Fiscally Responsible?

OK, I wouldn’t go so far as to imply that I’m actually getting better with money – I suppose I’m heading in the correct general direction to be getting better with money, but all the same, I’m nowhere even vaguely close to good, let alone fiscally responsible.

I should explain that a bit – I know how much I’ve got, I know what’s going out when, I know how much I owe (remarkably little, thankfully) and I know where the next lot’s coming from, and when. So on that score I’m fairly well organised. It’s just that I’m utterly bollocks when it comes to things like saving, or planning for the future. I can’t deny it, I’m shit. I’ve got money at the end of the month, I can always figure out what to spend it on. Save? Maybe next year.

So it’s been a bit of a shock to the system that this weekend I’ve

• Completed all the paperwork for a savings account, including the little bit that says “Direct Debit for £xxx per month to go in to the savings account“
• Also completed all the paperwork to sort out starting up a pension plan. Nothing earth-shattering or special, just a simple stakeholder pension that I can take with me from job to job without paying the earth to transfer it.But it also means that I’ve
  1. filled in another “take £xxx from my salary and shove it straight into the pension” form
     and
  2. filled in some extra crap for the new pension company to find out what the fuck happened to the one I started when I opted out of SERPS when I was 16, on some very dodgy advice
• Bought a book about financial management and fiscal ‘personality’ (Alvin Hall’s “You and Your Money“, which looks like it’ll be an interesting read)
• And finally, sent a cheque to the thieving cunts at Holmes Place who won’t let me cancel the membership, despite being sixty-fucking-five miles from their nearest premises, but insist that I have to pay off the year’s contract. £260, the tossers. But there was a vaguely civil letter that also got sent with the cheque to the arse-wipe tollsters, and then there’s going to be an utterly impolite one that goes off to their customer services director, when I can find the name of the elusive little fucker

So I’ve been pretty organised, and there’s been a bundle of other stuff that’s been completed this weekend too, which makes it into a worthwhile weekend.

Although it’s still bloody scary, getting this organised – particularly when it comes to money and savings etc. Now I just need to actually do the paying-in bit…