On my walk yesterday I saw a beautiful little roe deer standing maybe 30 yards away in long grass looking at me with its ears perked up. We just looked at each other for a while and then I moved on. But it was still there on my way back and I spent longer watching it grazing at the edge of a wood.

As I focused on it I found myself imagining that I was a hunter and that I was looking at it through the sights of my rifle.

Yet again I found it inconceivable that anyone in that situation can pull the trigger. What goes through their head as they look at this beautiful, innocent, calm, defenceless creature.

And then kill it.

If I do the same walk over and over my brain tells me it’s boring, I’ve seen it all a thousand times. But this isn’t true. The walk is different every time. I’m different every time.

At this time of year of course it’s in your face different with the explosion of greenery on the trees and bushes, all the blossom, the wildflowers.

The whole walk is utterly fascinating if I just open my eyes. And getting disgruntled about the perceived need to go further to find new walks is bizarre.

He’s not happy that I wouldn’t let him out this late so he’s now harassing me from the edge of my bath!

When Penny used to ask me “Can we afford to buy this?” in the past, we really had no way of knowing. Sure we might know roughly how much was in our current account, and might know roughly what big items we had to fund before we next got paid, but really we were guessing. This didn’t matter so much in the past but now that we are in various versions of retirement, it is going to be nice to know just how much money we have to spend on particular things at particular times. 

I had played with the app You Need A Budget (YNAB) a few years ago and then let it lapse, but I recently started using it again and am finding it is making a real difference. It is based on the principle of “giving every dollar a job”. In other words when you have money coming in to your account assign all of it so some purpose, even if that purpose is savings or even a “not sure what to do with this” category. This means that when you look in the app at the various categories of spending, and how much is left in each, if there is nothing left you have to think about which other category you have to take it from, which might be the “not sure what to do with this category” but at least you have had to think about what you are taking, and from where. 

Contrary to what you might expect using the app doesn’t make you worry about money all the time. In fact it is the opposite. It makes you much clearer about what you are doing with your money and why.

The app has a steep learning curve but there are fantastic videos and podcasts available to help make sense of it, and to be honest, it has been great fun becoming a true budget nerd!