Finances

I’ve been using spreadsheets to manage the monthly finances for years now. What we’ve got coming in, what we’ve got going out, bills, debts, spends, food, what we can afford to pay out.

One thing we’ve not had much of over the last 10 years or so is savings, that’s about to change as we’re about to start hammering the savings so that we can hopefully look to buy a house at some point. You know, if houses become reasonable to buy. It’d be nice to have a big one, with a study, a games room, maybe even that arcade room I’ve dreamed of since first playing Maniac Mansion on the Amiga.

We’re in a pretty good position right now. Money coming in is a little more than money going out, we’ve got plenty of debt still, but its managed and its coming down, bit by bit. As each bit is paid off, we unlock a bit more money and are able to then pay that towards something else.

At some point this year, most of the immediate debt should be gone, money will go into savings, which will go towards a house and who knows - maybe even an emergency fund. That’d be nice.

On an unrelated note, I’ve started to mess around with Azure. It’s a little less clunky than it was the last time I played around with it, and they seem to want to throw $200 at me to mess around with. I’m informed they’ve always done this, but I don’t remember ever been offered it before.

Met up with a friend this week whilst I was down in London, played a bunch of games, drank some good beer, put the world to rights and just generally had a good time in the middle of a bunch of stressful days filled with stressful meetings.

I need more of that. Beer and games, not stressful meetings. Nobody wants those.