It’s a question that has always struck fear into my heart, but I’ve been pondering again on how best to answer it.

I’m getting more comfortable with the response “I’m a writer” as it seems a fair descriptor of my focus in life and what I want to be when I grow up. After all, I’m told repeatedly that, on average, it takes ten years of writing before seeing any success. Even then the vast majority of full-time authors rarely earn anything above pin money, yet you would still describe them as writers. Just because my skills still need work before I even consider submitting anything, doesn’t mean the increasing collection of large word-processor files on my hard-drive isn’t writing.

Of course, given my current writing patterns, a more accurate response would probably be “I am a serial starer at blank word-processor pages”, but that’s just being picky.

The only problem is that the “I’m a writer” response invites the return question of “What do you write? Would I have read any of it?” and somehow the two first draft novels that have been abandoned and a collection of half-finished short stories doesn’t sound that impressive, even if you include non-fiction writing. Most people do still equate “writer” with “published author”, rightly or wrongly we live in a culture which values paid work only.

So, moving on to paid work descriptors. Over my employment years, I could use several – all starting with the rather telling line “I work in…” (customer service / copywriting / SEO / administration – delete as applicable) rather than “I am…”. I am incredibly grateful for these jobs, they help pay bills and nice things, and I am always professional and give my very best. However, they’re sporadic and I don’t tend to think of them as part of my identity – I rarely remember to give these as my answer to “What Do You Do?”.

I do have the expected fallback of “I am a stay-at-home mother” even if it does tend to end the conversation at that point. However, it sounds increasingly pathetic to my ears now that my mothering tends to be outside school-hours only, and I was never really one to pin my whole identity on my reproductive abilities in the first place.

Maybe I should just list everything I ever do? What do you think?

“I am a writer, photographer, mother, administrator, gamer, tropical fish keeper, camper, cyclist, knitter, amateur genealogist, kitchen cook, blogger, humanist and serial hobbyist.” You know, I think the poor sod would never ask the question “what do you do?” ever again…

Today I am back to being an employed person. I am no longer a feckless sponger living off the generosity of my husband (yes Akra, I do appreciate that you don’t think of it that way!)

Okay, it’s only working from home for a few hours here and there and will be sporadic at best, but it helps. Especially as the washing machine is currently making ominous noises and refusing to drain.

It has slightly scuppered my intention to reduce my computer use, but at least it’s timed well with my more disciplined use of my time.

I am still intending to keep up the routine of writing here regularly. Except, I am conscious that I’m doing a poor job in replying to comments of late. I’m consciously veering towards making sure there’s a regular post rather than worrying too much about other site stuff, but am I getting the balance right? I do read and appreciate every comment that you leave, even if I don’t always reply.

Anyway, enough navel-gazing. Back to work!

In the local paper today, there was the following advert:

Looking for a Trainee Journalist. Full NCTJ training to NCE level will be given to the right candidate, who needs to show aptitude, commitment and enthusiasm. Applicants should have excellent writing skills and relevant further education or training and/or work experience.

Some random thoughts.

• the advert stopped me in my tracks – spider sense tingling, the full works. I’d love this job.
• working at a local paper would probably be a fairly broad experience too – you’d have to be able to do a bit of everything.
• I’m not even remotely qualified for it. I don’t have any relevant further education, training or work experience. I just love writing.
• The only way I could demonstrate my aptitude, commitment and enthusiasm would be to show them this site. Then my online identity would be blown out of the water and blogging when your employer knows where you are has never really appealed.
• It would likely be minimum wage while training, full time, odd hours and completely impossible to organise (affordable) childcare around.

Damnit.

Six years ago or in three years time, it would have been perfect.

An overheard snippet of conversation while on the way to pick up Akra Jr from school today:

Bloke 1: … was 23 quid
Bloke 2: 23 QUID?! That’s half a day’s wages, mate!

Not a particularly exceptional conversation, I grant you, but it did get me thinking.

I don’t know what the purchase in question was, but what a great way to view money! I think most people have a cut off point, below which a spend is off the radar – the cut off varies in life and among different people – £10, £20, £30… below which the transaction becomes an impulse buy without it registering as “real” money.

So – if you started to view purchases in terms of the hours or days it actually took you to earn it – would your cut off point be much lower than it is now? It certainly makes a £10 takeaway feel a lot more expensive and extravagant…

Bother.

That’s the polite version.

Well, it looks like the regular freelance work Akra did in the evenings will be drying up shortly. It won’t cripple us financially, but there goes all the “frills”.

I am beginning to feel increasingly guilty that I’m not going out to work myself, despite me being unlikely to earn enough to cover childcare costs even if I did. I know in my head that me staying at home to look after the boys is the right decision for us at this point in time – we’re in a privileged position to be able to do so. Doesn’t stop me feeling bad that it’s Akra pulling in most of the second income with his “spare time” in the evenings.

Doing the odd bit of freelance writing and receiving an occasional Freefivers cheque seems quite a paltry contribution in the scheme of things.

Remember a little while back I mentioned that I’d joined Free Fivers? Well, I got my first cheque this morning – a whopping £90.91!

Earnings next month should be substantially less though, as I’ve done the available quick one-off lump sum clickthroughs and many of the repeat clickthroughs have dropped off of late (gone down from a potential £3 a day earning to around 50p a day) – hopefully they’ll get some new affiliates soon to beef the daily clicks up a bit.

Still, can’t complain. It’s made my bank balance a bit healthier this month, that’s for sure.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen loads of those banners saying “earn cash for browsing the web”, gone “yeah right” and ignored them completely. As I’ve mentioned before, I quite often pop on a few prize draw sites and surveys – won a couple of prizes (£200 once, yay!) after a lot of boring form filling in and still waiting to hit the minimum pay outs on the web surveys, so generally motivation is low (Aside: has *anyone* had a payout from You Gov surveys yet?!).

Anyway, someone told me about Free Fivers and I thought I’d give it a go. The basic idea is that they’re a collection of shop and site ads who give you cashback on purchases if you click through them or pay you pence per click through. The most lucrative seem to be the bingo sites, many of whom will offer deals like “deposit £10 get £15 cashback” (as long as you’re disciplined enough to *only* play through your initial deposit, that is). The most useful part of the site though, is a click through guide written by one of the users (see the Forums) which, in theory, helps you to earn about £3 a day just running through the free clicks (i.e. the ones you don’t have to buy anything from). In practise, I mostly get about £1.50 to £2 on a run through and it takes me about 20-30 mins. I also get any online purchases that I would have made anyway by clicking through to the shop via them. My running total at the moment is about £45, those are mostly the free click throughs and I joined on the 31st October – it adds up fairly fast. It’s a slow process – minimum payout is £25 but you have to wait for them to be validated which takes about a month – should get a cheque on the second month after joining if you’re consistent, but don’t expect a payout in time for Christmas. I haven’t had a cheque yet, but I know people who have so I know they’re legit.

If any of my UK readers fancy joining and want to use this link instead of the one above, I get a fiver once you receive your first £25 cheque for no extra cost to yourselves, but please don’t feel obligated to use it – I’m recommending the site because it’s useful rather than pimping for dosh. Hopefully at least the stay at home mums among us might find the extra cash handy!

I meant to post this wonderful article on thrift in the Times a couple of days ago, but the excitement of spending too much on birthday parties carried it out of my mind…

It’s actually a really good read, if only because it’s positive, funny and very well written. It’s actually inspired me to get back into watching our money more carefully rather than just put the fear of god into me like most money articles seem to do. I did once have my budget well under control, but it’s creeping onto the side of unruly again with the extra expenditure the extension has entailed. I can and will get it back under control again.

[Smug Mode: Off]

Well, the running away fund didn’t last for long. I suddenly realised that I was going to have to seriously dip into it when I looked at Akra Jr this morning and realised his longest jumper only reached down to his belly button… oops! Not only that but he was overdue for feet measurement too.

So, I scrabble around in my purse and find £30 (no idea how that got there, I normally operate on a no cash policy to stop me spending it!), my mother promises me £40 to buy “an outfit” for him, I stopped laughing and told her I could get a couple for that, and using the money put away and dipping slightly into next month’s “spare” cash I came up with a budget of £170 to completely reclothe my son.

And I don’t think I did too badly.

One pair of shoes (of *course* his feet had grown – having no money virtually guarantees it), the only pair in Clarks his size so not much choice and to be fair the last pair are getting a bit battered – he’s had good wear out of them … £28

From Mothercare: 1 dressing gown, 2 pairs of pyjamas, 5 pairs of trousers and 5 tops… £88

That leaves £54 to stock up on 5 jumpers (Mothercare had none in stock Akra Jr’s size, and they don’t sell the toddler clothes online, boo hoo). No problem (she says, after looking at Blooming Marvellous and discovering their jumpers are £19 each… criminal!)

Also, on my money discovery mission I found £20 worth of vouchers for M&S hidden away that we’d forgotten about. So got a more advanced jigsaw for Akra Jr (his current ones are getting a bit easy for him), an alphabet book, a numbers book, and a matching textures game which looked fun.

So all in all a satisfactory haul.

And okay, so I don’t have any savings left, but we haven’t gone into the red over it either. I’ll just have to run away next month instead… ;o)

For the first time in my life I’ve managed to stick to a budget for a whole month.

First, a bit of background information. When we moved here, we paid off all of our debts using the equity in our previous house and very much hoped that with lower living costs here things would be much easier and we could relax a little. It very quickly became apparent that with Akra’s salary it was going to be a bit of a tight squeeze.

So as we usually end up doing, we sat down on worked out a budget. The difference being that this time we made it realistic. Previously, a budget has usually been thrown out of the window in days as soon as an unexpected expense came along, or we hadn’t allowed for proper treats. This time around, we’ve even allowed for some savings so we can work up to some big ticket items we want for Akra Jr and the house.

Anyway, I looked through the figures this morning. Not only have I kept to the budget, but I’ve underspent by ?100 this month. So, I’m going to treat myself to The Sims: Superstar expansion and stick the rest in the savings account (or the running away fund, as my mother-in-law calls it!). It’s a really good feeling which will hopefully keep me on the straight and narrow for next month too.

[Smug Mode: On]