Sure a bit of roughness doesn't do anyone any harm.....

"Sure a bit of roughness doesn't do anyone any harm" you would hear my granny say from time to time.

Now before all your minds go into overload, she wasn't insinuating anything sexual, abusive or a three day stubble. What she meant was that sometimes when you were struggling with your finances that it did you good. I've heard her use this expression many times over the years and always thought, "how horrible." Though I'm starting to realise what she meant.

It wasn't that long ago when I would've seen a new gadget and if i thought I needed it, then I'd buy it. No questions asked, whether I needed it or convinced myself enough that I needed it, then I got it. Now I know that this sounds as if I'm spoilt or privileged, believe me I'm not, I earn my own money and buy my own things, it's been like that since I was about 12.

The first three weeks after having been made redundant I didn't really let it sink in that that also meant that my salary wasn't going to keep coming into my bank account, so I spent as if nothing had changed until one day the ATM gave me that heart sinking message "Insufficient Funds" Oooops, redundancy was well and truly here, staring me in the face through my own reflection in the ATM machine.

Since then the value of money now has a new net worth to me. A few weeks back I'd have thought nothing of spending a €100 on a pair of new jeans, a set of headphones or even a meal for two. In fact a hangover on a Sunday morning was cheap if it cost less than €100 the night before. €100 is now just under 50% of my weekly income and seems worth a whole lot more than it did a few weeks ago. I now think before I buy and it's no bad thing. I'm starting to realise how much money I wasted on things that I didn't actually need. I have a new appreciation for the value of money, €100, €50, €20 even €2, is worth a whole lot more than it was just a few weeks back.

I've been getting my bit of "roughness" for almost 9 weeks now and she was right, it isn't doing me any harm in fact it's doing me some good.

Redundancy came & I made a list!

Redundancy came knocking 7 weeks ago and it's not as bad as you might think. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather be working and earning a living than spending my days chasing my dole payment and traipsing all over Dublin like a tourist on a 48 hour visit trying to squeeze in all the sights from O' Connell Street to Dun Laoghire to Dundrum, just to get rent allowance. ( I think I'll save those rantings for another day ). However when I'm not chasing my social welfare payments I'm doing all those things that I never had time to do in the past. What I do most nights is create a list of things to do - it reduces the temptation of turning on the telly and getting sucked into Jeremy Kyle and the twosome over on ITV's This Morning Phil and Fern.

Items that have appeared on the list to date

• Contact the bank (let them know that my credit card payments are being reduced)
• Cancel gym membership - can't believe there are no public gyms in this city.
• Train the dog to sit, lie down, roll over, chase her tail, get up, get down and only eat treats when i tell her too
• Bake Cakes - and by god have I baked. Upside down pineapple cake, Guiness Choclate cake, Blueberry muffins, and pavlova. I'm thinking I'll bake a carrot cake next.
• Cook the majority of the meals - my partner works from home so for the past year or so I had dinner cooked for me most nights, now it was time to pay back the favour
• Have dinner partys - sitting in is the new going out! I'm having great fun trying new recepies on our friends and it's cheap.
• Shop at LIDL - it's so much cheaper.
• Re-upholster kitchen dining chairs - I couldn't believe how easy it was
• Go to the beach - been going every other day - it's great I'd recommend it
• Get back to writing hence the blog (i'm not in the right frame of mind to continue with my book)
• Laugh (at my revenge), everytime I get the feeling of having been made a fool of by my previous, unethical boss. *note to self* send her some cake and maybe even a link to this blog!

So redundancy hasn't been too bad apart from losing some financial freedoms. I'm really happy. I no longer work in a stressed environment where you didn't know if the boss was lying to you or being manipulative and all those things that were at the bottom of the list are now at the top.