Getting my money thoughts in order.

So - I've been reading the Motley Fool, looking at my bank balance and thinking about finances - again. A scare with the car (which turned out to be nothing, thankfully) brought it home to me that at the end of quite a quiet period I've not really got enough put aside at the moment to cover myself for emergencies.

I also found out today that if I start putting money aside for a pension when I'm 30, I'll need to save over £400 a month... which I don't have.

So what to do? Well, one of the first things is to stop reading websites and get on with getting more work in. I really need to have a couple of nice busy months to earn a decent amount and save up for the next quiet period. That, of course, is quite difficult to do when I'm actually fairly busy - so it looks like it's going to be a month or two of not going out.

Which, in itself, will be a good thing. The less I go out, the better off I'll be. Perhaps it's time to live like a monk again? The current situation makes that pretty difficult - I'm doing masses of driving and I have stuff all over the place, and not having my own room makes things very awkward and expensive. But I really, really must stop spending.

And I really, really, must keep working.