Long Weekend

Well and truly overdue, it was tidy up time in my flat after several weeks of me barely being home other than to eat, shower and sleep. I had three assignments due this weekend - the conclusion of my course - and I am still struggling for motivation. It's quite challenging to force yourself to read and comment on things that seem so painfully common-sense, especially while working two jobs. Fortunately they have granted me an extension of another week.

Let's pretend I carry a briefcase.

Work is going well is going along. I enjoy what I do, and I feel like I'm doing quite well at it, I just don't have any indicators on whether they are pleased with me, apart from fellow newbies who thank me for helping them learn. The senior employee in the desk beside has been away for two weeks and I'm so pleased that she will be back this week, as I'm hoping she can find out how I'm going or listen in to a few of my calls and offer suggestions to improve.

Speaking of work, they have organised a dinner out next week, one that I will have to attend. I'm not keen on paying out for that, but I'd like to get to know my colleagues a bit, and I've been told the restaurant has lovely food. It will be a dry evening for me since I'll have to drive home afterwards, so I am really hoping it doesn't kick on late into the evening. I'm fine with being a night owl but it's maybe less glossy if everyone else is rather merry! At least it's on payday, even if mine will be a short pay because of the timing of my start with the company.

We have a tentative date. In 2023.

Also trying to arrange to meet up with three friends in other towns - sounds simple, right, but because three of us have shifting work schedules and unsociable rotas, this is becoming more and more ridiculous and has fallen through over and over again. I fear we might all have to drive to the middle of nowhere on a Tuesday just to say hello for an hour and then each head home for early nights. We have literally resorted to pasting each others' work schedules into each others' calendars, and last night I remarked: well I'll have time to invite you all down in November once I'm unemployed again...

Which is part of why, despite three weeks of extra evening work coming up from my old employer, and money that will really come in handy, I'm resenting the time it will take up :( I'm well and truly in the middle of "shit-life" syndrome right now! Don't get me wrong, I'm not unhappy, but it's rather frustrating having to endure this while literally having no social life.

Good: the £100 parking charge, while not erased, has been dropped to £30 as a gesture of goodwill. I consider this lucky.
Freebies: huge bag of apples which I picked from the roadside
More freebies: tinned tomatoes, unopened marmalade, and about ten half-packets of herbs, spices and stock cubes, from a client's employee moving to Germany whom I didn't actually know... but they surely would not care who took these things after ten days of them sitting in a box saying "help yourself".
Eh: the caravan has done better than expected, but will still likely not cover its site fees for the year. This is mostly due to the late start in getting it rented out. I am pondering whether to sell it soon and cut my losses.

We're Dying Sooner... of "Shit-Life Syndrome"

Isn't that just a topic that makes you want to laugh, cover your mouth in horror for laughing, and then cover your mouth just in general horror? Life expectancy has been rising for years and years and all of a sudden, not anymore. And researchers have, believe it or not, put this down to "shit-life syndrome". That phrase is the actual name. I didn't make that up. (I wish I had.)

Peripherally, I knew this sort of thing WAS a thing in the UK and in the USA, even before I moved to England. We have ever-growing masses of people for whom the reality of their working lives is minimum wage, long hours, decades of debt and daily job insecurity. The Guardian blames this on poorly-educated people, but I'm in this situation and consider myself not to be completely ignorant, and I really don't think I'm a unique case. I'll be honest, I meet a lot of these people doing cleaning work (many seem to have quirky personalities that turn interviewers off, or they are smart people, but lacking the skills that would gain them work in other industries). But in kitchen work it is a mixed bag, there are some very clever, well-educated people who have landed in the gruelling work of a kitchen simply because they can't get work elsewhere. Surely, they can't all be terrible at interview. Surely it's a reflection of the reality, that it's not so easy to get regular, reliable work in the industry you're after.

So many of us are just working a gruelling, low-paid, low-skill job, with poor progression prospects and poor job security, and are reduced to feeling grateful for being a slave, just because it means the rent gets paid this month.

Well, it's correlated with poor health, to diet-related and lifestyle-related conditions which would be largely preventable with enough "education". Or is it? As I have spelled out recently, when you're tired you stop listening to the things you know and you start doing what's convenient. You eat a takeaway pastry and call that dinner, instead of the meat and three veg that you know is much better for your health, and you do it because dang it, you're tired and you've lost the will to care.

We are increasingly being treated for depression not because of major life events slapping us in the face, but merely thanks to the drudgery of our shit lives. We up the medication, or we self-medicate with drugs or alcohol. Dependence on drugs is rising, as are overdose numbers, not just in the drug capital of the world but here in the UK too. We're not becoming more stupid about drugs though, because we've never been more educated about their dangers. We're simply growing in numbers, we of the Shit-Life Brigade, and we search for the easiest escape because we are just too tired to figure out a better way to solve it.

It's mesmerising, until you're actually stuck in it.

For the past year I've oscillated between "not enough work" and "too much work", a Newton's Cradle of job insecurity. When you're low on income you worry about money and you spend so much time and effort trying to find work; and when you actually find it, you're almost blind with fatigue and you hate what you are doing, but you're still trying to catch up from the past few months, while also conscious that you need to try to save for a future where you again, won't have enough work, and it is a cycle that repeats. For most of that time I've survived just by thinking that it's not permanent, that the exhaustion will pass, that soon I'll have permanent work in an industry that I enjoy. What must it be like for people who can't even see a light at the end of the tunnel? What would I turn to if I thought there was no escape from shit-life?

Don't get me wrong. I am very fortunate. I am healthy and have enough to eat, a roof over my head. Most of the time I am content. But I try to get my head around a world where fully half of us are treading water for our whole lives. It makes me want to rebel. It's my eyes trying to claw their way out of my head, yelling out "NO!" (Let's pretend that eyeballs have a way to yell.)

I reject your assertion, World, that I have to live my whole life in a blur where the aim of the game is just to survive. I want more than survival. I want to have part of my life to myself, and dang it I'm going to do what I can to make that happen, even if it means giving up takeaway food and living on omelettes, fruit and sandwiches.

Arguing With Myself

It's all I seem to do lately when it comes to money. For example, the new trainers I bought for £12, that I badly needed, but that I knew were eating into limited funds. This week I also bought myself a pair of trousers from the charity shop, and two shirts, for a total of £8, and STILL I thought to myself: well I am only working here for three months so I really could have made do by wearing my skirts now and then. But once I was home I reasoned that denying myself a second pair of work trousers is really bordering on ridiculous.

I also badly "need" a haircut to try to tame the mess on my crown. Even so I am delaying it and delaying it because I'm so uncertain about having anywhere to live in November. I suspect what will happen is that I move my furniture into storage and spend another November in my caravan. That's not a bad thing, it is a lovely place even if rather chilly at that time of year, and I wouldn't be able to rent it for November anyway. And that has another side-effect, me being annoyed at having possessions, because having to pay people to move and store furniture is really very annoying.

I ordered a satnav for my car, and I justified it by getting an older and thus cheaper model, so if it doesn't do the job I'm going to be annoyed at myself to say the least. So far I have resisted replacing the radio. For about half my commute it will only pick up horrible radio stations that really test my patience, so of course I'm wishing I had a newer radio to get "proper" music. But until that's at a price I like, I will grit my teeth and bear it.

Silly purchase of the week: I paid to get a key cut for my work drawer because I am paranoid I'll lose the only key and be unable to get to the files I'll need for work. I realised too late that if I had lost it, the facilities team would break into the drawer for me (thank you, workmate J, for losing your key and helping us all to learn this lesson).

Fallout

Remember how I said that when you're inanely busy, something has to give? Well we have the answer. I interviewed for a permanent position in my office and didn't get it. I just wasn't giving the answers they wanted to hear, and that comes down to a lack of preparation for the interview. I'm still not entirely sure what was lacking, so all I can really do is google typical interview questions.

The manager was very kind, we get on very well and she did note that I still have 11 weeks where I am, and there was still a possibility of... possibilities. Of course I can't bank on that so I have to assume I'll be unemployed at that point. The real difficulty is that it's almost right on top of my rental lease expiring, meaning I will somehow have to find a new place to live while unemployed. Just in case you don't immediately grasp the significance of that, landlords essentially never let to someone without permanent full-time work. To say that November is going to be a challenge would be an understatement. A dear friend has kindly offered to host me if the worst comes to worst, but he is in Wales, nowhere near either here, or my work, so I'm not sure I can realistically take him up on the offer.

Not my car, I park better than this.

I finally managed to get myself a small loan, and bought a car. It's a ten-year-old, pug-nosed, one litre shoebox on wheels that you could park on a drink coaster, and although it has 100k miles on the clock, the service history shows that this little creature has been very well looked-after. So I have now been driving to work for a week. Amazingly, I keep forgetting that I have a car and that having a car means I can Do Things™. Things like actually going down to the holiday park where my caravan is (I can't stay overnight as the van is let out to holidaymakers, but I could still use the facilities there or even just visit the beach). I can visit the big supermarket where the prices don't gouge me. I can get bulk buys home because I don't have to carry them. I quite dislike that it's a car that has made this all possible, and that I can so easily feel relief at doing things the easy way, but it is what it is. A week of commuting has been even cheaper on the fuel than I expected.

As for the loan, it is expensive, but not in the eye-watering-interest bracket that I had expected. It is definitely cheaper than credit cards or payday loans. The option is there to pay it out early if lightning strikes and I suddenly get rich enough. The repayment itself is quite affordable (I say that, as someone facing unemployment!!!) because even taking that interest into account, it is cheaper to drive than to commute by public transport. This world is crazy, huh?

As for my second (older) job cleaning, I got what I wished for and immediately wished I hadn't got what I wished for. They have found someone to replace me. I will, as of Wednesday this week, be absolutely free in the evenings and not have to run off to push a vacuum cleaner around. It's what I want, but of course I'm also thinking: I really should be trying to earn more money for November. As it stands my full-time income won't leave much over once all the bills are paid. There won't be much in the tank for an unemployed December. The old boss is still offering ad-hoc work, and part of me is grateful while part of me wishes I could walk away from needing two jobs...

Good: lost a bit of weight, not much but it's a start
Hmm: parking costs more if you pay for it online, so I am constantly chasing change to feed the machine, meaning I have to keep paying cash for groceries. Last supermarket visit I made five separate transactions to get as much change as I could. A few funny looks. I hope it doesn't make me go shopping more and spend on things I don't need.
Bad: parking fine two hours after I bought my car, in my own backyard, because I didn't have my permit yet. £100. Currently appealing this but unlikely to get it lifted.

Saying "No" to Plastic?

How did we ever live without ATM cards? I was thinking about this during the week. One of my memories of childhood was when Mum's local building society was bought out by a bank. Our regular routine had been to visit the tidy, sterile and efficient building society, and now we were subject to the utter boredom of having absolutely nothing to do while stuck in a large and dirty bank branch, a shabby old place with threadbare carpet, completely devoid of any kind of personality apart from "horrible". Each week my mother queued for teller service, to hand over her passbook and withdraw her cash, and the "progress" of having to change banks meant that the passbook was no longer fed into a machine to be printed - the bank teller now used a pen to write the transaction out by hand. My mother observed this backward step and got merely an apology that the bank system couldn't cope with the newer building society computer system...

Look at that queue! The smile is a lie.

Bank Branches. Blech. Give me an ATM any day. I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that having to actually step inside a bank is as alien as a rotary phone, or using a fax machine. I mean, what for, unless it's to remind ourselves that this is how we used to suffer?

So it was with interest that I read Brigid Delaney's piece in The Guardian recently, where she admitted to intentionally not replacing a lost ATM card, and instead forced herself to operate only by cash. While I lived in Finland I often withdrew cash and used it instead of my ATM card. I found cash somehow tactile, since I was not looking after bills and payments myself, and it gave me some kind of attachment to the financial world, even if very limited. It also meant that I knew how much money I had. When you have limited income, the feel of notes and coins, the physical sight of it dwindling as you hand it over for goods, all keeps it very real in terms of tracking your spending. One of my workmates does the same. Her debt burden is high, so she does the maths on every payday, keeping all her bill money in the bank and withdrawing the leftovers as cash. Once the cash is gone, it's gone - there is nothing left for her to spend.

But given that it's still possible to spend every scrap even when you're working in cash, is there a point? Maybe. I personally think that the contactless trend is insidious. Paying for things has become so easy that we barely think about what we're doing. Think about it next time you pay - the focus is on waiting to hear that beep, at which point we pull the card away and consider the deal finished. We barely think about the amount, or that we've just paid for something, at all.

These little purchases, for a chocolate bar, for the bus ticket, for lunch, all small snippets which can add up to a tremendous amount of moolah in a very rapid way. Think how many people you know claim to be hard up for cash and still flash that beepy little card all the time - but it's not hypocrisy. The purchases are no longer tangible. People are simply not connecting "many small purchases add up to a big total". It's a spending avalanche, like in the cartoons when you were a kid and you'd see a snowball becoming bigger as it rolled down a hill. The little things matter, folks. They make all the difference.

Just When You Think You've Seen It All

Ahem. It is now a thing to pay for a daytime nap. £18 for an hour, to be precise.

In a way, I understand completely why this is a thing. Not so long ago, it was normal for people to verbally compete with each other on who's more tired. Because being tired, you see, is a measure of how busy you are (which implicitly makes you a hard worker, a driven, dedicated, ambitious person we should all admire).

But most of me automatically rejects the idea of buying a nap. Pay for sleep? What? Who are the people who can afford this? And how dreadful is their money management when £18 seems worthwhile for a bed for an hour, and how dreadful is their time management that they have to snatch this nap while not at home? (Despite my previous week of sleep deprivation... I baulk at the very idea.)

Then there's a small part of me thinking: Dang, why didn't I think of charging people for naps...

But where was I? Oh yes. The competition for being more busy than everyone else. If you listen to the people around you, you'll hear it in general conversation. Sometimes people bring it up spontaneously. I've seen people stuck in a busy-loop (and I must admit I've occasionally been stuck in one myself). That point where you are merely existing, you check your calendar constantly to see where you need to be next, where appointments creep up on you (dang, I haven't had time to get ready for this one and it's here already!) and you know that your life is just too busy. But paradoxically, you're too busy to try to get yourself out of the loop.

Are we choosing this? Plenty of people will say they're not. That this is just a necessary evil. That their obligations to the people in their lives drive half of it (ballet class, cub scouts, swimming lessons, piano tuition, Pilates, book club, etc etc etc) or even the simple workaholic mindset. But what if we choose to remember that our entire lives are driven by small choices made one by one?

I have real empathy for the ones whose calendars are full just by working. I've been there. But I also recognised it was unhealthy, and I dedicated time to actually evaluate overworking as a choice. So many choices are made while thinking we don't have a choice. But we often just forget to factor certain things in. Feeling like we have no choice working long hours, for example, sometimes omits to consider our spending habits and the possible sacrifices we could make instead.

I choose not to live in a palace. I'm not even in the smallest place I could be living - and I think next time I move, I'm going to opt smaller, because it will allow me to kill more debt. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but I still find it fascinating that so many people don't even consider these things. Maybe if some people paid for slightly fewer "activities" for their kids, they could spend a couple of hours with their kids and even squeeze in a nap... for free?

The Week That Was

I borrowed the title - in its original song it was about a horrendous week, but in my case, the last week has been probably one of the most blurry weeks I've ever survived. I don't think I can call it truly horrible by any means, but "tired" would be an understatement. And not like when I was physically overworked in the kitchen and my everything hurt. This week my feet have suffered to the point I could barely walk, but more than that, it was sheer lack of sleep. It turns you a bit loopy and really makes you waste money on things because you are losing both your proper reasoning and your ability to even care.

I started a new job with insane commuting costs. And of course I don't do things simply, so I'm still working at my old one (fewer hours, thank goodness) while also trying to complete a course in Business Administration. I cannot recommend having so many responsibilities at once. Sacrificing some of your sleeping hours to get work done is not recommended.

Predictably when you get to that point, something has to give. For me this week it was my spending on groceries. I did manage to get myself set for work (I have packets of soup, a microwave mug and spoon, plenty of snacks for my desk drawer, and the coffee is free). So I did sort of alright there. So far I have resisted buying anything at the work canteen. Unfortunately by afternoon I am starving, thinking about dinner, and facing the abyss of the commute home followed by going to my second job. So every evening I've ended up buying something I can eat on the train on the way home. It's been mostly inexpensive options from supermarkets, but even so it was a real lack of planning. By the time I realised I should have sorted this out, I was stuck in an entire week of "no time to cook any dinners at home, no energy to even think about that, it's just too bad". Literally. The choice was go home and cook dinner for tomorrow or go home and get that important extra half hour of sleep, and sleep won every time.

This role is a temporary contract so I did buy myself a nice (cheap) coffee mug for work to make myself feel a little bit like I belong, and a tiny plant for my desk, and oh some coloured pens. All bad and a bit of a waste of money I must admit. But I am trying to approach this job as if I will be staying, to give it my full attention and effort, to see it as an opportunity to learn new skills that I might be able to use in a future role. So far I'm quite enjoying what I learn.

The weather is kicking in with force, and ruining my work wardrobe plans of being in skirts and sandals. It's a good thing I hadn't bought more than I did, but trousers will need to be the go-to and more than one decent pair would be a smart idea. But that means I need some useful flat shoes which I do not hate. More shopping, sigh. I did finally get the new trainers that have waited two months to exist. Half marks for me.

Win: work is near the super cheap supermarket and I have "wait for train" time every afternoon to get cheap essentials to take home with me
Win/Lose: personal loan approved from the bank, to buy a car... up-front expenses ahoy, but I'd quite like to gain an extra 90 minutes back of my life each day thank you
Lose: the guy who won the auction for my scooter decided he had no interest in paying for it or even replying to messages
Thought to ponder: why are there soooo many things in this world which you realise that you have to get and really annoyingly, they cost money? Deep, I know.

The Financial Emergency

I have been doing a lot of reading Mr Money Mustache of late (go check it out, it's an amazing blog) and he said something that struck a chord with me. In his column, he occasionally has a letter from someone wanting advice on their money situation, and one particular guy had listed a monthly spend on gym membership and also that he had college debt. He wasn't drowning, or struggling to eat, but life was becoming financially painful.

I'm not going to touch on the relative merits of a gym membership here (I can think of better ways to get people angry really quickly!) or even on college debt, which is an Evil, Evil Thing™. What I liked about MMM's evaluation was his declaration at the end. Essentially he said: You have debts; this is an emergency!

Wait, what... emergency? Really?

Yeah, really. Think how we might weigh up our spending if we actually kept that concept in mind. As MMM noted, you don't spend on non-essentials when you have a financial emergency. And he's right - most of us, for example, would not buy a takeaway dinner while knowing that we might struggle to pay the rent later in the month. Struggling with the rent is a Financial Emergency.

But for some reason, we treat debt differently. Even well-managed debt, where we are paying off the agreed amounts, like a car loan or college debts, or that blasted credit card (like, don't worry, we'll easily cover the minimum).

Insert siren here. In fact, I think I will.

This might be news to people, but having debt costs money. It's called interest. Paying interest is poo. It's the pits. It's something we Don't Want To Do, and thus, having to do that shit? It's an emergency. While we have debts incurring interest, that one pound cheeseburger is actually a one pound fifty cheeseburger if we spend that money instead of attacking a debt. Even interest-free or interest-deferred debt costs us; in stress when thinking about it, in delaying us from doing things, in hurting our credit rating.

Antler dancing. Start them young.

We really should be treating all non-mortgage debt as an emergency. And by that I don't mean we should be doing antler dancing, I mean stop buying things. Or as MMM would say, next time you want to buy something that isn't necessary, punch yourself in the face then walk away. Put the money onto your debt and the debt will be gone faster, along with the interest charges, freeing you up to waste more of your money on whatever you please.

Or more likely - if you've practised not spending for quite a while - to free you to work fewer hours and do whatever you please with all your glorious, glorious free time.

Contactless Card Vulnerability

I must admit to partaking in the contactless revolution. Initially I was dead-set against it. I knew of its dangers, I knew that people could walk up and "beep" your card while it was still in your pocket. When contactless payment first hit the masses a few years back, I had no cards with any contactless chips (RFID) apart from my bus pass, and I was proud of being a Luddite. There were rumours of people losing money to thieves on crowded trains. Fortunately, contactless payment is limited to £30 in the UK, which reassured me a bit. But my everyday "current" aka savings account has no contactless chip on the card, and for the moment, I'm keeping it that way.

But where was I? Oh yes. Getting onto a bus in an unfamiliar town here in the UK, I was fumbling for my mobile phone to open a bus ticket app that I hadn't used before, apologising to the driver that I didn't have any cash with me and hadn't been able to buy my ticket on the app yet, and he simply said, "You can pay by card." I opened my wallet and looked around - but there was nowhere to insert my ATM card or type in a pin. He meant contactless, of course, and my heart sank. Then I remembered that my credit card had the contactless symbol on it, although I'd never tried it. I held my breath and hoped it would work. Flash, beep, out spits the ticket and I could go and sit down. Relief washed over me. My very first contactless payment, done under duress but definitely a positive experience. Suddenly I "got" why people had become so addicted to this.

But check this out. And think about what it means for our money.

It's not yet possible to get a stranger's phone number, or set up a date. But give it time.

Yes, we knew about the risk of losing a few quid, but do we realise that full credit card numbers are exposed? Not only that, being unaware it's happened? This is a brand new era of credit card theft - your credit card has no contactless limits, only the limit of your account itself. And since you still have the physical card, you won't know it's stolen. You can be none the wiser until you glance at your statement and see thousands of dollars racked up. Plus, if you're someone who only uses a card for planned purchases, and gets no physical statement? Those charges might go unseen for months.

Sometimes convenience has a price. We need to be vigilant in looking at those statements, be a bit aware of where our cards are (not in the back pocket, and not in a handbag on the back of a chair). It reeks of blaming the victim, but what's our alternative if we are intent on the convenience?

You can buy shields for your cards (UK) (US)* or even an RFID-blocking wallet (UK) (US)*. (Actually, I just bought some shields for myself.) Yes, it'll slow me down slightly when paying for goods, but that's a compromise I consider worthwhile. I will report back on their effectiveness and convenience once they arrive in the post.

I have also decided to pay far more attention to my credit card statements. I am one of those people who only uses a card for specific buys, and then transfers the money onto it the same day. That puts me at risk, despite my decent money-management of the card. So I shall be more careful in future.

*Affiliate links, but as usual I don't blog about anything I don't believe in.