In May 2012 I had my baby son and started maternity leave for the second time, knocking my family income down by over £800 per month. Surviving on Statutory Maternity Pay taught me to budget, and how to feed a family of four on only £20 a week. Nowadays I'm back to working, but still juggling the demands of two school-aged children against the reality of self-employed income.
One of the things I realised quite rapidly when I first started freelancing — and it’s an obvious one, really — is that you’ll have good weeks and bad weeks. I say weeks, not months, because with the up and down nature of freelance income… read full entry →
After the touch of reality reflected in the last post — how my over-spending and wastefulness was contributing to an unsteady financial future w/r/t buying a new house — I was already feeling a touch the poorer. So as you can imagine, when my accountant… read full entry →
Feels like ages since I’ve talked about budgeting, and for a reason… with excess spend on frivolities, a loan to pay off two credit cards one of which I didn’t close and am steadily filling back up, an expensive honeymoon (which I barely contributed towards)… read full entry →
Gaz is away til late tonight so I have 3 options: Catch up on some more work, which I need to do. Catch up on some housework, which I should do. Have a bath and go to bed with a bottle of wine and a… read full entry →
I’ve just come off the phone to my current mortgage provider. I rang up to see how much I’d likely be able to borrow if I wanted to purchase a larger house using equity in this house as a deposit. I was hoping that because… read full entry →
Having announced my intention to return to 100% freelance from October, it might therefore be surprising to hear that I’m also going to be attempting a pretty radical goal to try and drastically increase the amount saved to use against my mortgage balance: I am… read full entry →
Off the back of yesterday’s post about earning passive income (which in itself was a kick up the bum, and I feel a little more inclined to get some of my stuff done) I’ve been thinking about other ways to earn “on the side” and… read full entry →
I talk about passive income every now and again on my blog, so I thought I’d talk about what it means to me. What is passive income? Passive income is money I ‘earn’ without the need to specifically do anything to get it. That is,… read full entry →
As I woke up to another sale on my premium mail form yesterday, I felt like I’d received a fresh kick up the bum to start actively working towards my mortgage free in five years goal again. It’s not that I’ve not been working at… read full entry →
As promised, I’m documenting my progress following my big kick up the arse… This week I: Unlocked my online banking account Entered nearly 4 months worth of transaction data into YNAB Paid in both a cheque (which I’m notoriously lazy about) and some cash (which… read full entry →
I spent nearly an hour on the phone on Tuesday night with a friend of mine who’s asked to remain nameless (I don’t know why, maybe he thinks you’ll all call him up asking for financial advice too?) Following my comfort spending confession he’s given… read full entry →
One of the biggest barriers to me being mortgage free in 5 years is a bad habit I don’t tend to talk about too often: I’m a comfort spender. If I’m stressed, I spend money on anything and everything. The ironic thing about this unnecessary… read full entry →