Mr & Mrs P's savings diary...

Little_Pickle

Hi all,

We are now (finally) debt free and are hoping to save towards a house. (Apart from Hubby's student loan!)

We have a little in savings but not much left after having our son nearly 2 years ago and a massive wedding last year.

We have very good jobs but we curently rent, our son's nursery care is on the 'most expensive' end of the UK's scale (all because of WHERE we live) and we have gotten too used to having what we want!!!

We have spent 7 lovely years earning money and then spending it on travel, nights out, good food, good wine and generally just being wasteful!

Time to change things a little!

In our defence, we managed to save to have our son (I was a contractor and was entitled to standard gov. maternity pay only) so taking a year off without my salary was a massive downturn in finances. and then we managed to pay for our wedding which was approx £14k.

Now we are starting out again for our biggest savings push to date...
We aim to save a staggering £100k in the next 3 years... a MASSIVE task!!! £5k for our upcoming NZ trip, £20k to pay off hubby's student loan and £75k to buy a house.

We are 1.5% of the way there and are literally starting from scratch!
Wish us luck... here we go.....eeeek!

Emzilla

Many congratulations on becoming debt free and wishing you lots of luck for getting the money for your house deposit. :T

Emz xx

Little_Pickle

So, our budget is sorted. We have the magical numbers we need to stick to!

we have been quite tough on ourselves, but if we stick to it we will own most of a house... therefore a smaller mortgage... but that's the second part of the story... back to part 1!

This is the breakdown of what we have to spend.

£40.00pw Lunches & Personal Spends (each)
£12.50pw Clothes (each)
£50.00pw Weekend spends (joint)
£75.00pw Food Shopping

I know these amounts seem like a lot, but we are going to tweak them when we know what we can cut them down to.
Also, we were thinking we could see what is left in each pot at the end of each week and then put that into the savings too.

This all starts off on Friday... not far away now!

pennywisepoundstupid

Just wanted to say goodluck and hope everything works out for you.

Little_Pickle

It's almost Friday... I actually can't wait to get this savings thing started!
BRING IT ON!
LP
xox

Little_Pickle

so... we had a quiet weekend. Visited the folks with the little one and then onto a friend's house for the night returning home this afternoon.
That meant that we managed not to spend too much.. £25 in all - pretty good start!

I have £35 of my my £40pw to last me until Friday. I shall pop into the supermarket on my way to work to pick up my lunches for the week and the rest is for me to play with!

I was thinking of getting out cash each week and putting it into little envelopes to make it easier to track what we are spending.
The mantra I always remember from MSE is 'Cash is Queen!'.

So, bring on the first of very many budgeted weeks....

I hope you've all had a lovely weekend!
LP
xox

chevalier

Little_Pickle wrote: »

I have £35 of my my £40pw to last me until Friday. I shall pop into the supermarket on my way to work to pick up my lunches for the week and the rest is for me to play with! I assume you meant picking up stuff to make your own lunches not buying shop bought ones:eek:

I was thinking of getting out cash each week and putting it into little envelopes to make it easier to track what we are spending.
The mantra I always remember from MSE is 'Cash is Queen!'. As you said tweaking is the key, give this a go and then if it doesn't work for you, try another way.

So, bring on the first of very many budgeted weeks....

I hope you've all had a lovely weekend!
LP
xox

Have you done all the standard things like check suppliers are the cheapest eg for utilities and insurances? Even if you did this at the start of your DFW journey, the cheapest provider may have changed since.

Is your childcare cost mitigated by childcare vouchers from your employers?

Ref the saving for a deposit, would it actually be cheaper buying outside london and commuting?

chev

Little_Pickle

Hi Chev! So nice to see a name I remember!

Thanks for dropping by... here's the answer to your questions...

Yes, I will be making my own lunches - that and tinned soups (I love tomato soup!)
As you said re cash, we're in the early stages of our savings plan, and we'll tweak as we go along.
All the standard money saving areas have been covered (it was one of the first things we did) and we are getting much better deals than we ever have!
We do already get the childcare vouchers from our work places... we have also found a local nursery which now has a space (yay) saving us... wait for it... £400 per month! (I forgot to put that in my diary... it's been a mental week!) That will hopefully start in September and will make a massive difference.

Re the house deposit... we will be buying in New Zealand (my husband is a kiwi and we plan to move over there when our son is around 5 or 6). We want to take as much money as possible so we OWN as much as possible. Our plan, once we own somewhere is to smash the mortgage in 5 years... call this savings exercise step one!

Thanks again for dropping by..

Tomorrow would be shopping day, but I have just done a meal plan for the week and I won't need to go shopping until about Wednesday or Thursday! That's the best part of a week! happy days!

much love,
LP
xox

Little_Pickle

....sorry, me again - why do I do all of my thinking at nighttime????

aaaaaaaanyway, got a massive pile of stuff to eBay... should have done that this weekend, but avoided it.. naughty.
I found some French Franc notes... stuck 'em on ebay 'just to see' and whatyaknow? 3 watchers and 2 bids already (over the £4.00 mark)...brill!

From when I was here before, I have a huge glass jar of coppers and 5p's. THink i will head to the bank tomorrow and get some change bags... bag 'em up and hand 'em over. That'll probably be another £20 with any luck.

Also, we have literally 1000's of CDs. Anyone used Music Magpie? What are they like? Seem like a bit of a rip off to me - but I don't know if I can be bothered putting them all on ebay... any suggestions? oh, and I'll of course copy them onto our external drive first...

...okay... going now..
LP
xox

Little_Pickle

Quick update - Just got paid my bonus. that's £2000 into the savings... woop!

Also, forgot to add that we have a big trip to NZ coming up. that'll take about £5k off of our savings. so I might actually change the challenge to £100k to include that...

*wonders off to change the challenege...

Mrs_Money_Penny

"subscribes" Good luck. Love your diary. New Zealand how exciting.