Where I work, we use SAP for Payroll and shift planning. It’s a dog of a system, truth be told, but it does have one advantage: ready access to historical data for ‘ordinary’ people (i.e. non-SAP administrators) like myself.

I decided to pull out how many hours I have worked each month since I have been there, to see if the stages of my life could be identified easily in the hours that I had worked each financial year. It only took  about an hour to do in total, and most of that was spent inputting the data onto my own spreadsheet for graphing purposes.

What I found, shocked me.

Seven Years in a Graph

Getting Married

If you have read why this blog even exists in my Financial Meltdown series, you will be aware I am now separated from my wife. If we delve into the year I got married (2005), you can see the events as they happen in picture form.

OV is OVertime hours (i.e. staying on longer than an existing shift). OTIRD is OverTime Including Rest Days Worked. RD is Rest Days, and AL is Annual Leave taken.

In the run up to my marriage in October 2005, I was working hard to save money for the wedding, the honeymoon and the venue payments. Come October, I took a decent chunk of annual leave along with my Rest Days. When I returned to work, it was at fewer hours than before with some more annual leave used.

At the beginning of our marriage, life was good. We enjoyed each others’ company, and thus I was spending less time at work. I did the minimum required for a while just so we could be together.

The Honeymoon Period

After I got married, I virtually stopped working over my alloted hours at all. I did very little overtime at all for 2 years. I was enjoying life, enjoying being with my wife, and not realising I was running up thousands of pounds of my own debt and her as well.

It looks good, but right where that graph drops off at the end, things began to go sour. I quietly realised our money situation was dire. I chose to bury my head in the sand. For two years I ignored my debts. I never missed a payment, but I was slowly heading toward implosion. My wife added her own issues to mine.

Our relationship did much as the graph did. Rolled down hill. Rapidly.

End of the Road

I began working harder again. As much to make more money as it was to spend more time out of the house away from the woman I had married. It was the nail in the coffin for our relationship – as if one were needed at all. I still stuck my head in the sand but at least I felt better for working more.

Towards the end of that graph, crunch time came. My wife left me, I handed back my home to the landlord, and I had my financial meltdown.

And I took my head out of the sand at last.

The Future (and Now)

I (and you) will have to wait until the end of this financial year to see my recovery in pictures. Assuming I get to the end of this financial year still in gainful employment.

Does your life play out in the hours you work?

• Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back
• Dig Yourself Out of Debt: Know What You Owe
• Weekly Roundup #3
• Credit Card Analysis: From Hell to Heaven
• My Financial Meltdown: Part 3

• Simplify Your Life
• Introducing Myself
• Financial Freedom in Five Years (and the Difference Between Rich and Wealthy)
• 44 Ways to Ruin Your Financial Life By Age 30
• How to Pick a Financial Advisor