"My relationship with money is sort of like a very nervous rider approaching a very skittish horse."
+ the cost of my recent unplanned house move
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’m just a girl, who’s just had smart meters installed, so will now obsess about how much every electrical item costs to run.
I said last week that I would write about how much this unplanned and unexpected move has cost. But first a bit of context.
We were told mid-January that our landlord planned to sell the house we’d been living in for just under two years. We really loved it and didn’t want to leave, so the original plan was to stay put and hope he wasn’t able to sell or that the house sold to another investor who would let us stay.
A couple of other houses on the street were also up for sale and looked like much better value than ours, so we were hopeful. But then they both sold really quickly. I’d been looking at what was available, just to stay in the know, and spotted a nice flat in a good area for a good price, so the eldest and I went to view. And we loved it. After discussing it with my boys, we decided that it might be a better idea to move to somewhere we liked now, rather than to hang on, find that we had to move anyway and not be able to find something as nice.
And then it all happened really fast. We moved in last weekend.
I’d been worrying about exactly this. When I had my interview for the grant I received last year, I cried when I told them if we had to move I didn’t have any savings and also my credit rating wasn’t great because of my credit cards. And then, thanks to the grant, I paid off my cards, my rating went up, and I had some money put away just in case. (I am so grateful.)
Yeah, that money’s gone now.
(Picked up my phone to check the payments and realised I hadn’t cancelled the milk delivery at the old house, only postponed it for a week. Bugger.)
So what did the move cost?
£29.00 for packing boxes, bubble wrap and tape.
£450 for movers. I’ve never used movers before and while I can’t bring myself to say they were worth every penny - that’s a lot of pennies - they were great and I literally couldn’t have done it myself, so they were essential.
£40 for gas. The flat had prepayment meters which have been an absolute clusterf•ck that took more than a week to sort out and wasted so much time and energy (mine). I put £40 on the gas meter that apparently wasn’t even used and will be refunded to me. By cheque! Within 14 days! I can only hope.
£12 in a coffee shop to use the wifi cos ours wasn’t installed for five days.
£12 on cleaning stuff for the old house, which, yeah, will get used in this house eventually. I am now very much a convert to the Scrub Mommy and also a bit obsessed with this Instagram account.
£22.50 for new keys.
£36.00 for post redirection.
£33.00 for a new loo brush (I decided years ago when we moved a lot that I would never move a loo brush) and curtains for the 15yo’s room. The flat came with those beige blinds in every room, but they obviously don’t keep out the light.
£15.00 for a doorbell.
£25.00 for a curtain rod for my room. I have the curtains from the house before last. Bought the wrong rod though, so it’s got to go back and I’ll try again.
Total of almost £700.
Plus the deposit for this place. Obviously I’m hoping we get the deposit back on the last place, but I can’t count on it.
My savings are gone, I have a balance on my credit card for the first time in a while and also I’m into my overdraft (not a lot, but still).
I actually feel okay about it financially. I feel so lucky I was able to cover it all. And hopeful of paying off the card and building the savings back up.
But at the same time, I do feel slightly resentful that we didn’t really have a choice. I know renting is insecure, but I did think we’d get to stay longer than two years. My 19yo asked what’s to stop this happening in another two years? And the answer is absolutely nothing. Not even two years, this could happen again in six months. (It had better not.)
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I had a brief chat with fabulous author Laura Wood a while ago, but badgered her to tell me more.
An interview with… Laura Wood
Laura Wood is a bestselling author whose first novel won the Montegrappa Scholastic Prize for New Children's Writing in 2014. She also has a PhD in nineteenth century literature from the University of Warwick.
Her middle-grade novels have been shortlisted for the Sainsbury's Children's Book Awards and the Blue Peter Book Awards, while her YA novels have been shortlisted for the YA Book Awards, the Books are My Bag Awards and the Romantic Novelist's Association Awards. Her debut adult novel, Under Your Spell, will publish in 2024.1
Laura lives in Warwickshire with her husband, and their dog, Bea. Her favourite things include: reading romance novels, Fred Astaire films, cups of tea, fancy cocktails, recipe books, poetry, cosy woollen cardigans, crisp autumn leaves, Rufus Sewell's cheekbones, being near the sea, scented candles, and new stationery
What is your relationship with money currently?
Sort of like a very nervous rider approaching a very skittish horse.
I’ve been writing full time for eight years now and I slowly grew my income to about £30k a year which I’m really proud of. I had to hustle like mad, write a lot of books which started to gain bigger advances and in the first few years I accumulated plenty of debt which made it hard for me to catch up even on what felt like a comfortable salary.
There were times even a year ago where I’d be waiting to sign a new contract or waiting for a royalty payment and I’d have to borrow money to pay the bills or apply for hardship funds to try and bridge the gap.
That changed in spring 2023 when I sold my adult debut novel in a seven way auction. It sold here and in the States and then it started selling in lots of other countries too (currently we’re up to 13).
Suddenly I had a lot of money coming into my bank account and in most ways it is literally like a dream come true - the fantasy you have as a writer that all it could take is ONE book, the right book, and things could change. We were able to do some travel, do a bit of work on the house, pay off some debt. It is the best thing, and the relief is incredible. The main difference is feeling like we are not one minor inconvenience from disaster - if the car breaks, we can just pay to repair it.
I did think if something like this happened then everything would be magically fixed and I would never worry about money again, but the worry still lives there and sometimes it’s worse. It feels like things could go MORE wrong now. I live in fear of my tax bill and always have. I never had to pay off very much of my student loan because my income was so low (yay?) and I sort of put it out my mind. Now I feel it looming.
There’s also the knowledge that this could absolutely be a blip, that I could have a high income for two years and then drop back down to earth, that I should be making plans for how this money will keep us afloat for a long time (the unknowable how long??).
It’s tough to get out of the panicked mindset of someone used to living paycheck to paycheck and I sometimes wonder how much money it would take for me to feel safe and secure. I hope that’s something that changes over time, and I don’t for a second forget how lucky I am right now.
What’s your earliest money memory?
Pound coins sellotaped into birthday cards. Feeling so rich with my little hoard of coins that I thought I could do ANYTHING. Realising in that moment that having my own money gave me agency.
What advice would you give your younger self about money?
I don’t think I’m in a position to be handing out money advice yet. I still FEEL like my younger self when it comes to money and I think that’s actually the problem.
What’s the biggest money mistake you’ve made?
When I was 18 I got my first credit card while I was travelling, spent all the money and then hid the statements in a drawer hoping they’d go away. Surprisingly, that plan didn’t work.
What’s the best thing you’ve ever spent money on?
Travelling. Now I realise that the trips I take are an investment in loads of different areas of my life - spending time with my husband, boosting my mental health, and I always come back with a hundred new book ideas.
I think sometimes as a writer it’s hard to take yourself seriously. It’s a strange job and, I don’t know, maybe it’s different if you’re torturously toiling away for years on the Great Novel, but the work I do - it’s fast, it’s light, it feels often like an extended game of make-believe and it took me a long time to understand that it’s ok to think about my creative process in an earnest way. Feeding that creativity with new experiences is important, it’s a way of paying into my career development.
Do you have a pension? If not, do you have a plan?
Nope. And I suppose that’s a question for 2024. Now that I actually have some money I’m taking advice on it - something which feels quite scary for someone who doesn’t like thinking about money.
What would you do with £10,000?
Oh god, probably put it into a pension, right????
If you were me, what would you want to ask women about money?
I suppose I would like to know if they feel comfortable with it - the having it or not having it. And if they said yes I’d love to know how they got there.
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It is glorious.
The state of the rental sector in the UK is outrageous - there is so little security for tenants. Plus I will never forgive the thatcher govt for flogging off all the social housing without bothering to build much more
I totally understand the struggle with renting and not being sure how long it will last. In New York we have rent stabilization, which is great because it only increases the rent by a fixed amount each year but the best part that’s talked about less is that your landlord can never kick you out. Is there anything like that in the UK?