How The Budget Challenge Came To An Early End

So, this post comes a bit late, but at the weekend I decided to finish my budgeting challenge.

If you've been following this challenge, you know it was a rocky month. The challenge was already on the rocks, and I had bent the rules a bit in order to continue. I had £16 left for nine days, which I knew would be doable, but difficult.

Then I had an encounter with a homeless man called Danny.

We've all been there, when a homeless person comes up to you and tells you that they are trying to get enough money together to go to a shelter. Sometimes you are inclined to believe them, and other times you are not. But I personally don't care whether it was true or not. What was abundantly clear was the fact that this young man was homeless, cold, tired and dirty, and he needed help. I try to make an effort to give money out to the homeless, and so I immediately handed him a pound. But then we got talking. It was obvious that Danny was not only physically starving, but he was also starved of attention. He wanted someone to talk to. So my boyfriend and I were talking to him, and he told us a little about himself.

He told us about how his state of health was so poor, that he couldn't drink hot drinks any more because they destroyed his gums. I could believe this looking at the state of his mouth, half empty of teeth and blackened. He told us about how some of the more violent people on the street harass him for the little money he manages to make. He told us about how one time he stayed in a shelter, his possessions and his sleeping bag were stolen, and that's why even though the shelters were more comfortable, they didn't feel any more safe. He told us that the reason he was trying to get to the shelter was mostly because he was desperate for a shower. He was holding a carton of whole milk in his hand, which I imagine was his main source of nutrition for the day.

A poem I wrote about the encounter

I think the reason he was sticking around to talk to us was because we, as a group, had shown him the most kindness he had seen all day. Between us he had made four pounds, and he only had two in his hand when he approached, so we had significantly boosted his earnings. He told us that he needed twelve pounds to stay in the shelter.

For a millisecond, mostly out of habit I imagine, I thought of how I needed to conserve my money for the sake of the challenge. This thought immediately repulsed me. There was no way I was going to hold back from giving to a person in need for the privilege of pretending to be poor. So I dug out six more pounds, and gave it to him.

Danny was overwhelmed, to say the least. And I was glad that I had done it. Whether his stories were true or not were irrelevant to me. I can't imagine what it would be like to be homeless. I could barely manage to stick to this challenge. And the way the homeless are treated in this country disgusts me. How can we call ourselves a civilized country when we can't even keep our citizens fed and sheltered?

So yes, I finished the challenge early. The finish line had been warped and altered so many times now I couldn't really see the point any more. But here are some good things to come out of it:

1. Because of the challenge, I have still managed to come under my usual budget this month despite buying a new phone. If I hadn't have done the challenge, I still would have lost my phone and bought a new one and therefore I would be in debt to myself, so yay for the challenge!

2. I have learned a lot about myself and my relationship with money. I am not as good at going without it as I thought! Even though the rules of the challenge were very clear, I was making compromises, knowing that it would make me end up over budget. I really struggled to tell myself no! It's important that I know this about myself, because I'm pretty sure one day soon, as a poor out of work actor, I am going to have to learn to make myself say no.

3. I have discovered I can still make delicious food on a budget. Good times.

4. I am now in the habit of looking for the cheapest thing on the menu. I feel this is a good habit to be in. In fact, I realized that a bowl of chips will fill me up fine! And this must be better for my waistline than the burger and chips I would usually go for, so I'm saving pounds in multiple ways.

5. I think, having experimented with being on a much smaller budget, I should be able to manage a happy medium between my old one of seventy pounds a week and the tiny sum of eighteen. Perhaps forty, that feels like a luxury amount now! If I can stick to this, I'll be saving thirty a week for when I have finished uni! Not bad at all.

So all in all, although it didn't turn out anything like I thought it would, I am happy with this challenge. But most of all, I have been really touched by my encounter with Danny. It seemed so perfectly timed, spooky in fact, and it really made me appreciate my situation.

It's also made me very thoughtful about the future. I have been becoming more and more passionate about the homeless situation ever since I moved to Birmingham. I really care about it, and I think now I've realized I want to do more than just give a quid out to each homeless person I see. I want to get involved on a higher level.

I haven't quite figured out how yet, but I will.

For now though, love to you all, and I shall announce my new challenge soon!

x

Why I Will Never Stop Trying To Better Myself

Hello!

My sincere apologies for not blogging much lately. I have had a much needed holiday in Portugal with my lovely family. It was really great to have a complete change of environment and people to test this challenge out on. I wasn’t really sure how it had gone, until yesterday. I was on the sofa having a cuddle with my mum and she turned to me and said ‘You’ve been really lovely this Christmas.’ And it was then I knew I’d done what I’d set out to do.

Here’s a bit of context: Whilst I get on enormously well with my family, I do also have a bit of a temper, and I tend to get into arguments with my mum very easily. Nine times out of ten I am completely in the wrong. Nine times out of ten it’s just me taking my mood out on her. Sometimes I can be really unreasonable and it can create a really sour atmosphere for all present. When you throw stuff like packing, travelling, and airports in it can be a recipe for disaster. In general, when my mum gets stressed I get grumpy, which makes her more stressed and me more grumpy. It’s a vicious cycle.

This holiday, it was virtually argument free. There were a couple of times when I snapped unreasonably, and I was called out on it. In the past I would have just had a sulk and walked off. This time I was very quick to apologise. There were also many occasions where I could have snapped, but I took a pause to say to myself ‘is this really worth getting annoyed over?’ And I simply moved past it.

It was really great.

I also made more effort to be actively nice to people. I sent out some Christmas messages to a load of my friends, I tried to pay more compliments to my family (something I now wish I had done more of – I can tell my mum really appreciated it!) and I tried to be a good house guest to my Aunt and Uncle. I found that doing nice things can be quite addictive really, especially when you get good responses!

Now I was in no means perfectly behaved. I don’t think I’ve managed to go a single day this month without doing one of the things I was supposed to not be doing. I also look back and wish I had taken more opportunities to be actively nice. However, I think I have achieved what I set out to achieve – I am changing for the better.

Really, that’s what this entire challenge project has been about.

And here are some thoughts on…

Why I will Never Stop Trying to Better Myself

It is so easy to brush off your own behaviour with phrases like this:

‘That’s just me’  ‘You do you and I’ll do me’ ‘I am who I am’

Or phrases like ‘That’s not how I do things’ are used to get out of doing something you probably should have done.

While it’s really important to be true to yourself, I find a lot of the above phrases are not too far away from one of the phrases I most detest in the world:

‘If you can’t handle me at my worst, you don’t deserve me at my best.’

All my hatred for this phrase is pretty much summed up in this fantastic article titled If I Can't Accept You at Your Worst, Then Maybe You Should Stop Being So Horrible.

Because the thing is, while some things about your identity may be fixed and not in your control (sexuality for example) for the most part you get to choose who you are.

I had a conversation with a friend once that involved him using ‘I’m just not as organised as you’ as an excuse for some pretty lazy behaviour. Another way of phrasing it could be ‘I’m just a lazy person.’

Now I could be wrong here, but this is what I believe about personality: Only a part of it is genetic. Most of it is to do with environment and social conditioning. And you know what, it can be hard to change that conditioning, but I really believe it is completely doable. I didn’t come out of the womb an organised individual. Somewhere along the line, I made the choice to be organised. Or rather, I made a series of choices that lead to me becoming an organised person.

And really, I think that’s the trick to it. Small decisions. It could seem a little daunting to turn around and say to yourself ‘I am going to be a more organised person.’ But it’s quite reasonable to turn to yourself and say ‘I am going to get up half an hour earlier every day’ ‘I am going to make my lunch for the next day every evening.’ ‘I am going to do my homework as soon as I get home today.’ Put all these little choices into action, and hey presto, you have become an organised person.

I’m not trying to say it’s easy. I know it’s not. It’s hard. But what I am saying is it is your choice. It is your decision. No matter what has happened in your life to make you the way you are – the way you go forward from this point is still your choice.

Having this realisation has been really empowering to me.

Every time I was rude, aggressive, or patronising in the past, that was my choice. I’d like to think most of the time I didn’t mean to hurt people, but still, it was my choice to take that risk. And it’s my choice now to stop. And yeah, accepting that responsibility: that feels powerful.

The truth is I will never be perfect. I will make mistakes. I will no doubt be rude, aggressive and patronising again in the future. But I really hope that I will never again brush off that kind of behaviour as ‘just a part of me.’ Because I now realise that for the most part I choose what is and isn’t a part of me. I hope in the future that I will be able to own my mistakes, apologise for them, forgive myself, and then work towards making sure they don’t happen again. While I will never be perfect, I will always aim for perfection. I will always aim for better. I will always have that ‘shoot for the moon and you might land among the stars’ mentality. Because…. Well because, why on earth not?

So, in a way, I will never be truly content with who I am. I will always be striving for more. But that very part of my nature, that desire to always be moving forward in positive ways, that choice that I have made makes me proud of who I choose to be. It makes me happy. It really does.

So, I guess what I’m trying to say is this: If (like me) you have something about your personality that you don’t like, or you see traits in others that you wished you had in you – go for it. Make those choices. Make those changes. Empower yourself. It might be hard, but I promise it is worth it.