Kitty's FTB deposit diary

kitty__2 · 31 January 2016 at 7:16PM

Hi all! :wave:

This is going to be my house deposit savings diary to help keep me on track and accountable for all my spending!

A little background on me:

I'm 31 and currently live in London in rented accommodation with my best friend. I have never had a problem with saving money, I have just never really felt ready to 'settle down' and have used my money for things like travelling the world twice. I did come close to buying a flat under the shared ownership scheme in my hometown and ended up losing around £2000 grand in legal fees when I chose to move to London with my best friend instead. I don't regret a thing!

I have realised now that I really need to think about my future, especially as my friends boyfriend has moved in and they have started talking about 'when they get a flat together.' This has scared the bejeesus out of me. I knew it would come at one point - we have been in London living together for nearly 5 years now - it is just the reality that depending on how soon the day comes, I will possibly be moving into rented accommodation with a bunch of strangers, something that is my idea of a nightmare!

So. My grand arching 'plan' is to be able to get a place by the time I am 35 (I turn 35 at the end of 2019). I will probably be living with my friend for at the very minimum another year if not more.

I would love love love to live in London but obviously prices here are VERY expensive. I also don't know what my situation will be like in a few years time - I am currently single, perhaps I would be in a relationship and splitting the deposit.

Based on these facts, I have decided to pull a few random figures out of the air and decided on £40000. This could be a 10% deposit on a flat in a not so great area of London or a 20% deposit on a place in my hometown. Who knows what I will be feeling in a few years time, all I know is that I need the money.

I changed careers last year after paying a LOT of money for a course (thanks savings!) and now have a great paying job in a career I really enjoy and hope to be able to put away between £600 - £700 a month.

Have joined the 'Save 12k in 2016' thread with a target of £9000.

Let's do this! :j

kitty__2 · 31 January 2016 at 7:30PM

So! My current savings total stands at: £8854.75.

This comprises of:

First Direct Regular Saver: £2400
First Direct ISA: £2509.15 (Rubbish rate, can't wait to change it)
TSB Classic Plus: £1500.30
TSB Regular Saver: £750
Zopa: £1146.96
Ratesetter: £524.29
Cash Jar: £24.05

This is 22.13%

I probably struggle mostly with spending money on food at work. About once a month I prep my food on a Sunday and then the next week I just can't be bothered. Need to change this! Tonight I have prepped food for most of next week, I don't mind eating out for one day as I know if I don't do this then I will just get fed up.

I don't buy many clothes but my weakness is technology, Beats headphones, PS4, Apple Watch, Macbook. I want to make no more 'expensive' technology purchases in 2016.

I currently use YNAB for budgeting which I have been using on and off since about 2011, I find it's a great help when I do use it, problem is sometimes I go months without entering a single transaction!

I have also started to use eBay recently which is great for topping up the savings every now and then. Currently got 4 products listed and one of them has a bid! Woohoo!

kitty__2 · 1 February 2016 at 10:29PM

So it turns out I made a little boo boo with my initial savings figure that I declared earlier on! I bought a birthday card for my Dad and when I went to enter the transaction into YNAB I realised that I had entered the total of the 'savings' section as my house deposit figure on here.

I have 6 categories under savings which are:

House Deposit
Replacement Phone
Passport
Contents Insurance
Gifts
Holiday

I save a set amount under all of them which is the total roughly needed divided by the amount of months before it is needed (apart from the house deposit). I can't really include the 'others' as part of my house deposit savings as as soon as I buy a gift for somebody I would be eating into it!

So I have had to minus £140.93 from the total, boo!

But as least I am being honest with myself.

In terms of spends today I have bought:

A birthday card for my Dad - M&S do decent cheap ones so I picked one up for £1
Hair Mousse - I go through a can once every few months, usually £2.75 but on offer so I got two for £4

Both in my budget, total spends:

£5

(I won't be listing my spends everyday or even posting everyday, just feeling quite motivated right now

)

Other moneysaving things I did today were to take in my breakfast and lunch and make sure I have both prepped for tomorrow.

I also logged into my YouGov account for the first time since 2011. I have 1700 points. Only thing is the only available surveys for me are in 2012?!

I also want to open up a Nationwide Flex account for the 5% interest. Only thing is, it asks me, are you an existing customer? Yes I am. Please log into internet banking. I have no idea what my log in details are. Please enter your account number to retrieve them. Well I haven't touched that account for about 10 years so I literally have no idea! I guess I will just have to walk into a branch with my passport and hope for the best?! :huh:

Oh yes and on advice from somebody on the Save 12k in 2016 forum, I moved excess from my ISA into my TSB Classic Plus to fill it to £2000, will move the rest when i have somewhere to put it. I just have this mindset that you should never take out of an ISA as you will lose that part of the allowance. Well that is stupid for three reasons, firstly rates are rubbish, second I would lose it anyway as I will be taking out for deposit, third at 31 and with just over £2500 in it you can probably tell I have already taken money out of my ISA many, many times!

I will definitely open a HTB ISA come April 6th and maybe even an IFISA as well depending on the rates! (You can open and fund both these types at the same time).

Happy saving everyone!

BritishBibliophile · 2 February 2016 at 10:24PM

Welcome to the gang Kitty! I hope I get to follow you to the MFW board in 5 years time

kitty__2 · 3 February 2016 at 10:32PM

Thanks BritishBibliophile! And the same goes for you too!

Not much to report here, I have received £5.45 worth of interest payments so far this month, probably won't earn much more as this includes the two 'big' monthly interest earners.

3 of my 4 items listed on eBay have bids totalling around £46 and they have a few more days to go so hoping I will be able to hit the £60 mark even after fees have been taken off.

I have applied for and been accepted for a FlexDirect 5% account so hopefully I will be able to transfer the rest of my ISA in there soon.

I had a no spend day yesterday and could have had one today too - mucked it up by thinking it was my friend at works leaving lunch today so I didn't bring lunch in - turns out it is tomorrow! At least I only spent £3 on a meal deal, usually I would have spent £6 - £8 at Itsu or the food market!

I was reading an article in the Evening Standard today about the cost of living in London and how the average price of a property is over £500,000. It is so ridiculous, I know in my heart that I will probably never be able to afford a place here and even if I can it will be tiny. I do think to myself 'what if I have children.' If I brought them up here we would wouldn't be very 'well off.' That sounds like almost a horrible thing to say and obviously it is all about how much you love them not money, but the thought that for what I would pay for a tiny flat here would be the same as a four/five bedroom house complete with garden etc, what I was brought up with. Hmmm, makes you think

Anyway, tomorrow I am off for delicious food with my colleagues and friend who is leaving. It will be on budget and that is all I am spending!!!!

ahX · 4 February 2016 at 4:14PM

Hi Kitty,

Welcome to the board, I think i will start my own one of these threads to keep up my motivation as well!

I was intrigued by the Zopa & RateSetter information you provided and did a quick search to discover that they both are P2P lending sites - what has your experience been so far with these? have you lend any money/made any nice savings from using your money this way?
I have £2k sitting in a low interest savings account and am toying with the idea of moving some of it towards P2P lending.

kitty__2 · 4 February 2016 at 11:34PM

Hi ahX! :wave: Thank you and you should start your own thread, you seem to have pretty similar financial goals to me!

I opened both my Zopa and Ratesetter accounts in October and so far my experience with them has been pretty good. I like the fact that I am directly lending to people and can even see a breakdown of each loan my money has gone to and the purpose of it (in Zopa that is). i have earned £6.81 from Zopa and £6.34 from Ratesetter (gross interest).

They are fixed rate periods though (I have gone with 3 years for both) and you can't just instantly take the money out, you have to wait for the repayments to come back into your account (unless you pay a fee). Also bear in mind that they aren't covered by the FSCS (though are FCA regulated) which means that you don't have the £75,000 protection if something bad was to happen.

If you have maxed out your regular saver/high paying current accounts or just want to do something different with your money then I would definitely look into it, just as long as you do your research into it first

Anyyyyway, there is not much to report on the savings front today. Went out for my friends leaving lunch and only spent £10, yay! Cooked Jack Monroe's delicious spinach and lentil daal for dinner and will be taking the leftovers into work tomorrow for lunch. Here's hoping for a frugal Friday! :beer: (Yes there will be beer).

kitty__2 · 7 February 2016 at 8:13PM

Well this weekend certainly hasn't been a no spend weekend but thankfully it was all pretty much planned and budgeted for.

Friday I only spent £2.60 on some cat food and then proceeded to spend my Friday evening in bed as I was feeling ill

Saturday I spent £81 on clothes(!) This sounds like a lot but I barely ever buy clothes (to the point where I feel really self conscious wearing the same old things to work everyday) and I had the money for it in my clothes budget.

£3.94 went on two half price bottles of conditioner that should last me to the end on the month.

My friend and I went out to the pub and he bought a bottle of wine and then we had Domino's 'Winter Survival Deal', £7.50 each whilst watching a movie at home.

Today I went shopping with him as he needed to get a few bits and I spend £9.50 on a cheeky lunchtime drink for us.

It does sound like a lot but I don't often do much on the weekend and it was all on budget. Just got to be careful that I don't drain my 'drinking/eating out' budget too soon as it is only the beginning on the month.

On the side of actually MAKING money,

I am happy to report that I sold all four of my eBay items. :j After postage and fees I will be getting £125.19 which is amazing.

I have also listed 5 more items, starting tonight. They aren't very high value items but hopefully between them I should make around £20 - £30!

I have prepped my lunch for tomorrow and the next day and have a big Kilner jar of Tesco value museli mixed in with some extra fruit and seeds to keep in the cupboard at work, in case I can't be bothered/don't have the things to prep my breakfast. (For times like tonight

).

This takes my total saved for February so far to £145.01, which is around a whopping 2% of my yearly total. I can tell you this because I've got it all mapped out on a lovely spreadsheet which I spent about 2 hours on Saturday creating - the fun life of a saver! :rotfl:

savingwannabe · 7 February 2016 at 8:55PM

Well done. As usual a really positive post and we learn from you too.
Keep it up petal.

:j

Hutchch0920 · 19 February 2016 at 9:50AM

In a similar situation, working in London and have been living there 3 years, although I recently moved out to Kent in with my boyfriend and his parents and now commute in which is a touch cheaper than renting in zone 3 by about £100 but the house I live in now is much nicer and they pay all the bills (inc food!!).

Also joined the 12K in 2016 thread and have a target of £7k although we can now change that as the OH will be out of debt soon and can start contributing to the savings pot. Have you thought about looking a bit further out like Dartford? Pretty quick into the centre but flat prices are way more reasonable and also a fair bit of shared ownership so you could buy quicker and then staircase up.

kitty__2 · 21 February 2016 at 9:53PM

Hi clairewych! :wave:

That sounds so good that you are able to start saving more now that you are living with your OH and his parents!

Tbh I haven't really thought about any location yet apart from I want to be as close to London as possible but Dartford could be an option! Just trying to get myself on track with my savings at the moment after a very expensive year

Kitty's FTB deposit diary

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