Purpose

My sister Jessie (left) and I, age: quite young Personally, I’m yet to feel the effects of the global economic slowdown. I’ve not been made redundant, my salary has not been cut, overtime is still allowed. But I can feel it’s just around the corner. Local redundancies are being announced on a daily basis, and […]

How much does a university education cost these days?

I can tell you, because today I got a statement from the student loans company. This is the total of four years of loans that have to be repaid – it excludes all the (non-repayable) grants that paid my tuition fees. That’s this much in a few other currencies: It is increasing on a monthly […]

Exchange rates, and Running with technology

What’s going on in the currency markets? It’s absolutely mental! During my Year Abroad, £1 equalled 233yen. Today (45 minutes ago), £1 equals 162yen. I was just doing the sums – my salary here is is worth £7000 more than it would have been worth a year ago (if sent back home). This is great […]

It’s only getting better

As of this week, I’m pretty much working seven days a week. It’s part of the self-imposed six month debt-repayment and moving-house program, which is due for completion on the 5th of March 2009. It’s step one of many steps in our Grand Masterplan, some goals of which include the paying off of all family […]

The first 7 days

I had grand plans to document my arrival back in Japan both on this blog, and on a podcast. It’s not going to happen though – at least not yet. I’ve found it a lot more difficult to settle in than I’d anticipated. One main stress factor has been money – or lack of money. […]

The challenges of a long distance relationship

A misunderstanding this week between *Twinkle* and myself has led me to realise that, after 5 months apart, we’ve started to lose touch with one another’s realities. Whilst we do communicate regularly via email (just over 2,500 messages since we saw one another in January), these cannot give us a true picture of the daily […]

Rivers of money …and parking tickets

This past year I have adopted a policy of not holding on to money. The idea is not just to spend willy-nilly. As you know, I’ve done that in the past, with spectacular results. Rather, the idea (simply put) is to not take ownership of money in the first place. Instead of thinking that I […]