Help to keep me honest

Good Morning Diary and all,
Well it’s noticeably quieter with DS away! He seems to be having a great time with his girlfriend from the photos on FB that my OH is showing me. It’s nice to see them visiting various cities and enjoying the sites. Back here myself and OH are back at work and into the routine again.
On the MSE front, I have been trying to get my head around our collective pension situation. Not particularly exciting, but I want to understand at least what the options might be. Yesterday, OH followed up with her pension provider and got access back to her online account so she could check her account. Although she has about 23-25 years elapsed time in her career, she has accrued 11 years of pensionable service due to career breaks and having been part time. When we both started out, the pensionable age for men was 65 and for women it was 60. Now our state pensionable age is 67 for both of us. But we don’t want or intend to work until we are 67! So if we want to retire before then, it will be down to the private pensions and savings to make up the difference. I have been a member of a pension scheme of some kind since I was about 23. This isn’t really part of the DFW thread, but part of the bigger picture, that ultimately we are aiming for financial freedom at some point, when debt and mortgage free. Need to do a bit more planning and thinking on this.
The ‘take your lunch to work’ challenge has been interesting. In two weeks I have saved about £17 plus £22 from not buying a coffee on the way to work every day. So this is looking like it would be around £80 per month if I can keep it up.

Woke up early (for me) this morning and OH is asleep so thought I would have a mid-ish month review rather than wait to the end of the month and look back at how things have gone. We get paid at the end of next week but this is a five week month. Slight anomaly with budgeting as we have to make the money last a bit longer. So far it looks like we are reasonably on track. The areas I am focusing on are groceries (as ever) and spending money.

Groceries looking good and on track for about £400 for the month total. However, DS has been away for the last 2 weeks so this is lower than usual. We have been much better since he has been away at not doing the top up shops at our local CO*P which is really good to be fair and very convenient, but can be expensive. Need to stay focused on this for the next 2 weeks.

Spending money. Usually I budget £100 each for me and OH for the month. So far August is down at £80 for the two of us so far, I think projected to be around £160. I have reduced mine dramatically since I no longer spend at all during the day thanks to taking lunch to work and dropping the morning coffee. Would it be better to take the cash out in one go so you know how much you have to spend? The problem I see with that is it could be an encouragement to spend. There may be a better way to budget for cash than this, if anyone is reading and has any suggestions please chip in! Maybe there shouldn’t be a budget called ‘cash’ at all.

I have budgeted for a curry out tomorrow night to welcome DH home at our local, pretty cheap place. We are going camping for three nights last week of August, should be low cost, just the camping fees. We usually cook our own meals and don’t spend much.

Well I think that’s it for now. I think I know which areas to stay focused on this month to stay in budget.

Have a great weekend y’all! :beer:

Good morning diary and all,
So I have hit a small bump in the road this week. I had to go to the dentist yesterday and I have to have some work done which is quite expensive, actually £500. :eek: Unfortunately, there is no way around it, there is a cheaper alternative but the Dentist advised that the cheaper option would only be a temporary fix and so would probably not be the right course of action. We’ve been going to this Dentist for 20 years and over that time I’ve been really happy with the treatment and everything, and built up a lot of trust with this practice. So I’m going to go ahead with this and get the work done over the next four weeks. So it looks like the emergency fund (which currently stands at £1000) will have to be activated! So my plan will be to use £500 from there in September and then replace that over the following months. I could delay the Debt Free date to do this but I am really reluctant to do that, it seems like a small thing but I have got that target in my mind now, so am keen to make it!

We are going camping for a couple of nights on Thursday and Friday, the last break of the summer before really getting back to work. Aiming to do this frugally as we have chosen a campsite in some beautiful countryside and will be cooking our own food. We are taking DS with us, last little break together before he starts at University in 2 ½ weeks. Overall this month has gone pretty well to budget, I am going to do a bit of a review after the end of the month to see how we have done.

Have a great day all!