It's All About the Money, Money, Money

Photo by 401k via Flickr

The best thing about my job is getting paid. I enjoy my work and I like my colleagues but at the end of the day I'm in it for the money, not the job satisfaction. Getting paid after years of pocket money and student loans is an amazing feeling- for the first time you are truly financially independent, your money is under your sole control.

The downside to all this is that you are financially independent and in sole control of your money. All those bits of paper you used to pass over to your dad? Your's now. All the cash sympathetic relatives would send your way? Gone now- people assume you have plenty of money.

So what to do with your money once you've got it? Obviously for many people a reasonable (or unreasonable depending on your job and point of view) chunk of it goes on rent, transport to and from work and basic necessities (by which I mean food- not beer or shoes!)

Whatever is left over is yours to do as what you want with- save it, spend it, roll around in it, just remember it's got to last you a month. This week we're looking at what to do with your cash and the pitfalls to avoid falling into. 

So, save or spend? Despite the carefree, reckless life young twenty-somethings are purported to lead, not all of us take an ostrich- like head in the sand approach to the future. However, interest rates are at an all time low which can make it difficult to know whether a savings account is worth having. Generally speaking you are always better off with the bulk of your money out of your current account and many banks provide e-savings accounts that allow you to instantly move money back to your current account so you can always access it if you need it.

The main alternative to using a savings account is to put your money into an ISA. This is a longer term option and better for larger sums as it meas you don't pay tax on it. However, your money is less accessible because you can only keep contributing to an ISA up to £5000 and if you withdraw money before you reach this limit, you cannot continue adding money beyond the value you had before withdrawal. This means that before you put money in an ISA you should consider the likelihood that you're going to want it back in the near future.

One option that I adopted is to run both: once I've 'banked' a certain amount in my e-savings, I transfer half to my ISA. That way I have money available but not sitting around unnecessarily accruing tax.

If you decide not to save, you need to make sure you are happy and secure in your current position. Savings are a buffer for when you are in-between jobs so you need to be sure that won't be a situation you find yourself in. When spending, also keep in mind that you need to budget for four weeks: I plan my shopping trips so that I indulge myself as soon as I get paid and then keep my money for socialising and necessities. Then at the end of the month I know I can safely spend whatever is left over without going overdrawn.

Off the back of this is the issue of credit cards: contrary to media scandal-mongering, they can actually be a good idea- within certain limits. For young earners, especially those living at home, a credit card is the easiest way to develop a good credit score- something that is essential further on in life for securing mortgages and loans. Making online purchases and booking flights on your credit card means that your goods and tickets are insured so that if your order doesn't arrive or your flight is cancelled you can get your money back. Credit cards can also be useful if you need to make a large purchase that you can't afford until next payday as you don't have to pay it off immediately. 

However, you DO need to be careful: if you don't pay it off on time your credit rating can go down just as easily as up and worst case scenario you could end up getting phone calls from the bailiffs (this happened to me once when my paypal was hacked and it was really scary). To avoid getting into too much trouble I advise you to set your own credit limit: the bank will offer you far more than you actually need, so choose a limit that will allow you to make the purchases you need but that your paycheck or savings could conceivably cover in a worst case scenario.

At the end of the day, enjoying your money while you're young is the most important thing but don't overdo it: its worth buying sensibly and planning in advance for big or extravagant purchases. You might like spending but you WON'T like debt.

Love in the Time of Computers and Commuters Part 2

Photo by Hysterical Bertha via Flickr

At the moment my life comprises of work and sleep and as I live with my parents, fitting a boyfriend into the latter isn’t really an option. My situation isn’t an uncommon one in today’s house and job market which is why so many people opt for the former option: finding a person at work.  40-60% of marriages started from a meeting at work and speaking from experience not only my parents but also a ridiculously large section of the staff at my school have successfully exploited this proximity-driven opportunity to find long term relationships.

In terms of meeting people, work is probably the environment that most closely approximates that of university: there are a lot of people around, quite often of a similar age to you and who you have something in common with. For people with jobs in professions that require a lot of shift work, dating colleagues is often the only way to maintain a relationship as irregular hours can otherwise place stress on a couple.

However, clearly there are some major drawbacks to dating co-workers: breakups can be messy and unless you’re prepared to find another job when it ends, you’re going to have to see them every day and possibly face the fact that they’re with you 24/7 meaning that it can be difficult to keep a healthy work-life balance.

Clearly a work relationship is not always ideal or even possible: some work environments are predominantly one or the other sex and unless you work in a large company or department there might not be anyone your own age. However, it can work as statistics and experience have shown.

Below is another hastily put together interview with a co-worker who has been in a committed work relationship for nearly a decade.

Q Have you dated more than one person from work?

A Yes, but there was a long period in between and it wasn’t really dating as such. Both times it was somebody I was in the same department as.

Q Did you have reservations about dating someone from work?

A Yes

Q What made you decide to do it anyway?

A Love (laughs) it has to be doesn’t it?

Q What do you think is the advantage of a relationship at work?

A You have a better understanding of each other and the pressures of work and you’ve got something in common

Q Did you try other ways of meeting people?

A Yes, for example the internet wasn’t really about, but I did use papers ads and just sort of relied on chance. I went to an 18-30 social group and had quite a few boyfriends from there.

Q What advice would you give people contemplating a work relationship?

A Think carefully about it before you jump in because you get very emotionally attached- my first relationship at work, when it ended and he went out with somebody else from work I went and handed in my resignation.

Meeting Through Friends

This in my opinion is the best way to make people; one of the great things about leaving university and everybody getting jobs is that although your friendships remain as strong as ever, people also make a new lot of friends and acquaintances that you can meet through them.

The advantages of this are numerous: people who are friends of your friends of your friends are likely to have things in common with you, they are ‘vetted’ by your friend (you would assume they don’t befriend creepy weirdos) and should things go horribly wrong you don’t have to suffer through regular awkward social encounters.

However there are drawbacks: meeting someone ‘through’ your friend means that that friend will become an important part of the equation and if your friends are anything like mine they will not just sit passively by. Also any breakup scenario will inevitably cause problems for your friend as the middle man: you might not have to see them every day but for your friend it might be a different story.

Meeting people through your friends becomes increasingly feasible as you grow up: housewarming party, milestone birthdays, marriages, christenings, reunions, work parties, the opportunities are numerous. One of my work colleagues met her partner at a friend’s birthday pub crawl and my aunt met my uncle because she worked with my mum, who was married to my dad, who was my uncle’s brother (did you follow that?).

At the end of the day though, there are no guarantees in Romance, as in life: you could try all these things and end up along or you could trip and fall into the arms of your soulmate walking down the street tomorrow (we’re hoping for the latter). In the meantime, its sensible to make the most of every opportunity to meet people. If there’s someone out there for everyone you don’t want to miss yours by staying at home with the cat.

Let us know about your dating experiences and advice in the comments below J

Love in the Time of Computers and Commuters Part 1

I spent this Valentine’s day with my grandmother. Several of my friends spent it with work colleagues or at home on the sofa. Even some of my coupled up friends didn’t have plans.

Why was this?

Because this year Valentine’s day was a Tuesday in half term and everybody had work or family obligations.

At university dating was very much a matter of choice and convenience- social life was easily available, everybody was your age and it didn’t really matter anyway because you were young.

Subconsciously, we all assumed that we would meet our long time partners there at some point (for some reason I persisted in this belief right up to graduation). 

Once you graduate and this hasn’t happened you realise two things:

  

    Your free time and social life almost completely disappear once you start work

                 

                    Other people are starting to get married

These two things can induce panic and/or despondency but they also bring about a dawning realisation that the way we go about looking for relationships is going to have to change. Setting aside chance meetings, fated lovers and kismet, most workers and postgrads meet their partner through work, mutual friends or online dating. Over the next couple of posts I will be examining the efficacy of these three methods using first-hand experience, dubious statistics and the hastily collected testimonies of my friends and co-workers.

Online Dating

Over the last few years the acceptance and utilisation of online dating as a legitimate form of courtship has grown exponentially, blossoming from the last resort of the truly desperate to the smart choice for the modern working girl or boy.

 As interest has grown, so too has the number of websites catering to the singles market and you can now find sites catering to the love-minded for almost any hobby, physical trait or idiosyncrasy you can think of, alongside more corporate mainstream forums such as match.com (For an amusing look at your options check out podcast- The Complete Guide toEverything and their episode dating part one).

Just how valid is the choice to go online with your love life though? Do the results support its apparent popularity? Well according to my survey of Wikipedia, 17% of married couples in 2010 had met online, and as soon as I mentioned the topic of online dating at work I was inundated with tales of success from friends and family, far outweighing any disaster stories that might have occurred. In fact, aside from the lingering prejudice that online dating is a bit ‘desperate’, few people had a bad word to say about it.

As I shamefacedly admit to an irrational dislike of online dating as an option for my own love life (despite enthusiastically championing it for other peoples’) I have ‘interviewed’ a friend who has regularly used online dating for a couple of years, albeit to date unsuccessfully, about her experiences with love online (Names withheld to protect the embarrassed).

Q When and why did you decide to start online dating?

A I started when I was still at uni because it wasn’t proving very successful. It just wasn’t very easy to meet people because when I went out I was drunk and the men I met only wanted one thing.

Q Do you think online dating is a better method of getting to know someone then?

A Not properly knowing someone. It gives you a start and it’s a way of meeting people you wouldn’t normally meet. (It’s more) checking the basics, checking you’re compatible.

Q How successful do you think online dating has been?

A For me personally not very, although it’s nice to speak to people. But my friend found her long- time partner that way and I’m quite picky.

Q Do you think online dating is a good option when working full time?

A Yes because there’s less time to get out and it’s nice to meet people outside of work.

Q Have you tried other methods of meeting people?

A Yes, work- its awkward when you split up though. Friends have been good (for meeting people) but again I’m picky

Q What’s your worst story from online dating?

A I’ve got two: one is meeting up with guys and them not looking like they should (from the picture) and I’m picky about looks, the other is the guy who was much keener than me and didn’t leave my house for five hours.

Q What advice would you give to people starting online dating?

A Be open to different kinds of people, be completely honest on your profile, message as many people as possible and when you write a message be interesting- don’t just write ‘Hi, how are you’.

So that’s the lowdown on online dating- a reasonable chance of success and a way to fit your search for romance around your schedule. It might not be the most romantic story to tell the grandchildren but it’s better than never having grandchildren at all… Tune in next time for all the information you need about meeting people through work and making the most of your friends and relatives.