Expensive

There’s one thing I find quite nerve-wracking about this entire “working in Cambridge” lark. And that’s the expenses of it.

Now yes sure, I know I get them paid back to me – train travel, hotel/B&B, meals blah blah blah – so poor little me, wah wah, I’m so hard done by.</brat> But that’s not really what I mean.

Up til now, while I can’t admit to being the most fiscally responsible person in the world (or probably even on the same continent, to be honest) I never really had any major debts either. And before Herself pipes up, yes, I did dip in and out of my overdraft all the time – basically, I saw it as money that was available, and thus useable/usable. (whichever – I never spell that one correctly) But at most that was £1000 which, when compared to most people’s debt levels, is really fuck-all.

This year, though, I’ve put my account in credit, and it’s stayed there. I haven’t used the overdraft at all in four or five months now, and don’t intend to. And I’ve been training myself to not see “Funds Available” on my bank statement as including that overdraft. I now mentally just deduct that £1000 from the total before I think about it. So I know I’m in credit, and how much is there.

But now, with this new job, I’m putting in a lot of expense before getting any of it back. Fortunately (as it turns out) I got myself a credit card earlier this year, and that has proved to be an essential bit of kit this last couple of months. But at the same time, because of these expenses that I’m incurring (yeah, yeah, before getting them paid back) it means my credit-card bill is far larger than my overdraft ever was. (Before I go any further, I should point out that there’s been a couple of large purchases – new PC and new Laptop, for instance – that’ve gone on there too, although they’ve pretty much been paid off as well)

So it struck me as weird last night that I paid off an amount on the credit-card account that’s equal to what my full overdraft would be (well, is. But I’m not into the overdraft, so it’s what the overdraft would be. I think.) And I’ll be paying off another bundle at the end of the month when I get paid.

What’s the point of this post? No idea, really. It’s just something that was on my mind…