How to fall in love with saving money

cathybird

Eco_Miser wrote: »

The UK is part of Europe, just as Tasmania is part of Australia. Australia is a vast place and Australians can do an awful lot of exploring without crossing an international border.

True - not the same though. You get vast disparity in landscape, but not so much in culture, and the language everywhere is obviously also the same. I love European history and architecture.

We did see quite a bit of Australia's east coast but my parents were both Anglophiles when it came down to it (which is how I ended up here, I guess). In fact my dad's parents only really left this country in the 1920s and weirdly when I emigrated here I ended up living within a mile of where my grandparents both grew up, without at first realising it - very strange.

cathybird

Lomcevak wrote: »

I'm a die-hard budgeter, but don't try and do the whole year - in my experience things always crop up (good or bad) so a budget needs to be a living thing. Personally I only budget money I have; I keep two months income immediately available, so money I earn in January will pay the bills in March, and so the budget for January and February can be very accurate as I know exactly what I have to spend, and I have a pretty good idea for March. But no further out than that, as I don't yet know what I have to spend in April. Maybe there will be a payrise, maybe we'll have a ban on our (quite lucrative) overtime. Just don't know, so i'm not going to try and guess too hard. ...

So my January I know from my budget that I have about £1800 left after bills, living expenses, mortgage paid, etc. so will direct that to emergency funds and maybe a bit to the holiday fund and small amounts to other things. February will complete the emergency fund savings and March will complete the holiday fund, so April lets me start work on the ISAs. And if anything unexpected crops up I stop, replan, or reprioritize. Find it works out much better than trying to map out the whole of the year.

This is interesting, Lomcevak. I feel that the budget I've worked out is a living thing too, if only because I'm still getting used to the whole idea of budgeting (and being a bit unrealistic with it). My aim is to save £12,000 in 2014, but I'd also like to make a couple of (short) trips abroad - all of which together is a bit of a stretch, but I am going to try.

cathybird

So, have set up the S&S Isa, with Charles Stanley Direct, and will start putting money into it tomorrow, by way of making a quick start on my savings goals for 2014. I want to save £1,000 a month but some of this may go into my company pension (which allows overpayments). I also think I might set up a reasonably low direct debit (say £250) rather than try to squirrel away the whole £1,000 and then find I can't make ends meet.

I'll also have to try to "up my income" in some way, I think. Will give that some thought.

cathybird

Happy New Year, all - may your hangovers be fleeting, if you have one. My boiler decided to celebrate the new year by breaking down just close to midnight last night, so yay for it (not). :mad: On the plus side, I guess I saved up a bit of money in December, so that will help pay for it :rotfl:

atush

Oh dear. My rayburn (which heats and cooks) is also paying up but hasn't packed in lol. Hope you have wood for the fireplace, if you don't try your local garage.

Once we had no power mid winter for 3 days, and I had to cook on both the BBQ and the woodburing stove where I made a braised shoulder of lamb with veg and orzo for Sunday Dinner in one of my iron cookpots ;-) Made toast and scrambled eggs for breakfast on it etc.

7_week_wonder

Happy New Year to everyone too!

Cathybird, that's complete pants about your boiler - these things always time their demise perfectly:(. Hopefully your savings won't take too much of a hit to get it sorted.

Well done for setting up your S&S ISA - I still haven't quite taken the plunge. I think I'll do it once I get back to work and settle back into my routine.

As for extra income, the only thing I do is surveys. Although they pay quite a small amount I quite like it because it either goes into my paypal account or I get M&S vouchers and I then use both of them for treats and stuff.

I don't really do a budget, other than knowing how much I'd like to save each month, maybe I should! For the last 18 months I've been keeping much better records about where my money goes, so I'm going to keep doing that and then use the numbers there to set a budget later in the year.

I'm going to make some enquiries about the pension thing at work (I'm getting myself in a complete muddle about tax relief and stff) but I will probably also have some questions for the pensions board, thanks for reminding me about it mark88man. Fortunately I have some pension provision from my previous job so I'm still trying to work out whether it is cost effective to put extra in my current pension.

Have a good day everyone and good luck with all your New Year's resolutions.

WantToBeSE

Hi everyone No hangover here, i started my dry January last night, so no alcohol for me until February!

I am still reading this thread, just not had time to post much. Sorry to hear about your boiler, Cathy. Do you know how much of your savings will be swallowed up by fixing that?
Well done for opening the S&S ISA. Once i have a decent savings pot and have moved house and filled up my cash ISA, i will be looking into similar ventures

cathybird

Thanks all for your kind comments about the boiler It is still "working" in the sense that it's generating heat, it's just that it keeps on switching itself on and off every minute or so, whether it is supposed to be on or off. I went to bed just after midnight and that's when I noticed it because normally all is quiet once it's gone off for the night and instead it kept coming on and going like mad and then stopping. I've kept it on for now, though I don't know whether that's a good idea but it will be really cold otherwise. I did a bit of googling last night and established it might be something called a "zone valve"? - it might not be of course but that would be in the region of £150 to fix (I think).

cathybird

atush wrote: »

Once we had no power mid winter for 3 days, and I had to cook on both the BBQ and the woodburing stove where I made a braised shoulder of lamb with veg and orzo for Sunday Dinner in one of my iron cookpots ;-) Made toast and scrambled eggs for breakfast on it etc.

atush, all power to you The braised shoulder of lamb sounds delicious.

cathybird

7_week_wonder wrote: »

As for extra income, the only thing I do is surveys. Although they pay quite a small amount I quite like it because it either goes into my paypal account or I get M&S vouchers and I then use both of them for treats and stuff.

7 week wonder, I have tried surveys before and found them a lot of work for only a small return - perhaps I should consider them again? ... I do have quite a lot of stuff I could flog off on eBay, and Amazon too, probably, so should get that organised.

I don't really do a budget, other than knowing how much I'd like to save each month, maybe I should! For the last 18 months I've been keeping much better records about where my money goes, so I'm going to keep doing that and then use the numbers there to set a budget later in the year.

I've done one on the MSE Budgetbrain site and it was very useful, but I was still rather unrealistic in November when I tried to set a food budget for the month. I think if I think in terms of savings first, and try to put away the £1,000 for the month before I spend anything else, that will probably do for now.

I'm going to make some enquiries about the pension thing at work (I'm getting myself in a complete muddle about tax relief and stff) but I will probably also have some questions for the pensions board, thanks for reminding me about it mark88man. Fortunately I have some pension provision from my previous job so I'm still trying to work out whether it is cost effective to put extra in my current pension.

Yes, I really, really, really need to sort out whether I should be making extra payments into my pension or not. I could do it each month as a one-off thing to start with to see how well I cope (as opposed to setting it up as a direct debit). It's a bit more cumbersome but if I find it's too much I could pull back.