A few sensationalist News Stories...

"Young need to save for 14 years for a home, says Shelter"

"How do you prepare for a lifetime of renting?"

Just two headlines from the BBC this week, two among hundreds in the press over the last couple of weeks as various surveys suggest it's getting near impossible for people to buy a house in the UK at the moment. I'm sorry, but have I missed something?

On the 3^rd of January this year Joni and I were evicted from our rented home. On the 19^th of April we moved into our first bought house. That’s saving period of 105 days. We didn't win the lottery, haven't had a penny of help from either set of parents and no ancient relative has dropped off this mortal coil and left us a small fortune.

Joni and I are a pretty normal pair of young people. We are quite lucky in that we both have full time work, paying the region of £18k each. But, we between us we have 4 over drafts, 2 credit cards and a loan on a car that is to this day higher than the cars value, so not exactly a bank mangers dream. When we were asked to leave our rented house we had considered buying a house 'some time later in the year', but we hadn't actually done anything about it. But renting had gotten too much. Too many estate agents had charges a fortune for contracts, landlords have taken money from us, or just decided one day they want their house back because their daughter has fallen out with her mother!

We looking into these 95% mortgages, and New Buy schemes run by the government, but they involved buying a brand new house and we just didn't think it was what we wanted. We wanted space and light and a garden, and there were no builds in our area that offered that.

So we knew we were going to need about £15K or so for the deposit and fees. Now, it's this next step that separates us from everyone else, and I don't think it’s a particularly revolutionary step. I don't think you need two BSc's and an MSc to reach this giant leap of imagination.

We needed some money.

So we went to the bank.

And we asked for some money.

Ta dah!

We sat down with a bank advisor and 3 separate occasions and we filled out forms and we showed her our budget and asked politely and we convinced her that we could handle it. And she believed us, so she gave us the money we needed. Joni and I aren’t particularly good with money, if we were we would have the debt we have in the first place, but we managed to convince our bank that we could pay them back.

Now, the loan we got it going to take 5 years to pay back, which actually matches quite nicely with what one of these reports says – based on our age and location apparently it would take us 4.8 years to save for a deposit.

But here, really is my point. There is nothing special about us. If we can but a house in 4 months then I think a lot of people can. And what's most amazing is in the 2 months since we bought our house it has already gone up in price.  I wonder if perhaps the media stopped telling people they can't buy a house and told more stories of people like us who are loving our new home then perhaps the housing market would recover quicker.

Ponderings on age...

Recently I have been thinking a lot about age and what it means to be 25. I have a number of reasons to believe I am getting old, not least the fact that one of my closest friends takes the chance to call me boring at least twice every time I see him. Also there is the purchasing of the house, the 'career' (as opposed to just having a job) and the fact I think staying up till 2am is an achievement.

But let me paint you a picture of what happened this afternoon as I was driving home from work. I am fully resigned to the fact I prefer radio 2 with breakfast. I'm OK with this - Chris Evans is funny and radio 1 replaced one obnoxious DJ with another. So, with my phone still at home in a bowl of rice I was forced to listen to the radio on the way home too. Radio 2 was still on from the morning, and it was Patrick Keilty. He introduced Daft Punk like this

"Here is what the kids are listening to these days, apparently. It's about playing poker - staying up all night to get lucky"

I laughed out loud alone in the car, and then I stopped mid-giggle. Oh hell, I am not supposed to find that funny. And yet it made me laugh. I often feel like the oldest person in the room (even older than the boss). I find I can't help myself doing the dished when friends are round because I hate a messy kitchen, and I'm ushering people out the door at 11 because I have to get up for work in the morning. And I can't decide how I feel about this.

On the one hand I am happy. I love my home, I enjoy my job and I'm fairly happy with my life. I have no major problems to worry about. And yet I can't help but dread what future Fiona will think of the choices I have made. When I am 40 will I be glad I chose to buy a house aged 25, and that I built a decent foundation and I took the sensible options? Or will I just regret I didn't party every night, live at home longer, go on big holidays and generally live it up when I could? Am I growing up too fast?

And does anyone ever know the answer to that question before they are 40?

1 month on.

So, it's been one month since we moved into our house and so much has happened.

The house warming was the best we have ever had. The weather was perfect and we had the first trial of Dionysus bars. This turned out to be a terrible idea. Thank you for coming if you were there, but I have forgotten. I have forgotten almost the whole night. I was looking at photos days later trying to figure out what we had been doing and, to be honest I'm still not sure.

The day after I wrote up with a start at half 6 when I realised Joni wasnt in the bed. I went on a search of the whole house and found him in a tent, in the garden, with Tim & Stee. No one can figure out why this seemed like a good idea, but they really regretted it when Charlotte and I started banging plans together by their heads! I was still drunk at that point. It didn't last.....

The Sunday that followed was the worst hangover day of all time. 4 people spent the entire day sitting in the dark, groaning slightly and failing to eat. Tim fell asleep on his knees, Joni had to be put to bed in the middle of the afternoon and Stee refused to leave the house when we finally worked our selves up to a walk and MacDs at 7pm. I think we are getting old.

The next day we discovered 11 cans of out of date beer, and being good people we decided to recycle the cans. After playing beer bowling with them. We also went to next doors BBQ party and meet all the neighbours. That was fun, I've never met neighbours before. Not heard from them since though, I was still fairly hungover......

Since that weekend we have had a couple of BBQs, had friends round and started gardening, so all petty business as usual. I have started decorating because I am having a little trouble settling into this house. It doesn't really feel like home yet, but I think that might just be because its so unreal. It's all happened so quickly, and also we realised we have mostly bought a house because people said we couldn't. That's a good reason, right?

After a 3 month break....

So tonight is the end of our 9 day holiday and it has been a crazy busy week. As everyone knows, it started with picking up the keys for our new home on Friday afternoon. So off Joni and I go to the estate agent, every bit of documentation we could think of in one hand, id in the other. We walk into the agents and say its Joni and Fiona to pick up the keys and..... they just hand them over. No questions, no form signing, just here is an envelope, have a nice day.

And then it was a very short drive around the corner to our new home. And no exaggeration, we just walked around the whole house, just looking and smiling, twice before we were capable of doing anything else. Eventually we got it together and bounced off to my parents to fetch the essentials (airbed, TV, champaign) and spent our first night eating fish & chips and sleeping on the living room floor. Can't say I slept very much.

The next day passed in a whirlwind of energy and enthusiasm as a whole load of people turned up once again to help us move. I promise this time it will be for more than a year! I suspect even a free MacDonalds wouldn't get them all to help again if we declare we are moving again before 2015! I am particularly grateful to the guys who stuck around after our first BBQ and found a final wave of energy to t tidy the living room at 10pm. I'm sure the beer had nothing to do with it!

Basically all we did for the next four days was unpack. We lost an entire day (and a few years off my life I suspect) to an IKEA wardrobe. Special mention must go to Tim who came round every day to drill holes, build furniture and generally be the man about the house. He left his tools which was definitely a big mistake. Today we managed toll makes a fair cockup of hanging a spice rack but it's fine. The last guy left us half a tin of kitchen paint.

On Thursday we spoke up early but we realised if we didn't get away for the diy soon we were both going to lose it, so we went to Chester zoo and it was amazing, if a little cold. We then went home and Joni got really really drunk in or house for the first time. It was a good day.

We spent the rest of the weekend making sure the house was ready for us to go back to work. We've reached a pretty good stage now. Nothing more really needs doing, just the odd little job it would be nice to fix. Strangely I'm really looking forward to going back to work tomorrow. Tomorrow marks the official start typo the return to normality for me and Joni, and I couldn't be more excited.

All for one....

Following the success of the 2011 Bond Marathon, I think I have decided to embark on a new mission in celluloid. And it starts with spotting a DVD case at Tim's house, and getting a free book with my Nexus. These 2 things lead me to fancying watching The Three Musketeers. So we searched it on LoveFilm and got the longest list of films I have ever seen. At least 15 three musketeers films, and that before you reach the barbie version!

So that is the mission, To watch as many versions of The Three Musketeers as possible in one year, to try and work out why it is the most over-done franchise ever, and if any of them are actually any good. I will also attempt to read the originals book to find out what the story actually is.

So, I started this mission with the 2011 version, staring Orlando Bloom, Matthew Macfadyen and a whole load of other fairly famous people. This was a fully American version and it was given the Steam Punk treatment (for anyone who doesn't know, Steam Punk is a style which is set in the 19th or 20th century but with some 'modern' technology. Think the Robert DJ Sherlock style). In true American style everything was over the top, and all the writing budget was spent on lavish sets and dresses with some seriously tight corsets. But the plot just about held together and the acting was only a little over the top. And it was pretty enjoyable to watch. The biggest mystery to me was probably what Mas Mickelson was doing in this film, and why they bothered to put so much effort into setting up for the sequel which clearly was not going to get funded.

So first up was a typical American action film, but one of the better ones. Next Maybe to go further back in time... 

Solicitor-cide - is it a crime?

So on Saturday I agreed to buy the house for like the 10th time, and I suggested the date of the 12th for moving. The seller, being the total arose he has shown himself to be over the last 53 days took the best part of 4 days to get back to us and said... No. He suggested the 26th. I have to confess at this point I somewhat lost it. Actually,I lost it quite a lot. In a corridor at work. People in the next office heard. Vicky from marketing came to ask who had pissed me off.

I told the estate agent in no uncertain terms that the 26th would not do, and if he couldn't do the 12th, I can do the 11th. This time it only took 3 hours to get back to me - would the 19th do? The 19th will do, thank you.

And there, I thought we finally had it. We even celebrated a little. There was pizza and pop. And then came morning. And that quick call to the solicitor to organise the signing....

Yeh.

That.

Only my solicitor has gone on holiday all week. Without telling us. And the person she has left in charge is a full scale idiot. She had no idea what was going on with our file and couldn't get proper access to our solicitors stuff until the secretary was around. Most annoyingly, despite me calling 3 more times she didn't return my calls so I still cant confirm when I am moving. So I can't book my time off work. So I still cant sort my work diary out and confirm with my boss what I will be up to in a fortnight.

Not. Impressed.

Another birthday

Writing this on my favourite new toy, my nexus 7 just like I wanted!

Overall its not quite been as low key a birthday as I was originally planning. I didn't plan on planning quite so much but it was great anyway. My big night out was a success despite the snow! I am very grateful to batman, little red riding hood, Alice, danny & sandy, the captain, his gay pirate and my penguin for making it an awesome night. I've always wondered who buys those stupid photos in clubs- turns out it's drunk Fiona! I still haven't gotten over dogma turning us away,  they are well known for being the.....  let's say lowest- class club in town.  How can they turn away fancy dress? Mental! Still,thank you all for trailing through the snow with me and helping me get really drunk.  For those who missed it I feel obliged to report that when I slipped in the snow outside the hotel Joni had to physically pick me up and put me back on my feet due to my being unable to stand. 

The next day I crawled out of bed early and went for a walk around town in the snow and the peace of Sunday morning. It wasn't as peaceful as I thought actually,  although it did clear my head.  With Charlotte & Sean still around we took them to see the sights of Nottingham. This mostly involved being silly in the castle (photos of this will follow). It was fantastic to see have Charlotte and Sean around for the weekend.

This big weekend was followed by a fairly standard week at work.  My actual birthday was on Tuesday and my office treated me to a nice embarrassing round of facts about me (including discussions on why I was in Nottingham at 5am dressed as a zombie once and how you get uninvited from a wedding 3 days before it happens) and an impromptu Quiz about Denmark (9 out of 10, cause I rock).

The birthday celebrations ended with a family afternoon, with a buffet complete with party rings and jammy dodgers! And I got my last birthday present, from Jenny & Ben. Tea flowers, they are amazing! Just put them in boiling water and they open up into beautiful flowers and they make lovely tea. It was great to see everyone and my cake was awesome!

Overall a lovely birthday. Not exactly what I pictured when I thought of my grand 25th, but wonderful anyway.

Next week, on to a new house??

50 days later...

Exactly 50 days ago I received the txt message from our landlord asking us to move out of what we had come to regard as our home. It was a silly mistake to get so attached to a rented property but now we are well on the way to getting the first house we can truly call our home. Eeeeep!!

For those who don't know much about buying a house a brief explanation is required, to explain the stress-related snappy-ness we have both been suffering (and why its not going away any time soon).

The first step to buying a house if find out if, in principle, you can get a mortgage. This was easy - Yes. Banks were tearing our hands off to say yes, subject to checks, they would love to give us a 90% mortgage. The next step for us was to then get the other 10% for the deposit. This we did the cheats way - i.e. we borrowed it from a different bank because we don't have the patients to save.

Third step is find the house and get the owner to accept an offer. This is a stupidly time-consuming task. I am writing this blog post on the first Saturday morning I have't had to get up to go view houses in 8 weeks. We saw a grand total of 27 houses, luckily one of those was 'the one'. And everyone was right - The moment I stepped through the front door I knew this one was different, and by the time I had been to the bottom of the garden and through all the rooms I knew. And that was that, I was having that house. Getting an offer accepted took a further 2 weeks of hell. Waiting for the phone to ring, chasing solicitors and mortgage brokers. Luckily for me my new boss is extremely understanding and she hasn't said a word about me answering my phone at work. Finally we got an offer accepted, about £2500 more than we really wanted but the house is worth it.

Forth step turned out to be the real bitch, and largely because we didn't see the problems coming. Remember all those banks, desperate to lend us money subject to checks? Well it turned out that these were more SUBJECT TO CHECKS and these checks declared Joni and my borrowing too high, wages too low and generally just bad people to lend 90% value of a house to. But they would do an 85% mortgage giving me a heart attack on the the phone, and both of us 1 afternoon to find £5000. Due to the brilliance that  is Joni's financial planning, we actually did it. We called the mortgage broker back and told her to go ahead with it. What followed was the tense-ist 18 hours of my life but at 10:30am on Friday the broker called to say it had all been approved. New home, here we come!

Now I don't want to put a dampener on things but there is still 6 weeks to wait, approximatly. During which any number of a huge list of things can go wrong - The mortgage people can still change their minds about lending us money. The banks valuer can decide the house isn't worth what we are paying, or find some major problem. The solicitors can find some major problem. The owner can change is mind and withdraw, someone else can come along and offer more money than us. BUT if all these things don't happen you are all invited to the house warming in spring!

As promised, here are some pictures of (hopefully) our new home:

The one thing I'm never aloud to say, said more eloquently than I could ever manage.

In the weekend section of the Guardian newspaper they have a shorts section each week called "What I'm Really Thinking". This week my mum gave this to me and suggested I read it. What it said spoke to me in such a profound way I felt I had to share with with all my fans. Reading this article it felt like someone had reached into my heart and pulled out all those things I'm too cynical, too sarcastic, too defensive to say. I genuinely think it will have changed the way I express myself and in some ways that makes me sad. Below I present what I'm really thinking, but could never find the words to say:

I wish I could meet this person, I think we would be friends. I'd like to think we could go to the gym together and get coffee (....cake) together and not feel like we have to justify each others life choices with every conversation. To not slowly descend into a characature of yourself because it doesn't sit right with people - no normal woman could have made this choice. 

More than anything else this article scares me, actually. To read and write in to the Guardian (not to mention have your own home gym) suggests the writer is a fair bit older than me. I dream of the day people stop asking when I will change my mind, raise their eyebrows when I say I don't want children. "I bet you will have more children than the rest of us" is the phrase I hear most in my life. I wonder if anyone has ever considered how degrading it is to constantly have one of your life's biggest choices belittled on an almost weekly basis? If I took up going to church and people laughed and asked when I would give that up time and time again, you would be labelled bigoted or racist. 

If this writers experience is anything to go by I might have more years of defending myself than I would like. 

The 2013 Consumer Power Adventure pt 1: Turning Bills Into Mills

Time for the first of my  NYR posts about how I am trying to change the world using my consumer power. For this one I am cheating slightly because its not something I actually did in January, but I am trying to se January to convince my parents to do it, so I think it counts.

So, quick introduction. Ecotricity are and energy supplier. They were the worlds first green energy supplier and remain one of the largest. When I first decided I wants a green energy supplier I spent a lot of time researching different options and I decided Ecotricity were my favourite, for a number of reasons.

Firstly because Ecotricity are run as an not-for-profit organisation. There are no shareholders so they put all their profits into further research into alternative and effective green energy sources. For me this is very important, if we are really going to use green energy properly we need to do more research into it. Secondly Ecotricity are one of the few companies which offer green gas. Currently they are aiming to be the first company to build a green gas plant in the UK, using food waste to produce energy which we can use. This is a brilliant idea and its brilliant ideas like that that are going to save us all when the giant spaghetti monster comes.

One thing that did totally surprise me was that it didn't cost any more. Ecotricitiy have 2 simple tariffs. The first uses a majority of their green energy supplemented with brown energy they buy in (check the website for full details of the mix). This tariff tracks the 'big 6' so doesn't cost any more than your current supplier. So you can be doing good without costing you any extra! The second is their full green energy - this is 100% green using a mixture of their green energy supplemented with bought in green energy. This costs a little more, so if you an't afford it you don't have to.  

But to be perfectly honest, beyond all the green energy and saving the planet messages I really love Ecotricity because they are nice. According to Ofgem's complaints reports Ecotricity had the least complaints per 1000 customers in 2012, and from my experience I can see why. Call them and you talk, not only to an English human being, but they will do their best efforts to make sure you always speak to the same human being. If you email your own personal advisor will call you back, the same one, every time. I wasn't sure if Economy 7 was really saving me any money so I emailed them and told them. Later the same day they called me back and told me that they had calculated that on a standard tarrif I would have saved £1.10 over the last 3 months. So they had swapped me over but because it was such a small difference and such a short space of time they would monitor it for the following year and let me know if I would be better switching back. Can you imagine nPower or British Gas doing that?!

Check out their website for all sorts of fun and interesting facts about what they are doing:

ecotricity - because they are awesome

and really do seriously consider what you could be doing to help save our planet.

P.S. We got 6 free bottles of wine when we switched through the £50 naked wines voucher they give you and if that doesn't incentivise you to action then nothing will!

2 weeks on and the questions remain...

So its been two weeks since I couldn't sleep and frankly my sleeping patterns are not much better. Getting quite good at surviving on Paracetamol and diet coke tho, so its fine. I'v only made one or two more cock-ups at work and only my boss and the sales manager have noticed so far, so alls fine!

In those two weeks some rather dramatic things have happened. Firstly I am writing this post from my parents spare bed. This is because all of mine & Joni's 3 bedroom house has been packed up and moved into their garage. Again. This is the third winter in 4 that we have moved into my parents house, they must be getting sick of us. We decided to vacate our rented house pretty sharpish when we realised there wasn't time to buy a house in the time we had left on the lease. So we are here, saving money again. woo. hoo.

On the positive, our meeting with the bank actually went rather well. In fact I have had about 5 good meeting with banks in the last 2 weeks. Turns out we have reached the point where people want to give us money, which is nice. So its all systems go for buying a house - we just need to find one we like!

Which is of course where it all falls down. The problem with 'a buyers market' is that we can have pretty much whatever we want. There are so many houses on the market we could literately have anything. So what do we want? Something ready-made? A project maybe? A big garden? A conservatory? Something pretty good that just needs a little modernising? Do we want something to live in for a while? Or a quick project and the chance to make a few quid?

Now I am indecisive at the best of times. Throw in a few thousand pounds and I am like a kid in a candy shop, I just want them all. Buying a house involves making some serious choices about what I want for my life for the next 5 years. And I'm not sure I am grown-up enough to make those choices....

Loosing sleep over big decisions - now that is grown up!

Tonight I can't sleep. Joni is happily sleeping next to me but I can't sleep. "How can this be so?" I hear you cry. Well, 2 days ago something rather dramatic happened and thus unrolled the following, highly stressful weekend....

"Sorry to do this to you but I need my house back. Can you move out by the 17th of Feb. Love your landlord"

This was the txt message I revived from my landlord at 2pm on Friday afternoon, or words to that effect. Needless to say my brain went into total meltdown and 'ahhhhhhhhhh' was all I thought for about 12 hours. Luckily Joni is much less of a drama queen than me and he walked me through what our options were, and what should happen next.

The options are pretty simple. A) rent somewhere else, B) buy a house. In truth buying a house has long been a goal of our for this year (ever since The Great Mortgage U-Turn of 2010) but it was really for in 6 months time. You see, we have no deposit. What we have is 2 creditcards, 1 loan & 4 overdrafts. And interestingly one visa will not cover a house deposit! We always planned on taking a loan for a deposit (i mean really, the only people who can afford to save £15k before they are 40 live with their parents and ask yourself, who is really doing the saving in that situation?) but we hadn't quite reached the point where we could apply for a big enough loan yet, which brings me onto the real point of this post (and my sleeplessness)....

Has anyone noticed how ridiculous the current credit system is in the country? I mean really, seriously ridiculous. See we had a meeting with a man from Lloyds yesterday. Very nice man, very helpful, would have lent us £131 thousand pounds for a house in a heartbeat, but £13k for the deposit?!? No way! And I know the mortgage is secured against the house bla bla bla but why not secure the loan against the house too? It's just insane. The idea that I can get one hundred and thirty thousand pounds (seriously, say it out loud like that, its a huge sum of money) but I might not be able to buy because instead of staying home and sponging off mummy & daddy I went out and got a life is just extraordinary.

And before someone spells it out to me, I know its incase the house looses value, to cover fees (not that the grands worth of mortgage fees wouldnt do that) and the banks covering their arse bla bla, we get it. What really annoys me, what really gets to me, is that it is all decided by a practically-arbitrary computer system.

In the last 6 years I have proven I can budget, I can handle money. You can practically watch in my bank statments how I improve with money over the past decade. I the last 18 months Joni & I shown how we know exactly how to live to a tight budget, and in the last 5 months we have paid back over £2000 of debt while living in a rented house. Will anyone take notice of this proven responsibly? Of course not! You can't quantify that and turn it into an algorithm for measuring candidates so it doesn't count. No one cares for your actual situation, they only care about the numbers written down.

Tomorrow we have a meeting with our bank in which we will basically find out if we can get a house. Turns out, thanks to credit scoring, it may all come down to wheather we have a landline or not.

We don't.

Welcoming in a New Year

Traditionally people welcome in the New Year with lots of alcohol and a resolution. The copious amounts of alcohol were consumed last night, to predictable effects (laughing, shouting, drinking cava on the park at 1am), and now its time to talk about resolutions. See, I never start resolutions on the 1st of January, they are bound to fail. So I start resolutions on the 2nd. Much higher chance of success!

Last year Joni and I realised that all New Years Resolutions fall into one of five categories:
1) Personal Interests e.g. I will learn a new language
2) Personal Well-being e.g. I will quit smoking, stop being fat and win a marathon
3) Lifestyle e.g. I will love my job/life/husband and never complain about my lot again.
4) Relationships e.g. I will start/end a relationship with another man/woman/goat
5) Altruistic e.g. I will give 50% of all my wealth to children with aids and volunteer 30 hours a week in an old peoples home.

Having set five categories, I decided to have one resolution for 2012 from each category. I wrote a list and in the following months preceded to loose said list and forget most of the resolutions. I know the Personal Interests one was about going to the Broadway Cinema once every calendar month, and I know this because it is officially the first ever resolution in the history of mankind to actually be achieved, hurray! A had a personal well-being one about getting skinny, lol, and a relationships one about my relationship with Joni "staying the same", a wishy-washy resolution if ever I heard one.

So on to this year. I figure if I blog about my resolutions then they might actually happen (and at the very least I will probably be able to find them next year).

P.S. Mostly because Joni is a total nerd the resolutions have to be SMART targets (thats Specific, Mensurable  Achievable, Relevant & Time-bound in-case you have never worked in a school/office/any target-driven environment)

Fiona's 2013 New Years Resolutions!

1) Personal Interests: I will Learn Danish
This is a little broad, so to make it smart I will aim to be able to hold a reasonable conversation in Danish with one of my relatives when I go to visit them later this year. I will let the relative decide what counts as a 'reasonable conversation'.

2) Personal Well-being: I will do 150 mins exercise each week.
Diet goals never work - I always cave and eat my own mass in chocolate but 150 mins is the governments recommended weekly exercise for an adult and it seems achievable.

3) Lifestyle: To reach the end of 2013 with less debt than I have now, without the year feeling like it has been overshadowed by debt-repayments.
Its no secret that Joni and I have lots of debt and we want rid of it. In the last 5 months of 2012 we cleared over £2000 worth but we broke our backs to do it. I want to keep going in the right direction without feeling every step is being governed by how it affects our credit ratings. I'm not sure its a particularly SMART goal, but it is a goal.

4) Relationships: To not be dumped by any friends via text or other social media outlets!
While this may seem funny I am ending 2012 minus two friends who, in January, I thought were rather good friends. I discovered (via text) they weren't. While I am reassured this isn't my fault I do feel that this year I would like to focus on loving the friends I have, and building some new ones too. So watch out blog-lovers, you will be hearing more from me soon!

5) Altruistic: To blog once a month about how I have used my consumer-power to improve things.
I'm not a fan of giving money to charity. Millions of people give millions of pounds to charity everyday and nothing much changes. Starving people are still reliant on western cultures, ice caps are still melting and once a year Terry Wogan is still given a quick shock to wake him from his slumber, wheeled out on stage and given a variety of young presenters to ogle. BUT I do believe in consumer power, the power of every person to change the way the world looks by what they buy. Which is why once a month I will be trying to do something to change my habits for the better, and I will write about it here to encourage others to do the same. I think this will be the hardest goal, but it could also be the most worthwhile.

So there you have it. 5 resolutions for 2013. All a little bit tricky but also all worthwhile. I'm quite looking forward to next year now. Not looking forward to the 6am start tomorrow....