Money Diary: A Telecare Operator & Student In Edinburgh On 22k
Tags: Students, Salary, Money, Saving, Careers

By Anonymous

Welcome to Money Diaries, where we’re tackling what might be the last taboo facing modern working women: money. We’re asking a cross-section of women how they spend their hard-earned money during a seven-day period — and we’re tracking every last penny.

This week: “I’m a telecare operator which, for the sake of saving a couple of paragraphs, is basically an Old Lady Rescuer. We work shifts (woo) and provide remote support for elderly and vulnerable people living across Scotland: answering alarm calls, arranging appropriate responders, calling emergency services etc. I’ve been in this role for 15 months, lived in Edinburgh for 16 months and been financially independent for the past 18 months.

I had somewhat of a difficult experience of school and adolescence because I was severely unwell with anorexia from the age of 14. From 14 to 20, I had two repeated years of school, an inpatient admission in hospital, two years with outpatients and one year at Aberdeen University, during which time I lived half the time in halls and half the week in hospital. It took me a good few years, a lot of love and emotional support from my family and friends and financial support from my parents to get to the point where I could mentally and physically manage to work a full-time job and, therefore, support myself financially.

I dropped out of Aberdeen University after the first year, after deciding it wasn’t the right time and it wasn’t making me happy. After a couple of years of working, volunteering and part-time courses, I decided I wanted to go back to studying. I’ve been studying psychology part-time with The Open University for the past three years and have another two to go after this. Eventually, I think I want to do a master’s in health psychology and work in elderly mental health. Studying can be quite full-on to manage alongside shifts but I don’t honestly think I’d be able to study at all if I worked a ‘normal’ nine-to-five.”

Industry: Health and social care and university

Age: 24

Location: Edinburgh

Salary: £22,000

Paycheque amount: £1,573

Number of housemates: One, L.

Monthly Expenses

Housing costs: We each pay £540/month in rent.

Loan payments: £0

Savings? £2,500 in a Help to Buy ISA (I opened this last year just before the scheme ended and I transfer £100 from my current account every month), £400 in an instant access savings account (I transfer £50 from my current account every month and use this account when I have my car insurance, road tax and MOT to pay so I don’t need to take money from my current account — I paid all my car-related costs over the past few months. I plan to add extra to this account over the next few months with Christmas coming up and to pay for flights (fingers crossed) for my sister’s hen week in Florence next June and for my bridesmaid’s dress for her wedding in August), £6,000 in a long-term savings account (my parents put aside the child benefit they received and handed this money over to me on my 18th. I’ve recently had to dip into this money to replace my laptop which I spilled a TINY amount of water on but which nonetheless died a death (doh), £1,400 in premium bonds.

Other: £13 Wi-Fi, £20 gas/electric, £153 council tax (all three of these represent my half of these costs), £20 gym membership, £4.99 Spotify (student rate woooo), £5 Bloody Good Period charity contribution.

Day One

7.30am: Ohhhh yeeeeees. I came off night shift yesterday morning and got through the day on a three-hour nap. The first night of sleep I get after night shift is among the things I look forward to most. I slept for a solid nine hours which is almost unheard of for me. However, my blissful state is quickly displaced by a sense of doom when I a) remember it was election night and b) realise I have woken with a pounding headache. Put on Radio 4 and listen to the news, whack on my sleep mask and go back for a wee doze.

12pm: Hmm. Wee doze. Oops. Still got a headache and I know it will only get worse so I pop a couple of ibuprofen then do my morning skincare. Maskne is a thing, y’all. My skin is generally blemish-prone at the best of times and 2020 has really not helped things.

1pm: Belated breakfast (?!) of yoghurt, protein powder, apple, almonds, cinnamon and cacao nibs…then a wee bowl of Rice Krispies. Nom nom nom.

1.30pm: Uuughhhhh. Uni work. I’m doing my degree (psychology) part-time with The Open University and am currently on my second second-year module. This is my third year studying this way and, while it took a while to get into, it works really well for me. I can’t see that I’d be able to study this way if I worked a nine-to-five job so doing the nutty shifts that come with my job actually works very well in my favour. I’m currently two weeks ahead of where the study guide says I should be. I find this essential because there are certain weeks (cough…night shift…cough) where I get less done than others and it generally gives me more wriggle room. The topic this week is interpersonal relationships and I’m finding it v v interesting. Social psychology is by far my fave.

3pm: Whack out my yoga mat and do a quick 30 minute yoga flow. I always follow Cat Meffan’s flows on YouTube and really love them (and her).

4pm: Wee (by which I actually mean two-hour) FaceTime with Mum and my sister (G). Conversation topics are as usual on such occasions: recreational drug use, non-dairy yoghurt and debagging.

6.30pm: Walk to my nearest (and favourite) bookshop and pick up a couple of books (Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami and Nightingale Point by Luan Goldie). When I’m leaving the bookshop, I pass a guy who I matched with on Hinge earlier this year, spoke with at length and was then ghosted by. Luckily he doesn’t seem to recognise me. Yay for the relative anonymity of the face mask. £17.18

7pm: Cook some dinner of red lentil pasta / brown rice pasta, tomato sauce and veggie sausages. This sustains me for around half an hour before I make a lil’ chocolate mug cake. I am yet to decide if I’m happy that I found a decent mug cake recipe. Yes it’s delicious but it now means that I’m only two minutes away from cake at any given time. Dangerous.

10pm: Shower, evening skincare, catch up on Hinge activity, Netflix in bed. Schleeeep.

Total: £17.18

Day Two

5.30am: Wide awake. Excellent. Scroll for a while then book a slot at the gym, set an alarm and try to get in a bit more sleep.

8.15am: Wake up feeling very discombobulated, convinced my alarm is coming from my radio and insistently press random buttons, confused as to why it won’t go off. Takes me a good 30 seconds to identify that the noise is coming from my phone. Whack on some gym gear and head out the door. The gym is literally two minutes from my front door, which means I don’t have any excuse not to go (damn).

8.30am: Lil’ arm sesh. I’ve been fairly consistent with gymming since they were allowed to open at the end of August. I need to be a bit careful with monitoring how fixated I get with working out because if I work out too much, I can quite easily slip into it becoming a tad obsessive and that then has a knock-on effect on how and what I eat. I’d say that this is one of the main eating disorder hangovers that I still need to be wary of.

10.30am: Hair mask done, laundry (from two days ago) put away, shower had, breakfast eaten (same as yesterday: yoghurt, protein, apple, almonds, cacao nibs and cinnamon). Now settling down to some uni work.

1pm: Woo, two and a half hours of stats later and I decide I’m done for the day. Head out for a walk up through a local park. I love this time of year so much and haven’t been getting out and enjoying it as much as I should have. The soundtrack to my walk is the newest episode of The High Low. A proper lol is had when No Nut November and Destroy Your Dick December are discussed. Would recommend a listen for those few minutes alone.

2.30pm: Have a munch on some carrot sticks, mushed avocado, hummus and corn cakes, then put on the new Borat and set about googling DIY face covering tutorial things.

5.30pm: Three hours later, I have some semblance of a homemade face covering. It’s rustic but it will do the job. I’ll maybe try and make a few more and send to my pals once I’ve sussed out how to make them look marginally less homemade. Really unconvinced on Borat. Don’t really know what to say about that whole experience.

10.30pm: Thrilling evening spent eating pasta, watching Friends with L and chatting to Hinge man #1 about Borat and Sacha Baron Cohen. Resolve to do some scrolling on ye olde Facebook and YouTube to find interviews with him as a human being and as an actor. Drift off to sleep accompanied by the dulcet tones of Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and with the beginnings of a headache.

Total: £0

Day Three

9.30am: 9.30? A lie-in? Unprecedented. What a time to be alive.

11am: Breakfast eaten (porridge — sexy), phone scrolled and down to some uni work. Still got the headache that started last night, have the back-to-work blues and generally cannot be bothered with being productive. Alas.

1.30pm: Ugh. Brain = mush. Try to reinvigorate brain with some avo toast (have to cut out some mould from the bread before the toasting process).

2pm: Put on some marginally more socially acceptable attire (a pair of black leggings) and make the trek across the road to pick up a few bits (cashew milk, dates, Nakd bars, chocolate) to top up supplies before the commencement of the working week tomorrow. £9

2.15pm: Meal prep sesh. Make a massive batch of what I will call smoky sweet potato, quinoa and bean chilli but which in reality is a version of what I call all my meals: vegetable mush. I’ve been vegan for just over three years now. While this decision came about when I was coming out of the worst of my eating disorder, it was a decision that I made for the right reasons and was genuinely one of the best things I could have done for my recovery long term. For a year after I became vegan, I challenged myself to cook a new recipe from scratch every day. I learned not only more about vegan cooking but more generally about what my body needed and what made me feel healthy.

4.30pm: Set about sewing another face mask to send to a friend. Get to all but the final stage one and a half hours later and realise I have sewed the pieces together the wrong way round. Can’t face the task of unpicking all the stitches I’ve just spent however long doing. A task to look forward to later in the week. Oooooh the anticipation. Fml.

6.15pm: Have a dinner of some of the chilli vegetable mush with a couple of chopped up veggie sausages and broccoli. Followed by a couple of squares of chocolate. Obviously.

8.15pm: Settling down to sleep stupidly early because a) I still have a headache b) I’ve booked a slot at the gym at 8am and c) I am a grown-ass adult and I can do what I want.

Total: £9

Day Four

7.45am: Uuugggghhhhhhh. Reluctantly get up and get ready for the gym, then layer up with two jackets because if the temperature in the flat is anything to go by then OH BOY is it gonna be cold.

7.57am: OH BOY IT’S COLD.

9.15am: Gym sesh has been seshed, shower has been showered, laundry is on, coffee has been brewed (i.e. I have made an instant coffee). Uni time!

12pm: Breakfast (?!) of what could fancily be termed carrot cake porridge but is, more realistically, porridge with grated carrot, cinnamon, nutmeg and raisins. It’s good dinnae get me wrong but I’m not going to say it tastes like carrot cake. Because it doesn’t.

12.45pm: Remember that there’s a £20 million lotto jackpot tonight. Now, therefore, seems as good a time as any for my once a year purchase of lottery tickets. Get three lines of numbers which, obviously, triples my chances of becoming a multimillionaire (that’s how it works, right?). £6

12.50pm: Read a couple of chapters of Norwegian Wood to distract myself from the impending, pressing sense of doom that is the start of my working week.

2pm: Dreading dreading dreading. This specific shift (Saturday 2–10pm) is my most dreaded of all the shifts we do and to have it as the first shift of the working week is really not ideal. I count myself very lucky that my job and my hours haven’t been affected by the pandemic (relatively speaking) but the past few months have been a real slog, what with staffing shortages, management changing procedures and team changes.

5.30pm: Break. Reheat a big ol’ bowl of the quinoa/sweet potato/chilli mush and have a brief catch-up with my flatmate L who has just got back from Lidl. The news has just broken that Biden has secured the presidency so this dominates conversation.

10.15pm: Woooo! Day One is done. It was probably the quietest shift I’ve had in months (did less than 300 calls overall when it hasn’t been uncommon for me to take 400+ recently).

11.30pm: Exchanges exchanged with Hinge man #1 and Hinge man #2, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows playing and I’m off to sleeeeeeep.

Total: £6

Day Five

7.30am: Awake before my alarm. What fun.

8am: Gym time. Not really feeling it this morning but I’m not willing to pay the £2.50 cancellation fee. Halfheartedly lift some heavyish things and keep myself motivated by listening to “WAP” more or less on a loop.

9.30am: Showered and dressed (in loungewear obvs) for the day and open my laptop to find that…I WON THE LOTTERY. Well, I won £5. Immediately share the glad tidings with the family WhatsApp group and transfer the funds (lol) from my lotto account (which I apparently have now) to my current account because I WILL NOT BE LURED INTO REINVESTING MY WINNINGS IN MORE LOTTO-RELATED PRODUCTS. Not catching me that easy, Mr/s Lotto. Not today.

12pm: Have an online assessment for uni which I manage to bash through pretty quickly but which, nonetheless, kills my brain. Abandon doing any further uni work and instead read a good chunk of Norwegian Wood (really, really enjoying). Find myself v dozy and decide to go wild and have a midday nap before work.

1.30pm: Not entirely sure I was unconscious at all during that time but I was snuggled in my bed which is always a good place to be. Mash half an avo and have that with some tortilla chips and then a Nakd bar as a mushed together random lunch kinda situation before work.

6.30pm: Break — eat chilli veggie mush. Work somewhat frustrating today. We do the jobs of four departments at the weekend but with (generally) less staff than during the week. One of the classic weekend shift issues is that the time we dedicate to the work of the three other departments is significantly greater than the time dedicated to what our one job should be. A frustrating but regular occurrence. Today I’ve found myself in charge of the shift as my manager is on annual leave. I try to keep some banter and general positive vibes going on our work-chat-platform-thing to keep spirits up.

10.15pm: Aaaaand shift #2 of the week is done. Weekend survived.

11.45pm: Watch some YouTube vids (courtesy of The Anna Edit and Lucy Moon), chat to Hinge man #1, Harry Potter audiobook on and off to schleeeeeeep.

Total: £0

Day Six

5.45am: Why does my body wake me up now? Why? Feel v tired (unsurprising) and decide I can’t face the gym so cancel my 8.30am slot. Because I’ve cancelled more than two hours before the slot, I don’t get charged the cancellation fee. Back to sleep I go.

8.30am: Allow myself a slower start to the morning, laze in bed for a bit and watch Lizzy Hadfield’s most recent vlog — this makes me feel immensely better about life given that her new kitten, Luigi, gets a lot of screen time. So cute. So tiny.

10.30am: Morning skincare done, makeup on (skin is now at the point where looking at all my spots in the mirror makes me feel reeeeeeaaaal good about myself — not), carroty porridge eaten and settling down for a couple of hours of uni work. My life is truly thrilling.

1.15pm: Uni work done, now realise am v tight for time to get some food eaten and generally get my sh*t together before work.

1.55pm: Well that was a frantic wee time there. Lunch (red lentil pasta, broccoli and pesto) cooked, eaten, pans washed up, laundry hung up to dry, package unpackaged and new print plus frame put up in my bathroom (print of a lyric from one of my fave songs by The 1975: “Maybe I would like you better if you took off your clothes.”)

5pm: Break. Manager back today so feeling generally more relaxed, what with not having to worry about that side of things. Calls fairly steady and almost enough staff to make it bearable. Happy days. Eat more quinoa/chilli mush — honestly think I’ve got enough to last me another four days.

10.15pm: Aaaaand we’re done.

11.30pm: Showered and moisturised and in bed. Catch up on Jamie Genevieve’s most recent vlog and then spend a good 10 minutes looking at the Vieve website, lusting after every product and wishing I could afford to buy all of it. Harry Potter audiobook on and off to sleep. (No interaction with any Hinge men today. Disappointing.)

Total: £0

Day Seven

7.15am: Awake before my alarm (obviously). Read more of Norwegian Wood and have to use all my willpower to stop reading, get out of bed and get ready for the gym.

8.27am: I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go.

9.20am: Ugh. Was a good session but I now feel sick and exhausted. Legs are shaking when I’m standing still and when I’m sitting down.

10am: Hair mask done, skincare done, showered, dressed and — you guessed it — it’s uni work time.

10.17am: Scrap that. Am now ravenous. Porridge time.

11.30am: Phone call from the electrician to say he’s outside. The buzzer for our flat hasn’t been working for three (?) months, meaning whenever we want to let anyone in, we need to run down three flights of stairs. Electrician manages to fix the cause of the problem (blown fuse inside the call system box thing) in less than 30 seconds. Am part exasperated that it was this simple and part INCREDIBLY excited that we can now buzz people and deliveries in once again. Huzzah.

12.15pm: Decide I have had enough of uni work for the day and that I’d rather finish my book.

1pm: Finish Norwegian Wood — one of the best books I’ve read over the past few years without a doubt. Why haven’t I read any Murakami before?!

1.55pm: Make and eat lunch of red lentil pasta and pesto (again) and I’m ready for work. Headache is coming on.

6pm: Break. Headache really not very good now. Take some paracetamol, eat some quinoa/chilli mush and chat to L while half watching the news.

10pm: Finished! Make some pancakes and immediately eat two, using Betty Crocker chocolate icing as chocolate spread. Not been this aroused in months. Mind. Blowing.

11.30pm: Catch up on Made in Chelsea while catching up with Hinge man #1. Harry Potter on, sleeeeep time.

Total: £0

The Breakdown

Food & Drink: £9

Entertainment: £17.18

Clothes & Beauty: £0

Transportation: £0

Other: £6

Total: £32.18

Conclusion

“I’d say that this was a fairly average week for me spending-wise, considering that it was in the middle of the month. I’m quite careful with money and try to only buy essentials during the week. When I get to the end of the month, I see how much I’ve got left and then buy myself whatever I’ve compiled on my ‘Lust List’ over the course of the month and which I decide I really, really want (this list is pretty much everything on the Cult Beauty website). It’s worth noting that I didn’t have a big food shop this week which would obviously have bumped costs up. I tend to cook in bulk (case in point — the veggie chilli) which means I only need to buy a big load of food every 10 days or so. It’s rare I gain money in a week (oi oi lottery win) so that was fun heehee!”

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