Nuts and Bolts

The one thing that other contractors were not short of (besides a bob or two) was advice and it seemed to me that everyone had a different take on things.

At the end of 1988 when we moved into the Townhouse, Ron Barlow had said a couple of things to me, we sat in the front room on a couch facing the wrong way and Ron said "You'll be as right as ninepence here" which was a nice thing to say, he also said that if we watched the money situation and never lived beyond our means then all would be well.

I think he said something like "Live on pie and peas instead of steaks and lobster" although his actual words are lost in time.

So, a few years later, as a jobshopper, those words were among the best advice I had ever absorbed as I saw contractors around me living quite the extravagant life, spending money as fast as it came in, it was taking some time to sink into my thick skull, but I realized that with all this extra money I was earning came a responsibility to our future.

So, we started taking even more notice of the flow of the cash.

The nuts and bolts of being a contractor were explained to me by my first accountant, a Mister Stan Solomon, an accountant that I had found from the advice of another contractor, John Jefferies. Stan showed me how to do double entry ledgers, which I showed to Karen. A new, improved household spreadsheet was developed on the Amiga (using Borlands Quattro Pro) and of course, a dedicated shoe box was acquired to keep all our (real and imagined) receipts in.

The year of 1990 would be an imperfect start to our financial future, we did many things wrong but at the same time did some things right, I can't truthfully say that we lived a pie and peas lifestyle, but we certainly were not eating a lot of lobster.

Steak however...