CHALLENGE: Best of British – Eat Local

It began with a debate

My family were eating dinner. My sister and father had fish, whilst my mother and I had vegetable fingers. I pointed out that their cod stocks are being heavily overfished and commercial fishing had a devastating impact on the environment.

My Dad said that was all very well, but what about the damage caused by the Mediterranean chickpeas and American haricot beans we were eating? The food miles would be in the thousands for each item on our plates!

Food miles

How much of what is on your plate is actually local? We eat food from all over the globe without a second thought; bananas from India, sugar from Brazil, peanuts from China. It travels thousands of miles, often by air, to reach shops while it is still fresh.

The government estimates that food transport to and around the UK accounts for around 15 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions every year. That's more than the entire carbon output of several small countries!

The Challenge

I decided that for a week I will eat only British produce. This means no cane sugar, no tea or coffee (even Tregothnan tea, grown in Cornwall, is blended with imported Indian leaves), no peanut butter and a whole lot of label checking. Only things that are grown in the UK or made of 100% British ingredients are allowed.

I started on Thursday and found the challenge to be a lot harder than it sounds! I'll write more about the difficulties of it tomorrow!

Car = Fixed

You know my car was making a horrible strange noise? It was the wheel bearing that needed replacing (I actually guessed that - clearly a mechanical genius!). This set me back £122 to get repaired.

This came less than a month after Jools broke down in Bristol, which fortunately only cost me £14.50 to get fixed. Next week he's going back in to get the fan belt tension-thingy replaced, which will be another £160.

That's the problem with older cars; they're cheap to buy but expensive to run! Jools has now cost almost £300 SINCE SEPTEMBER! Rarrr! The garage says he should be fine after these repairs are done though. I'm glad I've started saving for things like this!

I Am A Strange Google Search Term

It made me smile to read that someone had come across my blog by Googling, “did they create the recession to save the planet?”. If Governments were that altruistic and selfless (doing things for the good of the world, not just to win votes!) I think there would be a lot more hope for us all!

Student Loans: Why You Shouldn't Pay It Back Early!

IMPORTANT: This information applies to people who began studying for their degree between 1998 and 2011. Pre-1998 loans are far more expensive and are much more worthwhile paying off sooner! 2012 and onward loans are different again, so please see this page for information on that!

On my sidebar, you can see that I am close to repaying the overdraft and other debts I accumulated whilst living as a student. You may be surprised to learn that figure does NOT cover the thousands of pounds I have in student loan debts.

Why do I not count this as soul-destroying debt that I should be digging myself out from underneath right now? The answer is that it is not consumer debt.

Whilst normal loans have an interest rate of 8-12%, a student loan's interest rate is set at either the Bank of England's base rate plus 1%, or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower. The current interest rate is 1.5%. Student loans do not affect your credit score either. This means that the value of the loan will stay the same in line with the annual increase in living costs.

Required Repayments

If you began your course between 1998 and 2011, you are required to repay 9% of your income over £15000. This begins on the 6^th April after you graduate. If your wage falls below £15000 a year you stop making payments. The debt is wiped out after 25 years or if you die.

If you are an employee, the payments are be automatically deducted from your wages and will show up on your pay slip. If you are self-employed, you have to do some self-assessment calculations based on your income and National Insurance payments. Please see the government's website for more information.

Why NOT to repay your loan early

If you wish, you can make voluntary repayments on your loan. To the uninformed, this sounds like a wise use of excess cash, but there are two major reasons NOT to pay them off early!

The vast majority of debts, such as bank loans, car repayments, credit cards, mortgages, etc., will charge you much higher rates of interest than your student loan. Focus your efforts on repaying these (if you have them) to save yourself a lot of money in the long run. If you are planning on getting a mortgage in the future, any extra money would be best used to lay down a deposit on a house – the bigger your deposit, the less interest you will have to pay in the long run!

You can gain a lot more interest in savings than the interest paid on your loan. A cash ISA will give you in the region of a 3% return per year. Other savings could give you an even greater return if you decided to invest it.

Other types of student loan

Graduates who began their course before 1998 will have a different loan with a much higher interest rate. The advice above does not apply and I encourage you to research the best approach for your situation.

Students beginning their course from September 2012 will be subject to a different system again. The new, obscenely high tuition fees mean that most will graduate with over £50,000 in student debts, but you will not repay until you are earning above £21,000. See the Government's information page for more advice.

Evil Tripod Noise of Doom!

You know the sound the tripods make in The War of the Worlds?:

That's the noise my car has started making!

Dad has deemed it unsafe because he has no idea what's causing it. Of course what with all the bank holidays lately, the garages have been shut and are now fully booked up until next week! It is NOT easy to get to work at 5am in Cornwall when your car has stopped working! (Sorry that you had to get up so early, Dad...)

You think you're getting somewhere, then something always comes out of the blue to knock you back down to Earth! I'm really hoping it won't cost too much to fix because I've only just started putting money away for this sort of thing!!

Resolving to Live Better for Less

It's that time of year again. Do I dare set a resolution publicly? Well, I've been meaning to do these things anyway so it's high time I had some accountability!

My biggest financial goal for the year is to achieve 100 days of not spending a single penny. Different people I've spoken to have different opinions on whether it will be laughably easy or torturingly difficult.

The rules are that rent/bills going out of your account are not included, but meals, parking, food shopping, entertainment, gifts, fuel, etc. are considered “spend”. It has been pointed out that I may just bunch lots of unnecessary spending into “spend” days, but I counter with the opposite; if I'm on a no-spend roll, I will be far less likely to succumb to “let's go and get a drink” or “shall we go to town for a bit?”.

Another financial goal is to record every penny earned and spent. I will carry a little notebook on me at all times. Any purchase, bill, car park, charity donation, etc. will be recorded, as will any income received on the day, either in the form of wages, gifts, tax refund (roll on April!!), etc. I'm hoping I won't get too obsessive, but I would LOVE to be able to see where my money goes and how much I'm saving/spending/wasting!

Also, follow my own advice on reducing waste and helping the planet.

Some personal goals:

Find the perfect PhD!

Spend less time online and more time with my friends. I think I might have to just ignore Facebook. I'm not on it for hours, but I am on it at least once a day. I currently spend a lot of time reading news articles and of course blogs!

Lose a little bit of weight each week until I'm at my goal. It could be 2lbs, it could be 0.25lbs, all that matters is the downward trend! (Boooo, so cliché!)

Have you set yourself goals for 2012? Will you be paying down debt, building your own house, getting fit or simply staying happy?

Wishing you a happy, healthy and frugal 2012!

Setting Aside Money for Annual Expenses

Most household costs can be easily worked into a budget. Monthly rent and bills, fuel costs, mobile phone contract, food costs, etc. If I have £50 left over after all that, it's mine to spend, right? Wrong!!

Christmas is a fantastic example of an annual event which can “come from nowhere” and bust your budget! It happens every year, yet this year has been the first where I've actually set aside a little from every pay packet to spread the cost. I've just been going through my budget and thinking of how much I need to budget weekly and monthly to be able to afford the annual costs of living!

Car tax – My car tax is due for renewal in February, when I need to pay either £215 for a year or £118 for 6 months. (Makes me miss my little Micra's 1 litre engine and £130 for a year's tax!!)

MOT – The MOT safety checks for Jools the Peugeot will cost approximately £50 at my local garage. Since he'll be 12 years old by September when it's due, I'm guessing it'll cost a little in repairs too. I've budgeted an extra £50, but if he costs more than that then it's a matter for my Emergency Fund!

Car insurance renewal – Again, due in September. I'll be a year older and hopefully with a year's No Claims Discount, HOWEVER the EU has ruled that women's car insurance prices have to be equal to men (despite us being ten times less likely to have a serious crash...) from December next year, so my insurance is likely to increase, rather than decrease, next year. (Don't get me started on how somehow sexism is not allowed in car insurance yet ageism is!!) Worst case scenario is about £70 a month with a £150 deposit, so I'm budgeting £220 for the initial outlay.

Gifts – Christmas cost me about £130 this year for my entire family, which is at least £300 less than normal! (We used to go a bit crazy at Christmas!) For this year, I am budgeting £300 for all gifts, which will include both birthdays and Christmas!

Dental checkups – Dentists charge anything from £15-£40 just to look at your teeth, and you're supposed to go every six months. I know I need some work doing too, so I have a separate fund for this.

Things you may also need to consider:

Television License – If it were up to me, we wouldn't have a television at home. When I'm at Uni again later in the year, I will not get one. If you do have one, don't forget to budget £145.50 for this year.

Holidays – If you want to go away over the summer, spread the cost over the winter months too!

Subscriptions – Do you have any annual subscriptions to the gym, magazines, clubs etc.?

Insurance – Do you have to pay any life, home or disability insurance premiums annually?

I need to spread the cost of approximately £900 over the course of the year. £17 a week sounds a lot better than squeezing £400 into my normal budget in September!!

Have you got a section in your budget for occasional expenses? How much do you need to save?