Two subjects that don't really have a whole lot in common, but neither are quite complex enough to warrant an individual post, so I thought I'd lump them together.
So pensions. Hardly an exciting conversation topic. However, I have to have a company pension and so I've had to think about it a bit recently, as my work have switched to a different pension provider and I had to have an appointment with a pension advisor. Now I'm not going to bore you with any great details about it, but I did decide to insist on having an ethical pension, limiting what my money can be invested in. It would seem pointless to have switched banks if I didn't apply the same standards to other financial things like my pension. So that's done.
Onto festival tickets. Earlier this year I won two tickets to a festival via a photography competition. Unfortunately I wasn't able to make it to the festival in the end as it fell on the same weekend as my Mum's 60th birthday party. So I suddenly found myself with two tickets (each with a face value of £190) that I couldn't use. And I couldn't decide what the right thing to do with the tickets was. So I posed the following question on facebook with the following options:
1) Sell them on ebay. Keep the money.
2) Sell them on ebay. Use the money for something beneficial for myself (e.g. a course I really want to go on later this year that I can't really afford) that also fits in with the project.
3) Sell them on ebay. Give away the money.
4) Give the tickets away to someone who couldn't otherwise afford to go
5) Trade the tickets through justfortheloveofit for some skills that I need.
Alongside putting the question on facebook, I spent a lot of time talking through the options, especially with my housemates. It really made me think about the project again, and what it actually means. I spent a lot of time questioning about whether it would be wrong to actually sell the tickets. And if I gave the tickets away, how would I work out who was a worthy person to give the tickets to? Several friends pointed out that I'd won the tickets through skill rather than pure chance, and I shouldn't deny myself something nice. I liked the idea of trading, but there wasn't anything I particularly needed or wanted, and realised that trying to trade was actually more likely to result in me ending up having something I didn't really need. Also, as the festival hadn't sold out, I would be selling them for less than face value.
In the end I decided to sell them on ebay. They ended up selling pretty quickly, and to a buyer who looked like a person rather than a tout. Also, from their emails (as much as you can trust them), it appears it was a couple who love the festival, but couldn't afford to go that year. So hopefully people have genuinely benefited from the tickets.
And as for the money, I've decided to put it aside and spend it on something for the project. I'm not sure what that'll be yet - maybe a course I want to go on, or a membership for something like wwoofing. That way I'm not simply buying or trading for something that I don't really need, and it can help me to do something that I might not have otherwise been able to afford.
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