Peonie's journey to smart money management

Peonie

Peonie wrote: »

I have shared my current savings situation on another diary but have not on here before, so here it is - we have just shy of £12,000 in savings, £9,000 is for a rainy day and as you know, the remaining £3,000 will be used to fund home improvements. I still want to increase what we have in the pot to at least £12,000, maybe more...

The kind folks on museumworkers diary gave me some advice, to have a rainy day fund of 6 months of mortgage payments and bills. I went through our SOA for this month and 6 months of mortgage payments and bills adds up to just less than £12,000, meaning we have only £3,102 to find.

Peonie

We had a nice afternoon yesterday, we walked along the local footpaths and saw some beautiful houses. Sigh.

DH has been selling on ebay. :j :j :j He's sold some of his childhood toys (there's still a lot more to go), and he sold his 4 year old camera for £210 in 2 minutes! I'm trying to think what else we can sell now.

Peonie

lezhitianxia wrote: »

i have no money!

Hello, and welcome to the MSE forum. I hope you get to where you want to be.

Peonie.

Lixi_2

Peonie wrote: »

The kind folks on museumworkers diary gave me some advice, to have a rainy day fund of 6 months of mortgage payments and bills. I went through our SOA for this month and 6 months of mortgage payments and bills adds up to just less than £12,000, meaning we have only £3,102 to find.

That is a good rule of thumb I think. What I am aiming for again. I think if you go on income the rule is 3 months and on outgoings 6 months (which for a lot of people works out roughly the same)...

Peonie

Lixi wrote: »

That is a good rule of thumb I think. What I am aiming for again. I think if you go on income the rule is 3 months and on outgoings 6 months (which for a lot of people works out roughly the same)...

Thanks Lixi, that is a good rule of thumb. For a few months I was aiming to save 6 months of wages :eek: but it would take far too long to achieve and there's a lot of other things I want or need to save for.

SeriouslySeekingtoSave

lezhitianxia wrote: »

i have no money!

:rotfl:Neither do I. My mortgage pig eats it all! :rotfl:

Lois_E

Peonie wrote: »

On the very cold nights rather than switching on the central heating system we closed all the doors and used an electric heater to warm the living room.

Depending on what your house is like, that might not save any money. Remember that gas is about 3 times the price of electricity for the same amount of energy. It might be interesting to have the central heating on for an evening, read the gas and electric meters before and after, and work out how much you've spent in total. Then the next evening leave the central heating off but have the electric heater on, read the meters before and after, and do the sums again. If you do it, I'll be interested to see what results you get.

SeriouslySeekingtoSave

Awesome idea Lois! I need to do something similar just to get a grasp of what my bills should be so I'm coming from a more informed stance when my energy is due for renewal in December.

Peonie

Lois_E wrote: »

Depending on what your house is like, that might not save any money. Remember that gas is about 3 times the price of electricity for the same amount of energy. It might be interesting to have the central heating on for an evening, read the gas and electric meters before and after, and work out how much you've spent in total. Then the next evening leave the central heating off but have the electric heater on, read the meters before and after, and do the sums again. If you do it, I'll be interested to see what results you get.

At the moment we have a cavity wall open and a couple of doors missing to some poorly insulated areas of the house so I would have thought it would be cheaper to only heat the room we are using and not them all... Hmmm...
Thanks Lois.

Peonie

I have made my final payment into my monthly saver :j :j :j

Now I need to wait until the middle of the month when the interest gets paid, the interest rate then drops and I'll whip the money out and into another account.

Is anyone else watching Country House Rescue? I enjoy watching Ruth Watson come up with a different idea every week to bring in money. And seeing the amazing properties is not too bad either.