Where the money went

[fivemack]

Third in an irregular series; last year's is here.

SLC is the Student Loans Company, to whom my debt ought to be discharged on 25th April 2008; FOREX is money withdrawn from cash machines abroad and spent, LIVE covers things from furniture to extra socks, MEDICINE is a pair of staggeringly expensive spectacles. TAX is 90% the council tax on the house I rent.

What's changed? Well, it's got a 'SAVINGS' segment this time. Food's exactly the same, rent is (surprisingly) exactly the same - I paid rent for three more months in 2007, but my brother is living with me and has paid half the rent for the last six months. For the second year running I've become proportionately meaner in terms of gifts and donations to charity; I should really do something about that.

I've spent a good deal less on entertainment, by spending a third as much on camera equipment as in 2006 and 30% less on books, though I think another component is that youth hostels in the Balkans want to be paid in cash, so come out of FOREX rather than ENT.HOTEL. I have left Cambridge much less often at weekends in '07 than in '06, though the train ticket to Istanbul meant my travel expenses were about the same in the two years.

Comments

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

How do you manage to spend 2% of your salary on medicine? Vaccinations, private health care and travel insurance?

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

I couldn't think of a better category to put spectacles in, and I got upsold to spectacles with Nikon lenses of absurd cost.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

That seems perfectly sensible. When I wore glasses, I used to reckon on about 300 pounds every couple of years for glasses, and they didn't have particularly complicated lenses at all! Now, that seems a little extravagent when I wear contact lenses almost the whole time :-).