Month-end accounts: September 2019 (1)

For the first time in 18 years I’m not doing a month (or week) end accounts wrap up. I started in October 2001 after I noticed I was spending too much of my student loan and needed to control my spending.
Initially it was weekly but once I started to be paid on a monthly basis, it made more sense to skip it to monthly.
The reason for skipping this month is that I have not particularly owned my own computer for many many years and I’ve always (ab)used the company laptop with Excel on it. I had migrated to Google Sheets back in 2008 and ended up losing everything! PLEASE, ALWAYS BACK UP GUYS!!!

So, now I am between jobs and back from holiday and don’t have the time to do everything, even if I was set-up for it.
Quite frankly, I think that it is a nice spreadsheet and it churns our nice graphs, and tables and charts and projections and warnings and all that. But it does take maybe 1 hour to complete each month and I don’t have the time right now (even writing this short post means time away from something else).
I start a new job in a week’s time and that’s a contract position. It means a lot of admin on my side and I can use the time when I do that to complete September’s numbers but it might not be until Ocotber comes to an end that I get round to it.
One very serious thought that I now have is that there is a huge difference betweeen being a salaried employess paid by the month and rewarded by the year(s) for the effort put in and being a contractor who is paid by the hour and needs to show what they are worth.
No more slow starts for me – I need to take the finger out and get serious!
And part of that is working out what needs to be done now and what can be done later and what can I just skip altogether.
If my time is worth (just say) £1 a minute and I can save £30 by calling the car insurance people and getting a reduction in our renewal in a 10 minute call – great. If I can save £3 in a supermarket that takes me 20 minutes to get there and back… maybe it’s a waste of time.
What you can’t put a price on is your family time or time with your loved ones. All work and no play made Jack a dull boy and from now on, I need to balance what adds meaning or value (family time or paid employment) to my life and what doesn’t (make your own assumptions here).
In any case, our Family Finances are doing well enough to not require constant supervision. I’m sure we’re doing just great – although we could be doing better we are a whole lot better off than 90% of the rest.

Thanks, GFF