Life After Lockdown

South_coast

Have you read The Millionaire Next Door? It says in there that gifts from family don't tend to be a good thing as you don't appreciate them in the way that you would if you had earned them and end up either with a sense of entitlement or wasting what you've got (or both!)

It makes me feel better to think of this when I have spells of how you're feeling ❤

Grogged

It all sounds very cathartic, it's good you're looking forward as it's so easy to get stuck in the past and it's negativity.
Keep up the good work and track the progress you're making. 👍

V8D

I haven't read Millionaire Next Door - is it worth it? Generally speaking, I'd say you're right. Just feels difficult to be nowhere close to reaching my goals (which are admittedly pretty high... 😂) when others have so much more but don't need to worry about making mistakes / business / career choices etc. to the extent I do. Being a single-income household can be a little disheartening too at times as reading some of the diaries on here, having two full-time incomes makes a lot of difference.

Anyway, definitely looking forward and I do appreciate everyone has their own struggles. 🙂 

This month's non-bill spends have looked like this:

Food	£              271.16
Petrol	£                58.03
Dog food	£              125.60
Other - refund for some work I stopped doing a while back	£              140.00

Spends were way less than they usually are as we are hardly driving and only shopping once every ten days or so. Probably won't need to buy much dog food in May. The refund was a one-off thing; I was going to complete the outstanding work but as the lockdown started and it became apparent that it was going to carry on for a while I decided to give the money back rather than having work hanging over me from a second business I have finished running. Just wanted a clean break from it, I suppose.

South_coast

V8D said:

I haven't read Millionaire Next Door - is it worth it?
Being a single-income household can be a little disheartening too at times as reading some of the diaries on here, having two full-time incomes makes a lot of difference.

Hmmm, not sure on the book. I didn't get a lot from it, but I've seen people on here raving about it. It seemed to labour over the points to try and reinforce the message a bit too much for me. 

I hear you on the single-income thing. I was astonished to discover a few weeks ago that my bills each month add up to £913 when I thought I was living cheaply (no paid-for TV, no landline, no broadband, work pay for my mobile etc), but it's only in the last couple of days that's it's clicked that that's because I'm paying for EVERYTHING! That's a big chunk of money, however much you earn. My BF and I live apart, which I can't see changing for at least 20 years, but I winced the other day when I realised that between us we're paying £238 a month on council tax, despite both getting a 25% single-occupancy discount 😯!

V8D

I've noticed a lot of money / self help type books seem to reinforce the same stuff over and over too. Managed to find a PDF copy and just had a look at the chapter titles.

I'll be honest, I'm not bothered about being cash-rich. I like nice things and probably always will do. 🙂

I was quite surprised when I totted my bills up. I do get my mobile bill back through my business but everything else comes out of our personal money. My husband loves spending money on various hobbies, some are shared and some aren't (who knew how much a model railway can cost to build??! 😂). 

🙁🙁 re your council tax. It's definitely cheaper to live together. 

savingholmes

I read Millionaire next door last year. The problem is it is written for an American audience who on the whole have different pension and other accounts. It did reinforce the message to me though that if parents given what they called 'economic outpatient care' to adult children - it makes them rely on it and they end up earning less and remaining dependent and having less to show for it. Eg parents buys expensive rug for child - adult child then splashes the plastic to get stuff to match. Similar with paying deposits on housing - keeping up with the Joneses is harder as you are in an artifically high standard of living area compared to your income which causes problems etc. That made a lot of sense to me - as MIL has been kind to us over the years but when it stopped / slowed down dramatically we were left with bad habits etc.

savingholmes

There were naturally exceptions eg teachers who were less likely to overspend as a result and genuinely seemed to benefit.

V8D

savingholmes: that makes sense, thank you. I have saved the pdf and will dip in and out of it. Being American everything is different to here and I know what I need to do, just sometimes have trouble actually doing it. 😂

Warning ... rant coming! 😂😂😂

Having this time to think isn't doing me a lot of good today. When I was growing up I was fortunate enough to see a lot of the world with my parents (they were and still are pretty much addicted to holidays!). I haven't been on a holiday since my honeymoon to Cornwall back in 2016 and that was the only holiday my husband and I have been on. Not because we couldn't find the money if we wanted to but because my husband never seems to want to be away from home and for some reason refuses to travel out of the country (don't really know why and we've been together 11 years this year). To be honest, he doesn't really want to travel within the country either. I've put this to the back of my mind for 10 years and didn't really think I was bothered about going on holiday. Today I was reading some travel articles and remembered how much I used to love seeing new places and how much I enjoyed being away and seeing a bit of the world when I went on a field trip when I did my surveying masters course. Very much doubt my husband is going to change so no real point to this but it would be nice to have some holidays. 

Also found he's spent just under £79 this month on model rail stuff. It comes out of PayPal and there was money to cover it so not linked to our accounts. This is a lot less than the £400 per month he was spending over Jan / Feb / March but I can't deny it somewhat annoys me especially as he tells me that I am the "spendy" one when he spends a lot of money on what my mum calls "a train set" (true 😂) and he constantly wants take aways / restaurant meals because he can't be bothered to cook. His reasoning for why I'm the spendy one always comes down to that I have a new XF (which normally my business pays for through claiming £0.45/mile) and an iPhone 11 Pro which my business also pays for and means I don't need a separate camera because the zoom is brilliant. I mentioned to him that I wanted to buy some new trainers and he was like "you've got some", yep that are 10 years old, covered in Hammerite with holes in the fabric or another pair of similar vintage with worn soles. Currently running 3/4 times a week, all my clothes are too big for me and my shoes are knackered. Don't think it's asking too much, eh? 😜

Not really much point to the rant as nothing is going to change, just wanted to get it out of my system and suppose its vaguely budget / money related! 😉

longway2go

Ohhh that sounds really hard and also frustrating when you are trying to budget. Not sure if it would work but is it possible to allocate a monthly amount each for you and him so that then you expect and budget for it and he can see that you are actually not spending on the things he classes as spend. 
The holiday thing is hard atm but potentially when things change could you maybe book a night away to see if that would help him come to the conclusion that time away is nice. 

Bargainhunter30

I dont think I could cope without travel and holidays. At one point in my twenties I would go on holiday with anyone that could get time off 😂 have you thought about going away with friends or if none are free, looking into solo traveller trips, where you meet like minded people on an organised tour. I used to do these through ST@ travel, they do different age groups and styles. 
Also maybe a separate personal spends budget would be beneficial so you both get the same amount to spend each month with no judging. Hope you feel better soon x