CAN'T AFFORD LIFE

Feeling: Frustrated

I realise that I don't come here so much anymore because I don't feel I have very much to say, but there are times. I'm seeing a life coach at the moment. She's a friend of my mother's and is a qualified counsellor training to be a life coach, so our sessions are part of her studies. I felt I needed a fresh approach and some help to regain a sense of direction and she's great! We try to meet once a week for a hour and discuss short and long term goals, obstacles and such.

At the moment I'm working whatever hours God sends to save as much as I can to learn to drive and ultimately move out with my boyfriend. We were house hunting and I kept coming up against obstacles that made it clear now is the time to begin learning. I might be learning late as I'm 24, but people do learn at all ages and I've always lived in a very well connected area so until the prospect of moving out became a reality I was saving myself a lot of money. I've saved well enough for us to book a holiday for our 5th anniversary! I might talk about that some other time.

Unfortunately the driving lessons depend on when I finish paying for my braces. I am so close to the end! I have calculated how many hours of lessons I want a week and it's far from cheap, so with my birthday in a week's time from now I have asked my parents for a block of lessons as my present. This will cover 2.5 weeks of lessons, which isn't very long so I need to be sure the braces are about to come off so I know that's all paid for now, let's move onto the lessons. It's a chunky amount of money when you're not working fulltime. I've figured I need to work 22 hours a week to cover all my expenses. I can only hope work allows me that as head office has just told us they want to cut down hours.

Thankfully, my boyfriend is the best support I could hope for. He knows the pressure I'm putting myself under to learn to drive relatively quickly and that I might need longer. You don't know until you start, I can only hope that I take to it well and approach it with a calm head. I know stressing will make it harder so there's no point. I've looked up a couple of schools that I like the look of and will book an initial lesson with the cheapest to see how I like the instructor. I hope this doesn't eat into my savings too much, but I suppose this is a prime example for what savings are for!