Learning to Live on Less!

White_Iris

Forgot to add yesterday that I've had some Quidco cashback and payment for a pinecone survey, so the house savings are now at £6575 which I think will be the last payment I make this month. I think there will be some interest being paid at the end of June, so hopefully that will push it past £6600. Then once we get paid and we've transferred all the earmarked money over I'm hoping the total will be around £7200, leaving £300 to add in July to make my £7.5 target.

White_Iris

Pay day today and it was a lovely big payment thanks to all the extra hours I've done this month. I've transferred the extra over to the ISA already but I'll count it in the July total (I move it straight away so I don't accidentally spend it!). I haven't had an interest payment in the ISA yet though and I was sure it was paid every three months. Maybe it gets paid at the very end of the day and it'll be in the account by morning? No extra cash to add to the savings so I think Junes total will be £6575, leaving £925 to save in July! I've already got one extra shift at work on Thursday and I've got some hours from June which missed the payroll run so will be carried forward to July so that's an extra £75 already but that will be added to Augusts total.

I'm aiming for a very low spend July, out of my £200 spending money I'm hoping to keep my actual spends below £50. I have some debit card transactions pending and a PayPal payment to come out but once all that has cleared I'm going to empty my account into a savings pot (an easily accessible one, I'm not brave enough to throw it all straight in to the ISA!) and try very hard to spend as little as possible in July. I do have a birthday party to go to but that's just drinks out one evening, I might even volunteer to drive to save on taxi costs (it won't save much on drinks as soft drinks are nearly as expensive as booze!), so I'm hoping to spend under £20 that night. I'm also going to try a store-cupboard challenge and go for a week without grocery shopping. I'll need to stock up on perishables the week before but I think I should be able to do it, which would mean my £50 grocery budget could go to the house deposit ISA.

White_Iris

White_Iris wrote: »

I'm aiming for a very low spend July, out of my £200 spending money I'm hoping to keep my actual spends below £50.

Well that hasn't happened as I've already spent nearly £80 :eek: To be fair £20 was on car parking for the month and £10 was on some bargain Christmas presents I spotted but the rest has just been frittered away! Out of that money I do have £20 set aside for an evening out on Saturday and as I'm driving hopefully I'll come home with some change and that is it for spends for the next few weeks at least, as I'm working a lot of extra hours and will be too exhausted to shop!

With the extra hours I've worked already this month I should make an extra £250, which can go straight to the ISA towards Augusts total. I currently need to find £335 to meet my £7.5k target for July, I have the odd £35 sitting in my PayPal account (just waiting for feedback on the items sold before I spend the money) but I'll have to get creative to find the remaining £300 this month!

White_Iris

Another £25 Quidco cashback. Once that gets to my account it will be straight in the ISA.

So, the house purchase is progressing. We've received the authority to proceed from Help2Buy and our mortgage application has been submitted today. Hopefully we'll find out if the mortgage is approved soon. I've just paid out for the mortgage valuation survey, so that's taken a chunk from our savings but if the mortgage is not approved we'll get the money back. The house builder should have also sent the contracts to our solicitor, so fingers crossed we'll be exchanging contracts in the next few weeks! :j

sweetpea26

Wonderful progress WI. That is great news.

White_Iris

I sold our old spare freezer yesterday and have had some eBay sales to add to the pot, so my total now stands at £7380. I have a few dribs and drabs coming from PayPal and Quidco, so I should be able to top this up to £7400 fairly soon but the remaining hundred will depend on me being able to sell some more things. DH is being less than useless and has spent everything he has and then some this month - he currently owes our Christmas pot £150, so I've warned him not to dip in to any other savings or there will be big trouble!

We have to go see the house builder on Monday and let them know what extra plumbing or electrics we want. We're going to have to think long and hard about this as we would love to add little luxuries like outside lights and heated towel rails but can we afford them? I think if we don't do it now we won't ever do it but I'm loathe to get in to credit card debt (as that's the only way we could pay for them) when we (I) worked so hard to pay them off.

White_Iris

Another sale, some garden furniture this time which should be collected tonight, so that'll be £15 in the ISA and I've got just about a fiver coming from Quidco, so I'm up to £7400. I've got some bits listed as BINs on eBay and a few of them have watchers so hopefully someone will decide to buy soon. Still no decision made on the house extras, I did add it all up last night and to get the bits we want will be an extra £700 on top of the "finishing touches" we've already agreed on. We've been given £1000 by the developer as a buyers incentive to go towards finishing touches, so if we get everything we want it'll cost us almost another £1000 on top and that doesn't even include flooring! I'd forgotten how expensive it is to buy a new build, at least you get carpets with an older home, even if it's not your taste.

White_Iris

I've managed to sell something else through our local Facebook page, so the total in the ISA is now £7410. I've also submitted a gas and electricity reading today and it seems that we've built up a bit of credit, so I've requested some of that back. When it arrives it'll be transferred over to the ISA making the total for July £7460. I'm pretty pleased with that, it's closer to the £7.5k target than I expected to get and has given us a good boost to get to the £10k we need. As it's now the summer holidays, savings will slow down so the target for August will be £8000. Once our regular savings are added to the pot, it only leaves £150 extra to find, which should be achievable.

debtfreewannabe321

WI wow I have been absent for a while but so pleased to see your news has the mortgage been approved now then? When do you think you will be moving? I hope it all goes to plan for you really pleased for you hun xx

White_Iris

debtfreewannabe321 wrote: »

WI wow I have been absent for a while but so pleased to see your news has the mortgage been approved now then? When do you think you will be moving? I hope it all goes to plan for you really pleased for you hun xx

I'm hoping the mortgage will be finalised soon and we'll exchange contracts in the next week or so. As it's a new build we won't be completing for a while but the developer wants contacts exchanged asap (so we don't back out I assume). The current estimated completion date is mid-December, so we need the deposit in place by November (although I'm aiming for October just to be sure we have it).