Around the time Evelyn was born, I began turning down PR requests left right and centre. I’m sure I burned a lot of bridges, and all I did was politely ask to be paid for my time.
Amazing how the PR requests dropped off after that.
But they didn’t stop entirely, and each time I politely ask to be paid, I am politely told in return “We don’t have a budget” or “We don’t pay for comment.”
People, you’re paying me for my time. For the time I take out of my life to write about your product. For the time I spend ignoring other things in order to focus on YOU and your product.
Now, let’s be clear – I’m not talking about the work I did for The Shake, which was unpaid, and enjoyable. This is because I KNOW The Shake didn’t have a budget to pay me. There was no one person sitting at the top of the pile making money from our work and refusing to pay.
But other publications, other companies, they’re different.
When a large multi-national company tries to tell you they don’t have a budget to pay you, you’re left laughing maniacally in the corner. Because REALLY? REALLY?
Bullshit.
There’s money somewhere, but it sure as hell isn’t being spent on the bloggers doing actual work for you. Which is crap, frankly.
In any case, I wrote about this for Money Circle this week, and it is something which makes me a bit ranty. You wouldn’t refuse to pay your plumber, or your electrician, so why refuse to pay your writers?
I’ve declared this year to be the year of making as many things as possible from scratch.
From soap, to bacon, to yogurt, and hopefully during winter – cheese. Every fortnight we spend a lot of money on things I could otherwise make cheaply and I’m left wondering why. Why do I do this to myself?
Of course, there are a myriad of reasons. I’m time poor. It’s easy. Making things is hard when your children are small. I’m busy. Etc etc. But really, they’re all excuses.
Since Beth mentioned home made yogurt, I’ve made yogurt, three times. The first time curdled terribly, until I did some troubleshooting and worked out my thermos temps need to be lower – around 65C works best.
Soap is rapidly filling up all my shelves (yay, soap!) and down the track I’d eventually like to try selling some.
Cheese is a no-brainer, really. Cheese: need I say more?
So this is my new thing. I’ll be aiming to write about something new every week, talking about what worked for me and what didn’t.
If you want to read more about my reasoning, there’s an article up at Money Circle about it.
So, we’ve been broke this month. And not broke in a “we’re doing okay” kind of way, but broke in a “let’s not go anywhere because we don’t have the petrol”. A few things conspired against us and our savings – namely a large mechanic bill, impending car registration, bills, and just stuff. You know how it goes, I’m sure you’ve all been here.
And then my bank changed the way it works, showing me just how much we’ve been spending at the supermarket. You guys, I’m not sure why it’s cheaper to buy crappy processed foods rather than ingredients, but it is, and we’re stuck with it.
But it has to change, because I can’t keep this up.
No worries though, I have a Plan.
Have you ever reached the point where you actually have no money in your savings accounts? Nada, zip, zilch. I’d forgotten how awful it feels to be this broke.
A series of small misfortunes occurred this fortnight. Sick children required new prescriptions, bills needed paying, food was more expensive than normal and school went back, doubling our petrol bill.
My bank accounts are stripped bare.
On top of all this, my credit card was cancelled after a company I bought from recently had their database hacked.
With $3 left in my bank to last us 6 days, it was a low key weekend. Things we might have done – a local festival, a trip to the shop for ice-creams, a picnic – all disappeared. Instead, we stayed home and I baked while the children watched DVDs.
When I first started working, I spent money indiscriminately. My then-boyfriend (now husband) and I were living in a tiny shoebox unit in the middle of the city, and spending money made us happy.
Useless objects, littered around our house. No thought for the future.
We were young, and growing up seems oh so far away when you’re 17 and 23. Who needs to save money? One day in the future, we’d be grown ups and things would magically work themselves out.
Isn’t this the fairytale we’re all taught? That our twenties are only practise for our “real lives” which will start at some undetermined point down the track.
