Hello and welcome to your annual financial health check. It is just over a year since I took hold of my personal finance and gave it a sit down talk about what a bad personal finance it was. I changed the way I do things in my life so that now I am not poor. Have you?
(At this point I add the disclaimer that I am not a financial expert. I am someone who was stupid with money and I don’t want you to be stupid with money. I want people to learn from my stupidity so that no one else has to be stupid with money.)
Last June, I was working as a cleaner for two companies earning £1300 per month, and an extra £100 per month online as a teacher. I hardly saved anything. Then, I found Dave Ramsey on Youtube and followed his advice, and the advice of Sorelle Amore and Robert Kiyosaki, and suddenly I went from having no money to saving £600-£1000 per month.
I wrote a budget on the first day of every month, telling my money what to do instead of wondering where it went (Dave Ramsey). I paid myself first. I put any pay day pay straight into my bank account (Sorelle Amore). I changed my attitude around money and the purpose of money in my life (Robert Kiyosaki).
UB40 had a famous song, “There’s A Rat In Me Kitchen, what am me going to do?” This was the anthem for the house I lived in last year. I tried to get my housemates to keep the place clean and I put down traps, but to no avail. These were Super Rats. So I moved.
Due to me being mostly self-employed, I did not have the necessary paperwork to move into the beautiful place I wanted to move to. However, thanks to my financial health being healthier, I was able to pay a full year’s rent (including electricity, gas, water and tax) straight off on the phone, so I was able to move in days later.
Money talks. Have money.
I have rebuilt my bank account so I have next year’s rent ready to go and I can add more to my bank balance as I go now for the next six months. I knew that by doing things this way, I would give myself freedom to look for other work. The cleaning contracts came to an end, which was on the cards for months. Also, my boss was saying bizarre things to me and creeping up behind me and prodding me in the back. I have no idea why but she seemed to want a reaction. Don’t know why. I was listening to Akira The Don on Youtube with his Jordan Peterson flip “You Can Say No”. “When someone pushes you a little further than you should go, you can say no.”
So I took on board what Jordan Peterson said and I started looking for another job. I’ve got work as a security guard at football matches and events, plus I am teaching online. I wanted to dress better, smarter, and with these two roles, I now can. I saw which way the wind was blowing and I got out of my main cleaning job. I left. I said no.
I could do that because I had money saved up and I had just started another job.
Money is good. Money is helpful. Money takes the stress out of life when life happens.
Have money.
On the subject of money, the final season of Snowfall landed and I watched it avidly. Wow. The last episode. Wow.
I had to go and rewatch the first episode, then the first season… and then all the seasons. Snowfall is the story of 1980s LA, where smart, academic Franklin sees that being Black will be a hinderance to his possible future success, and his uncle is making some money dealing marijuana. Instead of trying the riskier and more emotionally challenging option of going to university and using his brain for the good of planet Earth, Franklin helps out with his uncle dealing drugs. Franklin then realises that the rich folk are using cocaine, which brings much more money with it, so Franklin gives up the idea of going to a Black university on the other side of the country and instead deals cocaine, and then discovers a new version called crack cocaine.
Franklin and his family become the biggest crack cocaine dealers on the west coast, selling out their community and everyone they ever knew – even the elderly couple who run the Black book shop that Franklin used to visit regularly. The poor Black community get hooked on rock and Franklin and his family become richer than anyone could ever have dreamed. They deal with arms dealers, the CIA, they get shot, they shoot their friends and family, they bury their dead, and they become even richer.
Jerome, Franklin’s uncle, tells his wife Louie that he wants out. He is sick of being shot at, sick of always having to watch his back. Louie says no. She needs to stay dealing for her own self respect because she remembers being the abused child prostitute she was and she needs more – more money, more power – to feel good about herself. Within hours of saying that, Louie is kidnapped, tortured and branded, and Jerome – the only man she has ever loved – is shot dead as he comes to rescue her. Louie ends up penniless, Jeromeless and on the run. She could have got out. She chose not to.
Leon goes through a metamorphosis. He started out with Angry Little Man Syndrome, he learned to hold back only after he had shot a child, he began to read, he began to learn. Leon went to Ghana to reconnect with Mother Africa. He took his girlfriend there. She was recovering from crack addiction, from the drugs that Leon had sold. Leon and Wanda learned about how Africans had sold Africans into slavery. Leon compares this to the slavery he had sold his fellow Black Americans into with addiction to crack.
Leon goes back to the projects of LA with Wanda. They are distraught and lost. They want nothing to do with crack. Leon tries to change things, but no one wants to listen. He does help a smart gang member complete his university application form and he helps that young man get to university. Leon decided to become a solicitor and do something better with his life. Go Leon!
My favourite character in Snowfall has to be Teddy MacDonald. He is the CIA agent who is in and out of Central America, selling drugs, shooting people and generally making himself popular and unpopular at the same time with arms dealers, his bosses and Franklin. I love how Teddy went from being an office boy, kept in the office by his superiors following Teddy’s screw up in Iran and subsequent mental illness, to being a sharp shooter with a face that looks permanently bored and tired. Not much shakes that bored and tired look from Teddy’s face.
Reuben is a half Cuban half Russian KGB agent whose boyfriend has no idea what work takes Reuben away for hours at a time. Teddy goes to talk to Reuben. Teddy is about to quit everything and walk off into the sunset with his girlfriend from Iran. He goes to visit Reuben and tells him, “Go and take whoever size ten shoes those are in the closet and go and live the life you want to live… Next time I see you, I will kill you.”
Teddy had lost his brother and his father to the drugs war and was giving Reuben a way out of everything they were all involved with. Teddy said to Reuben how lonely the life they live is, and he wanted his own happiness, and told Reuben to chase after his happiness instead of continuing to do the work they were all doing.
Whatever you need to leave behind, leave it behind.
It could be a partner, a friend, a habit, a belief about yourself. Whatever is harming your life, you can leave it. You can leave it today. Now.
Or, like Louie, like Franklin, like Teddy, you can stay and deal with the consequences of staying. But is staying worth it? What will it cost you? How will it damage you? Are you worth more?
Franklin unravelled. It started at the end of series 5 and the whole of series 6 was about Franklin putting money first, and by putting money first, he lost everything. His girlfriend left him because Franklin became violent to her and his mother got locked up in prison for murdering Teddy and she refused to speak to Franklin, and this was all over money. Franklin lost all of his money, and eventually, he lost his sanity. Franklin, after owning an empire worth $100 million, became a penniless, mentally ill drunk. Franklin had never touched alcohol. His father had been a homeless drunk. Franklin began drinking and couldn’t stop drinking. All because he put money first.
The Bible does not say that money is the root of all evil. It says the love of money is the root of all evil.
Franklin’s father got himself together – before Teddy shot him – and used his money to run a shelter for other addicts and their families. Franklin’s father loved people. Franklin ruined everyone’s lives and his own through his love of money.
We can do a lot of good with money. We can provide for ourselves, for our family, for causes we want to give to. We can do a lot of good with money. Dave Ramsey says that money will make you more of what you already are. If you are a jerk, money will make you a big jerk. If you are a generous person, money will make you outrageously generous.
Franklin and Louie gave up everything for money, and money devoured them.
We do not have to be stupid with money or with our lives. We can be good stewards of the money we are given. We can increase the money we are given and be good stewards of the increase.
Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps are all over Youtube, and you can get the book, too. But here are the first four steps. Do them in order, don’t skip steps.
1) Get a £1000 emergency fund. Put that money somewhere where you can get to it if you need it (instant access account is good for example) but not where you are going to be tempted to get to it and blow it on pizza and Pepsi (such as your sock drawer).
2) Pay off all debts, starting with the smallest debt, finishing with the biggest debt. This is about behaviour modification, plus the change of mentality and emotion around money, not about tackling the worst debt first.
3) Save enough money for 3-6 months of everything you need eg rent, bills, tax, food. Have this money saved up so that if you get ill or have an accident or want to take a break, you can and there will be no financial stress in the stress of everything else.
4) Invest 15% your income into your pension. I put £200 per month into a private pension and have done so for over 10 years now. It is bubbling away nicely. If you are in the UK and don’t have a private pension, get one. Speak to your bank, go to every bank on the high street and see who can do what for you. You need to do this so that you can retire with dignity.
This week, I read that 56% university students in the UK are doing sex work.
As I have said before, I have to question the entire mindset and moral compass of anyone who says, “I’m a few quid short. I know! I’ll become a prostitute. I’ll become a webcammer. I’ll debase myself for money instead of deferring my course or going part time so I can work or even not going to university at all seeing as most jobs prefer workers to have practical work skills instead of an often useless degree these days.”
Today, while working at a football match, I got chatting with the 20 year old I was buddied up with. He is earning £3000 per month. He does JCB work – he operates a large road and building site digger from 07:00 – 17:00 five days per week. £3000 per month at the age of 20. He works at the football ground because he’s a fan of the team whose ground he works in. He doesn’t need the money.
You want to make sure that you have money and that money doesn’t have you.
Jesus said in Matthew 6:24 “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”
One of our friends from India said that some people in India, instead of worshipping Ganesha or Shiva or Jesus, put money on an altar and worship the money. Some people worship money in many different ways.
There is a difference between thanking God for the money you have and using that money to do good in your family and in causes you support and worshipping that money. Total world of difference. I often say to God, “You give me the shifts, I will do the work and You give me the money.”
Luke 12:33 – 34, Jesus said, “Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for youselves that will not wear out, a treasure in Heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Jesus just gave us Franklin’s story. Franklin treasured money. Money left Franklin, and Franklin’s life disintergrated. Franklin made money his life instead of using money to give life to others like his father did when he set up the shelter to help fellow addicts.
Whatever is most important in your life will determine your life. It will determine mine. That is a challenge. I get so caught up with chasing shifts that I don’t pray, I don’t read the Bible, I don’t go for a walk. I get caught up with making sure I am OK instead of trusting God that He will make everything OK. And He always does.
Ruby Rose has tattooed on her hand “Let go and let God” which is a phrase Christians were using a few years ago. Let go of checking my inbox for shifts every few minutes and trust God will provide.
The shift I went on today, I talked a bit with my shift manager and he wants me there at every match he runs. Great! That is half of my month sorted.
And it’s stressful checking my phone every few minutes in case a shift comes in with a care company that I don’t really want to work for. So I’m jacking that, and just focussing on the online work, the possible in-class teaching work that may be coming up and the football and other events the security company wants me to work at.
I need to work at the letting go and letting God thing. I have always worked and always made sure I have enough shifts. Life has always been uncertain for me. I have lost job after job for being gay and my family are homophobic/biphobic thugs so myself and my husband are on our own. I do worry to some extent that I have enough money saved up because I have no backstop, no loving family.
It’s also my self respect. Everything I have, I have because I worked for it.
And God blessed my work.
I have enough money saved up. I am OK. I need to remember that. My husband owns his house and I can stay with him if I need to. We would drive each other to distraction again, but his house is there if I need it. I need to work but I also need to trust God more.
Baby steps everyone. Baby steps.
Make sure you have done Baby Steps 1-4 if you are in the UK.
Good luck!
catherinehume 