Hey! Dirt-ay! Baby I Got No Money, I Am Worried...

If you are anything like me, this will sum you up pretty well:

I have a horrible habit of spending money like I'm a millionaire after I get paid. Though I always resent spending more than a pound on anything edible in the supermarket when I do a food shop, I think a packet of 200 candles for a fiver is an absolute bargain. I'm more than happy to spend £4 on a coffee every morning, £10 on a packet of cigarettes daily, and never think twice about splurging out on 10 cocktails at Be@One on a Tuesday. My logic is completely backwards, like how dare you try and charge me £3 for a delicious packet of chicken breasts! That is fucking outrageous, do you think I'm MADE OF MONEY- ooh look, a packet of 20 poisonous sticks that you light on fire for more than three times as much as chicken! YES PLEASE! As a result I then live on pasta and bread alone for the last three weeks of the month. So here are a few tips to adult better than me...

1. Don't smoke

2. If you have to smoke, smoke rollies, they're cheap, and also a pain in the fucking arse, and if you're lazy like me that means you smoke less, which in turn saves you more money.

3. Don't drink

4. If you have to drink, only buy things on offer YAY FOR £3 BOTTLES OF WINE! If you get them cold enough then you don't even notice taste the bitter, anti-freeze like aftertaste 

5. Don't get an overdraft

6. If you have to get an overdraft - JUST DON'T. DON'T FUCKING DO IT, IT'S TOO LATE FOR ME! SAVE YOURSELVES.

7. Make your own lunch

8. If you cant be bothered to make your own lunch like me, then these:

Thank you Jesus.

I have also discovered a few amazing apps that have saved my broke ass many a time, and perhaps could save yours too.

Vouchercloud:

This app is FAB. It has deals and discounts on all sorts - hairdressers, shops, restaurants, plus its started doing online discounts now too, and it has competitions to win free vouchers and days out. It's free to download so why would you not! Get it. Now.

o2 Priority:

If you're on o2 like me, and all the other best people are, you need to get the o2 priority app. It's the same kind of stuff as Vouchercloud. Free shit, discounted shit - BUT it also does priority gig tickets. I'm sure you all know this already, so I will stop. But what I would say is check it daily, because some deals are only available certain days of the week, and they do update it quite regularly. And one more thing - DO NOT be taken in by the Monday £1 pizza lunch deal at Dominoes. I almost shat my pants with excitement waiting for my delicious greasy pepperoni pizza on Monday, only to be handed a button size box of soul crushing disappointment. It's barely big enough to fill the stomach of a new born baby. Waste of time. And your pound - I had to spend a further £4 on snacks afterwards so it really defeated the object.

LetYaNo

I've only really recently discovered this one, and it. Is. Awesome. You get free stuff or discounts for filling out like three questions about the service you receive. Me and my housemate legit had an entire free meal each on it. It finds your location, and then participating bars, restaurants and shops in your area, and even gives you a map of how to get there! Plus the more you use it the more rewards you get. SHAMAZE!

My main concern in life is food, it's where a huge majority of my salary goes. Give me all the Dominoes, curry, McDonalds and KFC I can eat (which is a LOT). If any of my friends ask if I want to go out I don't seem to have a function in my brain that can say no, even when I only have like 20 bucks left to last me 2 weeks. So these apps are great for that, because even though I cant say no, I can save a bunch of $$$. But if you're interests are marginally broader than mine, you can subscribe to www.wowcher.co.uk or www.groupon.co.uk - they email you daily with deals on everything from gym memberships to going on sky dives! Wowcher is a little more girly, they do a lot of beauty deals but Groupon is more of an all rounder. 

It gets very easy to start ignoring their emails because they come through so often, but if you have a meet up with a pal coming up in the near future, keep your eye on them, because the deals are amazing and they have some pretty original ideas for activities.

I have a ton more money saving bits to write about, but I wont now, because I'm boring myself and probably you too. If you know of any other good discount stuff let me know, because I am very, very poor. And if someone could invent an app that gets you a discount on cigs and wine that would be GREAAAT thankssssss.

Cheers all for reading, and all your support from my last post, I was so excited about all the feedback I couldn't sleep and got in trouble at work the next day cos my boss thought I was hungover. Worth it.

Happy adulting x

An Introduction to Attempting to Manage Adult Life

My name is Sophia, I'm 22 and I'm potentially London's worst twenty-something. Although on the surface I look like I'm doing OK; I have a well-paid job for someone my age with no degree, I have a cool place, great friends, and a cute cat... I find the fact I have to pay bills, go to work, buy boring stuff like soap and bog roll with my own hard-earned money, cook for myself, manage my own bedtime, and try not to drink myself into oblivion to cope with it all on a daily basis, a very real struggle. To give you a picture of what my life is like under the surface... 

This is what my phone looks like.

This is what my bedroom looks like.

This is what the laptop I'm typing on looks like.

This is how I deal with all of the above.

I'm on a quest to better my adulting skills, and very slowly, after 4 years of being in the big bad, grown up world, and in what I'm pretty sure is the most expensive city on the face of planet earth, I'm learning how to manage the challenging things adult life throws at me. 

My first piece of advice to anyone around my age would be do not move out. Live with your parents for as long as feasibly possible. Get a job, and get some savings.

If you must move out, my second piece of advice would be do not get a cat. Like I did.

If you must get a cat, do not get a tortoiseshell cat. Like I did. They're mental. Google it.

If you must get a tortoiseshell cat, do this. 

My next piece of advice would be do not get Tinder. It costs you. It costs you money by eating up your data like a fat kid eats up cake. And inevitably that means you pay for more data because its 2015 and if you can't use Facebook on the commute to work, then what the fuck else can you do. Look out the bus window? No. It costs you self confidence because you don't understand how after your 700th Tinder date nobody has fallen in love with you and immediately proposed. HELLO HAVE YOU SEEN ME, I HAVE A CAT AND I OWN LIKE 4 DIFFERENT BEDSPREADS. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT. And finally it costs you more in money because chivalry is dead and the dude is probably going to expect you to pay for half of dinner and get at least 3 rounds of drinks.

Just kidding about that last bit, I'm all for girl power - I don't actually think gals need to be paid for by a guy, but not going on dates at all eliminates the need to spend money on some douche bag who only wants a blow job.

My final piece of advice: ASDA is bae. 

I came to London as a complete supermarket snob, having grown up in a family that only shopped in Sainsbury's and Marks and Sparks (as my Mum used to call it). ASDA was a no go. It was for Jeremy Kyle rejects and the homeless. Now I will never, ever shop anywhere else. Why would you spend £5 on tea bags when you can get them for 50p? Why go to three different shops for a chicken pasty, a bath mat and a chlamydia test when you can get all three at ASDA? Trust me, even if you're moving from Buckinghamshire where ASDA isn't even part of your vocabulary, it will save your sorry twenty-something life.

So, here we are at the end of post one. I've started this blog to try and get my shit together, and maybe help some other people in my position do the same. I'm a fan of many of the finer things in life; salmon, gin, avocados (also bae), MAC, Topshop, eating out and many, many other things I can't afford. So I'm going to try my best to be savvier with my dolla, and hopefully help you all to be too.

Laters babes x