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Monday - Money Out Day
Aug. 17th, 2015 11:23 pmAlthough my relatively comfortable position in life is due at least as much to good fortune as to good planning / hard work I like to believe that an organised approach to managing my money helps maintain the state of affairs and bolster it against future misfortune.
One of the things I do is typically set aside some time Monday evening to pay any bills that have come in over the past week and make any other movements which are required. Sometimes this rolls over to Tuesday but rarely longer and I will often pay a regular bill as soon as the scheduled transaction pops up in GnuCash; but I don't open that every day. (I have also discovered that enabling 2-factor authentication on my internet banking (which everyone should do, if you haven't already) discourages me from logging in as often and encourages this sort of batch processing.)
To a lesser extent Friday but Friday is also payday and I kind of like to let that money sit in my account for the weekend.
This is particularly relevant today because today had a very big invoice (scheduled in two parts because transaction limits) paying the next instalment on my home solar panels, which were installed on Friday [happy dance].
This also means I am back to paying off a mortgage because the installation happened a little earlier than I originally intended. Yay having an open revolving credit facility for such occasions. (The revolving bit is important - if you don't pay it off it's not revolving.)
Since I really don't enjoy being in debt[1] I'm going to be a bit more cautious with my spending over the next few months. Fewer dollars to random good works and charity, more self restraint on impulse buys, and hoping no more crowd-funded investments (my only expensive vice at present) come up that I really want to get into.
That's more flippant than serious; I will "borrow to invest" in this fashion but only because I am confident of being able to re-earn the amount quickly. As the saying goes "don't lend what you can't afford to lose". I call crowd-investing a (personal) vice because it is putting significant amounts of money into limbo with no guarantee of when or if it will come back; very high risk for someone with normally a very conservative risk profile. I do however select the companies I invest in based on the principle that even if they fail, they will have added something to society in the process. [Eg cleantech, medtech, social enterprise].
In a similar fashion (and this has been a frustration throughout the process of researching, quoting and having installed) I'm not concerned about "payback" time on my solar installation, nor on the expansions planned to come. All the installers are like "Oh you don't want to install any more that you need for personal use; the electricity companies aren't paying enough to make your money back". I'm like "dammit, I don't need to make my money back, I'm spending money that I have to spend."
The energy companies can have my surplus for free if it means other electricity user get to pay that little bit less. Think outside your goddamn pocketbooks people!
~~~
[1] I know very few people who claim to enjoy being in debt, but several who claim that despite their dislike of it going into debt to get the things they want and then having to pay it off is the only way they can maintain financial discipline. I can sort of see where they are coming from, but it's like peeking into an alien dimension.
~~~
This post hasn't quite gone in the direction I intended but I'll leave it here and hopefully retain the enthusiasm to make another sometime soon.
One of the things I do is typically set aside some time Monday evening to pay any bills that have come in over the past week and make any other movements which are required. Sometimes this rolls over to Tuesday but rarely longer and I will often pay a regular bill as soon as the scheduled transaction pops up in GnuCash; but I don't open that every day. (I have also discovered that enabling 2-factor authentication on my internet banking (which everyone should do, if you haven't already) discourages me from logging in as often and encourages this sort of batch processing.)
To a lesser extent Friday but Friday is also payday and I kind of like to let that money sit in my account for the weekend.
This is particularly relevant today because today had a very big invoice (scheduled in two parts because transaction limits) paying the next instalment on my home solar panels, which were installed on Friday [happy dance].
This also means I am back to paying off a mortgage because the installation happened a little earlier than I originally intended. Yay having an open revolving credit facility for such occasions. (The revolving bit is important - if you don't pay it off it's not revolving.)
Since I really don't enjoy being in debt[1] I'm going to be a bit more cautious with my spending over the next few months. Fewer dollars to random good works and charity, more self restraint on impulse buys, and hoping no more crowd-funded investments (my only expensive vice at present) come up that I really want to get into.
That's more flippant than serious; I will "borrow to invest" in this fashion but only because I am confident of being able to re-earn the amount quickly. As the saying goes "don't lend what you can't afford to lose". I call crowd-investing a (personal) vice because it is putting significant amounts of money into limbo with no guarantee of when or if it will come back; very high risk for someone with normally a very conservative risk profile. I do however select the companies I invest in based on the principle that even if they fail, they will have added something to society in the process. [Eg cleantech, medtech, social enterprise].
In a similar fashion (and this has been a frustration throughout the process of researching, quoting and having installed) I'm not concerned about "payback" time on my solar installation, nor on the expansions planned to come. All the installers are like "Oh you don't want to install any more that you need for personal use; the electricity companies aren't paying enough to make your money back". I'm like "dammit, I don't need to make my money back, I'm spending money that I have to spend."
The energy companies can have my surplus for free if it means other electricity user get to pay that little bit less. Think outside your goddamn pocketbooks people!
~~~
[1] I know very few people who claim to enjoy being in debt, but several who claim that despite their dislike of it going into debt to get the things they want and then having to pay it off is the only way they can maintain financial discipline. I can sort of see where they are coming from, but it's like peeking into an alien dimension.
~~~
This post hasn't quite gone in the direction I intended but I'll leave it here and hopefully retain the enthusiasm to make another sometime soon.
