In my last post, I was focused on making changes you can be grateful for as you grow older. But as Valentine’s Day came around, I have also been thinking about the expectations we have about others and what generosity looks like as a mindset. Last year around this time I wrote about financial inequalities for single parents so perhaps this represents personal growth? Or maybe February is just the kind of month for reflection.
On thinking and writing about this, I realised that making and keeping commitments to myself are an act of radical self care. Removing the anxiety around whether I will or won’t do something, and removing the restlessness that comes from leaving all possible options open: this is a pathway to peace.
What this also means is that when others don’t fulfill their commitments to me, I take it badly. In previous posts about this it was important to recognise that I am not always reliable – far from it – but if I have committed to do something, whether a basic act like call you, through to something more existential like ‘have your back’, I am all in.
I don’t even quite know what I want to say here. But there is something nagging in my mind about the kind of behaviours we accept, and what that does to our self esteem. If I expect high standards from myself and feel like making commitments and sticking to them show respect and value, then I try to live that in how I treat people. If I don’t get that back, does it mean that people are treating me poorly or does it mean that I am not open enough to have people show up authentically?
Likewise, if gift giving is part of my ‘love language’ (hate that phrase but not enough to not use it as shorthand) and someone isn’t willing to bend to those needs is this someone who will always disappoint me? Or a situation where I am pushing someone to be too different from who they are?
And if I am able and willing to create so much space for other people’s authenticity why wouldn’t I expect the same willingness, and a compromise and sense of joint value where we navigate this so it works for us all. So everyone is in the same boat instead of just one person being prepared to compromise their needs.
This isn’t about romantic relationships though Valentine’s Day would have us think that is all there is in this world, it’s about how I show up and what I need from others. And clearly I don’t entirely know. But I hope to work it out.
I was inspired this week by a Twitter post by Dan Go on ‘things I’m doing at 43 to avoid regret when I am 73‘. I am 43: I don’t like regrets. The guy writing is a fairly traditional motivational coach of the kind where I doubt we would have much in common, so I thought I would come up with my own.
And whilst this account isn’t on Twitter we are definitely on Insta: come and join us, the water’s lovely!
So these are the ten things that came to me, most of which are not a surprise. All of them have simple things that can be done today, or this month, and all of them will help you not just in 30 years time but right now in terms of living in your peace.
Work out what matters to you. Everything else comes from this. You are old enough now to know what matters to you, and to go out and live it. Where there are perceived tensions, this can be awkward, but really they are rarely so dire as to make things impossible. And think about it in terms of your top three since as Brené Brown says, more than three priorities is the same as admitting that we can’t actually choose. For me the three priorities are my kids, my community, and social justice. But it can be anything: your faith, your family in a larger sense, or something granular like running or gardening which gives you the kind of mental and physical strength and peace to deal with everything else. It really doesn’t matter. But it means you have a kind of north star to come back to if you are feeling off-course.
Make commitments. Look, you get to decide what you want and what you don’t (and if you are a guy, I might have just lost you with this one). But the older I get, the less respect I have for the emotionally immature reluctance to commit. It’s not just about intimate relationships, but with everything. Being half-assed means getting half-assed results. That will be true whether it means you are hoping a relationship with a partner will grow positively whilst you also try and enjoy keeping your options open: or whether fear is making you self sabotage with how you do your work. Instead of seeing commitment as a threat to your freedom, see it as a way to aim for depth instead of breadth. You might be amazed.
Learn to deal with hard things. In Dan’s post he talked about learning to deal with grief, which is a critical on especially at this time in our lives. But we all have our stumbling blocks. Knowing yourself better is a great first step: understanding that you struggle with conflict, or shame, or whatever means you can look it in the eye and try to learn new mechanisms. It’s not enough to stop there though, and just get into an anxiety spiral when hard things are coming up. Work through them, knowing that crappy things will just be crappy, but they will no longer be impossible.
Get financially secure. So my whole blog is pretty much about this, but to me it’s not a priority because it’s a mechanism which allows me to focus on the critical issues. But paying off debt, organising your finances and mindfully allocating your money toward your priorities really does set you free to focus on other things. If you don’t know where to start, check out my three introductory posts: getting started, auditing your fixed costs, and paying yourself first.
Take time with people who might not be around for long. This might well be your parents – and with the total uncertainty of life and how hard this year has already been – it could be anyone that matters to you. Spend time to really understand them, ask the questions you might want answers to in the future, and make your peace with any lingering anger or resentment.
Take care of your body. At 43 I can see that the careless disregard I have always had for my body – I mean it’s just there, it looks ok, what’s the issue? – will in years that might be coming very soon, result in challenges. There is endless advice out there about how to exercise, what to eat, staying healthy blah blah and none of it turns me on at all. So this one is a simplified version: to treat my body like a precious and rare commodity, since that is what it is. That means making those regular appointments at the dentist or GP; taking some basic care over what I eat, how much and when; and getting some exercise in. Some of that is easier than others, but none of this requires me becoming a world class weightlifter, just having one less slice of cake. And recognising that life is guaranteed to nobody (see point above…) might help focus on this.
Make a plan, and go for it. So thirty years seems like a long time. I mean, I was 13 thirty years ago: and now I have a 13 year old. But being clear where you want to go matters, and more at this age maybe than any other. I don’t want to work for another 25 years (which is what the UK State pension age qould require) but that means really working toward an alternative. I don’t want to be a burden on my kids in terms of my money or my health – I mean I will totally rely on them but that’s part of our cultural norms, I don’t want to have to – so making sure that I work on these now is critical.
Protect your energy. This might mean cutting off toxic people, or it might mean dealing with a sticky issue which has been nagging away at you. For me it means trying to be less negative and speaking out rather than resenting things. But it also means saying no to certain situations where I feel obliged to be spending time with people that I don’t really get any value from. Being able to prioritise protecting my energy over fulfilling social obligations feels like a gift.
Do what you love. OK so you might not be able to do this instead of your day job (or not yet) but doing what you love really does matter. Doing activities you love is part of dementia prevention: hobbies help us keep mentally stimulated without pressure, generates a sense of achievement and goal setting, relieves stress and builds confidence. So whether it relates to exercise and keeping healthy, or you do jigsaw puzzles, write a blog, paint in your attic, or whatever, do it because you love it. Note: partying doesn’t count: dancing totally does.
Work out what needs to be in place if you pass away. Yes make a will, but also prepare your executors. If you have kids, work out the details of guardianship for them and if they are old enough, prepare them for what would happen if you passed. Organising your money into a Trust, along with simplifying and preparing a guide to all the paperwork will make things so much easier for everyone at a time when they will already be devestated by losing you. Which, God willing, will be much after you turn 73!
Don’t forget to come and join me for daily inspiration on financial independence, budgeting, wealth, and all manner of other nonsense over on Instagram!
Last week I wrote about selling my rental. I wanted to reflect a little on the financial side of how that went.
I bought my property in my home town in early 2016, intending to live in it. It was a tricky time with the market, and we moved further out that our previous home. Since I was on a budget, I looked at 42 properties and eventually chose the one we had nicknamed ‘the ugly house’.
A friend gave me some great advice at the time. He reminded me that I wasn’t looking for my forever home: that I needed something that would work for at least five years until my son reached secondary school age when maybe we would have different needs. It needed to be cloe to public transport, have some outdoor space, and some flexible living space for when my parents visit etc. And it had to have rental potential based on how my job works and how things might pan out in future years.
And it turned out that rental potential was needed much before imagined. I was offered a job almost straight away, and moved six months after buying the house. So naturally I rented it out.
All in all, it was rented for six years. There were about six months of ‘void’ (without tenants) and I had three different sets of tenants in that time.
During that period, the house went up in value by £96,000. So even if I hadn’t rented it out or made any improvements, I would have made a profit.
So how did the financing work out?
Below I set out a) the costs which are due to buying a house. These include sale and purchase costs, the mortgage, and insurances. Whilst the types of insurance are different, it probably works out about the same. Then b) costs unique to having a rental. Whilst some of these are maintenance costs, having to contract these out (or indeed do them when I would happily live with e.g. not redecorating for a while) I add them all in here as relating to the rental.
Purchase fees (solicitor, survey, stamp duty etc)
£ 8,544
Sale fees (solicitor, survey, stamp duty etc)
£ 9,360
Mortgage insurance
£ 1,440
Other insurance (landlord, boiler etc)
£ 4,200
Mortgage
£ 64,440
Total costs regardless of tenanting
£ 87,984
Letting agent fees
£ 11,448
Maintenance, decoration etc
£ 12,000
Costs specific to renting the property
£ 23,448
Tenant income
£ 93,600
Total costs
£ 111,432
Total costs in spite of tenant income
£ 17,832
So overall, I didn’t break even. Since this was bought as a family home and perhaps wasn’t the best in terms of rental options, I can live with this. But it is nothing like the predominantly American mantra of real estate as a way to make millions. Since it was rented out, I also had to pay capital gains tax on the increased value, which cost an additional £23,000, taking the total rental specific costs to £46,448.
On the flip side, having tenants essentially paid my mortgage which is a huge deal. So that was £64,400 which I didn’t need to make as income.
So it worked out pretty well in the end. I made the decision to overpay my mortgage, so was able to sell the rental and come out with a decent chunk of money clear, a lot of which is profit from the shifting market. And now I get to decide what to do with it!
Welcome to this blog post – if you’re new, do have a poke about the other posts, and if you’re an old friend, thanks for sticking with me. Also do come join us over on Instagram for frugal food and adventure ideas, reflections from the Barbies (those girls don’t play), and some inspiration.
So, I was banging on mysteriously in my financial review of 2022 about some major changes in my portfolio, and the biggest one is that I have sold my rental property in the UK. This was something under consideration for a long time – indeed, it’s a year ago that I made the first call to an estate agent to get a valuation. During my portfolio valuation in March 2022, I realised that60% of my net worth is in property. Since around 30% was in pensions, it meant that there was very little liquidity.
Whilst I don’t need a ton of liquid cash, I am at a point where I need more flexibility. That might mean having more accessible money for investing in a side hustle, or a smaller property in Kenya as I plan my transition there. So it doesn’t mean putting it all under the bed in a cardboard box but it also doesn’t mean hosting so much of my net worth in one property.
All of which are critical conversations. But this post is just about the decision to sell my rental property, and how it is working out so far.
One of the main challenges with having such a heavy lean towards net worth invested in property, is the level of risk. Whilst owning a house to live comes with a certain amount of risk, it is very different to owning property as an investment. If my house that I live in goes down in value, all the other houses locally will likely go down in value too meaning that I haven’t lost out substantively: the market has changed for all. Plus if I want to live in that house, as long as I can pay the mortgage (hello rising inflation), it balances out.
With the uncertainties in the housing market in the UK, I felt that the risk was too great and that I would be stuck with the house forever. I had bought the house planning to live in it with my kids, but then I got a job overseas and now I really don’t see us moving back any time soon. Whilst it was a good house for us when my children were smaller, I had planned for it to be a ‘five year home’ and we are past that point – even if we wanted to move back, the size and layout of the house, and proximity to a decent secondary school, means it doesn’t work for this season in our lives.
Whilst the rental income was covering costs, it wasn’t enough to make the locking up of all other assets worth it. In fact, choosing to rent out a house that I had bought as a family home only made sense when I was thinking we might move back to it. Many FIRE podcasts talk about this – basically, what you look for in a rental property and a home for yourself are different. Which is not rocket science, but good to remember.
Paula Pant has some useful guides to working out whether a rental property is worth it. You can have a read for yourself to get into the complexities of it, but my property fails at the first hurdle. Paula’s ‘one percent rule’ recommends that you only consider a property where the rent equals one percent of the purchase price. So if you have a house like mine where the acquisition price was £360,000 it should rent for £3,600 per month. Whilst the rental markets in the UK and US are totally different, by the time of the sale (noting that the value had increased, and I had frozen rents at the same amount since 2016), rent for my property equaled less than 0.25% of the market value.
So I decided to sell. I wanted to treat my tenants well, and gave them six months notice that I would not be renewing their tenancy in September. I agreed a price and put the house on the market. Since things are so strange at the moment, I had no offers for some time, then an over asking price offer which I accepted immediately. There was a lot of negotiation trying to get things done as quickly as possible on their side so they could be in for Christmas, and my recognising that just after my dad passed away, I was really not capable of dealing with very much. So, with help from the estate agents, we muddled through and completed on the sale 10 days before Christmas.
And that’s it! It feels like a long post but it was a decision which took so much thought, and one where a lot of the thinking was basically crystal-balling in terms of what would happen with housing market, mortgage rates and so on. And in the end, I had to make a decision based on the information that I had at the time, and what season of life I am in right now. I am finalising the financial assessment of how it went and will share in a future post (including all the joy of Capital Gains Tax woohoo) but for now, I am excited about what’s next for that money, and hoping the new owners had a great Christmas in their new home.
I like to start the new year with a stocktake of how my finances are doing and whether my savings and investments went according to plan, then using this as a prelude to setting some plans and goals for the coming year. This isn’t the only focus for the year, so check out future posts to find out more about setting intentions, vision boards and the like. But it is a good way of gathering some baseline data to see where I am starting from.
To say 2022 was a tricky year financially is a massive understatement. Whilst the economy globally seemed to be strengthening post-COVID at the start of the year, the invasion of Ukraine in February turned a lot of the world’s certainties on their head. Prices started to go up for petrol, food, energy, leading to massive cost increases in the basics for most households.
This trend has continued throughout the year, with supply chain issues as well as scarcity in some areas leading to a crisis with the soaring cost of living. I feel like I’ve been writing about this all year: 92% of adults in the UK have reported an increase in the cost of living, with 60% saying they are ‘very concerned’ about their ability to cope with additional rises. Food banks in the UK had to distribute more than 1.3 million food parcels in 2022, an increase of 50% since pre-COVID figures. I recognise that whilst financial freedom remains a critical goal in my life, so many people are getting closer to the financial precipice that they really need to get support, and get it now.
Inflation also grew at a significant and rapid rate, hitting almost 11% in the UK by the end of December. For many people, including me, this had an immediate impact on mortgage interest rates, biting even deeper into the daily costs of getting by. Whilst the expectation is that inflation has now hit its highest point and will start to reduce in 2023, the impact (and uncertainty) of these shifts are real.
It has also been a shaky year for the markets. Again an understatement, with the Financial Times headline for the end of the year reading Stock and bond markets shed more than $30tn in ‘brutal’ 2022. Markets in the US had their worst year since 2008 (and we all remember what a brilliant year that was). Whilst I love FIRE and the focus on both balancing for risks, and keeping your head in the event of a downturn – and I have definitely moved on from panic selling in 2020 – it has felt like another rollercoaster ride which just hasn’t been that fun.
This has also been the worst year in terms of growth for my own portfolio. I made some major changes this year (more about this in future posts) to rebalance away from being over-invested in property, but continued to invest throughout the year in mutual funds and my pensions. I added in kids’ savings here which I don’t normally do, but as they are starting to get older I need to come back to my financial planning for them, and make sure I am adjusting as needed depending on their age and stage.
My investments this year came to almost£80,000, though some of this came from my property sale meaning that my investment from salary alone came to £50,000. I am extremely proud of this figure and what it represents in terms of prioritisation and tenacity. Since I have been working on myself over the last few years, I can feel that pride at the same time as recognising that my salary and privileges mean that I am in a very unusual and blessed position.
2022 Contributions
Personal pension (SIPP)
£ 8,600
Savings (stocks and shares ISA, emergency savings)
£ 31,000
Work Pension (pre-tax)
£ 18,444
Mortgage capital overpaid
£ 5,000
Kids’ savings (JISA, J-SIPP)
£ 16,000
Contributions
£ 79,044
Next steps for me are to do a review of my net worth (and realistically to not compare it to a US$ amount as I traditionally have – with the recent forex issues, this is a pathway to sadness) and set out some plans and goals for 2023. Whilst I do that, I will just continue to save and invest as usual, and get ready for what is hopefully an easier year for us all.
Look forward to hearing about your 2022 and how able you were to follow your financial plans given that major challenges during the year.
Firstly thank you for being here with me in 2022, and for joining me over on Instagram. In spite of a very challenging year, it’s been a privilege and a blast!
I’m so happy to be back with you after a much needed break, and writing this gentle post with some recommendations has been a nice way to return. But I am looking forward to much more on family, mindfulnesss, FIRE and much more in 2023.
I’ve been consuming a lot of content recently, and since it’s such a hit and miss process, thought it was time to share some links and ideas as to where to find more FIRE and mindful money advice. And with the end of 2022 just round the corner, it might also be the time when people look for something to get them in the zone for making New Year’s Resolutions.
FIRE is about so many things to so many people that it can take a while to find something that speaks to you – prioritising what matters in your life, living mindfully, rejecting bullshit corporate culture, or just being really, really rich – that you might need to dig to find what you need.
FIRE has definitely become part of more regular conversation over the past few years, but 2022 didn’t feel like there were many new contenders in terms of content creation.
I will focus on podcasts here, all of which work for people who are FIRE-curious, newly on this path, or much further along. Most of the books I read this year have been about mindset (and start ups – more of which soon) so I won’t include them in this post. I have stayed true to my three favourite podcasts which I listen to regularly, and whilst I have tried a range of new things, none have really compared.
Journey to Launch
Hosted by the fabulous Jamila Souffrant, Journey to Launch remains a staple for me.
She talks to her own experience of working toward FIRE goals as a mum, bringing on guests to talk about money, making consicous choices, building generational wealth especially in Black communities, and a whole lot more.
Journey to Launch is also active on Instagram (and she even replied to me once #fangirlscream) with real advice as well as motivational thinking.
Afford Anything
Paula Pant is such an OG in the FIRE space that she was one of the advisors on this year’s Netflix hit Get Smart With Money.
I love her mantra ‘you can afford anything, but not everything‘. Coming from a determined and mindful standpoint with your money and your life is more importnat to me in FIRE thinking than the end goals. Paula and her guests talk about this a lot, providing guidance and inspiration on mindset, decision making and prioritisation, and optimising what you have.
She is a property guru and whilst a lot of the advice there is for listeners in the US, the overall thought process is still inspiring. You can also find her over on Instagram.
Choose FI
The third go-to is Choose FI. This year, one of the two hosts left to focus on other priorities so it’s now fronted by Brad Barrett (who is always doing ‘quite well’ – an in joke you will need to listen out for from earlier episodes) along with guests.
Choose FI started as a community, aiming to provide crowd-sourced advice, and the community feeling is evident. I love the personal journey stories, especially when people come back on after months or years to update the audience on how things are going. The bumpy ride and unexpected turns that people go through are inspiring and comforting when your own journey takes some new twists. Find them on Instagram as well.
I hope you enoy them! What have you enjoyed or been inspired by this year? What am I missing? I love sharing ideas and content recommendations with the community so do flag whatever has been part of your 2022 journey.
Enjoy your New Year’s Day and I hope you are feeling inspired for the new year!
Carrying on from last week’s posts about the cost of school holidays and what I ended up spending, I wanted to share a bit more on what we actually did. I also shared activities and ideas throughout the holidays on this blog’s Instagram account: come and join us!
There was a big shift in my thinking this year for a couple of reasons. One of these is just the age of kids – a lot of my suggestions don’t work if you have younger kids who need a lot more supervision. I would say though that ages about 4-8 are the best for frugal holidays as long as you can take time off work to hang out with them (and that’s a big, big if). Now mine are 9 and 13, they have different needs and opportunities.
The other thing that changed for me was taking an active decision to let my kids get bored.
I have always been clear with them that their boredom is not my responsibility. But there is also tremendous pressure to fill our kids’ time with endless opportunity and stimulation. So much of the insistence that we have our children do so much outside of school is a concern that they will get left behind: without all the extra tutoring, music, sports blahdy blah they will somehow be less rounded, less competitive and overall less successful. If you are in a country where yours it not the majority culture, there might also be language or religious classes or community events which are important in making sure your kids feel their roots. That’s a lot of expectations we’re putting on our kids, and they are exhausted. And so are we.
An article in Psychology Today is clear that parental expectations, and a zombie apocolypse view of the world where missing out on the right college means Your Life Is Over is pushing parents to put too much pressure on their kids. As the article notes, whilst extra-curricular pursuits were a hobby or a chance to try new things,“each activity is now one more area for social comparison and thus one more possible source of stress and anxiety“. Another article sounded the alarm for the impact of this on children in terms of squeezing out valuable family time. A survey in the UK found that 90% of children went to after school activities 4-5 times per week often getting home as late as 8 or 9pm, meaning chances of meaningful family conversation, or a relaxed dinner where you chat through the day, are slim.
Internet suggestion for a photo of borderom 😀 Photo by Tony Tran on Unsplash
Aside from the existentialist question as to the future of Higher Education (which is a whoooole other conversation), cramming in so much to our kids’ days is putting huge pressure on them, but also onto us as parents emotionally, financially and in terms logistics and organisational skills. Especially when there is only one parent and no family around. I don’t want to spend all my weekends watching football or basketball matches (as a side note – don’t attend U11 basketball matches with a hangover. The noise will make you wish you were dead) or schlepping children across town for various activities. Often both of my kids will need me to take them somewhere, attend or support them or whatever, at the same time. And I just can’t.
So with all this in mind, I decided that we all needed a break over the summer. And this meant cancelling a long held plan to go to Kenya for four weeks (there were other reasons for this but actually it was something of a relief in terms of money and having to organise All The Things) and then sitting down with the kids to talk about what a more relaxed and frugal summer meant. I also had to work all but two weeks of the holiday, and travelled for work for parts of three weeks.
So this is what we did:
Getting the most of what we already own
Use holiday clubs when you have to. In previous years I used clubs to keep the kids entertained and busy. This year I only used them for when I was travelling, since they will have a nanny around to keep them safe and fed, but they need more in terms of things to do. My daughter did three clubs which were actually great – explorers, where they went out every day on the train and poked about Copenhagen; analogue photography where they learned to use cameras and to take and develop their own pictures and had an exhibition; and, more randomly, badminton and origami. She loved them, made some friends who then came to play at the weekend, and got out of the house. But the three weeks were definitely enough.
Take a chance to use what you already have. I feel like in spite of general frugality, we have a LOT of stuff. We got out a bunch of things which have been sitting around since we moved, putting up gymnastics rings and a ladder into a convenient tree, and finding badminton and tennis racquets for games in the garden. I threw all our ‘sand toys’ into the back of the car so they would always be on hand. We also spent a few days of my holidays going through all the stuff in my daughter’s room to get rid of clothes, books and toys which she has grown out of. This all went on Freecycle so other families will get to enjoy them, whislt she has a clearer view of things she actually likes. I also encouraged her to get out things she hasn’t used for a while or made time to play with: sticker and activity books, craft kits and so on, many of which were good fun over the holidays.
And doing the garden means saving money buying flowers!
Help them think of projects. We also sat down and came up with ideas of things they can work on when I am not there, using what’s around. We thought about things they can do when bored (reading, drawing, small craft things), and projects where I did buy some additional bits and pieces. My son worked his way through some focused phsyics and maths work (yeah, no idea where he gets it from), worked out how to set up a telescope he had for Christmas and spent evenings star gazing and looking up astronomy facts, and practiced his clarinet. My daughter learnt how to use our sewing machine and made clothes for her Barbies, looked after the vegetable patch in the garden, and researched and made bee and insect houses.
Think of stuff to do as a family. We did a lot this summer, but most of it free and none of it ‘thrilling’. We went to the beach many many times. Whilst we used to go for an hour or so we got in the habit of packing a picnic, rugs and books and making a whole morning of it. We walked in forests, around lakes, and all through the centre of Copenhagen which is a great place to explore. I have a couple of memberships we buy annually (to the Danish Architecture Museum which is super cheap and gives you free coffee and to an amusement park which is super expensive but definitely exciting) and we made use of them. We researched and cooked recipes which we hadn’t made before – I recommend doing this with one kid at a time if they are like mine – played boardgames, watched all the Marvel films we hadn’t seen before, and got into a podcast about political systems. It’s all individual, but my point here is that fun doesn’t have to be novel, or fresh or expensive. Treats and time together can be pretty simple.
But sometimes spending on a treat is totally worth it
Spend on things that do make a difference. Brunch or dinner out; a book or a two-month subscription; decent coffee – whatever it is that you will appreciate, do it. The flipside of recognising that throwing money at problems doesn’t solve them is realising that when you do spend mindfully, on things that make a difference to you, it feels that much sweeter.
That was our summer! We had a lot of fun, and saw a lot more of our city. The kids got bored, and got creative. I think we read about 20 books each (either from the local library where we visited weekly, or things which had sat on shelves unread for a while. We cooked, baked, gardened, sewed and played games. And saved a ton of money.
Food is central to good times and bad in my culture – no difficult family conversation, lengthy future planning session, or celebration – of either life or death – would be possible without a central table of food to act as referee and peace keeper between the participants. In my own house, food is linked in my mind to love, to taking care of my children and creating a cosy, secure home with our own small traditions.
These days though there are also two less comforting sides to feeding the family. Firstly, and the focus of this post, is the soaring cost of groceries and how to manage your budget. The second is the ethical aspects of food – industrial farming methods and animal welfare issues, exploitative employment practices, and reliance on cheap imports which have a heavy environmental footprint, are all real concerns when making choices in the supermarket.
So – what can you do to keep an eye on your grocery budget?
We already shop at discount supermarkets: in Denmark that means LIDL (and my mum and I talk on the phone about whether they have the same things on offer in the UK as here. Rock and roll): and Rema 1000. These are so much cheaper than the fancy supermarket, and I am also not tempted by the delicious bouji foods which are on offer there.
The building blocks of cutting food spending seem pretty easy, but, like any diet habit, it’s about how much you stick to them and whether you have emotional splurges:
Meal plan. This is the most important thing, because the shopping and preparation all stems from here. Who is eating at home and when? (in 2021 this became a trick question since the answer is ‘all of you’ and ‘all the time’). What are the things you like to eat? How are you going to get your five-a-day? From then, the questions are around how you can stretch out both the food and the preparation – things like roasting a chicken then using the cold leftover meat the next day or two; or cooking a basic batch tomato sauce which can then be turned into spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce, or the base for a chilli. I have been meal planning for a while, but I am still terrible for thinking ‘ooh I don’t feel like that any more, let’s have something else’. It helps me to remember that this contributes to reducing food waste: UK households throw out the equivalent to a whole month’s worth of grocery budget every year whilst the amount of food wasted across the country could feed half the 7m Britons who are struggling to afford to eat. That’s something worth making our own small changes for in my view.
Stock-take and write a shopping list: When you have meal planned, break it down into the ingredients you need for the week. Then check your cupboards/fridge/freezer and check you have what you need. Are there things you’ve not included but need to check, like coffee? I have a page up on the pinboard in the kitchen where I write staples like this, or flour, oil and so on. Write them all down in a list which is easy to use, organised by the shops if you’ll visit more than one, then by aisle if you can remember such things. The real trick though is a) remembering to take the damn list with you (which is why lots of people keep it on a phone app instead) and b) following it when confronted with other options.
Batch cook, or batch prepare: Batch cooking is now so well known that there are whole books about it but it’s basically making things in big enough quantities to freeze additional portions and basically create your own ready meals. It’s just as much hassle and time to prepare five portions of something as it is one, and it usually works out much cheaper. Every week I make a basic roasted aubergine and tomato sauce every weekend (don’t tell my daughter it has aubergine in, fur would fly) and use this as a tomato sauce base. My top tip on batch cooking is to label everything properly, otherwise Freezer Surprise will be a regular on the menu: and freeze it in portion sizes so you don’t have to defrost and potentially waste a whole load of goodness.
Batch prepare: In an effort to increase my vegetable intake, I make a dry coleslaw mix (basically just the vegetables) using the food processor, every week. This week I grated up carrot, beetroot, celeriac and spring cabbage and have used it in a standard salad, in a salmon poke bowl, and with mayo as an accompaniment to a sandwich. I also do things like prepare roasted chicken for use in lunches.
Enjoy yourself. Yes we’re budgeting (and trying to save the world) but food should also be a pleasure. Make things you like to eat. Find a time when the planning and shopping works, involve the kids in talking about meals they look forward to, and involve them in prep. My son and I make a cake every week as our treat for the week, usually one for home and one with the same mixture made into cake bars for school. Then I batch cook/prep in a two-hour window at the weekend when the kids are playing or with friends, and I listen to an audio book. It genuinely feels like a pleasant time, much more so than trying to slam a meal together at 17.30 on a work night. Some people prefer an evening’s cooking with a glass of wine – it’s all about what works for you.
Last week’s food prep in our house – Sunday evening and all is ready…
How is the rising cost of food impacting you? I’d love to hear your tips!
So I have been out for a while, trying to deal with being very close to burnout. Feeling better now, but taking that space was critical. I tend to keep pushing myself well beyond what is a good idea, then getting surprised when things start to fall apart. The last few weeks I have been thinking about this and about the sense of going through life with baggage – as a single parent but also in general, as we all do – with the results and scars of our past mistakes and misfortunes, fears and triggers.
This is showing up in my life in a few ways at the moment. From the FIRE perspective, for many people the concept of baggage means coming into this journey deep in debt. And not just in debt, but with the habits, choice and often value systems which led to that debt in the first place. For me as with others, it’s more coming in and realising what I have wasted in getting here and what kind of different position I could be in. But the worst waste of time would be to get stuck in those feelings instead of getting up and at it. Your time is always now.
I was talking to a friend last night who has recently become an expat, a move which has given him a bird’s eye view of his home town. Realising that the years of making just enough money to go out and kick it with friends meant living life, which was all about ‘having fun’ actually kept him in stasis for decades. Now this could be a cause for regret. But equally, our journeys are what made us: looking backward and sneering at our younger selves is not going to change the past, though it might diminish the value that we did find. Being able to make peace with whatever our baggage is – the poor decisions, the risks that we miscalculated, that person we continued to trust in spite of there being more red flags than the bunting at the Communist Party conference – is to make it manageable and be able to take that past along on a brand new journey.
I wrote a while ago about ‘loving what is‘ – that sense of accepting and loving the present just as it is, something which is a critical step on the pathway to peace. The ability to reflect on my own triggers and limiting beliefs means that I can at least recognise them when they come up. Something like shaking hands across the divide. This is what making baggage manageable means to me: it’s not denying it but recognising my part in it, and the positives that either came through the results or through the journey. Kind of like taking a luggage trolley full of giant suitcases, feeding them into a magic vortex machine, and coming out with a little badge that you wear to remember without being tripped over by it. Or, as per my experience last week, you can just give your bags to Kenya Airways and never see them again. Either way, it works.
Making peace can be hard. It can also feel counter-intuitive in a world where – especially with FIRE, and at my stage of life – it’s all about striving. How is it possible to come from a place of tranquility and still have enough drive to get out there? The quote above from Eckhart Tolle speaks to this I think. So much of what we do is about rearranging circumstances, or the small things (or indeed the deckchairs on the Titanic) instead of rearranging how we look on the inside.
Don’t get me wrong, this internal rearranging can be just as tough as making peace. Encouraging the tectonic plates to shift inside you requires tenacity and strength. Especially when it raises questions about whether you will continue to accept the systems you have been brought up with, to live inside the structures you have internalised and all the comfortable spots you’re used to seeking solace in, however damaging.
As I start the long process of moving back to Nairobi, being able to focus on the inner work instead of the busy-work of administration, is critical. The organising bit is easy (actually it’s a massive pain in the ass, but meh) but the work on finding my peace is much harder. Who am I now, as opposed to when I last lived there? Who are my people, how do I feel about how I have moved compared to them and the spaces we find ourselves in? What are the values I have instilled in my myself and my own children and how will these blend or clash? How can I stay open to the great things coming whilst not being so attached to certain things working out that for them to go wrong would destroy me?
If in doubt about peace, stare into the middle distance. Photo by Colton Duke on Unsplash
All those questions are critical but they aren’t things I need answers to right now. Coming to them with an internal stillness and certainty gives a certain protection both from the intensity of negative results and from freaking the F out. That has to be worth it.
Ah here we are again. In the inexplicable British system (is it to do with an old byelaw about swords? No?) the tax year runs from 6th April, so this time of year always feels like a time for a fresh start. It might feel more like this if it would stop snowing and really get on with the business of Turning On Spring but let’s see. Oh, and it also means a bunch of work, but we’re here for that too.
So what are the things you need to be thinking about?
As with all new year’s exercises it boils down to wrapping up last year and preparing for the next one. There will be some major changes to be aware of for the 2022-23 year, thanks to Rishi Sunak’s budget but if you want fuller details of what those are I suggest you have a look at this fuller list of upcoming tax changes and what they might mean for you. Basically – he has likely done you no favours. In a post in 2020 I actually used a picture of Rishi but this year I can’t do it, even ironically. It feels like we are all being pushed too close to the financial brink to find any of this funny any more.
My main focus today is on the wrapping up at the end of the tax year. This means two things: preparing for my tax return and looking back on how I spent, saved or invested my money. This week I will focus on prepaing tax returns, in order to get the boring stuff out of the way first.
Prepare for your tax return
Caveat: Firstly, I am not a financial advisor (pretty obviously, I mean my personal finance Instagram is mostly pictures of Barbies or food). There are lots of people out there who can help you with all the details of your taxes, and I am not one of them. But I am sharing my own approach here because why not.
Secondly, not everyone needs to do a tax return. However if you are the following then you do:
You are working for yourself – either as someone who is self-employed or someone who makes income from additional sources to their regular job which is not taxed elsewhere, e.g. from rental income;
You are a partner in a partnership business;
You are a minister of religion – any faith or denomination;
You are a trustee or the executor of an estate.
If you are unclear, the best thing is to consult an Independent Financial Advisor since getting it wrong in either direction could cost you a lot of time and stress.
Spring is in the air, though taking its own sweet time to arrive…. Photo by Arno Smit on Unsplash
As with so many things in life, the best time to start preparing for your tax return is this time last year. No really. The easiest way to do your taxes is little by little, so if you can get cracking with a simple spreadsheet and way of monitoring income and expenses, your life will be so much easier next year.
Of course the complexity of your tax directly relates to the complexity of your income. I have income from employment, from a rental property, from savings interest (but not dividends which have separate rules), and some overseas stuff plus I also pay into a personal pension which has its own tax benefits. So I need to complete four forms. HMRC really are the best place to start since their factsheets and whatnot are actually quite helpful. Another great thing about getting started early is you can call HMRC and ask them questions before they get closer to the 31st October deadline for filing paper forms and start to have a collective breakdown.
HMRC – surprisingly helpful if you get in early. Photo credit.
So the first things to do are to make sure you know if you need to file a self assessment; and if so, what forms do you need to complete. Once you have that, you can pull together all of your paperwork and start ploughing through it. You will need to know what expenses you can claim, and make sure you keep copies of all relevant documents.
In terms of when and how you get organised, you can do what I do and have a personal date night once a month with all my financial paperwork and a beer and just get it done. I do feel a little bit squirmy and sad saying that, but I find it so much easier than getting in a panic once a year. I also have a friend who has a week long retreat with her tax return and uses it as a way of engaging with gratitude for the year that has past. Whilst I absolutely love that as an approach, it’s not for me. So – as with every element of personal finance – go ahead and find whatever works to make the process as simple and painless for you as possible.
Even in your tax return.
See – I managed to talk about tax returns without making a joke about Rishi Sunak’s family circumstances. So anything is possible!
What are you going to do today to further your personal or financial journey? Whatever it is, I hope it will be full of joy.
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