"My earliest money memory is money literally saving my life."

+ What's on your money joy list?

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. I can give you a good book recommendation though. (Have you read Under Your Spell by Laura Wood? GORGEOUS.)

Years ago - I mean, so many years ago; 2008, I think it was - when I first started trying to get a handle on my money issues, I read a book by Suze Orman in which she suggested writing out all your money memories. I wrote mine out. They were all sad and bad.

I wrote about that here

Even more money shame, the story of my life, and not getting a Sindy house

Almost exactly a year ago - and inspired by this post from Dana Miranda - I said I was going to make a list of good money memories.

I even suggested it in the guest journalling prompt I wrote for Katherine May a couple of weeks ago, which inspired this post by Kara Grant.

And yet I still hadn’t written my own.

I think partly it’s because I don’t have to dig deep for my good money memories. I don’t shrink from them like I do the bad memories. But I still think it might be a good exercise to write some down, as a reminder.

Thinking about money is often so fraught, it’s nice to focus on the joy it can provide. And, frankly, so much of what’s happening in the world is so terrible, that it’s nice to focus on joy full stop. So.

1. Mallorca with my 15yo last September. Sunrise swims. Carbonara pizza. Many ice creams.

2. Copenhagen with my 20yo earlier this year. So thrilling to hang out with him as an adult. And to have time to myself (to eat cardamom buns) while he went off to hang out with friends.

3. Always, as Nora Ephron wrote, “Dinner with friends in cities where none of us lives.”

4. Books. So many books. And Substack subscriptions!

5. Perfume samples. I persist in trying to find my signature scent. Latest attempt is Replica: From the Garden, as suggested in this post by Amie Elizabeth White. I love the smell of tomato stalks. Reminds me of my grandad’s greenhouse.

6. The gym with my 15yo and also the subs for the 5k we’ve signed up to do together later this year.

7. Cinema membership with my 20yo. We talk on the walk there and on the way back and see loads of films we wouldn’t have otherwise seen.

8. Coffee. I know I’m not meant to enjoy spending almost a fiver on something I could make at home for much less. But. I love sitting outside cafes, people-watching. I love walking on the prom on a hot day with the condensation from an iced coffee running down my arm. And writing in a coffee shop makes me feel like a proper author. (I’ve been a proper author for 14 years now. And yet.)

9. Concerts. With my friends. All around the world.

10. You know what? Just paying my bills. I’m so lucky to have a home and life I love. I don’t take it for granted.

How about you?

I’d love to know what’s on your money joy list.

---

Paid subscriptions enable me to keep writing these newsletters and attempting to smell like a hot tomato 🍅

If you’re not a paid subscriber already, I’d love it if you’d consider upgrading. (And if you are, thank you, I love you.)

If you would like a paid sub, but can’t swing it right now, email me and I’ll sort it.

---

An interview with Tasha Goddard

Tasha Goddard is 50 and runs her own business, along with her husband, providing services to UK educational publishers. She is also an illustrator and pattern designer and hopes to transition to those being her main career over the next five years, to carry her through creatively and financially into her next few decades.

She lives in The Cotswolds in the UK, with her husband, two teenage daughters, and two black cats. But her heart belongs to the Mediterranean, where she hopes to move in a few years, dragging her husband along with her.

Tasha writes a somewhat meandering newsletter, covering freelance life, illustration business and travel, along with an illustrated food newsletter. You can see her illustration work on her portfolio and she is always open to hear about illustration and pattern design commissions and collaborations.

What is your relationship with money currently? 

It’s mixed. I want and need (actually that’s probably debatable, but in order to do the things I want to do and allow my family to do the things they want to do, it’s need – compared to a lot of people it’s absolutely not!) more money, but I resent feeling that way and wish that society wasn’t built how it is, and I also default to just getting on with client work and not having the energy to create things that could provide longer-term perennial (or passive if you don’t hate that term) income.

I am reasonably organised with money and set aside the tax money every time an invoice is paid. The cost of living crisis, coupled with not having put up our fees in ten years, means we have been digging into mortgage reserve more than I would like, but we have been better at being more realistic about quotes this year and also some clients have increased the fees they pay, so we should be back in a healthier space by the end of the year.

I am also aware that we are fortunate or privileged enough to have a tonne of equity and we will remortgage for another few years and that’s fine. Especially as we plan to sell up once he kids are done with uni and run off to Europe.

What’s your earliest money memory?

We were driving back from Wales at Christmas when I was a kid (maybe 6) and we picked up a hitchhiker. This was in the days when they only had seatbelts in the front and car seats were definitely not a thing (or certainly not one we could ever afford).

We had to take a slightly different route to drop him off. It was very horrible weather and he was very grateful, so he gave me 50p in 10p pieces, which was all he had.

Shortly after he got out, I dropped the coins on the floor, and so I got down to find them. While I was down there my dad saw an animal crossing in front of him and swerved to avoid it and skidded an ended up flipping the car.

If I had been on the seat, instead of the floor, I would have flown out the window and almost certainly not survived. So my earliest money memory is money literally saving my life.

What advice would you give your younger self about money? 

Don’t just consider the monthly payment when borrowing money, consider how much you will end up paying and for how long.

And, to my brand new freelance self, put at least 33% of every invoice away to cover tax and NI and to provide a rainy-day buffer.

For the first ten years I had to borrow the money to pay the tax bill and spent another ten or more years paying that off. Loads of people did tell me to do that though and I felt like I couldn’t afford to, but really I couldn’t afford not to.

What’s the biggest money mistake you’ve made?

Not buying a flat in Oxford during my first job. We waited another few years and bought somewhere in Stroud instead. During those 3 years the value would have almost doubled (I looked it up).

What’s the best thing you’ve ever spent money on? 

My 5-week interrailing holiday last year. It was not the most sensible thing to do, as I would have preferred to have a large buffer before going away. I had just enough coming in from work done over the last couple of months to cover it and the normal bills, but then I didn’t have as much the next month, and so on. If it weren’t for the cost-of-living crisis it would have been perfect.

This was my 50^th birthday present to myself, and something I really really needed to do. I wanted to do that when I finished uni, but ended up (mostly for financial reasons) jumping straight into a job before I had even officially graduated.

I always thought I would take some time out to travel, or move to Europe, but life and houses and marriage and kids and dogs all got in he way of that. When the kids were younger, we managed a week in France a few times, with the company and financial help of my in-laws, but that was about it.

Before kids I went to Spain to stay with a friend a few times and we went to Copenhagen and Paris (including for our honeymoon), but none of that was proper travelling.

My mum always wanted to travel too and my dad barely ever agreed to go anywhere. A few years before she passed away she started going on big solo trips. She would have preferred company, but decided that if she waited for someone to go with her, she would never make it.

She went to India and Nepal, then the year after to Mexico and Cuba, both times staying for free with Esperantists, and then finally, Jamaica, where she ended up having a manic episode and I had to go and rescue her.

It turned out she had had a terminal cancer diagnosis for most of those trips, so she was travelling with that knowledge, and didn’t fit in Africa and Russia which she also really wanted to visit.

So I wasn’t about to wait for retirement and the possibility of dying before I did it. I had already started doing small solo trips with srprs.me and was very happy and comfortable travelling on my own, but I didn’t like all those short haul flights, both for the environment, and also because I don’t like airports or planes very much.

And so train travel was calling to me and I thought what better way than to make it a celebration of my half-century and a promise to myself to not let sensible mess and risk-aversion stop me from doing this thing that I absolutely love!

It was a wonderful experience, albeit a bit more fast-paced than I prefer. Since then I have done a few week-long stays in different places, but hopefully I’ll fit in another longer one maybe a couple of years down the road.

This year, my husband gets his special trip, though he’s choosing 2 weeks instead of 5, and he’s off to Japan in the autumn. And we’ll also try to get away for our 20^th wedding anniversary in September, and then maybe a trip together to Japan next year!

Travel is, for me, something I want to always make time and set aside (or sometimes borrow) money for, because it’s soul-affirming and inspirational and fascinating and just something I don’t want to live without again.

Do you have a pension? If not, do you have a plan? 

Yes, though it’s the same one I set up when I first went freelance in 1999, and I should have increased the payments into over the last couple of decades.

It’s set to lay me around £15,000 a year, which was a good and comfortable amount then, but not so much now. But, we do also have a house that has gone up in value a crazy amount and will give us at least £250,000 when we sell and probably more.

Depending on where, in Europe, we end up that should do us, plus I plan to keep illustrating as long as I can, so I think we’ll be OK.

What would you do with £10,000?

Probably use it to pad out the buffer. I want to get up to around a £25,000 buffer, and then I will feel less stressed about short months and the like.

I might hold back some for a trip and a new iPad.

What little luxury could you get with a tenner?

I tend to be a bit too willing to treat myself and the family (I think that stems from growing up pretty poor; I am not good at denying myself or my loved ones something nice), so it’s difficult to think of something I wouldn’t just spend a tenner on anyway…

Maybe a nice bit of pottery from one of the independent shops in town, as I am trying to cut back on that.

If you’d prefer not to subscribe, but would still like to support me/this newsletter, you can you can buy me a coffee.

RELATED POSTS:

“Money is not as important as everyone makes it seem.”

“I am the boss of money, it’s not the boss of me.”

Is the 4th too late for “Happy New Year?”