Cash Poor

The distinct difficulty I have as a typically time-poor urbanite is that I am not as cash-rich as the articles tell me I should be every time they flag up yet another way to simplify and save time by delegating or automating parts of my life. I’d love to be able to delegate all the boring bits, but I can’t afford it.

Part of trying to simplify my life is that I’d like to stop wasting money on things that are neither useful nor necessary nor beautiful. I’m doing this in the quite possibly unfounded hope that it will diminish the panic I invariably feel at the end of a contract, before I have another one lined up. (There are times when I hate being freelance).

Most ways to save money seem to involve sacrificing time, and vice versa. This is NOT helping. So are there any simple ways around the problem?

Making my own lunch to take to work isn’t all that time-consuming – as I don’t generally wear make-up (cycling to work renders it pointless), I can afford the 5 minutes. It’s cheaper and simpler than spending ages staring at the shelves in the sandwich shop going “um…” Given the amount of mayo in the average sandwich shop offering, it’s probably healthier too.

A common money-saving tip is to shop around. Timewise, all I can say is thank God for price comparison sites.

I’ve started using a top sheet under my duvet. This may seem completely unnecessary but it means I can launder less often, because I only have to change the sheets on a weekly, not the whole bed. And sheets are a lot less bulky to wash, saving time and money at the laundrette (a major plus given the price rises at my local laundromats).

Of course, the first tip they give you for saving money is Budget: write one and stick to it. Um. And spend exactly how much time tracking my expenditure? I do this as part of my job, so I know how time consuming it can be to do it properly.

But the truth is, if you do it in a spreadsheet program, you don’t need to be an IT or maths genius to set up the formulas. And once those are in, it will pretty much do itself as long as you enter the outgoings. I’ve simplified these so all cash transactions fall under “ATM” and then I don’t need to track every last cappuccino. Then it takes 5 minutes a day, if that, and at the end of the month, all I need to do is clear one column and hey presto – it’s reset itself.