Financial Freak Out

I got my first electricity bill the other day, and I freaked out.  It was astronomical, or so it seemed to me.  What with the in-floor radiant heating, the water heater, and the fact that Orkney’s electricity rates are among the highest in the UK (a statistic that makes no sense to me), it was a bit of a shock (pun unintentional).  My immediate reaction was to go around the house, lowering the thermostats, turning off all the wall outlets (UK outlets have little on/off switches), closing the doors to rooms, and hanging my last load of laundry on hangers and rails around the house instead of using the dryer.  LL in Calgary is rolling her eyes right now and saying, “Of course you did, Elaine.  Of course you did.”

I know this sounds like an overreaction, and it’s not like I can’t afford whatever the bills turn out to be each month, but it comes on the heels of many, many instances of flagrant overspending since I arrived here, the most recent incident being earlier that same day.  I had just seen my phone bill in which I had made a call to an International Toll-Free 1-800 number in Toronto.  Turns out my UK phone provider still charges for numbers like those, so I had unknowingly spent $60 on a single phone call to a bank in Canada earlier last month.

You see, since I have landed in Scotland I have spent significantly more money than budgeted for on a variety of items, for four different reasons.  I have overspent due to: 1) ignorance – the aforementioned phone call, and buying large furniture items here in Kirkwall because I needed them quickly and didn’t know there is a haulage company that does a weekly run to Ikea in Edinburgh for a really reasonable fee; 2) stupidity – over tipping a porter on the first day because I hadn’t looked at the denomination in my hand, and buying that handmade toque because I didn’t look hard enough through my luggage for a hat; 3) circumstance – having to make an extra 4-day trip to Glasgow to pick up a replacement bank card after mine was compromised; and 4) intent – buying Kirkjuvagr Gin instead of Gordon’s, and having lunch at The Foveran restaurant instead of eating at home. On top of all of those examples, many other instances, and the phone call, the electricity bill was the straw that broke the banker’s back.

I wrote the landlord asking what a typical month’s rate was – it’s not that I can’t afford the bill in my monthly budget, it’s just that I don’t want to find out I’ve been doing a poor job of managing my usage. Then I spent an entire day going through all my expenses for the last four months, working through a spreadsheet to analyse my up-front costs and build a budget going forward.  The good news: my bill was in line with what the previous residents had been spending and my monthly budget for the next 24 months is absolutely do-able.  The bad news? I have spent waaaay more than I had planned for when it comes to getting settled. 

The day before I left, Sibling 1 asked me if I really thought that by the end of this adventure I would be breaking even, and I blithely assured her that, oh yes, based on my calculations I would be fine, possibly even ahead of the game.  In retrospect, not so much.   

But, I do still have to live. Ergo, the heating is back up, the sheets and towels are in the dryer, and I’m off to buy a new pair of winter boots.  Panic averted.  Or at least postponed.