"The easiest money you'll ever come by is the money you never spend in the first place."
+ overdrafts, balance, and the dubious freedoms of freelancing.
Hi and welcome to The Ladybird Purse, my weekly newsletter about women and money. I’m not a financial advisor and am in no way qualified to give financial advice. Which you’ll know if you read on…
My 19yo texted to ask me for 10p last week and followed it up with “Unless you don’t have 10p?” I had 10p. But actually not really. Because it was from my overdraft. Yes, I am once again deep in my overdraft and I have almost £1000 on a credit card and I feel fine about it.
Money is coming and when it does, I’ll get back on a relatively even keel. At the same time, if for some reason the money doesn’t come… I’m in trouble. So, you know, same as it ever was.
It’s all educational. Really. It’s teaching me how I feel about money. And how I want to feel.
For ages, I’ve had a note on my phone for something I planned to write about here:
I’m learning how much money I need to feel secure*. I’m learning to wait and not spend impulsively. I’m learning to think about where and how money works for me best.
And I am learning all these things. I’ve learned some of them before. God knows, if I’ve learned anything from writing these newsletters it’s that I have to learn the same things over and over (and over) again. But I’m getting there. Slowly but surely.
* My phone changed “secure” to “sexier” - I have not yet learned how much money I need to make me feel sexier. I suspect it’s A LOT.
Been meaning to share this short film about freelancing for a few weeks since I saw it at Babak Ganjei’s exhibition in Liverpool. Made me laugh a lot. Also: too real.
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An interview with… Marnie Riches
Marnie Riches grew up on a rough estate in north Manchester. Exchanging the spires of nearby Strangeways prison for those of Cambridge University, she gained a Masters in German & Dutch. She has been a punk, a trainee rock star, a pretend artist and professional fundraiser.
Her Amsterdam- and Cambridge-set, best-selling George McKenzie crime thrillers, tackling the subject of trans-national trafficking, were inspired by her own time spent in The Netherlands. Her debut and the first in the series - The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die – won the Patricia Highsmith Award for Most Exotic Location at the Dead Good Reader Awards in 2015. Dubbed the Martina Cole of the North, Marnie has also authored three mini-series, all set in Manchester: her Manchester gangland thrillers, her PI Bev Saunders mysteries and her DS Jackson Cooke police procedurals. Critically acclaimed, she has sold over 300,000 books.
When she isn’t writing gritty, twisty crime-thrillers, Marnie writes historical sagas as Maggie Campbell about the birth of the NHS in Manchester. She is also the author of the first six books in HarperCollins Children’s historical adventure series, Time-Hunters, penned as Chris Blake.
Marnie is a Bridge Fellow for the Royal Literary Fund (RLF), teaching academic writing. She was the previous RLF Fellow at Cambridge University’s post-graduate researcher unit and currently is a course tutor for Cambridge University’s Masters in crime- and thriller-writing. She has previously also taught the Faber Novel Writing Course.
What is your relationship with money currently?
My current relationship with actual liquid cash-money is okay, but that's only because I remarried my ex-husband, and he has a very sensible job that pays an actual salary. I have been working between 50-100 hours per week for over ten years, often working seven days a week, but writing has turned out to pay little more than part-time, semi-skilled worker's money - ridiculous when you consider I've had an average of two (highly commercial) books published per year by imprints of Big 5 publishing houses for just over a decade and have sold around 300K books as Marnie Riches (crime), Maggie Campbell (historical saga) and Chris Blake (children's).
In 2022, I wrote two full crime-thriller manuscripts and held down three prestigious teaching jobs, but came away with a depressingly low amount of cash. I think I made about £7K from my actual writing in that tax year. Thank God for teaching! Every June, I send my income and expenditure details to my accountant, hoping to feel optimistic about my ability to generate a healthy living wage from my prolific output. Every year, my taxable income is increasingly depressing. But I'm an optimist and never one for being risk-averse, so I keep writing in the hope that I'll eventually get a string of Sunday Times Bestsellers, and my backlist will start to sell in earnest, as well as advances improving significantly. You've got to be in it to win it, right?
Having said all that, my portfolio career does generate some money, and in terms of capital (i.e. my house), I absolutely mustn't grumble. I was sensible/daring enough to get on the property ladder at 25 (I'm now 52), and over the years, we have had to relocate many times. Each time we moved, I deliberately bought wrecks so that I could do them up.
My most recent house was a gargantuan project, which I funded and managed when divorced at the same time as writing not two but three books in one year! My mother died the year we moved in, too. It was horrifically stressful, as I had to turn a semi-derelict two bedroomed bungalow into a comfortable, modern family home. It took two builders, a borderline-nervous-breakdown and almost-court-case to get there, but I now have a lovely home in a good area in the North West, and my mortgage is pretty low.
I've hung up my renovation hat, now, as I just don't have the mental or physical energy for all that upheaval anymore, but property has borne significantly better fruit than any other of my career strands - not that I ever see a penny of it. If you never get off the property ladder, any gains you make are just numbers on a spreadsheet. My kids will eventually inherit, though, so that's nice.
After years of struggle (both when my husband and I were younger and married, as well as during my divorce), I am finally in a position to save regularly and, crucially, stuff as much of my earnings as I can into my pension. I didn't for years and years, when my kids were small. We had always agreed that my husband would save for our pensionable years, but when we split, I took much of the equity in the house, because I thought (wrongly, it turns out) I'd never be able to raise a mortgage as a self-employed writer. He took most of the pension pot, so I was literally almost (pension) potless for a while. Once I divorced, I got myself an Independent Financial Adviser, and he is still a total godsend.
What’s your earliest money memory?
My earliest money memory is putting any money I was given for birthdays or Christmas into my money box. It was a little clay tortoise, and I still have it somewhere. My mother was a single parent - sometimes unemployed, and when she was working, she worked as a cleaner, because the flexible hours suited having a small child, given she had no way of paying for expensive childcare. She worked so incredibly hard.
Among those early memories, I can see her in my mind's eye, sitting at the kitchen table which now serves as my desk, totting up her money for the week and accordingly writing out daily menus that would be in budget, once she'd paid the rent on our council house and any bills. Money was so tight when I was a child that she weighed only 6.5 stones and I was extremely anaemic. We just couldn't afford to eat well for a long, long time. Food banks weren't a thing in the early 1970s. Our clothes were second hand back then, and we didn't go on holidays until I was older. My father refused to pay child maintenance and got his liability reduced in court to 1p a year. I learned back then to cut my pattern to fit my pocket (except in the case of property, where I've always taken risks and overstretched myself).
Even now, most of my clothes are second hand (god bless eBay), my car is second hand (and the sort of brand that retains its value, so I don't lose out on depreciation too badly when I come to sell), I get my hair cut and dyed at a hairdressing school because it's significantly cheaper, I don't spend anything else on 'beauty'. I don't have a cleaner, a gardener, even a window-cleaner. If I can get what groceries I need in the 'going off' cabinet in the supermarket, I do. I believe that anything worth wearing is worth repairing. I don't buy coffee or lunch out, unless I'm meeting a friend.
The Dutch have a saying - 'zuinigheid is een deugd', which means, 'thriftiness is a virtue' and in many ways, I abide by that maxim. When my mother died, she left nothing beyond her furniture and the money to settle her outstanding bills and pay for a headstone. She never owned property, so there was nothing to pass on in terms of a decent inheritance for me. Now, as a result, I put away what I can when I can so that my kids will inherit something worth having apart from nice memories.
What advice would you give your younger self about money?
Do a law degree and become a corporate lawyer.
What’s the biggest money mistake you’ve made?
Not doing a law degree and becoming a corporate lawyer, though I flirted with it twice. I decided to join a rock band and stick to my boring, poorly paid job as a professional fundraiser instead, and that was my biggest money mistake by far. If I'd gone ahead and gone into either corporate or entertainment law, I'd be a multi-millionaire by now and likely a partner in a top 10 law firm in London.
Oh, and I spent THOUSANDS on cigarettes when I was younger, which I wish I'd never ever done. My mother, my aunt and my cousin all died from lung cancer. Imagine if they'd spent that cigarette money on a nice holiday or four? Or savings for the extra decades when they would have lived?
What’s the best thing you’ve ever spent money on?
Property. Buy the crappest house on the best street for the lowest price you can haggle the vendor down to (it's a buyer's market at the moment), get a good architect and refurb it with amazing second hand/eBay finds! Beware though! Building costs are currently through the roof.
The other thing we have no compunction in saving money for and spending money on is decent holidays. Memorable experiences and family-time are priceless.
Do you have a pension? If not, do you have a plan?
Yes. I always had a portable pension, which I didn't pay into for over a decade. Now I'm putting as much as possible away to make up for the years when I didn't. My IFA has me invest my money into mainly higher risk funds (though some are low risk and therefore low return), which he'll move to all lower risk as I near retirement age. The other strand to my pension plan is my book backlist. I will keep writing until I get those hits that create a rising tide to finally float all my boats!
What would you do with £10,000?
Invest it into pension or a high yield equity ISA. There are some excellent kick-out funds out there (don't ask me to explain that - google it!). Until recently, National Savings & Investments was also doing a 1 year fixed rate bond that gave a decent yield, so it's always worth looking out for those.
But if you're earning above the £12K personal tax-free threshold, the government gives you 20% or 40% (depending on which tax band you're in) on a pension payment, which is a better rate of return than any savings account. Alternatively, if you can afford it, gift the £10K to your kids towards a deposit for a property purchase. The government tops up any money saved with a 25% contribution if you put cash into a Lifetime ISA for your kids, which they can then use towards a deposit.
I'm sketchy on the figures, as my other half does that particular piece of admin, but among the things we've been scraping and scrimping for is a deposit pot for our kids, for when they need it. It's like a living will. If we don't help them, they won't get onto the property ladder perhaps until they're middle aged, if ever.
What little luxury could you get with a tenner?
A nice bottle of wine. Actually, forget that. I'd buy some nice dahlias for the garden. Expenditure on shoes, knitwear and plants is my weakness. Or maybe I'd just not spend it at all. The easiest money you'll ever come by is the money you never spend in the first place.1
If you were me, what would you want to ask women about money?
I'd ask women if they're providing for themselves financially, separate from their spouses. You never know when the most perfect marriages can go awry, plunging women into the poverty trap. Is their name on the deeds of any house they own? Have they made a will? I used to be a professional fundraiser, and a clear, up-to-date will is essential, especially to protect women and their dependents in the event of the death of a spouse - especially where familial circumstances are complicated by divorce or blended families.
I'd ask them if they're spending more than they should? I have so many female friends who seem always to be skint, but they spunk money on stuff I wouldn't dream of buying, and the small things soon add up. If the schools in their borough are crap, can they afford to move to where the state schools are great, rather than pay private school fees? We saved around £150K by doing that, and we're up North where private schools are half the price of London ones! Could they save money by spending less on grooming and expensive clothes, which adds up fast? Do they really need the latest hot fashion? If so, could they buy that dress from Anthropologie or Whistles on eBay for 25% of the retail price? Are they cooking from scratch with fresh ingredients, not just to save money, but to look after their health? Do they really need that expensive gym membership, or could they jog for free or...gasp...do their own domestic chores instead of paying someone to do them (and husbands have a duty to pitch in 50/50 to domestic labour, too, especially if they want to avoid the old divorce courts!)?
Women are the most vulnerable, when it comes to any kind of economic upheaval because of the gender pay gap and the damage that child-rearing does to a woman's economic capabilities, so I'd advise any woman to watch what she spends, avoid debt she can't service and, perhaps above all, stick money into pension to avoid poverty in retirement.
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Must once again share one of my favourite bits of financial advice: In a documentary about David Geffen, Marlo Thomas told a story Geffen had told her about his mum. The gist of it was that as a teen, he’d saved up $17 to buy a radio. It was a lot of money in those days and it had taken him a long time to save it. He told his mum he was going to take his $17 and buy the radio. She told him that he could buy the radio, but then he wouldn’t have the $17 anymore. But if he didn’t buy the radio, he’d still have the $17 and he could buy the radio at any time.
Great interview and I just ordered one of the books.
Great interview and some really good points in the final answer around the things women tend to spend money on. It’s so easy to get sucked into thinking that you just ‘have’ to do these things as a woman which men would never dream of spending their money on - expensive Pilates classes and beauty treatments are sold to women as a lifestyle to aspire to but and I used to buy into it until I realised that I’d be far better off saving that money and going for a run/doing a YouTube video at home.