Look after the pounds...

Yesterday’s dog post has been met with mixed reviews, some fellow softies and some hard (and not particularly wet) nosed bitches (in the female dog sense) so today I’ll opt for something of a less touchy feely nature.

In my life, here’s what’s happening today…me and Lindsey are off to view a couple more properties in Islington at lunchtime and I am suffering with a throaty chesty type lurgy, which I put down to working in a new office environment and the air conditioning etc etc. Very dull indeed. Even duller are my lack of weekend plans, so we’ll brush over real life and start pondering some issues of importance.

Recently, my thoughts have turned to money, or more specifically my recent lack of it.

I’m not someone who could ever be accused of allowing money to fester unnecessarily in my account, preferring to set it free as often as possible and to spend it frivolously on as many people as I can. So finding myself not being paid for 2 months, having impending deposit plus 6 weeks rent on new place, AND having my boyfriend’s 30th, mum’s 60th, brothers, dad’s and grandma’s birthdays all in April…quite frankly it’s terrifying. Not to mention ridiculously selfish of everyone to gang up on me and have April birthdays.

I’m also not someone who’s used to worrying about money. That’s not to say that I’m some minted uber princess, but more that the normal amount that comes in regularly keeps me sweet, so it’s all these ‘unplanned’ things (ok, so I knew about the birthdays) which have got me. I usually have an idea of how much I do or don’t have to the nearest couple of hundred quid (usually within an overdraft I hasten to add).

But why are British people so cagey about money? It seems most people spent lots of time worrying about not having it, or worrying about people finding out when they do have it for fear of being labelled as spoilt, or silver spooned, or even worse, being repeatedly numbered for rounds at the pub.

We all have friends who we classify as ‘skint’ cos they harp on about it the time, but perhaps there are others who loyally dip their hands into their threadbare pockets to dutifully buy their rounds without a murmur who are worse off. My suspicion is that those who wax lyrical about their hard-up-dom aren’t actually as hard up as they’d like to make out. The very fact that they worry, means they are probably careful with their money, whilst the rest of us think we’re fine, so continue splashing.

And what’s with the whole privacy about your salary thing? I understand it within work, as there are undeniable discrepancies between similarly qualified people, but within friends….should it matter? I don’t give a toss who earns what, but I find it interesting that some people guard it so tightly. Again, I suspect those people who earn more don’t disclose as they don’t want to be milked like the proverbial cash cow, rather than those who want to keep schtum as they are embarrassed of their meagre salary.

Right, flats to view…money to spend that I don’t have, and cookies to bake and poems to write for all April bdays. Purse strings an all.