How much can you save?

JAMIEDODGER

hi all, just thought i would pop on and see how you are all doing:D

im still not at the point of being able to join you yet......had a rubbish few months! but i am hoping i will be able to at some point this year:) in fact i should be debt free apart from the loan in may. thats when i will start saving to pay the loan off which should still take me 6 months so i am aiming to be able to save properly by december!!! oh well better latethan never eh:D

jamie

moneysavingwannabe

Hi Jamie,

We should be swapping places then soon!! Well done for nearly clearing your debts and good luck with the saving.

Where can I hang out when I have spent all my savings and have cc debts etc?? I quite like it here at the moment but it's not going to last much longer when the building work starts!!

JAMIEDODGER

msw - to dfw board of course:) your savings are remarkable by the way, well done you!:T

moneysavingwannabe

Hi Jamie,

It has taken a while to save that much! I am a bit scared about spending it all plus lots more and starting again, but I am sure it will be fine. Might need some support from the dfw board - thanks! :eek:

Becks_in_Debt

moneysavingwannabe wrote: »

Hi,

Ok here is my SOA

Wages 1675.00

Outgoings
Household ( I pay half)

• Council tax £132 - (council tax seems high, where do you live have you looked into if you are paying for the right band)
• Life insurance £29.38
• Mortgage £411.04
• Buildings & contents insurance £36.67
• Water £30 ish
• Gas £69
• Electricity £27
• Food £200

Car

• Tax £125 a year
• Car insurance £321.30 a year with 7 yrs no claims
• Petrol £30-40 a month

Personal

• Union £11.33
  • Gym £50 (I know!!! But helps me de-stress after work)
• Contact lenses £12.50
• NTL (Virgin) - £40-50 (BB, phone, basic tv)
  • Virgin mobile pay as u go £20ish evry 3 mths

I tend to leave about £200 to spend on other things for the month and put the rest in savings.
Normally save £700-£800 at the moment
I think thats it!!!:D

Hello, i have been browsing through this thread and i would like to join :wave: , as you can see from my sig i am currently part of the DFW forum, currently we struggle but as of May this year we should have an extra £600 p/m to play with each mth, £250 of this is going towards paying off the debts, this not inc what we currently pay on them. Me and OH plan to start making savings, I know some people would say pay off the debt first but if we ever had an emergency like boiler packing up we would be screwed as we have £NIL savings. So although I would not actually be saving for another month it would be great if I can join in and get tips. This is what we want to save for . . .

• Xmas 2007 (expensive as I have a 2yr old daughter)
• I am self employed so need to start saving for tax return 2007/2008
• General Savings - Emergencies - Car Tax - Mot - Car & House ins

I have started the process in opening accounts, any suggestions on best one's. I have an ISA account with Barclays which has been open for years and has £6.00 in it as I took all the money out when we had our "Rough Patch".
I am having seperate savings accounts for each thing that we are saving for. We currently bank with Natwest and Barclays so it would be good if we could stick with these banks for savings aswell as makes it easier as I do all my banking via the Internet.

I think I read about a "Olympic Challenge SpreadSheet" any chance someone could PM me one and I can get everything set up for Savings Day.

Thank You Everybody.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cgi-bin/viewnews.cgi?newsid1160141972,18232,

Use this to check if you are in the correct council tax band

moneysavingwannabe

Hi Becks in Debt,

Welcome to the thread! Good luck with your savings.

We are about to clear our savings out completely so it will be a bit scary! Although we aren't really used to having lots of money anyway so it has been a bit of a novelty!

Yes I have checked the band already thankyou and I am in band C like most of my street. My sister lives on the same street and she was in a higher band and has now been moved down to c too! She got quite a bit of money back so it is worth doing! We live in Nottingham but only in a 3 bed semi....it is a bit steep. :mad:

Good luck with the savings, are your debts 0% we are going to put the cost of a kitchen on 2 0% cards, not done it before but I'm sure it will be fairly easy to juggle them and swap to a new card when we need to ??!! :eek:

Becks_in_Debt

moneysavingwannabee Thats good news about your sister getting money back from the coucil tax banding. I am in the process of claiming back bank charges. No I am not a fan of credit cards, mine are on sofa and car finance (interest has been frozen), loans, bills from previous address (all account's now been closed) and store cards, yet I am not a fan of credit cards, still dont understand that one?
I am really looking forward to having savings, I havent had ANY in about 3 years, so it is really going to be great, Saving for xmas is going to be a big incentive, I love xmas but for the last few years not been able to spend like I would normally, I am looking forward to spoiling my dd and I would like to be able to invite family and friends around for a bite to eat and drinks, which isnt cheap if you want to do it properly. There are so many things I want and since getting in debt I do not agree with getting loans out in future if i want something I am going to pay for it out right. So I will be on this thread for years to come.

katrose_uk

Hi all!

I've been using the MSE website for a couple of years now and although I haven't subscribed to any of the threads I've read some of the information that has been posted.

I have recently had the fortune/misfortune, whichever way you want to look at it, to have inherited some money from my late Uncle and paid off my debts (I'd much rather have been paying them off monthly and still have him here ) but now I want to make the most of it and would really like to join this'How much can you save' club as I think it will help me stay on the straight and narrow!!

Me and my OH have a situation which I'm sure can't be that unusual.

I bought my house two years ago and then a year ago met my OH who also has his own house. I moved in with him in December last year, but we now have two houses neither of which are in a state to sell! We've spent the last year trying to get my house finished and still aren't there. I took out a unsecured loan on my mortgage to carry out some of the rennovations. My repayments (although I'm interest only on most of it) are huge at the moment, so I'm thinking the rest of the money should pay off some of that to get my repayments down and that I should then use the money each month and save that - what do you guys think?

Hopefully my house should go on the market in a month and then we can move onto finishing his off...but we want to save for:

- a house together!
- maybe a wedding one day??
- and generally just a better way of living!

SO advice...what do I do now?? :j

moneysavingwannabe

Hi and welcome,

I'm not too hot on the best thing to do but my friend has recently moved in to her bf house. She has kept hers and is renting it out. The rent pays the mortgage plus she has more left over. It might be worth thinking about?

I don't mean to be gloomy but she also sees it as a backup if any problems occur as she nearly lost her house when she split up with previous bf so is quite attached to it now!

We are trying to pay overpayments on our mortgage to pay it off more quickly and have already saved quite a bit. That seems like a good idea too!:D

I'm sure other people will have better advice soon!

katrose_uk

Thanks for your advice. I'm going to pay a lump sum off my mortgage and get my monthly payments down. I also have the added cost of a horse! But he's a permanent fixture (I've had him since I was 12!) but I think I'm going to go down to DIY from now on as its a saving of over £140 a month!

We need to get my budget sorted, we spend far too much on food and beer :beer: at the moment and it's not doing my waistline any good!!

I'm going to try and put £250 away a month into an ISA for 2007-8 and then into my direct saver. We've both thought about keeping our places and renting them, but think that that gives us an easy way out! And of course, get my house sold as soon as possible! I like to think that you should work at a relationship and I don't want to have an easy way out!! We've made the big move in together with the more difficult task of moving the horse and two cats over to Bradford.

Guess time will tell eh!!?