BritishBibliophile Wants A House
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BritishBibliophile
Posts: 535 Forumite
My name is BritishBibliophile and I'm [STRIKE]addicted to books[/STRIKE] saving to buy a house.
My finances have been up and down over the years, I was one of the lucky ones that graduated from university just as the economy tanked. Worked in a supermarket for 18 months while I paid off a Career Development Loan, managed to repay and save at the same time so I paid the loan off about halfway through the repayment schedule. Then left the supermarket to start a business, got a small business loan, but that failed too. Luckily my parents loaned me the money to pay back the business loan and I then paid them back.
Nowadays I have a not-well-paid job and live in the most expensive city in England. BUT if it was easy it would be boring and I like the occasional challenge
I have a savings plan that I've been operating for the past year and is working well for me;
- Save minimum of £100 (very minimum, it tends to exceed it) from my pay each month.
- Do the "Tilly Tidy" thing I saw on the MFW board, in my case I can't move pennies as the bank won't let me. So instead I round down my current account to the nearest 5 or 10 and shuffle the money in to the savings.
- Penny jar, 5 penny jar, and saving up 20 pence pieces too.
- Posting on Bubblews and Ciao. I have my own website (link in my profile) where my blog posts include book reviews, which I'm then adapting for Ciao along with other reviews when I have the energy. Bubblews is fairly self-explanatory, I just post whatever.
- eBook sales, I launched a Kindle eBook series (30 Women in History, Volumes 1 & 2) this year and the pennies that Amazon give me get swept straight in to savings.
- Selling other bits and pieces when I have clear outs.
So, as of the start of this diary on 1st September I have a minimum of £5636.78 in savings. That's a minimum as I've got extra in an every day saver, that will be going towards moving if I get a new job elsewhere, so not part of the deposit savings but could be in the future.
Right, let's hope this motivates me to keep on going!
My finances have been up and down over the years, I was one of the lucky ones that graduated from university just as the economy tanked. Worked in a supermarket for 18 months while I paid off a Career Development Loan, managed to repay and save at the same time so I paid the loan off about halfway through the repayment schedule. Then left the supermarket to start a business, got a small business loan, but that failed too. Luckily my parents loaned me the money to pay back the business loan and I then paid them back.
Nowadays I have a not-well-paid job and live in the most expensive city in England. BUT if it was easy it would be boring and I like the occasional challenge
I have a savings plan that I've been operating for the past year and is working well for me;
- Save minimum of £100 (very minimum, it tends to exceed it) from my pay each month.
- Do the "Tilly Tidy" thing I saw on the MFW board, in my case I can't move pennies as the bank won't let me. So instead I round down my current account to the nearest 5 or 10 and shuffle the money in to the savings.
- Penny jar, 5 penny jar, and saving up 20 pence pieces too.
- Posting on Bubblews and Ciao. I have my own website (link in my profile) where my blog posts include book reviews, which I'm then adapting for Ciao along with other reviews when I have the energy. Bubblews is fairly self-explanatory, I just post whatever.
- eBook sales, I launched a Kindle eBook series (30 Women in History, Volumes 1 & 2) this year and the pennies that Amazon give me get swept straight in to savings.
- Selling other bits and pieces when I have clear outs.
So, as of the start of this diary on 1st September I have a minimum of £5636.78 in savings. That's a minimum as I've got extra in an every day saver, that will be going towards moving if I get a new job elsewhere, so not part of the deposit savings but could be in the future.
Right, let's hope this motivates me to keep on going!
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Comments
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Monthly & Annual Totals
Going to be updating this bit at the end of each month with how much I managed to save during the month, hopefully give me a better idea of what I'm doing!
September 2014 - £112.98
October 2014 - £169.03
November 2014 - £154.56
December 2014 - £32.51
Grand Total: - £469.08 (This total is from when this diary started, not sure how much I saved before that XD)
January 2015 - £164.930 -
Your nickname is awesome
And you sound awesome, too.
Best of luck.0 -
Thank you blue_mango, less sure about the awesome part but I do love my username, although my Gentleman Caller is more of a bibliophile than I am XD
I've got a week off work coming up so I need to start planning the best way to use it! Was going to take the shop to Camden Market but I won't be ready in time so it will have to wait until November.
Going to restock the freezer with home cooked goodies, including a paprika chicken recipe I tried last weekend and really enjoyed. Food plan for next week is almost completed, just need to make the actual shopping list for it. I can also see about getting some more beef mince for the freezer as I want to do bolognese, lasagne and chili. Plus if I do lasagne then I'll have some cheddar left over to use for a cheese scone attempt
Took my coats to the dry cleaners yesterday, not very MSE but it's the first time in 3 years that they've been cleaned and they should last me another 3 years if I'm lucky. Money hasn't been taken out of my account yet but when it does I'll be able to tidy some in to the savings.
Need to go shopping this weekend as it's my Eldest Little Sister's birthday next week, no idea what to get her so I'm going to wander around looking in shops before giving up and going home to find something on Amazon :rotfl: but at least I'll be able to get the birthday card sorted.
Finishing this week at the moment with £3.50 from the grocery budget BUT I need to post a birthday card to the USA tomorrow so that will use some of it.
Also must remember to go to the library after work to get a cookery book or two so I can get some more ideas for freezable stuff.0 -
Dry cleaning money was taken out so tidied £4.19 in to the savings 0
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Yesterday ended up being an expensive day as I had to go birthday shopping for one of my sisters. Very difficult to buy for her as she loves One Direction, but I refuse to spend my money funding that pile of drivel. In the end I managed to find some jewellery and rounded it off with some posh chocolate from Hotel Chocolat.
Was very tempted to buy some chocolate from there for myself as it's always lovely, but I stopped myself as it's going to be an expensive month anyway without me buying anything else.
Managed to save a tiny bit of money by using my John Lewis Tea & Cake voucher to get a cheese scone and a pot of tea while I read my book, so no Caffe Nero visit for me 0 -
Where about do you want to buy a house? And how many bedrooms? Just curious 0
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The "where" is a bit up in the air at the moment, if all goes well with Gentleman Caller then we'd be living together but our families are in 2 different counties, my parents still have children living at home and will do for at least the next 4 or 5 years, but would like to sell up, Gentleman Caller's parents want to sell up too but don't necessarily want to move too far due to circumstances.
So basically, "somewhere in the south-east, but not bloody London" is the plan at the moment, I'm not worrying about the "where" until I'm closer to the £15k mark XD I'd like 3 bedrooms as I'd like a couple of children, Gentleman Caller doesn't really want children at the moment but does want somewhere to keep his multitude of books.
So, who knows? I want to save up more and see how things go with Gentleman Caller before I start thinking about it properly, right now it's all just a big castle in the air 0 -
£1.05 TT to the savings! Also got £5.50 left over from grocery budget from this week but this will probably go in the Christmas fund envelope.
Off work next week so planning everything I need to cook for the freezer.0 -
Forgot that I moved £1.31 to the savings last week. Not sure what my total is as I also didn't note how much I moved at the beginning of the month XD Will sort that out this evening.
So far for October I've moved £122.26 in to the savings, which has come out of my wages. Will no doubt move a fair bit more in the coming weeks as I already took cash out for the Christmas envelope, but I've got quite a few travel costs again this month, so we'll see how I fit saving around that.
New total: £5767.32
This month I really need to start photographing and eBaying my old beads. I used to make jewellery but I just don't have time, plus the market is saturated, so I might as well see if I can get a few extra pennies from destashing.0 -
Sounds as if it's all going well! You mentioned creating and selling eBooks through Amazon, does that bring in much at all?
It's something that I have considered in the past yet was unsure of how much money it would yield.
I like the idea of the rounding the money to the nearest 5/10. Lloyds TSB offers an automatic service that is similar, called Save The Change. It rounds up all purchases to the nearest pound or £10, depending on the purchase and moves the difference into my savings account.0
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