead of a stoned fuckwit none of this would have happened cos I would have found the receipt in five minutes. It would be fixed by now. As it stands, I’m waiting for my brother’s flatmate to bring up his spare fridge – not the best time to be asking favours from a devoted daddy – and the receipt to facilitate the engineers won’t arrive till next week.

So the other day when I was in the supermarket I bought a big expanding file with various different sections printed on it, like “mortgage” and “insurance”, and I’m spending at least part of my Xmas Eve sorting out the piles of paper that have been stuffed in various drawers making up my laughable filing system. Never again will I be in this fix. It’s all very well being an eternal optimist but losing a receipt for an expensive electrical item and expecting it to continue working is just tempting fate.

My bank just rang me about reviewing my account and I’ve made an appointment to go in and talk to them about it tomorrow. They recommend that I get a loan to pay off my existing credit card and overdraft (which, incidentally, I never asked for, they just kept upping the limit without asking me if I wanted them to, fools that they are, and I just kept spending the money, fool that I am). I’m about to finish paying off my graduate loan, and once that’s done I was intending to divert the money that’s been going out on that to paying off my credit card anyway. The bank reckons that we should be able to keep the payments below that amount every month, so hopefully I won’t miss it. As long as I can a) refrain from saying “fuck it” and taking out the first loan I’m offered and b) actually get off my arse and shop around to see what better deals there might be, this looks like quite a viable option. And I’ll need to pursuade them to never, ever, ever give me an overdraft facility again without my specifically asking for it. They’re sneaky deaky li’l motherfuckers, banks. In some ways I long for the return to the tradition of paying for everything in cash and keeping it in a box under the bed. But, oh, yeah, I live in Bensham. It would be nicked and in a smack dealer’s greasy little trackie-bottom pocket before I could say, “Who are you and what are you doing under my bed?”

And I’ve brought lunch into work twice this week, saving me dollar beaucoup. I’ve brought it in today, too, but I’m exhausted and hungry, and tomato soup really doesn’t appeal so I may succumb to the lure of the caff and eat the soup tomorrow, thus still sticking to my “three packed lunches a week goal”. Mm, baked potato…

I realised I was being roundly ripped off by my mobile phone company – my bills the last two months have topped the £60 mark! According to the lady in the Carphone Warehouse, the service provider (whose name I shall only hint at – it begins with a V and ends in “one”) should have called me and asked me if I wanted to move up a tariff to save me money, but they slyly hadn’t, and instead let me go on paying through the nose, sending me bills so complex they made my head hurt and my eyes water. Yesterday I found a better deal where I get 25 more minutes, inclusive insurance and three times as many texts (my weakness) for £10 less a month than I’ve been paying just for my contract, let alone all the extra I’ve been paying for all the non-inclusive texts and minutes I’ve been using. And for £30 I’m getting a brand new Sony Ericcsson W800i so I’ve effectively got a new camera and an MP3 player in one fell swoop. I’m so proud of myself! And excited to be getting an MP3 player – I haven’t had portable music since I won an original Walkman aged ten in a competition. I was in the local paper for my exceptional technological possession. Once again I will have a soundtrack to my life, but this time it won’t be “Now That’s What I Call Music III”. Anyway, please don’t anyone tell me I’ve got a crap deal or I’ll cry, unless you do it in the next few days while I’m still in my cooling-off period and can change it for something better.

Next step is to find a better broadband deal. I’m paying £20 a month for 1mps from Tesco. Tiscali looks quite good, they’ll do £20 a month for the same and free UK landline calls. But does anyone have any better suggestions?

Oh, and last night, while I was simmering dinner, I made myself sandwiches to bring to work – another £2 saved :-)