Onwards to freedom!

savingholmes

LOL at the obsession. Good you now know. Line drying in the summer helped me a lot - I really noticed the difference in cost over the winter. 

On the router they highly recommend not switching it off as it can make the box more likely to fail.

SuperSecretSquirrel

Thanks KC, SC, and SH 🙂

KC - We've never had any problems arise from switching it off, but it's one of the few appliances that we tend to leave switched on at the wall 24/365. It's that, the fridge, the freezers, an alarm clock, a couple of phone chargers, and a night light, everything else is properly off at night or when the house is left empty. Even though it's quite high up the list, at 34p per kwh, we're talking (currently) £25 for the whole year, we'd save about 70p per month if we switched it off each night, not worth the bother for us 🙂 5 years ago we paid 13p per kwh, so if you switched it off for 8 hours each night back then you'd be looking at a saving of 27p per month.

SC - I've completed about 5 surveys, can't see that becoming an obsession 🙄 I've read a novel that's been sat waiting for a while, I'll probably try to keep up a reading habit, but it won't become an obsession. I've spent 6 hours playing a new computer game already this weekend, it could easily become a bit of an obsession 😬 I've also started a little just for fun project, but it won't be something I'll be talking about on here 🤫

SH - We'll definitely line dry whenever it's an option, but the times where it's not we'll continue to use the dryer as needed. Like the heating it's just another of those winter costs we have to swallow. I'd never heard that switching a router off was bad for its longevity, that advice has entirely passed me by until now! We don't switch it off as the plug is a bit of a pain to get to, and we like the option of wifi throughout the night in case we're awake for a while. Good to know that we're not being particularly wasteful, just following advice we'd never heard 🤣

SuperSecretSquirrel

Another thought on the dryer. Our old one died a few years ago. When we got our new one it blew our minds that it was clever enough to switch itself off when the clothes inside were dry. I shudder to think how much drying of dry clothes we used to do in the old one!

Clever dryers, led TVs, led lights, condensing boilers, cordless vacuum cleaners. It seems whenever we replace something old and clapped out with something new and sparkling, much improved energy efficiency comes along as a welcome side effect.

savingholmes

Yes - I have a sensor dryer and it's great although it will randomly go off in the night as part of its anti-crease function if you don't open the door. 

Our washing machines washes at 20 degrees so it bemuses me to see these adverts saying swap from 40 to 30 and save £70. I never have a problem and barely use a quarter of the recommended washing powder either.

South_coast

I switched from 40 to 30 and it was all a bit smelly, so I swapped back. But then my machine is 12 or 13 years old.... Just hoping it continues to limp on until I get the new kitchen 🤞!

Karmacat

SuperSecretSquirrel said:

KC - We've never had any problems arise from switching it off, but it's one of the few appliances that we tend to leave switched on at the wall 24/365. It's that, the fridge, the freezers, an alarm clock, a couple of phone chargers, and a night light, everything else is properly off at night or when the house is left empty. Even though it's quite high up the list, at 34p per kwh, we're talking (currently) £25 for the whole year, we'd save about 70p per month if we switched it off each night, not worth the bother for us 🙂 5 years ago we paid 13p per kwh, so if you switched it off for 8 hours each night back then you'd be looking at a saving of 27p per month.

.... I'd never heard that switching a router off was bad for its longevity, that advice has entirely passed me by until now! We don't switch it off as the plug is a bit of a pain to get to, and we like the option of wifi throughout the night in case we're awake for a while. Good to know that we're not being particularly wasteful, just following advice we'd never heard 🤣

That's brilliant on all levels ✨ so it really does cost pennies to leave it on all the time (I like the ability to go online if I'm sleepless, though I could use the mobile internettage too) and that you're not being wasteful but following unknown advice 🤣

PS - I never measure the laundry liquid, I'm **sure** I'm wasting some!

SuperSecretSquirrel

I'm not allowed to touch our washing machine 🤣 OH has a system, and under no circumstances short of a physical emergency (like an extended hospital stay) am I allowed to interfere 🤣

She assures me that the vast majority of washes are at 30c (the lowest option on our machine) and she uses about half the recommended amount of detergent and softener. Everything always ends up clean as new, and if I'm honest I'd prefer even less detergent/softener as I find the fragrance a bit strong for my liking, but I won't win any debates regarding laundry, and I know which side my bread is buttered so it's a small price to pay 🤣

Also I forgot to include the boiler as a 24/365 appliance (mostly on eco standby), and sometimes the extractor fans and dehumidifier are on when the house is empty or at night, but certainly not 24/365.

SuperSecretSquirrel

Quick change of subject... Financials!

• The 7% regular saver is up and running and now has £300 in. The balance will increase by £300 automatically each month.
• 4.5k personal + 3k joint in a 2.75% easy access account. This can be beaten now, but I'm not entirely sold on the more generous provider, so we're happy as we are for now.
• PB rate increasing to 3% from the next draw, just in time for my big new year win 😉

I haven't peeped at S&S or pension balances since October the 1st, trying to keep it a new years surprise for my new year round up. I wonder if I'll crack before then...

savingholmes

I reckon you'll crack...

LOL

Well done on the savings shuffle.

SuperSecretSquirrel

Happy new year everybody! 🥳

1st of January 2023, where does the time go…

I did manage to hold out in the end SH - I've been checking investments quarterly for a while now, and maybe sometime soon I'll drop down to annual checks. Maybe.

I've posted before about our budgeting approach. As soon as I get paid, I automatically send a good chunk of money to savings and investments and the joint account, then what is left in my current account is my monthly disposable cash. I have a target amount for fun fritter spends, I don't want to be too far below or over that target at the end of the year. I have a budget for boring day to day spends (groceries, fuel, etc) I don't want to be over this amount at the end of the year. I have a sinking fund that gets fed monthly and is intended to cover bigger lumpier personal spends (car, gifts, holiday, clothes, home) without busting the fun/boring budgets. The joint account is another sinking fund that covers household bills and school costs. Neither of these sinking funds actually sinks at the moment, more is fed in than comes out. CoL could put an end to that, but we've built up a buffer that should last us a while. OHs day to day finances are separate from mine, she feeds her savings and the joint account monthly, then spends what she likes as she likes from the remainder.

In 2022 I spent the following proportion of my personal budget pots:

• Boring 86.4%
• Fun 84.2%
• Lumpy 83.4%

I'm happy with those figures. I have made life easy on myself and been fairly generous with the budget amounts, but that's worked out well. I'll stick to the same boring/fun amounts in 2023. I'll be increasing the lumpy budget as we very much intend to have a holiday outside the UK this year. There might be a car replacement (or two!) on the horizon too…

The joint account is actually two accounts that we think of as a single joint balance - a joint current account, and an attached joint easy access savings account at 2.75%. We keep just enough in the current account to cover monthly household outgoings, then earn some interest on the rest. The joint account balance increased by £1962.87 in 2022, so that's a good buffer to deal with further price rises, and could possibly contribute towards this year's holiday or home improvement costs.

My personal easy access balance increased by £3346.01 in 2022. It won't increase as much this year as I've opened a 7% regular saver that needs feeding, but there should be plenty in there to cover 2023 lumpy spends, unless we go crazy and replace both cars and do some expensive home improvements and go on a foreign holiday all in the same year. Barring a big PB win, that would necessitate some kind of borrowing (or cashing in of PBs, effectively borrowing from myself).

Of course we're all well aware of the rocky ride pensions and investments have suffered this year. Some of that is masked in our figures as OH transferred a small DC pension pot to a DB scheme with generous transfer terms. Her new pension is pretty opaque - sporadic updates that don't seem to be made at regular intervals. We'll just take an annual snapshot of her pension estimate, multiply the annual value by 25, then add that to the DC values to get some kind of combined total. It's not perfect, but it's the best I can come up with. This is where updating our big picture numbers once a year really starts to make sense.

With all that preamble out of the way, it's time to update my beloved bigger picture net worth table 😁 I'll be back soon!