February Income / Expenses Report – Keep on runnin’

Mar06
by TFS on March 6, 2015 at 7:46 am
Posted In: Budgets, TFS Updates

Keep On Running

 

 

Ah… the short and cold month of old February. It should hopefully allow most people to get up to a good rate of savings shouldn’t it? Well for once it might surprise you to let you know we actually did pretty well with a savings rate of 55%! Whoo! Let’s see how it broke down (remember these expenses are for two people!):

 

February Income

 

Categories February Notes
Total £3,900.17  1
TFS £2,431.95
Mrs TFS £1,050.77
Interest TSB 1 TFS £6.65
Interest TSB 2 Mrs TFS £6.65
Interest Santander £13.22
Cashback Santander £3.33
Cashback CCs £321.55  2
Solar Panels £0.00
Gifts £0.00
Sold stuff £66.05  3
Refunds £0.00
Other £0.00
SIPP Tax back £0.00
  1. Overall a good month for income! Although massively helped by…
  2. I cashed in the cashback from our Barclaycard cashback card. This goes onto the card as credit but as we use it for groceries and other bits that works out fine anyway. This was built up over around 1 year and included a big chunk when manufactured a spend of £5000 on our house moving bill, which added a nice chunk to the cashback total!
  3. I have a separate bank account for selling our stuff on eBay which I don’t track in MoneyDashboard. I pay the eBay fee’s from here as well (if need be) so it’s nice and separate, and then transfer a chunk of money over into the main account when there is a half decent amount in there. This way I know it’s all pure “profit” after eBay expenses etc. In fact that brings up a good point in that I should pay postage costs via this account as well, I will start to do that in future!

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Four Modern Day Paradoxes of Human Construct

Feb27
by TFS on February 27, 2015 at 7:24 am
Posted In: Economics, Psychology

 

The Snake Paradox. (I admit it... I made that one up!)

 

The Snake Paradox – The more crap the graphics,

the more addictive a game is (I admit it… I made that one up!)

Us humans are fucking dumb sometimes aren’t we? We are always striving for more. More money, a bigger slice of the pie, more productivity, better technology, more efficiency. It is this trait that has taken us from our original spawning ground of East Africa to become a multi-billion member, world wide force that even nature itself now has to reckon with. But we don’t always seem to use our gains to good effect in my humble opinion. Let’s have a look at where we are squandering some of them with a list of Modern Day Paradoxes of Human Construct:

 

1. The Productivity Paradox

The smarter we work, the harder we work

As this is primarily a blog about working as little as possible this has to be number one in the charts 1. For evidence of this paradox look no further than Keynes’ failed prediction of the 15 hour work week. From the linked article: living standards have increase nearly 8 fold as he predicted, yet the drop in working hours has failed to materialise. There are a few reasons I can think of for this:

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Notes:

  1. Sorry for not doing the “countdown” pop-hits chart style list. Personally I don’t see the point in leaving the best till last! ↩
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When the spectre of redundancy comes calling – have you got enough money to survive?

Feb23
by TFS on February 23, 2015 at 9:52 pm
Posted In: Random Thoughts

Redundant Mickey

 

A close work friend of mine revealed he was “offered” redundancy today 1. It was a shock to both him and I, but deep down we (should) know this could happen to any of us at any time.

Anyway we went for a few beers after work so I could be his sounding board and apart from the usual you’d expect in this situation, I was really quite surprised at how bewildered he seemed. This was a guy who I would say is pretty frugal. Without revealing too much, he had managed to set up a pretty cushy living situation for himself whereby he could work from home in a mortgage free house with his family. He could well have passed for a closet FI’er if I didn’t know any better. So I would have thought he would have some cashola saved up for a rainy day. He may well have for all I know, but I got the feeling from our conversation that it didn’t amount to anything that substantial if he had. Alternatively I could be way of the mark or he was being cagey, and the bewilderment was simply down to being told he wasn’t wanted anymore? Who knows! It’s a brave man to ask for another’s balance sheet details and I am not that brave (or rude).

I also thought that I would be ecstatic if they’d offered me the same deal (he has been there 10+ years so similar time to myself, i.e. big time redundancy money). But again, I guess I will never know until it happens. Even if I really wanted to leave somewhere, it cannot be nice knowing that you are surplus to requirements.

The bottom line of all this though is clear:

No One Is Safe

This was a solid and reliable employee for 10+ years and he has been shelled like a pea from the safety of the corporate pod with barely a second thought.

Live Within Your Means

Regardless of whether you want to leave work ASAP or not, you owe it to yourself and family to at least have some back up savings to cover your arse if the worst was to happen! I can’t believe I lived for many years without any significant savings, even though I could have amassed them with relatively little pain or change in lifestyle. Fair enough, I didn’t/don’t have any dependants but I would have been up sh*t creek for at least 8 full years of the 11 I have been working for if I’d have lost my job. A sobering thought indeed.

 

Again, I don’t know the exact details but I can’t help thinking that if my friend had a bigger safety net to fall back on, he wouldn’t have felt so bad about the whole situation.

 

Have you or anyone close you ever been made redundant? Was it a cause for celebration and a well deserved break from the rat race, or was it a wake for you/them to get your financial house in order?

Notes:

  1. The ironic fact that I wish it had happened to me instead of him was not lost on both of us, him having listened to many of my (mainly drunken) ramblings on how I am going to quit “at some point soon”! ↩
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Combining and Tracking Couple’s Finances, More Moneydashboard tips, plus free £10!

Feb13
by TFS on February 13, 2015 at 12:27 pm
Posted In: Budgets, Free stuff, My Favourite, Personal Finance, Psychology

 

MoneyDashboard

 

To run a tight financial ship in any relationship you both have to be transparent in what you are spending, have similar long term financial goals, and hopefully have the same level of frugality running through your veins. There is wiggle room on this of course, but you generally have to be in the same ball park I find, or things aren’t going to go well long term! Finding a frugal partner is something I will have to leave up to your own judgement, and TEA has a great post on discussing your financial goals with your partner.

That leaves being transparent with your spending, and the easiest way of doing that is clearly by just combining your accounts into a joint account. However this can be a bit of a pain, and something that not everyone wants to do!

If the reason your significant other doesn’t want a joint account is because they specifically don’t want to reveal their spending, then some pretty loud alarm bells should be pounding in your ears! But let’s assume that this is not the case, how do we go about pulling in transactions from multiple accounts in the easiest way possible? Once again… enter MoneyDashboard.

 

A brief digression – Get £9.97 when you sign up through Top Cashback

This offer only lasts 2 days from Friday 13th January until Sunday 15th so you need to be quick!!! But if you open a Top Cashback account here* then, find the moneyDashboard offer (it’s currently on the homepage, or just use the search box)  you will get an even bigger than normal £9.97 cashback, simply for opening and syncing at least one of your bank accounts. Which really is money for nothing (well, 15 minutes of sitting at your computer!).

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January Detox Challenge II – The Results

Feb10
by TFS on February 10, 2015 at 7:43 pm
Posted In: TFS Challenge
Sweet stuff

What I ate the week after the challenge ended. Oops

We are in the second week of February already, where the hello did that go!? How did you all get on with your January “detox”? Mine went ok-ish I’d say overall. Let’s have a quick reminder of what I was trying to achieve:

  • Run 2 x 1 mile run per week and one 2+ mile run per week (With a side/semi-long-term goal of doing 1 mile in 6 minutes and 2 miles in 13 minutes)
  • Eating – No Added Sugar!
  • No alcohol

If you need more info than that, the full challenge write up can be read here, and let it be known that I think you’re a little bit weird (but I like you even more than the “normal people”) 🙂

Following are some notes on how I did!

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