Journey to... adulthood?

Urchhhh · 26 August 2015 at 10:43PM

This year I'll turn the grand old age of 21 (yeah I know, I'm not THAT old but I feel it!). The past year has made me grow up loads. In short: got engaged, moved out and had a baby!
My longer term goal is move out of rented accommodation and have our own mortgage by the age of 30. Owning my own house eventually is one of my dreams! This gives me just over 9 years to do so (well 9 years, 2 months and 11 days..). My partner is on board but leaves me to do everything money related. He isn't very good with money and all this bill paying malarkey so prefers me to just do it and he just sits and nods. Luckily he isn't a big spender at all, I don't even recall last time he spent money on himself.
Neither of us have any debts so I feel we are in a good position to start saving for our future. Our house deposit saving is on hold until our holiday next year is over: big family holiday in USA that has been planned since I was around 9! 3 weeks in USA, mainly paid for by gran who is retiring this year so is spending her retirement money on us. Although if we save up the amount we want before we go I'll start redirecting money into the house saving.

My short term goals..

1. Create a budget and stick to it. I always half make them and never fully follow them! We had a rule of 'any extra junk you want use your own money' but this meant we both used all our own money on junk and I went into my personal savings, just going to cut out the junk - better for my purse and my waistline
2. Save 20% of my own personal income (OH is doing the same), this is around £70 a month. But going to aim for £450 in my personal savings by 31st December. Actual figure changes as my maternity pay varies a lot. £29.77/£450
3. Work out how much money we need for USA and save it. Literally going through it with a fine tooth comb and going to put it all in envelopes: so 'day one buses journeys' etc. Its tiring but I know it will be worth it
4. Bring emergency savings up to £500, currently sitting at £250.
5. Save up money for car tax currently £0/£145
6. Put any loose change into pot for wedding, we have £50 so far. Not set a budget yet so unsure of how much I need. Not deeming this necessary yet as I want my daughter to be a lot older when I get married so she can take part. This wedding will be done as cheap as possible though

So in short...
Personal savings: £29.77/£450 (Deadline: 31st December 15)
Car Tax: £0/£145 (Deadline 31st January 16)
Emergency savings: £250/£500 (Deadline 31st December 15)

My really short term goal...
No more money spending until pay day... I don't have any money to spend! Pay day is on 31st of this month so only 5 days to go!

Urchhhh · 27 August 2015 at 11:02PM

First proper day at this and I think I've done well!
I did spend some money today - 35p! It was for a good cause though, I bought some passata out of Lidl.
Today I decided to raid the freezer and cook up some meals using the ingredients we have in the house. I've cooked up 10 meals each and have plans for another 9 for me and 13 for OH. I don't eat much variety but OH likes variety so I cook two different meals.
Tomorrow we are eating out for lunch/tea. We try and go 2/3pm and fill ourselves up! We always go to pizza hut on pay day and we don't want to get rid of this tradition but we're going to make it cheaper! Pizza hut always have a '2 for 1 voucher' available if you fill out the survey online (it says it on the receipt). So I hunted out the receipt, 5 minute survey done and bam I have a 'two for one voucher'. Its only valid on main meals (not the buffet we normally get), however we are just going to get a pizza each and get two different ones we both like to share. We always get the unlimited drinks but get one each. They are 2.55 each so they isn't cheap! We've agreed we will just share a drink. We normally pay £20ish but I'm thinking we will actually pay around £11/12 tomorrow instead:)
So we won't need to buy anything for tea until the 16th of September, pretty happy!
The fitness class I go to also put on a new offer. If you buy 3 month membership its £89, normally is £35 a month. That's a saving of £16

No money to add to my savings yet as I need to wait until we've both been paid to work out what we have extra after bills but feeling good about this month already

Urchhhh · 28 August 2015 at 6:33PM

£152.23...That is what we spent today in total, although when you break it down it doesn't sound as bad.

First of all the biggest cost, a Hetty Hoover. We bought a cheap hoover which is pretty naff when we first moved in together. I always wanted a Hetty and OH decided this pay day was the day! We decided we would buy it in Tesco, it was 49p cheaper woo?! But our main reason for picking Tesco was the fuel save. Its coming to an end soon and the Hetty Hoover gave us an extra 4p off per litre! Our grand total for fuel save is at 12p per litre and with the dropping fuel prices this is even better! Hetty cost us £99.50

We then spent £19.36 on M. In mothercare we bought 4 packets of Huggies swim nappies (48 nappies in total) down from £5.29 to £1.37 a packet. We go swimming a few times a week so this will definitely save costs. We also bought 2 packs of dummies for £3 each reduced from £4.79, she currently uses 0 - 6 month dummies but these ones are 6 - 18 month ones. On the walk to the pound shops OH found a ten pound note on the floor. So we bought some things for M's Christmas with this money (actually we have bought everything we need for Christmas now). Bought from poundland, B&M, home bargains and BHF.
2 rattles, crayons, a big plastic ball, paintbrushes and 2 books. Including stuff we already had bought she now has 10 presents for Christmas which I think is plenty for a then 7 month old baby!
We also bought a drink each for me and OH which was another £1 for the both of us.

We then went to asda and spent £17.61. £14.50 of this was spent on vests and sleepsuits in the next size up for M - this comes out of her Child benefit money. I then spent £3.11 on food. We both haggis, YS pie and YS muller yoghurts.

We went to Aldi and spent £3.66. This was two bottles of cider, a bag of onions that were 39p in the super6 and 2 bread rolls for 29p for OHs tea!

We then went to pizza hut. I had a '2 for one voucher' and we shared a drink. Total spend: £11.10. I didn't manage to finish my pizza so I've brought it home and will have the rest for tea! This isn't included in our food shopping money, its budgeted separately. We also walked away with another 2 for 1 voucher for next time

So for a meal out, new hoover, some food, clothes for M, nappies for M and the rest of her Christmas presents I don't think we've done half bad!

We also spent £40.30 on Sun holiday. 4 nights on the west coast of Scotland for the three of us, not bad! But that came out of our holiday savings so its fine

savingwannabe · 28 August 2015 at 10:15PM

V good. I am impressed! I am interested in these sun holidays. Glad to know that you liked it. Welcome to you and your diary. swxxxx

Urchhhh · 29 August 2015 at 11:31AM

Emergency saving: £313.70/£500
Personal saving: £112.22/£450
Car tax: £20/£145

Spent some more money last night in Aldi/Tesco.
Tesco £2.54 which was YS Belgian Bun, YS pack of 4 Scotch pies and YS Chicken Kievs. I now have enough food for OH's teas for all of September!
Aldi: £2.68. 79p for marg and £1.89 for icecream - okay we didn't need the icecream but at least I bought the aldis stuff and not the ben and jerrys I was eyeing up in Tesco!

I'm going to go to Lidl today and buy some chocolate and crisps on half price. Love chocolate and for 17p a bar... I just have to stock up!

OH went on a sun holiday a few years ago and said it was good. Our is in March so a while to wait until we find out how it is!

Urchhhh · 30 August 2015 at 3:24PM

Total spends yesterday: £6.22
That was on 2 x 24 bags of crisps and 24 bars of chocolate. Works out at 4.5p per bag of crisp and the chocolate bars (100g) where 17p each! I normally end up going across to the poundshop across the road and buy a £1 bar of chocolate... I'll do this at least 3/4 times a week. I'm quite addicted to chocolate so this should save me money

I also went shopping with my friend, she needed to get an outfit for a night out so I said I would take her. She gave me £15 for petrol so straight into my car that went. The bus to the city is £10.30 return so she said it saved her taking the bus and isn't too much over what she would of paid for the bus and she didn't need to wait 40 minutes on the bus herself.
Going to make a roast dinner for tea tonight anyway, have everything I need in the house so that will be no spend! Today is turning out to be a no spend day!

Urchhhh · 30 August 2015 at 11:11PM

My grocery budget is £100 a month, I've currently spent £18.21. OH does have every tea now ready for this month though and I also have enough until the middle of the month. I've also got enough chocolate to last me till Christmas
My month is going to be mega huge and go from 28th August to the 30th September - which is 34 days

One aim is to have 20 no spend days, so far 1/20

Urchhhh · 31 August 2015 at 9:46PM

Today we spent a hefty sum on Musclefoods, £60!
Portion sizes are small but we prefer our veg to meat so only use a small portion for us both!
This is on:
- 5kg Premium Chicken Breast Fillets (We eat 100g eat for a portion so that's 50 portions there)
- 1 x 1kg Great British Beef Brisket (not sure about this as never used it before)
- 2 x 400g Irish Grass Fed Steak Mince (80g a portion so 10 portions)
- 2 x 5oz Peppered Rump Steaks (4 as we'll share a steak)
- 1 x 400g Turkey Thigh Mince (5 portions)
- 4 x 100g Pork Medallion Steaks (8 portions - we'll share)
- 8 x 4oz British Lean Steak Burgers (8 portions)
- 8 x 85g+ Chicken Drumsticks (4 portions)
- 12 x 75g Meaty Cumberland Sausages (6 portions)
- 2 x 350g Unsmoked Rindless Bacon (its 28 slices so 14 portions)

That's 109 portions for us, not including the brisket as I'm not sure what portion sizes I would use (or really what to do with it) If I do a rough guess of 10 portions of 100g, so a total of 119 portions it works out to 50p a portion! I don't think that's too bad

So absolutely loads! Priced it up on Tescos website and it came to £82 there.

We've decided we'll pay for it with the emergency savings for the now and take off £20 of our food budget every month for the next 3 months and put it back in.

So...

Emergency savings:£273.70/£500
Food budget: £18.21/£80

The meat should last us months and months and months! Its over 11kg of meat!

I can't wait for it to arrive on Friday and portion it all out!

Prothet_of_Doom · 31 August 2015 at 10:04PM

Urchhhh wrote: »

First of all the biggest cost, a Hetty Hoover. Hetty cost us £99.50

If this is an example of your decision making, I'd suggest you haven't fully understood the best way to save money.

If you want to save money, you only buy stuff you need. If you needed a vacuum cleaner, £45 would get you one good enough.

So I'm thinking you wasted £54.50.

Urchhhh · 31 August 2015 at 10:16PM

We have a hoover that we bought for £36 before as we couldn't afford the hetty before. I've always always wanted the hetty hoover, my partner decided he would buy it for me out of his pay. So we figured out what would be the best way to get what I wanted. So yes we could of saved money - we don't even need it now! So we could of saved £99.50 really! I was happy to wait till our current one kicks the bucket to get it - which will be a while as we only bought it when our daughter was a week old.. she's only 16 weeks now!
I'm quite happy with our decision but thanks for your opinion

Andypandyboy · 31 August 2015 at 10:31PM

You have had a hoover for 15 weeks and it was a priority to get a Hetty? Unless the other one was a real dud I really can't see why you would have done that. We have a Dyson which I hate, I would love a GTech Air Ram but I really couldn't justify it as the Dyson works perfectly well.

I think that the previous poster is right, need is what you should focus on, not want.

Journey to... adulthood?

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