Ever since I starting working an office job at age 22, I have been piling on the pounds. So I recently took the decision to start getting more exercise. Now the cheapest option would be for me to either exercise outside or going to my company's gym. However as both entitle my very self concious self having to exercise infront of other people I have not been able to get up the courage to go to the gym and outside exercise works but I also sometimes talk myself out of doing it for various reasons. So I have decided to rent a treadmill. I know this sounds like an expensive waste of money and I'm not even going to try and justify it here as in all honesty I know I cannot. I feel as though I need to start getting more exercise and getting healthier and hopefully this will lead to me being less self concious. My aim is to eventually stop renting the treadmill and to go to my companies'gym.

In the meantime I have decided that I will rent the treadmill as long as I use it enough to justify it's costs. It will cost us 50 EURs a month to rent ( the treadmill would have cost 1200 EURs if I had brought outright, which means I would have paid the full price for it if I rent it for 24 months). I will attribute 5 EURs value to everytime I use the treadmill for 20 minutes and 10 EURs value for a 30 minute session. At the end of each month I will calculate if I used the treadmill for a value more than 50 EURs, based on the values allocated above. The first month I do not get 50 EURs worth of value from the treadmill, I will cancel my rental and return it. I this way I can be assured of not paying for something that I am not using.

I received the treadmill yesterday and have not used it yet. I plan on trying it out tonight and will let you know how long I am able to use it for. Wish me luck!

I have made an appointment with our garbage collection company to come and pick up several larger items which we can no longer use and which have been sitting around our appartment collecting dust. I've noticed a wave of blogs about de-cluttering and simplifying your life in order to be more effective on this website and have received some inspiration from them. I am now going to start accessing how I can de-clutter my life at work and at home.

First steps will be:

- List some of the important things that need to be done.
- Prioritise the line items.
- Then brain storm on how to achieve these things.
- Take action on each in turn.
- Re-assess progress.

I have no times lines for the above yet. I guess I'll start off by making a list of the things I need to get done.

Thank-you to those you have voted on my contest entry "10 things I wish I had known before I moved out of my parents house"! I am trying to work on my written communication as I have had to start doing quite a lot of it in my new job. I never used to have to worry so much about what I wrote before. It's difficult for me to constantly think of the audience I am communicating to, how they will understand my message, will they understand my message, whether I am making it interesting/serious enough and am I including all the necessary information. So I've decided to practise my written communication by writing more in my blog here. :-)

I moved out of my parents house to live with my boyfriend with only 1800 EURs to both our names. We both had fulltime jobs but that did not prevent us from getting off to a very rocky start. We lived in a one bedroom hole in the wall with a matress on the floor to sleep on and our clothes in suitcases. I'd like to share some of the things I learnt during that time and since:

1) You will survive.
No matter how tought it gets, the love you have for each other will get you both through it. No need to lay awake at night stressing. No need to over eat and gain weight. No need to lose your hair. You will be fine if you watch your pennies and work hard.
2) Know who you will owe.
One of the biggest stresses for me was the occassional large bills which came up, that we had no idea about and had to pay in less than a month's time. I have since found out about all the taxes, health insurance policies and other miscellaneous money suckers that are part of the grown up world. I now know exactly when large chunks of our hard earned money will be due for payment. I would recomend any freshly independant adult to ensure they know exactly what bills they will have to pay, how much they might be and when they should be expected to pay them.
3) Keep an emergency fund (in other words, that fancy furniture can wait).
We always kept an emergency fund avaliable, starting off with 500 EUR. Whenever we had to dig into this fund we would then spend the next few months building it back up to our minimum of 500 EUR.
4) Keep your monthly costs as low as possible.
The less money going out each month the more you will have to save/spend.
5) No matter how little start saving.
I did not start automatic monthly saving until recently and am still kicking myself for not starting this good habit earlier. This lead us to rely on the CC more than we should have.
6) Start a pension fund ASAP
Again, I waited until the age of 25 to start my pension savings, as that was the year it becomes compulsory in my company. I realise now that you should never trust other's with your savings decisions as they do not have the same passion for your own finances that you do. And 25 is not better than 22,23 or 24 to start your savings.
7)Don't rush moving out, you'll be giving up the cheapest rent you'll ever know.
Boy do I regret giving up that cheap rent, even if I could no longer bare being under the same roof as my parents. Sometimes you just need to swallow your pride and take the cheap rent ;-)
8)Accept offers of help from friends.
We received many offers from friends to have old furniture that they no longer used. We turned most of these offers down because we were disillusioned enough to believe that we would be able to afford some beautiful, imported, solid wood furniture within 6 months. OH sweet ignorance! 2 years down the road we were still sleeping on the matress on the floor.
9) Share your costs.
Try and split your bills with as many people as possible. Can you rent with someone else? Can you share the cable? Do you go grocery shopping with your neighbour?
10) Enjoy the time.
I wish I had relaxed alot more and just enjoyed the time, rather than freaking out about keeping my job and saving to buy that 600 EUR microwave oven, which lasted us just over 3 years before it broke down when we replaced it with one that cost less than one third of the price. I prefer our new ,icrowave too because I did not have any sleepless nights over buying it.

I worked during a bank holiday this week and am still debating whether to take the money or the days off. I've already handed in quite a few holidays days in the last year and feel I could do with the days off instead.
I'll need to think about this one.

Having posted 2 rants on this issue in the last few days, I am already feeling better about this issue and writing it out has also started help me understand that the problem does not lie with me but with Emma. One of the things that has become very important to me in the last few years, is being honest and consistent in the way I communicate to other people. As I feel I had a problem with this in the past as I tend to be a much more internal person and therefore have troubles trying to convey who I really am and what I really think to people. Because of this I tend to accept what people say to me and show a non-commital form of agreement, rather than show my true opinion. This can lead to confusion and people feel as though I keep things from them. So I have been trying to work on being able to communicate and connect with people in a more honest and consistent manner. It's hard sometimes to find words to convey what you truely mean if your not used to being verbal about your true feelings.
Anyhow, I feel writing this stuff will also help me in my quest of improving my communication skills.

Well the next episode in this saga continues:

After the episodes I described in my previous posts, we stopped talking in a social way and started only communicating when necessary. I thought it would end there, especially as I was already looking for another job, within the company and had decided it was my time to move on. I had been in the job almost 2 years and knew a substantial amount. I had obtained several skills and taught myself some others, I'd also received a glowing performance review and knew that I was in a good place to apply for a new job within the company. Luckily for me 2 positions became avaliable within my department around that time, one for a manager role and the other for a business analyst role. I knew people were discussing which one I would apply for, but I kept my decision quiet and played the whole thing down as I did not want to have to have the extra stress of being watched through the whole application and interviewing process.

However, these sort of things never remain secret for long and of course the rumour went round that I applied for the business analyst role, as did 5 other people from our department. We under went an initial test, during which 2 people were eliminated from the interview round. Then we had our interviews and for 2 weeks after we were told nothing. There were 2 positions avaliable for which 3 of us were interviewed. Finally one Friday afternoon I was chatting with 2 people from my team and my manager walks up and calls me to an office for an impromptu meeting. The 2 people I was speaking to did indeed realise what the meeting was about. I was told that I got the job, however neither of the other 2 candidates were accepted, however they were not going to be told yet so I needed to keep quiet about it. I agreed full heartedly that they should not hear from me that I had the job and definately not that they did not get the job.

So when I returned to the team I acted as though I was let down to the 2 people who realised I had been called to discuss the job. Emma overheard the conversation and spent the next few days boasting to some of our team members that someone had been turned down for the business analyst job.

A month later we announced to the team/department that I had accepted the position and was going to be moving to the role.

During that month I kept my distance and did not speak to Emma, as I just wanted to move on and forget about our differences. I felt then as I feel now that we have nothing to compete against each other as she is a very beautiful, slim, intelligent women whos dresses in expensive, fashionable clothes. Whereas I'm quite plump, hate shopping and hence wear the same clothes frequently and am not very social. I do however treat myself to the occasional extravangant item, which leads to the next event.

I own the gold Dolce Gabbana Motorola phone, which is very guady. When you switch this thing on or off it calls out Dolce Gabbana very loudly. The one evening after six o'clock, after most people had gone home, I switch on my phone. It called out it's annoucement and I hear one of my colleagues ask who's phone was that. Emma replies It's not mine, I would not have such a hooker phone.

I could have got up and pulled her weave off of her head, but instead I held my tongue and let it go, but I regret it now. That night she let open the doors for me to find out more about her life from the collegue she made this comment to as that collegue also found it an uncalled for comment.

I knew this information before, but the way the colleague explained it to me I could never have suspected just how far someone would go for their hunger for money. Emma, who is a recently divorced 27 year old women is now living with a 60 something rich jewish man. He has 2 children nearly her age and she is living the high life off of his money. She has taken up an assortment of different hobbies just so she can hobnob with the rich crowd ( sailing, flying lessons, tennis, golf etc). Somehow she has also managed to have this guy write her into his will so that if he dies, she will inhieret a holiday house he own in Switzerland.

At work, she spends her days trying to network with anyone who she meets. Her thing is offering to buy them lunch and she will never go to lunch without her note pad. She signs up for any event/organisation that she feels might help her meet the people she needs to meet to get where she needs to get in life. She is determined to move on up and she has stepped all over people in order to try and do so.

So here I will leave this entry, as I have strayed from the path a little. I question myself if this is how people get to the top? Is this how people make lots of money? Is Emma going to succeed in life and the rest of us going to fail because we're not willing to go that extra mile? Do people admire people like this? Should I admire her, or pity her?
I guess this is what I am trying to figure out in my own head.

I came across this documentary explaining the lead up to the current financial down turn. It is a UK documentary but it may be interesting to people in America as well as it talks about the crisis on a Global level.

http://bestdocumentaries.blogspot.com/2008/04/super-rich-gre...

This post is a follow on in my personal rant series in which I am trying to understand and let go of the frustration of dealing with a colleague so hungry for sucess that it seems she will do anything for it.

So last time I left off with the first incident that occured between me and Emma, that started me doubting how genuine she was trying to make friends with me. We eventually discussed what the issue was that caused her to stop talking to me and I apologised fully letting her know that I did not realise that my actions would have hurt her, but also asking that she would speak to me straight away if there was osmething bugging her instead of not talking to me for some time. I am the type of person that once burnt I am very cautious with people so I kept my eye on her. She started coming up to me and being overly nice, in a way that grated against my nerves as it was an act. I mirrored her behaviour.

This went on until our manager went away again, now I missed this out on my first post but realise now that it was a key factor in what caused the next run in. The first time our manager went away Emma called in sick the first day. I did not think much of it at the time and as it was my first time backing up our manager did not know how the sick day would be organised with human resources. I assumed that she would call HR and HR would record it in the calendar then I would just need to know to communicate it to the team. When our manager came back to work I let her know who had been sick and for how long so that she could check that it had been recorded in the system. However, our human resources insist that sick days are recorded the same day that they occur, so there needs to be a check on whether people do call in sick or not.

So the next time our manager went on sick leave, Emma called in sick the first day aswell. I did not quite know how to go about ensuring she called in sick so I checked with the manager of another team to see if they would check. They insisted that I have the person send me their reporting better email when they return to the office. Now this email is an automatic email sent to anyone who has reported sick with our HR just asking them to reply with the day they are better and the amount of hours they will be working (which may be reduced if you are not fully recovered). No personal information whatsoever and you would normally copy in your manager. So not foreseeing any problems, when Emma came back in to the office, I asked her just to copy me in instead of the manager. She said that she did not want to and she would call HR to complain. She did call HR who did not quite know what to say. I spoke to the other manager again and he advised that if she was not willing to copy me in on the email she should copy him in. I advised her if she did not feel comfortable copying me in to the email she should copy in the other manager. She then went off to have a discussion with him about this "injustice". From that point on anyone who called sick, I advised should copy in the other manager when they report better.

This incident resulted in my outright dislike of this person. I still communicated to her, but only in professional situations and with no personal information. Surely I know that this was not the correct action to take but I realised that there was something much bigger behind these issues we were having and I did not want them to escalate as we still had to work together as colleagues.

However, a little while later we received our annual bonus and raise information, which is based on a performance rating. The information is reported on one sheet of paper, where your annual salary, bonus and new annual salary after your raise is noted. As I am very good at calculating out and explaining these figures, she came to me and placed the paper on my desk and asked me to explain everything to her in detail. *SHOCK HORROR* She refused to copy me in on her reporting better email, which contained NO personal ifnormation, yet she wants me to explain to her just how much money she will be earning for the next year based on her performance as rated by our manager????? Does this make sense to anyone else, because if it does please explain this to me?

So this covers the second major incident in this saga. After this our communication shuts down and we stop speaking to each other all together. However, due to gossip the next part become much more interesting and is when I start building up a better picture of Emma and how determined she is to suceed, it also brings me to question how I see life. I'll cover some more in my next entry.