London! Yay?

So, after years in a small town in the North of England, I am taking the well worn graduate path and moving down to London.

I would like to pretend this is because I have a shiny new job, but actually it's because my husband has a shiny new job and I am so ready for a change. When I was a student, I sort of assumed I'd end up moving to a large city, drinking lattes and using public transport. I ended back up in a small town I grew up in, managing to move all of ten miles down the road to the coast 18 months ago to a marginally larger town. I'll admit, there's a stonking pub here but that's about it.

As such, I am wildly excited. We're moving towards the end of next month. I remain excited until you ask me the following questions:

1. Where are you going to live?

2. What are you going to do for a living?

3. How do you plan to move that monstrosity you call a sofa down the stairs, anyway?

Then I sort of crumble and have to try to resist the urge to have a little cry.

Now, we are sort of coping with part 1 via going flat hunting at the weekend, and part 3 has been solved with the grim resolve of spending a large amount of money on a moving firm. I am proud of our large amount of mismatching but sturdy furniture, and I simply can't face going furniture shopping in the near future. Logically, the best thing to do is schlep it all down to London, and to prevent Mr DG and I divorcing with less than a year under our belt we may as well avoid the arguments that our mutual attempts to move furniture cause.

Part 2 is one filled with fear and horror and a grim sense of denial. Do I have a job lined up yet? No. Do I have a plan? Only if wildly flailing counts.

Still, I suppose it's more relevant to a graduate blog as we discuss my wild scrabbles through the world of jub hunting. I'm still in my current job at the moment, but desperately trying to persuade employers that I am really very good at administration and should be taken on for the specialist administration roles I'm applying for. OR EVEN A WRITING JOB TO ANYONE READING THIS. Yes, I actually do enjoy administration work, or to be precise I rather prefer getting paid and administration is the quickest way to do it. Quietly I hope I'm going to use this move to find paid employment writing stuff – are you reading this, employers? I can create content for PRETTY MUCH ANYTHING, you should see my portfolio, ASK TO SEE MY PORTFOLIO PLEASE?! However, I enjoy eating and paying rent more than I want to be a starving artist, so now it's a desperate scrabble for a job.

Still, a small and dirty part of me thinks that at least this will be stonking blogging material. Between the job hunt and the move and the new place, I am set up for MONTHS to come, before we even get to the whole bitter Northerner issue.

Plus, bonus Kermit gif.

Beep beep

So, car insurance.

I am no longer a Young Person according to official statistics. The other day I had to fill in a form and it was with great melancholy I ticked the '25-34' box. As such, today's news stories about the car insurance industry technically don't affect me, as I am theoretically skipping into the world of 25+ married person car insurance. In theory I am stability itself.

So why, exactly, my premiums have gone up is a puzzle.

Cars are essential in today's world. I wish they weren't. I would love to get rid of my car and not have it as a necessity. Unfortunately, this would involve living in an area with decent public transport links, or indeed not working in the countryside. Both of these things are facts in my life, so I pootle on with my car. Mr DG cannot drive, so it's very definitely my car and my bills for petrol, for insurance, for car tax, and for repairs. Weirdly, I found these things slightly easier to afford when I was a student. All of the above bills have shot up exponentially in the seven years since I passed my test.

I have had very few jobs where didn't need my car to get too and from work, starting from pretty much as soon as I passed my test, which I passed about a month before my eighteenth birthday. I have a feeling that every 'group' of friends needs at least one person with a car, which has pretty much consistently been me. It makes finding work easier, it gives you a bigger list of places to live. I would feel a bit lost without my car, now.

I worry about people who have to jump straight into the new world of driving, and how they'll cope with the bills as they rise steadily. I can still afford to keep my car going, although that said my fan belt sounds like it's on the fritz and if it goes before the end of the month I'm going to have to sacrifice a pair of tights and make do. Hell, I can't afford to not keep my car going – there's no way to get to my work by public transport, and the walk would take about six hours on a good day.

I don't know if there's a point to this post, per se, other than to ponder if car insurance firms don't put out daft ideas like 'Make new drivers only drive during the day!' (so sucks to be 20 and work night shifts, then) to try and distract the rest of us from the fact that it's getting more difficult by the year to still run a car. I'm no Jeremy Clarkson, bleating on about my civil rights to drive cars at whatever speed I wish. I'm thoroughly aware of the environmental impact of cars, which if I walk and take public transport everywhere I can. But in this country, if you live outside a major city, a car is a grim necessity.

I wonder.

The Disorientated Graduate's Guide To Winter

The nights are dark, the days are cold and the high street is pushing Christmas like it's going out of fashion. It is, of course, winter, and this presents a new layer of problems for graduates. I am now in my third winter since graduating and feel I can now guide the average graduate through the terrifying world that is the coldest season and the surprising bright sides it can bring. No, really.

The Heating

There are not many times in this blog I'm going to write this, but when it comes to the heating: REJOICE! FOR YOU ARE NOT A STUDENT ANY MORE!

Like so many students, I lived in a houseshare. As energy companies are bastards, we couldn't afford to have the heating on all day. I lived in Scotland. As such, days at home involved waking up and having a very hot shower. When you were out of the shower, you put on your underwear. Then – and this is a knack I am proud of – you put on the wooly tights, then the vest, then the t-shirt and the pajama bottoms. After this came the thin jumper and then over that a hoodie. Add another pair of socks to the equation, and some slippers. Make a hot drink, and then sit in front of the computer with a blanket over your knees. Add a hot water bottle when appropriate.

That, you see, is SURVIVAL. Heating takes away money you can spend on important things, like vodka and cheese, and my student priorities were very clear indeed.

Living with your parents as a graduate is often pants, but it does mean that the heating is on during winter. Remember going home during Christmas, and sweating as you sat in your t-shirt? Well, it's like that ALL WINTER ROUND.

Moved out with people with a job? Possibly not at parent standards of heat, but I am currently sat in a flat with the heating on and it is the most beautiful thing in the world. Sure, we can only afford a few hours a day, but as we work roughly equal hours it means we can time the heating around it.

… and if you are unemployed and can't afford to put the heating on? Well, see my tips as a student for keeping warm. Let me tell you, they're cast-iron.

Time Off

Summer holidays are no more. Spring break is not for you. British laws and customs, however, mean that Christmas represents more of a chance for a little time off. Within reason, of course; many graduates work in businesses that do not shut over Christmas, or only shut for a day.

TIP: Many people do not celebrate Christmas which is all good. However, if you celebrate Christmas find someone that objects to Christmas. Not the type that just 'don't like it' but people who really, really hate Christmas. Jehovah's Witnesses are particularly handy for this, and frankly it's revenge for all of those times you get woken up by missionaries.

Okay, it's not the big amount of time off you had as a student, but at least you don't have to revise for Christmas and/or write a dissertation. Christmas dissertations are rubbish, although asking a drunk father to edit it on Christmas Eve is quite good fun. I don't think he even knew who Charles II was.

… and work

Winter can bring new opportunities for work, through an increase in seasonal labour. Sometimes this can lead to new longer-term opportunities, although I will be the first to admit that being a Christmas retail temp can be soul-destroying.

The weather, however, presents new and exciting challenges. If you are travelling by anything other than a transporter, prepare to add more time on to your journeys. Travelling by train? Buggared. Travelling my car? Buggared. Travelling by foot? Buggared. You will need to get out of bed earlier without a doubt, which is frankly pants.

And yes, it's dark ALL OF THE TIME. Wake up? Dark. Get out of the office? Dark. I cope with this by way of eating more cake and taking more baths, two of the pleasures of winter as far as I'm concerned.

Now wrap up warm and attack the winter! Or hibernate gently. Either way.

IT'S NOT DEAD MONEY YOU FOOLS

If one more person tells me that renting a house is 'dead money' I swear, I will scream. In fact, I reached this point quite a while ago, but it seemed impolitic to start shrieking at the downstairs neighbour, particularly because I had just hit his car and we had arranged matters fairly convivially up until that point.

When you come out of university, you are almost certainly without money. You are without money in exactly the same way that someone who left school at eighteen is without money. To buy a property is inordinately expensive, tens of hundreds of thousands of pounds. As such, it's frankly bizarre to expect someone in their early twenties to afford a house.

And yet renting is considered by anyone about ten years older than you to be the worst decision you could possibly make. “It's dead money!” they will cry. “Save up for a deposit! Find the money! It will be your PENSION!”

So as I sit here paying my rent, I would like to take a moment to take you through why the above statements are a lie, difficult, impossible, and a downright evil lie, in that order.

1. 'Dead money' is a phrase I particularly loathe. It's that weird, Thatcherite fetishism of money, that money should in some way be doing something. The money IS doing something, and that something is putting a roof over my head. You tell me that's dead money and I'll invite you to sleep outside.

A lot of people choose to live with their parents in order to save up for a mortgage. That's fine. That's your funeral. I lived with my parents for a year, until my sister and I were having daily screaming arguments and I spiralled into what I now realise was the beginnings of a bad bout of... I don't know what, exactly, as I don't wish to be too dramatic, but I think I may have cracked if I'd stayed much longer. It was the point I realised I was crying into some toast on a daily basis that I knew something had to give. I houseshared for a time, and now I'm sharing with Mr DG. I couldn't afford to live by myself, and neither could the majority of people I know. I found the method that worked for me.

This method keeps me with a remarkable sense of self-worth and also means that I am now of much better terms with my family. My parents are even coming for tea tomorrow. That is a healthy parent-child relationship, aged 24. My mother still desperately trying to iron my shirts was really not that good.

2. That said, saving up for a deposit is a jolly good idea. I am all in favour of savings. I really, really am. Mr DG and I try to squirrel away what we can every month, admittedly currently towards The Great Social Event Of 2012 i.e. our wedding, but it means we know we can do it. We don't go out a great deal. We eat cheaply. Buying new clothes are a distant world. Savings are a priority, for us.

However. You need approximately 10-20% of the worth of a house to get a mortgage. An average house around here is £100,000 pounds. That's £10-20,000. My annual salary is somewhere between those two figures. So that's at least a year of saving, even if I somehow managed to spend £0 in that year. So, er, where is my deposit meant to have come from between then and now?

Before any smartarse points it out, I am aware that at the moment it tends to be cheaper in terms of monthly payments when you compare mortgage vs. rent. However, I refer you to the £20,000 deposit above.

3. 'Finding the money is entirely possible'. Unfortunately, none of my wealthy relatives have yet revealed themselves. Bastards. I have also failed to find an old map with an 'X' marked on a treasure island, win the lottery, or worked out a way to rob a bank that is morally correct and 100% likely not to get myself caught.

4. A pension?! MY PENSION?!! What? The money is LOCKED WITHIN THE HOUSE. Locked there UNTO FOREVER. That's like saying that my rather lovely pair of Converse (three years old this year!) is a pension plan. That's not how it works at all. I have bought the shoes, I own the shoes, I will not somehow miraculously get the money back from the shoes. It is money invested, yes. It is a sensible investment, as they go. However, your pension is your pension and your house is your house. Telling people their house was their pension is the reason why we are about to have a whacking great pensions crisis. (Guess what generation is paying for that one, too?)

In conclusion: your average graduate cannot and does not have a mortgage. Your average graduate spends the first few years of post-graduate life doing doggy paddle to keep above water. If you can afford, and want, an aspire to a house then please, go for it! If you can't, though, don't go insane trying to get one. Don't make yourself ill. Try not to encourage any more recessions in terms of becoming over-stretched in your borrowing. (Think of the next generation of graduates there, perhaps.) Try to remember that having a roof over your head is good and safe money, and that our communal fetishism over property-owning as a nation is just plain weird.

And don't ever, ever tell me again that renting is 'dead money' because so help me I will not be responsible for my actions.

There is a Graduate Myth post here, somewhere, but I felt a bit of rage was possibly the way forward.

Some mildly bright news

Occasionally - very occasionally - there is a bright chink of light in the doom and gloom of professional graduate life. I've recently managed to secure a paying - paying! - writing and editing job. It's not very well paying, admittedly, but since it's my first paid gig outside of my job, I am ecstatically happy.

On the plus side, it's something for the portfolio (if I had one) and it's also something to throw into the gaping maw of my overdraft. It's also evidence that no matter how ambivalent your feelings towards your place on employment might be, some people turn out to be unexpectedly useful.

On the negative side, it's editing a re-wording a website that's in the exact same industry I already work in. (No conflict of interest, luckily, that would be a fun one to explain to my actual boss.) It's also effectively a second job, in between working, commuting, blogging, wedding planning and every so often sleeping.

... I, er, wait, why was I pleased about this again?

Graduate Myth #4: Disposable Income

Disposable income makes the economy go around. It's what makes us all have the ability to buy sparkly eyeshadow, stupid extras for cars, and life-affirming holidays.

I love disposable income.

Despite opinions to the contrary from Mr DG and my parents, I am not particularly profligate in my spending. I spent my time as a student eating on a basic level and not buying many clothes. Money as a teenager came via a badly paid part-time job, and I used most of the cash for driving lessons. So when I came out of university and fell into my first full-time job, it was like the singing of the hallelujah choir. Despite a fairly low wage, I was still living with my parents. They asked, and received, a rent to cover my living expenses. After that, the money was all mine!

… then I remembered that living with my parents was basically crap, and moved out. And lo, I have no disposable income again.

This is true of most people I speak to. Any kind of wages over the basic minimum you used to scrape by with as a student seemed like a gargantuan sum of money, but there was a lot more expenses to being a grown-up than you might first imagine. My two bugbears are the horror that is maintaining a car – necessary in order to get to work – and saving for a wedding. Now, a wedding is exactly the kind of thing that you need disposable income for and yes, it's exactly the kind of thing I couldn't afford a student. But as Mr DG and I sit in our living room and debate whether or not we can afford a pint this weekend (answer: no) I wonder: does any recent graduate actually have any disposable income?

The answer is, yes, a little. We sit and complain that we have no money – but we have no money because we're saving for houses, or we've just been on holiday, or we're getting married. The sad truth is that depressingly, if you work full time and have a couple of incomes and no kids, you do have money. The expectation, though, is that if you have an annual salary approximately four times bigger than your annual budget as a student, the money will be somehow neverending. And, of course, it isn't.

Alas.

Plus, you get the delightful knowledge that whinging because you can't afford new shoes is the absolute worst kind of first-world problems. That's an added bonus.

Student Debt

Some fascinating stuff in the Guardian today about student loans and debt management. I am having a birthday party/housewarming/potluck thing this evening so to be honest don't have time to go through it fully, but it looks like a good read.

As a heads up, I am fairly heavily in debt, but it could be worse; I have paid back approximately £100 of my student loan and I graduated two years ago. I currently owe a bank a small amount of money in terms of an overdraft, but nothing outrageous. I managed to graduate owing absolutely nothing on credit cards or overdraft due to a combination of being fairly boring, working my socks off, and having a car accident in my fourth year of studies which resulted in permanant back problems but on the bright side I ended up with a payment for the injuries, as the accident wasn't my fault.

I do not advise this as a method for paying off your debts.

Now if you'll excuse me I need to run around Seaside Town like an unsuccessful Come Dine With Me contestant.

The Real World(tm)

The main problem with the real world is that, in a sense, you are protected from many of its little vagaries when a student. Now, as a student I had to pay bills, and one week I ran out of money so lived off a loaf of bread and a box of Tesco Value eggs. (Okay, that’s a tiny fib. I still had some herbs, and after three days a housemate took pity on me and gave me half a cup of rice.) At the same time, though, I didn’t worry about, say, council tax. That was nice.

The depressing part is that you don’t realise that you’re free of all this nonsense. In fact, you bewail how difficult life is and how completely fucking unreasonable British Gas are. That is still true. What you don’t realise is also how completely fucking unreasonable the council tax people are. And the water board people. And don’t get me started on that family below me with the child that’s teething. No one’s fault, sure, but the child seems to have an uncanny knack of stopping crying approximately 0.1 nanoseconds before my alarm goes off in the morning. If that’s not completely fucking unreasonable then I don’t know what is.

Before anyone comes in on their high horse and whinges at me that this is just the real world and what everyone has to put up with, and not everyone gets to spend four years faffing about on the government money ETC ETC BLAH BLAH can it please be noted that the above statement probably applies to everyone. At least I moved out at eighteen and learned about the whole British Gas thing, and that you can make a variety of increasingly desperate meals with naught but eggs, bread, and seven inventive tricks with oregano. My younger sister often tells me that I lived in fairyland or four years and never dealt with the problems of THE REAL WORLD and NORMAL PEOPLE. That might be true, but she still lives with our parents at the age of twenty-one and works part time in a takeaway. I was talking to my mum about water bills, and she piped up in genuine confusion that water was something to be paid for.

This is less a disorientated graduate problem and more of a disorientated twenty something problem, I realise. Still, university tricks you into thinking that you’re dead worldly and capable of taking on everything so it’s rather a shock when you work out that they really are all still out to get you.