I started this blog a month ago now and boy did the first month (and three weeks??!) fly by!
Not so much because of the blog – I actually kind of forgot about even setting it up – but because I’m in the process of changing jobs and things have been hectic making sure I get everything done at my old job before I leave. It’s all very exciting but I’m quite warn out after the last couple of months.
But, hey ho, I’m taking a break from work things and came here to check in on my progress. In my last blog, I made some promises… Basically, I listed some steps I was planning on taking to start becoming more ‘money smart’.
And?
Well, like I said earlier, I kind of forgot about having even set up this blog so I took some of the steps straight after I had written the first post but the rest of the month was far less ‘intentional’ about my money moves. So let’s have a look.
The first thing I noticed when I went back to read my first post was that I was clearly feeling so very regretful about booking some nice things for us to celebrate our first wedding anniversary:
“My most recent impulse buy? A hot air balloon voucher for our first wedding anniversary. We really would have been happy with just a low-key weekend away or a nice meal in a nearby restaurant. I ended up booking all three. All because I was bored and anxious on the way home from a beach trip.”
-Me, two months ago
I mean, admittedly it was a little extravagant considering that technically – technically – we’re still not married. Our amazing Amalfi-coast wedding was very much a casualty of Covid-19 and we have made no plans to rebook it. But more about that later.
Let me just say that it was totally worth it!
First of all, why shouldn’t we celebrate a little? There has been so little to celebrate in the last year and a half, and it’s been just a little bit challenging to find things to be joyful about. So now that we’ve been away for our anniversary non-iversary trip, I do not regret it one bit. We had a lovely time on the seaside for a couple of days, ate and drank lots (you know, just to support the local economy after such a hard year…) and felt totally relaxed for the first time in a long time.
We didn’t get to go on a hot air balloon ride on our anniversary due to bad weather (it actually ended up being such a lovely sunny day but there was too much fog in the morning to fly safely) but we were able to rebook it for mid-June.
And it was incredible.
I’ve wanted to go on a hot air balloon since I was a little girl watching the balloons drift past my grandma’s house. I actually told her many times that one day – you know, when I’m an adult with an adult job that pays me adult money – I’d take her for a hot air balloon ride. She passed away during the final year of my studies so sadly I never got to show her how I now have an adult job that pays me adult money that can pay for things like hot air balloon rides. I take some comfort in knowing that she would 100% have approved of my spending decision in this case, and she would have loved the hot air balloon ride.
As if by coincidence, the year after my grandma died, I moved to Bristol, UK where I see hot air balloons all the time (there’s even an annual hot air balloon fiesta!) and I’ve been wanting to book a ride for years. I think put against that context, it was only inevitable that I would eventually make a ‘stupid’ spending decision and finally buy myself a balloon flight voucher.
I might write about the trip in more detail in another post but my main point is that I suppose it’s easy to feel anxious about money and spending it, but when it’s to make a lifelong dream come true, it’s so worth it. It was such a beautiful experience, it was a glorious June morning and the views were so beautiful I wanted to cry. So I have no regrets, except about feeling anxious for days about booking our anniversary treats.
Lesson number 1: it’s easy to feel anxious about money but it’s okay to spend money on ‘stupid’ or ‘pointless’ things if it means you’re living a happier, more fulfilled life. Budgets shouldn’t just be full of ‘useful’ or ‘necessary’ items that sensible adults spend money on, there has to be some room for ‘silly’ things that make your heart happy.
The next promise/action point I had listed in my first post was to return and request a refund on my latest clothes hauls. I am pleased to confirm that this was a success! I returned orders from Asos and Next, and for once I was brutally honest about what clothes I was likely to actually wear and not just think I’d wear them but in reality they’d gather dust at the back of my wardrobe until I got rid of them on my next charity run.
Returning clothes returned around £300 to my account in about a week so I’m quite pleased with that. Without my brutal honesty, driven by money anxiety, I would probably have ended up keeping about half of the clothes in the mistaken belief that I am capable of branching out from my usual comfort zone of neutral palettes and black.
My second promise was to cancel unnecessary subscriptions and that also was a success, although probably only partially. I paused Audible for three months to allow me to catch up on books (and avoid losing my existing credits), cancelled Disney+ that I got to watch a specific film and is now taking £5.99 out of my account every month even though I haven’t watched a single film since. Cancelled my life insurance policy that I took out as a student; this was an extra £7.99 per month that was completely unnecessary because I have since taken out a new life policy to suit my current circumstances as a mortgage owner. Overall, I have probably saved around £35-45 per month by cancelling and pausing unnecessary subscriptions that I had kind of forgotten about.
I have to say though that I have since started new subscriptions at an impulse so I suppose my new promise/challenge for July will be to go through my subscriptions again and cancel any that I don’t use.
Lesson number 2: small amounts add up quickly. If a subscription is £5.99, £7.99 or even £9.99 per month, it doesn’t sound so bad but if you have a bunch of subscriptions, cancelling them could end up saving you quite a bit over the course of the year. If you invested the amount you save from the cancelled subscriptions every month, your savings would work to make you more money.
I also did remove my card details from auto-fill (except Apple Wallet which I think is one of the best financial inventions of our time) and that has definitely helped curb spending on an impulse.
I also started to go through my credit card and bank statements (this was actually a really crucial part of going through my subscriptions because there were some smaller ones that I had totally forgotten about and were now able to cancel) and started creating a budget. Things got a little too hectic mid-May so this is still a work in progress, but I can use my lessons from the first month’s Money Madness challenge to create a sensible budget that leaves room for things that I really love.
Anyway, I will come back and check in at the end of July!
Speak soon,
Anna
Billionaire Sorority 