Four new walls - a savings diary

SuperHan · 27 January 2018 at 3:06PM

Hi all,

I'm a long time poster on some other boards, and have just stumbled across this one.

I've always been a bit of a saver, but for specific purposes (usually big holidays!) and so after getting back from the US in October, my reserves are a little low. We want to buy a house in the next 12-18 months, and so are on a savings mission to get enough together for a deposit (and stamp duty!).

We already own one property, so will ideally need to get around £30k together before we will have enough to move. I've set myself an ambitious goal of getting to £23k in savings in 2018. To help get to this, I thought I would start a diary where I can reflect weekly (or when I need to) on how the savings are going, where I've managed to generate/save additional cash from and generally as a bit of a motivation to keep going.

I'm not sure whether I'll get anyone else posting here, as it is more of a rambling for me - but I welcome anyone else's contributions/journey sharing!

SuperHan · 27 January 2018 at 3:07PM

I'll kick off straight away with my first update:

As of today, we are at £10,885. This sounds like a great start, but we have just cashed in two of my husbands SAYE accounts for £8,700 which has given us a huge boost. He's committed a new £500 a month to saving into this, but we aren't going to factor this £500 into our savings as we are hoping to have bought the house before this matures.

Our goal for month one, including this, was to be at £10,000 - so we are a little ahead of our plans for now. We are waiting for another £300 cheque back from SAYE but that could be a few months from now.

I have just done the Natwest account switch for both of us, which will hopefully bag us another £250 towards our target, but we won't get that until early April. We've done most of the others in the past, so there aren't any other easy wins there.

Other than that, the plan is to put £1,250 from our monthly pay to one side each month and with a bit of wiggle room that should get us to our £23k goal by 31 December 2018!

As we've just started, I'm not finding temptation too difficult. I've been walking to work (saving £3 a day on bus travel - not a lot but it adds up), we've almost stopped eating out entirely, we traded clothes in yesterday at a cash for clothes for £7 and have returned things we bought and didn't need but would normally have kept out of convenience for £6.

I hope by recording these "little wins" here, I'll be able to see them add up and keep them coming!

My tactics for curbing spending at the minute is spending all of my time looking on Pinterest or other sites for house inspiration. It feels a bit like online shopping, and gives me a focus of things I want more than what I see in the shops every day. Does anybody else have any tips on how to suppress the need to buy unnecessary things!?

SH

savingwannabe · 27 January 2018 at 3:27PM

Hello SuperHan and welcome.:beer::j OMG I am v impressed by your momentum. Good luck with your savings goals you are well on track.

I try not to buy new but I do like to spend on fleabay. At present I am trying not to. Sometimes I can be good other times I con myself into needing something that I dont really need.

I am going to try to have a No Spend Month on fleabay. I wonder if you would like to join in? :j:D

Skint_yet_Again · 28 January 2018 at 7:31AM

Good luck with your savings plan SuperHan, you sound very focused and I am sure you will soon reach your goal.

With online shopping I usually fill my basket with goodies and then make myself wait 24 hours. If I still need the item after that then I buy it, but usually after 24 hours I have convinced myself I don't need it

pinknsparkly · 29 January 2018 at 12:25AM

Hi SuperHan, and welcome!

I absolutely agree with you on the "little wins" front, it's amazing how quickly they add up! Before Christmas i decided my online shopping was getting out of hand so I signed out of all my online shopping accounts, unlinked my PayPal account to them and deleted all of my shopping-related bookmarks.

I'm also a Pinterest LOVER and have decided to try turning it to my advantage.... I've set up a new (private) board and if I do come across something I love then I pin it to my board. If in a few weeks / payday / when I have spare money I still really want it then I will allow myself to buy it. I review the board about once a week or so and delete items that I'm no longer desperate to buy. Since doing that I've not actually bought anything that I've pinned as after a few days the urge to save that money instead of spend it takes over! So a similar thing to SkintYetAgain. If I had the money to buy everything I pinned, then anytime I decided not to buy it, I'd transfer the money that I would have spent into savings instead (perhaps put some of it into a holiday savings pot so I still feel like I'm "treating" myself!)

SuperHan · 29 January 2018 at 3:03PM

Hi guys!

I like the idea of transferring the money to savings if I don't spend it, I think I'll adopt that one.

I'm not a big eBay shopper savingwannabe, but we do spend SO much on Amazon. I've spoken to the OH and we've agreed to try and do February with no Amazon shopping (it's a shorter month, which will hopefully make it a bit easier!).

I found an old style £20 at my Mum and Dad's house this week that they weren't doing anything with. They said if I can be bothered to go to the bank/send it to Bank of England and get a new £20 I can keep it. So another little win there!

I need a hair cut, so I've been on the Facebook Marketplace and found someone who needs a hair model in exchange for a free cut, so I've messaged her to hopefully save a bit there too.

I'm going to have a mooch through some of the other threads on here this week for inspiration and to join in motivating others, so I look forward to speaking to you all soon

savingwannabe · 29 January 2018 at 6:16PM

Gosh how amazing are you for ways to save money. That's what I call initiative!

You have cheered me up after a lOOOOOOOOONG day at work.

pinknsparkly · 30 January 2018 at 12:30PM

Amazon is definitely my kryponite too.... I don't even want to think about how much I've spent on there over the years :O

If you don't have any luck with the hair model option, then maybe consider college students instead. My local 6th form college runs hair, beauty and massage courses and you can get cheap haircuts/beauty treatments/massages to allow the students to practice. I've not got round to trying it yet but I've heard good things. Though I've also been warned that your haircut takes MUCH longer as the supervisors have to keep coming over to check (but that's what a good book is for, right??)

SuperHan · 30 January 2018 at 10:26PM

pinknsparkly wrote: »

If you don't have any luck with the hair model option, then maybe consider college students instead. My local 6th form college runs hair, beauty and massage courses and you can get cheap haircuts/beauty treatments/massages to allow the students to practice. I've not got round to trying it yet but I've heard good things. Though I've also been warned that your haircut takes MUCH longer as the supervisors have to keep coming over to check (but that's what a good book is for, right??)

I think that's what the hair model thing is (from reading the description, I think she's a trainee but with a salon rather than just at sixth form). I'm going to pop into the salon on my lunch tomorrow for a consultation - so that's exciting!

I did a bit of time in London with work over summer and they have so many hair dressing academies that I went and got a free cut and colour (and it was SO good!) but as you say took ages. It was more difficult to find something locally which is why I went down the Facebook route!

I haven't spent any money today either, so another good day! I was almost tempted as my team at work were going out for lunch, but a couple of us got some work dumped on ten minutes before we were due to go which was pretty urgent. I volunteered to skip the lunch and do the work so the other girl could go, which will have saved me the best part of £10 (if not more!) and we are all going out for lunch on Friday anyway, so I won't have missed out too much.

My current plan is to spend a bit of money to save... I'm trying to find some not-so-expensive days out that we can do, which will hopefully stop us being sat at home and deciding to go shopping. Last year I also decided to start a "try 100 new things before turning 30" challenge, and I'm on about 45 or 46 at the minute. So trying to find inventive and inexpensive activities is becoming a bit of a hobby too!

So far, I've found a free trial for an evening class for self defence and I have secured free tickets to go and watch PMQ in the Houses of Parliament. We'll need to get a train to London (but they're about £35 return this far in advance), and we might splurge on a Premier Inn too. I think if I have something to look forward to in the near future it will help me curb other impulse spending.

Yesterday I dragged the OH to Aldi for the first time instead of the local Asda to buy things for tea. It was a small shop so we probably didn't save much, but he's never been an Aldi fan and I think I might be winning him round... So hopefully there will be more savings there. I did buy a £10 room fragrance set, but I think I'm going to take that back, as I didn't really need it, I just got a bit swept up in the bargains and I'd heard some friends say nice things about it.

I've had a read through the back stories of some of the other diaries in here, so can't wait to keep up with them now as they get updated

The journey seems easier when you're sharing it with others!

pinknsparkly · 31 January 2018 at 12:36AM

Yeay on the no spend day!! Even if it meant missing lunch

I really want to get into the habit of finding free or cheap things to do. At the moment, when we need to have a cheap weekend we just seem to end up spending it mooching around the house which feels like a waste of a weekend! It's easier in the summer when the weather is nicer and we'll head out for a walk or something, but in the depths of winter that isn't quite such an alluring prospect!!

I looooooove Aldi, though it's taken me quite a while to master the art of refusing to look at the items in the middle of the shop because I can guarantee that there will always be SOMETHING there that I absolutely need! I bought a whole heap of bathroom bits from there a few months back (bins, toilet brushes, wall mounted soap dispensers) and took most of them back the next week, oops!

Four new walls - a savings diary

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