A day in the life of my money
As a self-employed writer, it's a wild ride 🎢
Welcome to The Lighthouse! A newsletter written by a Canadian author (Cait Flanders, that’s me!) who found herself living in the middle of nowhere in the UK. It’s deeply reflective and also intentionally lighthearted. There’s enough darkness online and in real life. Let’s hangout in the light. 🕯️
Hi friend,
If you asked me what ONE THING I thought about most in November, my answer would be money. Not politics. Not work. Not the holidays. Not my people. Not The Lighthouse. I did think about those things, but mostly I thought about money, which impacts + is impacted by all of those things too.
I first got the idea for this post in the spring, but couldn’t quite figure out how to bring it to life… until now. Because I am spending so much time thinking about money, I feel incredibly connected to it—and thought I could easily write about my experiences with it. This was a little different for me but felt fun to write.
I hope you enjoy reading!
xx Cait
A day in the life of my money
9:33am - I open my bank’s app to send Tall Man £2. Yes, that’s right, £2. All couples handle money differently, and I love some of the creative solutions I hear people come up with. Tall Man and I try to split all our shared expenses 50/50. We spend more nights at his house than mine, which means he probably spends a little money on food for me. So sometimes (and because we’ve agreed this feels fair), I will bring him a few staples: the coffee he likes, extra milk, oats, bananas, etc. Other times, it’s easy to do a 50/50 split. Like this weekend. He bought the nice £4 loaf of bread we like and I ate a bunch of it. So this morning, over another slice of toast, I asked if I could send him £2 and he laughed and said sure. Like, it’s not essential but if I want to, go for it. And I do want to. I love that we talk openly about these little expenses, because the little things are the big things—or become the big things. I want to be in a relationship where we talk about it all. Including if we can split the cost of the nice loaf of bread.
I send him the £2. It’s easy because we use the same bank, which has a great app that makes it simple to send money back and forth with your “favourites.” He is certainly mine. Then I quickly look at my recent transactions and see my weekly deposit into my retirement account also came out this morning. I realize I haven’t opened my investing app in a while and wonder what the balance of that account is now. Mental note: check my retirement account later.
11am - Back at The Lighthouse, over coffee, I map out the week and try to think of all the different expenses that could come up. A friend is coming to stay until Sunday. (For the old school Blonde on a Budget readers: do you remember Roomie? Who I grew up with in Victoria then lived with in Toronto? After all these years, I’m finally hosting her! And in the UK, no less! Life is definitely an adventure.) I have some money set aside for that. But I also want to get a Christmas tree this week. And potentially a few Christmas gifts. I am writing this all down on paper, then open my bank’s app and look at the balance. This should be interesting, I think. I don’t remember what it was like to budget with salaried paycheques, but this seems to be one of the most common things I say to myself, as a self-employed writer who earns + has to budget with lump sums of money. Every time the lump sum starts to dwindle, I think: this should be interesting. Because I know more money is coming soon, but I don’t know exactly how much or how long it’ll last. That’s the pay cycle I operate with…
I look at my upcoming scheduled payments and think about all the bills that come out at the start of the month, including my new monthly loan payment for the (newer) used car I bought a couple weeks ago. That’s a debt I knew would be coming one day, but wasn’t expecting in 2024. Still, I was intentional about it, and worked with my budget to come up with an amount I felt comfortable borrowing and paying back each month. Now, I have a more reliable car, a small loan, and the first payment comes out next week. Yep, this should be very interesting.
1:22pm - I leave the grocery store with four bags of food, enough to fill The Lighthouse for most of the week. It cost me just over £60 and I felt totally neutral about that amount. Groceries are the one category of spending I somehow do not stress about1, because I love food and know how important it is to nourish myself. I will cut out shopping and any other category of spending entirely, in order to eat well. Having food in the house also makes me feel rich. I largely stick to staple or recipe items when I shop, but will occasionally buy myself a few treats. This week I bought a few further still, knowing Roomie is coming, and oh my gosh I’m just so excited to see her and have morning coffee together and eat some yummy meals with my old friend!
2:31pm - Back at The Lighthouse, I check my email and see one from my literary agent’s office. It’s the most recent royalty statement from the publisher of my first book, THE YEAR OF LESS. It tells me some interesting things, starting with the fact that it sold another 7,300 copies in English in the first half of 2024 (this is just for the paperback and ebook, not audio—that was a separate deal with a different publisher). This feels kind of amazing, considering the book is almost 7 years old. There are also advance payments for two foreign language translations. And in fun news: enough copies have sold in Brazilian Portuguese that I’ve out-earned the advance from my publisher in Brazil too! There’s an extra $38.60 USD on the cheque I’ll be getting—my first royalties payment from Brazil! I am somehow most delighted by this news. I think about how impossible it seems that I’m still earning money from this book, but especially from countries all around the world. What a wild and wonderful journey this continues to be…
I scroll through the statement and see the full amount (in USD) I’ll be getting later this week. I do a quick conversion to GBP and discover it’s enough to cover all my living expenses for almost 2 months. Including Christmas. Including my new car loan payments. Not including some things I actually need to buy soon, like new running shoes and the hiking boots with the hole in the toe that I’ve been meaning to replace all year. But I don’t have to worry about money again until January. I am so relieved, and so grateful to everyone who buys my books.
2:45pm - I open my bank’s app again and think about how much the balances are all about to go up by. I feel so, so, so relieved. Then I remember: I was going to check the balance of my new retirement account! I close my bank’s app and open my investing app. The balance is just under £900 and I feel proud of it. Some people will think that’s nothing, but it feels like something to me—especially when you’ve just started investing in a new country and aren’t actually making much money. At the start of this year, I had £0 invested in any UK retirement accounts2. By the end of the year, I’ll have £1,000 in my Lifetime ISA (LISA)3. This is something. And something is better than nothing.
4:25pm - I walk to the library to pick up some books I had put on hold. This might not seem like something my money would be involved in, but I have to pay £0.80 for them—£0.20 per book. I was shocked when the library first told me they’d be starting to charge any fee this year. A late fee, sure. But a hold fee!? I know it’s not their fault, though. It just shows how underfunded they are. So, I bring a £1 coin with me and am given a 20p coin in return. When I get home, I put it in my little coin jar, where it’ll be waiting until it’s time to get the next book. I don’t like this new fee, but I will pay it because I love libraries and want to keep them going. (I just wish my tax dollars were doing it!)
6:40pm - I text Tall Man about a Christmas gift for one of the kids in his family. The website is having a 40% off sale and it ends in 6 hours. Can he find out exactly what she wants in time!? He will try!
7:04pm - I decide to buy myself the thing I’ve been thinking about buying for months. It is not the new pair of running shoes I probably do need to get sooner than later. But it’s a thing I’ve been wanting and imagining… and is something I’ve lived without for 11+ years. “When I get the money…” is what I’ve been telling myself, and now I have some. I still wonder if I actually need it. Maybe I’ll even regret it? It’s possible! But is it easy to return? Yes. I buy it, and schedule it to be delivered next Monday—after my visit with Roomie. I’ll test it out next week, and see if I really do want it or not.
9:11pm - Tall Man texts me the details about the Christmas gift in question.
9:19pm - I buy it in time to save 40%. Sometimes I hate sales and marketing and Black Friday, of course. This is probably my least favourite week of the year to be a person on the internet, because almost everyone is offering a sale. It all feels fake and forced and even a little manipulative (depending on the tactics).
And sometimes, it really does help.
If you’re supporting creatives, it helps them too.
The next morning
7:51am - I log into my US bank account and see my royalties have been deposited. I transfer the money across continents, then update my bookkeeping software. Then I click over to see my total revenue for the year so far, as well as my profit and loss statement. When I compare the numbers, I can see that I’ve earned £4,000 more this year than I did last year—and there are still 4 months left in the UK’s fiscal year (which ends April 5th). That means I’ve earned an extra £500/month, so far this year. I remember that one of my original financial goals for 2024 was to increase my income, and I’ve done that. I’ve also crossed most of the other financial goals off that list. I stopped writing about each one, but I’ve still been doing them! Except for the big ones, around my new UK estate planning. December feels like a strange month to talk to people about what I want to do with my money if I die young… but those are the conversations that need to happen, if I want to cross these last items off the list in 2024. And I do.
I just need to make sure I have the money to pay for the changes I’ll need to make.
Also, because groceries are approx. half the price here, compared to what I would be paying if I were still living in BC. I do not know how anyone can afford to eat in BC.
To clarify, this isn’t my ONLY retirement account. I have over $100,000 CAD invested in an RRSP in Canada. That money will stay there for now. I’m just starting from scratch in the UK, as a newer resident who plans to stay.
A Lifetime ISA (LISA) is similar to a TFSA in Canada or a Roth IRA in the US, but is way better because: for every £1 you invest, the UK government gives you a 25% bonus—up to a max of £1,000 per year! That means I can invest £4,000/year of my own money and get £1,000/year from the UK gov’t, for a total investment of £5,000/year. Yes, please! There are lots of retirement savings options available, many similar to what we have in North America. But this felt like the best one for me to start with, as a self-employed person with a lower income right now.
As a fellow self-employed person who's regularly thinking about her money, I loved reading this dispatch, identifying with so much of it, and celebrating your wins alongside you!
ADORED reading this. I've been thinking about money a lot too! And am definitely making 2025 a year of more thoughtful spending (or even like our dear pal Nicole says, anticapitalist living!)