[00:00:08.06] - Gordon
Hello.

[00:00:08.17] - Taylor
Hello.

[00:00:08.24] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.

[00:00:11.29] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:00:13.29] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have affected our businesses over the last seven days. And thank you so much for joining us.

[00:00:25.08] - Taylor
There's only two of us this week.

[00:00:26.17] - Gordon
I know! It feels really weird because the last three episodes, we've had four plus. I think the last episode, we had four plus an audience member. So yeah, it's very strange just being the two of us now. And during this week, we had an anniversary, which is quite nice because it coincided with our celebration of 200 episodes. And the anniversary we had was five years since we did our first episode. That was back when Covid was hitting and we all went down into lockdown and we all thought, "what are we going to do?" And Taylor and I decided we were going to do a podcast. And that was five years ago. So we've been doing this show now for five years. Who would have thought? I've got some news.

[00:01:15.04] - Taylor
Okay.

[00:01:15.29] - Gordon
So very quickly, on our website, we have a chatbot, and this is something that is being trained on all the episodes that we have. So all the content, including the transcripts. And it's recently been upgraded, and basically, you can now ask it for episodes and find out when we spoke about something and what episode it's in. It should then come back with a link to allow you to go straight to the page with that episode on it. So, that should make searching around the site much easier if you prefer to do it with our chatbot. We do, of course, have our search facility on the website, which should work just as well, but this will be another way of doing it if you want to. Let's get straight into our topics. Would you like to go first or shall I?

[00:02:12.00] - Taylor
I'll go first this week.

[00:02:12.29] - Gordon
Off you go.

[00:02:13.25] - Taylor
So I wanted to talk about expense tracking.

[00:02:17.09] - Gordon
Okay.

[00:02:18.20] - Taylor
So I am looking to move out and get my own place. And part of that means getting a mortgage and getting my finances under control. Now, I don't think they were a mess. It was just I didn't know the exact figures that I was spending every month, both from my personal things, so my own personal expenses, things like the gym, but also my business. I had a rough idea. I could look back and see, "Okay, well, I've been making this much money and I've been roughly spending this much money," from my book keeping. And I can make a rough estimate, but I didn't know the exact figures.

[00:03:02.02] - Gordon
So we're talking about subscriptions here in particular, aren't we? So things that you've committed to.

[00:03:07.03] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:03:07.13] - Gordon
Not just general spending.

[00:03:09.07] - Taylor
Yeah. One thing I wanted to do was to find out where I was spending my money and then where money would be spent if I were to move out. So how much the mortgage would cost, how much service charge, insurances, all of the other things that go along with with buying a property. And I wanted to see, could I afford it, essentially. And I found some really interesting things. So I found that there were some things that I just didn't use and I just never cancelled. There were things that I realised that I actually did really want. And I thought, I could just get rid of that if I needed to, whereas actually, it's something I do actually want to keep. So I now need to find more things to either cancel or think, "okay, how am I going to make more money so I don't have to sacrifice certain things." There were areas that I was able to subsidise and be smarter with. And just general organising my finances a lot better. I had the monthly subscriptions, so things that I pay monthly for. But then you've got some things that are non-monthly. So some things were quarterly, some things were annual, some things were bi-yearly.

[00:04:31.08] - Taylor
I don't know if that means every twice a year or every two years. But they also needed to be taken into account. So when I'm putting money aside, I'm going, "well, this isn't something I pay monthly, but it's something that I will need to pay in a lump sum throughout the year." And so I'm also adding those on to make sure that I have enough money in the account when the time comes to pay for those renewals.

[00:04:55.05] - Gordon
Yeah, it's a very sensible thing. It's something that I've been doing forever, and I got it from friend of mine, and that is to take annual payments like TV licence and car insurance and things like that and work out how much they're going to be, and then divide them by 12 and put money aside into a separate account for those expenses when they come around. That way, when they come up and all of a sudden you've got to find £500 for something, you don't have to worry about it because you know it's already in this account and it's along with other expenses that maybe we haven't got to yet. So there might be more than you need in there, or there should be more than you need in there. And you can then just pay for everything that you need very easily without having to worry about it. It's been a really good system for me, and I'm pretty sure it's going to work just as well for you as well.

[00:05:51.20] - Taylor
Yeah, I probably spent four days trying to do this, and I probably spent three days I was thinking about it. The thing I struggled with the most was figuring out how to set it up and how to organise it in a way that is scalable and maintainable. I wanted it to be a way that I could easily add or remove rows and items without having to insert new rows, without having to shift all of the columns around, without having to touch any of the formulas. And so that was something that took me a while to actually to figure out how to do it, really, and how I wanted to organise it. I spent three days, really, just thinking and just going "how do I do this?" And then I went through using apps, and then I went through using all these different things, just to end up on a Google spreadsheet and just a solution that I just was like, "let me just start putting them in, and then I can start styling it and organising it in a better, in a way that makes...

[00:07:00.18] - Gordon
And then pulling information from different areas and making overviews as well, making yourself a little dashboard, if you like. Yeah, it's very good. So I think one of the things I picked up from what you said is that we should be auditing our expenses and in particular, subscriptions, just making sure that what we've subscribed to is still meeting our needs, or is it something that's a bit overkill? And maybe they've got a lower tier that you can move down to, which will save you money and give you a better value, because you're not using the extra facilities. And just making sure that you do actually use everything that you're paying for, because there are a lot of companies that I'm sure have people who pay subscriptions for something they don't use and they just forget it's there and they just pay every month, every quarter, whatever it is. They forget it's there. They've got used to that money coming out of their account so they don't miss it. And yet it's money that they're not actually getting any value from. They're not getting anything from that money that they're spending in terms of making their life easier or services or whatever it is.

[00:08:18.25] - Taylor
Yeah. And one other thing that I think it's shown me is that when you have annual subscriptions, it's very easy to go, "well, I have enough money to pay for this right now." And so you pay for it and you don't actually think, "oh, well, I'm going to have to pay out that money in a year's time," again, in a lump sum. So by being able to put it into this sheet where it will automatically calculate, "okay, this is how much my monthly outgoings are going to cost." It's actually, "well, do I actually need that? Is it something that's going to add value? Is it something that's a 'nice to have'?" And I could create another sheet, which is a priority order of when I start earning X amount more money, I can then start spending more and things like that. Or I know someone that gives themselves a cap of £1,000 of monthly expenses for their business. And if they want something, they need to find and remove something else. I think it's a very good way to keep track of how much you're spending, and you know exactly, well, I'm only going to be spending a thousand.

[00:09:28.16] - Taylor
And it means you are ruthless with what you're... Do you really need it or is it quite nice to have. Is it pushing your business forward or is it pushing your mental health or your physical health, or is it just, eh it's fine?

[00:09:45.24] - Gordon
And the other thing is by having all this data at your fingertips, you can make informed decisions. So you can make a decision either personally or in your business, whether taking on another... What is effectively a debt if you've signed up for something and you've got a minimum term, that is a debt that you've agreed to do. And you can only really make that decision if you can see at a glance where your financial position is. And that's a really good way of doing it by getting these things all into a space where you can view them easily.

[00:10:25.04] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:10:26.03] - Gordon
Well done. Well done. And also, fingers crossed for your moving out. I hope that all goes well. I'm sure you'll tell us about it in future episodes. This is the beginning of that journey to becoming a property owner, which is a huge, huge change. Both financially and independently and well-being-ly. I'm not sure that's a word, but yeah, well done to that. My topic for today is making sure that you spend your time wisely. Now, we've spoken about this before, but over this last week, I've spent many, many hours on things that I really shouldn't have spent so much time on.

[00:11:13.11] - Gordon
It's things that have frustrated me, and I've spent time researching to try and find out what the situation is, and it was all to see whether a bill of £100 was to be paid by me, or to be paid by somebody else. And if I look at the hourly rate of the amount of time I spent dealing with it and getting upset over it and frustrated and having to have conversations with people. And if I look at the hourly rate for that time, it's way in excess of £100. And when you look at it that way, well, maybe you just pay it and think about "what have I learnt from this experience and how can I make it better for myself next time?" I've also had a package that I ordered an item of, and the package was sent by Royal Mail and it said it had been delivered and there was a photo along with it, and the photo showed that it wasn't our front door. So I went searching, found that it had been delivered to a neighbour, and I then asked the neighbour if the package was delivered to them and whether it was for them.

[00:12:36.01] - Gordon
And sure enough, it was. They still had the packaging and they had a different tracking number on that package, which I also did a search for. And the picture for the delivery for that was exactly the same picture as the delivery for my package. Now, this is a real pain because I had to go to all this work to prove that the package that was shown on the delivery wasn't actually my package and was not even meant for me. I now have the packaging that's shown in that picture, and it very clearly shows that it's not my name, it's not my address, it didn't come from the company I made an order from, it's got a different tracking number. But I've had to talk to the supplier. It was something that came through Amazon, so I've spoken to Amazon, I've spoken to Royal Mail. And again, many, many hours of time have been taken up with this stupid thing that I really shouldn't have spent this amount of time on. I had to fill in forms to show that it wasn't something that was delivered to me. I've had to sign that form, and I've now had to let them know.

[00:13:56.22] - Gordon
And they've given me a new tracking number with a replacement item which hasn't even been sent yet. According to the tracking number, it's not even in the system. So it took about a week for the item to be misdelivered, and now it looks like it's going to take another week for it to actually get to me, assuming that it arrives this time around. And sadly, this is not something I could really not do myself because, again, it's about £100 worth of equipment, but I could have been very much out of pocket at the end of this because even though the time it's taken, I would have earned more by working on other things, it would have been a waste of money because I had to prove that it hadn't arrived. And so the onus was on me for all of that, which was a major issue. But I am now waiting. I'm still waiting. I still haven't got the product I ordered. The company that sent it weren't at fault. The people that were at fault, in this case, was Royal Mail. So what I didn't want is because they'd shown that the delivery had arrived safely with a photo, I didn't want them to use that as evidence and say, "actually, it was delivered, so we're not giving a replacement."

[00:15:23.15] - Gordon
I had to do all the investigative work to make sure that I had the evidence to show that actually that wasn't my delivery, that wasn't my front door. It wasn't even meant for me. And it's such a pain. So some things you have no choice about. You have to spend the time on it because it's like a customer complaint. If you don't deal with a customer complaint properly and make sure you are dealing with it professionally - I'm not saying go out of your way to jump through hoops for customers, because that's not always the best way of doing things. But dealing with it in a professional manner is really important because otherwise you could end up with bad reviews. And unless you can show that the bad review is unreasonable, you get tarred with that for potentially years. So that's an important use of time, although sometimes it feels like it isn't. But yeah, using your time wisely doesn't necessarily mean using your time to the best value. So going off and doing some work and earning more money than just paying something off. It means using the time wisely and basing it on your opinions and your experience as to whether it's worth fighting for something, whether it's worth losing money, whether it's worth paying money that maybe you feel you shouldn't have to, or if it's worth protecting your image and your company's good name.

[00:17:06.22] - Gordon
And that's been... I've had three things this week that have been really frustrating. And I'm hoping that we've come to the end of that now and the three things have all happened and now everything's going to be fine. We will see. But there you go. Use your time wisely. Think about where you could end up going with a particular task and decide if it's worth your time and effort doing so. That's me. Anything you want to add to that?

[00:17:38.06] - Taylor
Don't think so. Just very frustrating more than anything.

[00:17:40.25] - Gordon
Yeah, sometimes they are. Sometimes it comes with the job and it may be a little stressful, so make sure you build in time to relax and do something that you want to do, something that you enjoy as a little reward for yourself. Thank you for watching. As always, please, if you are on YouTube, like, share, and subscribe.

[00:18:03.10] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes.

[00:18:08.07] - Gordon
And we're on all the major podcast platforms. Do a search for "This Week With Taylor and Gordon." We will be back with you next Friday at 1pm. Happy Easter for the last week that we've just gone, we've just had. I don't think we've mentioned that before. So Happy Easter for then. We'll see you next week. Until then, my name is Gordon, and I'm from Drayson Design.

[00:18:33.05] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:18:35.27] - Gordon
Goodbye.

[00:18:36.02] - Taylor
Bye.

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