In terms of income, it's a bit shit! In terms of my wealth, things are looking O.K. In fact you might say that Hive has kept my wealth alive!
Income - massive reduction coming up for at least April and May
I work two very part-time jobs and was set to earn roughly the following from each in May and June:
- reviseosciology.com - my revision blog/ resource sales/ webinars - £1500 a month
- teaching AET courses - £1000 a month
So I've lost around £6000 in income over those two months.
This is mainly because:
- A-level exams have been cancelled and so the usual seasonal demand for my revision material is now gone.
- The AET courses are face to face and no one's allowed out, so these have been cancelled until at least June.
On the one hand this is most painful - my earnings are seasonal and my peak earning months are April - June, and this will no where near be covered by any bail out package from the government, which takes into account averages.
However, as you'll see below I do have significant cash savings which will see me through at least three months (easily in fact) and with a mortgage holiday and low interest rates, this wont' be too bad.
TBH without the mortgage, my outgoings are only around £7-800 a month, it's not that much.
I will earn something from my revision sales, but probably only around £4-500. Thankfully I've already had one kind couple say they don't want a refund for the revision webinars I'd sold!
Also, I imagine my training company will be pushing out extra courses in July/ August, so I can make some of this back, but that will be a bit grim due to larger class sizes, for example.
MOST IMPORTANTLY, I'm using this time to get my house done-up ready for rental and I'll be doing a van conversion shortly (when I'm allowed out to buy one!) - so I can get out of this country and reduce my expenditure further!
Wealth - surprisingly stable!
When I last did a wealth review in February, my TNW (not counting property wealth) stood at £49 000, and today, in what I'm going to call the 'early Corona phase' it stands at £48 800, so I'm a grand total of £200 down!
To say the least, this was a pleasant surprise!
What's happened to my different asset classes of investment?
- Shares - are down, but only around 20% overall - I guess is this because most of those investments are in staple companies (like Microsoft) who are going to OK during a time of Crisis.
- My cash savings are stable in March relative to February, although that's a bit misleading because the value of the dollar is in decline!
- Gold and Silver (somewhat annoyingly because I bought them as a minor hedge against stocks going down) are actually down around 10% too.
- I've written off my tax-debt to the government, anticipating being allowed to pay that well into 2021, or it just being cancelled altogether.
- My Peer to peer account is OK, however, there will almost certainly be more defaulting on this. I've stopped re-lending.
- And gotta love the crypto here - up around 25% - NB this is mainly due to the Hive airdrop.
HIVE - keeping my wealth alive!
All of the increase in my crypto holdings are down to the Hive airdrop, which has proved to be something of a wealth-saver - it has literally neutralized all of the other losses!
HOWEVER, I probably won't get my 28K Steem out for the current value of $0.14 - if it stays above $.10 I'll be happy. But I am an optimist there: thanks to the enormous size of Justin Sun's ego, psychologically having the value go below it's recent-historic low is something I don't think he'll stand for, so he'll probably buy up Steem at a $0.10 flaw (or is that floor?).
Conclusions
The way it was supposed to work was that I'd earn a lot of money this Spring, and that would be a nice little buffer to see me off to Europe in a Van in November this year.
As it's turned out, I'm having to manage my transition and cost of living for the next 12 weeks (hopefully no more) from the cash-pot I had stashed just for transitioning.
If I'm careful and a bit tight-wad, I should be OK, maybe I'll need to cash in a few premium bonds, maybe scrape some cash out of those silly little savings accounts I've forgotten about, but all in all it could be worse!
The most important lesson from all of this is that it's firmed my resolve (NB it was already pretty firm!) to transition to a low-impact, low-fiat lifestyle asap.
If I take a pragmatic view this is all good practice for learning to live with less!