All posts filed under: Money

My house-buying journey

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Buckle up, it’s a looong one.  Jan 2021 I’ve moved back to my mum’s during lockdown and decided to give up my London flat, so I have the motivation to start this house-buying ‘journey’. I hate the phrase ‘journey’ but as this is a flipping epic saga it makes sense.  I set up alerts on Rightmove and draw up a list of must-haves and definitely-absolutely-no’s for my dream pad.  I want a period property with at least 2 bedrooms. Nice to have: my own front door. Very nice to have: a separate dining room, bay window and garden.  It’s been SUCH a long process and I feel like my life is kind of on hold. @chez.shez Alerts start pinging for properties but as it’s lockdown I don’t rush to follow up–big mistake–properties are getting snapped up in record time.  See a lovely 2 bed Victorian terrace with a garden on a quiet street next to a cute little pub. I think this is a contender, call up the estate agents and book a viewing. I’m …

Buying Your First Home as a Single Woman

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Owning my own home was something I never thought was possible. As a fully paid-up member of generation rent I was fully of the belief that home ownership was simply out of reach. I left university smack bang in the middle of a recession, interned for free and worked hard in an industry renowned for not paying that well (fashion). All while paying extortionate London rents. I never had a penny of savings, never had any money at the end of the month, and frequently got my card declined at the supermarket (until I realised that any transaction under £20 wouldn’t register with my bank and proceeded to get lots of overdraft fees). This sounds all doom and gloom… but there’s a happy ending! You can buy a house as a single woman. This month I had my offer on a house accepted and a mortgage accepted with a good lender. So how did I do it? Read on… Widen your options for where you want to live I have lived in London for almost …

7 Money Management Tips For Travel

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Travelling and money go hand in hand – if you want to see the world, it’s gonna cost you (although I have some tricks to cut costs HERE). Preparing for my own backpacking trip forced me to check my own bad spending habits and, frankly nonexistent, budgeting skills – so in the spirit of friendship I extend these tips to you. 1. Set a Budget No matter how much money you have saved, or how little you need to know exactly how much money you have to spend each day. Have this amount seared into your mind. If you go over one day, then pull it back the next and if you are underspending either save that cash for a treat or to extend your trip. 2. Open a New Account A savings account that you don’t have easy access to is a great thing. I used to have a savings account but as soon as I logged into my internet banking I was able to quickly siphon any funds into my current account. So …

The Best Travel Budgeting App – Review

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If you’re going backpacking for a few weeks or months then keeping on top of your budget is paramount, I know boring… but if you accidentally blow all your dineros in the first few days your trip will be cut short. Obviously while you do want to be careful with your cash you do not want to spend hours each day faffing around with receipts, spreadsheets and paper. There’s an app for everything and I thought I’d road-test some of the best money travel apps available. Which I did, and as soon as I started looking into it, it became abundantly clear that TRAIL WALLET is head and shoulders above the rest. So I’ll just tell you about that one… *Please note this in no way sponsored or affiliated with Trail Wallet, I just genuinely think it’s a cool and useful app. In a Nutshell “Trail Wallet is an easy travel expense tracker for iPhone and iPad. Designed to be fast, it takes the headache out of expense tracking so you can focus on the …

The 7 Best Money Saving Tips for Backpacking

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Chances are, you’re not that well off… don’t get offended, I say this as a fellow pauper. Also, in Sherlock Holmes fashion, I have deduced that if you were ‘in the money’ then you wouldn’t choose backpacking as your method of seeing the world. If I had the dough it would be Kardashian-type excursions to the Maldives, sippin’ on yak, and wearing Roberto Cavalli kaftans. As it stands, I’m a mere mortal; travel – even on a shoestring – requires cold, hard cash and quite a lot of it. So you’re going to have to save those pennies, something I have realised is hard, so here are some tried and tested tips to help you fund that trip. Please bear in mind that I’m from the UK and lived in London, one of the most expensive cities in the entire world, so my tips come from that perspective. If you’re an Ozzie or from the US or Western Europe you’ll still probably find they apply to you. 1. SET A GOAL Before you depart you …

Why Going Travelling Nearly Made Me Have a Nervous Breakdown*

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* Not literally, obvs, but planning a RTW is hard! I had second and third thoughts before I even stepped foot on a plane (let alone another country). I pulled it back though and that’s the important thing, but nevertheless, I found that I had a bit of a wobble a few months before my trip… So, okayyyy, in the big scheme of things, a year or two spent travelling is a drop in the ocean, but when you’re in your twenties, a year is a long time. A whole lot can happen in a year (and often does) and that scared me, I thought ‘sh*t am I wasting my prime years?’. The answer to that is ‘no’, because like Jennifer Lopez, I will not reach my prime until my early 40s which leaves plenty of time for globetrotting. Financially travelling scared me too, this is because prior to actually committing to a year of travel I was a bit ignorant of the costs. I knew about flights and making sure that I had enough cash …

What That Coffee Can Buy You Around The World

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Let me first level with you by saying that I have never, ever bought a coffee in my entire life. This is because I hate coffee – seriously, I’ve tried it about three times and the last time I had a sip it made me feel violently ill for DAYS. No exaggeration. It’s yukky. BUT I do buy tea, wine, cakes, all sorts of sh*t, so the coffee is a symbol for our mindless consumerism, okay? Now, a lot of people like to tell you that by skipping your weekly Starbucks you can save X amount in a year… blah, blah, blah. But we are the generation of instant gratification, we can’t sacrifice the little things for some unknown future reward.We need them! So with that in mind I’ve taken the liberty of showing you EXACTLY what the price of a Cappuccino (let’s average it out at £3) will you get you around the world. THAILAND £3 = 160 Thai Baht Your Frappuccino will get you a night in a hostel dorm in Thailand – …

The Ultimate Guide to eBaying

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Going travelling? Want some extra cash? Then eBay is a great way to make some mullah by selling your old clothes… let’s face it we’ve all got a lot. It can be a/ a ball ache and b/ difficult to master, so here are some tip tips. As a fashion blogger I not only bought a lot of clothes, and I mean a lot, I also got sent tons of freebies too. If I’m honest even when I was at my most prolific I probably only regularly wore about 15% of my wardrobe. Some stuff was too small, and no amount of running or wishful thinking would remedy that, some stuff too big (from the college years), and some stuff unworn, unwanted or unfashionable. I found that I was quite ashamed of the amount of clothes I’d accumulated and only worn once or not at all, I had so much stuff that even if I wore a new outfit each day it would take me years to get round to wearing all of it. Disgusting consumerism …