How to fall in love with saving money

cathybird

WantToBeSE wrote: »

Hi All

Love love LOVE the fact that it's Friday! Bring on the weekend! Payday today, so stuck another £180 into my savings account..see my signature for my new total .

I need to start looking into personal pensions. Can anyone give me some beginners advice for what to look at and where to start please. I know NOTHING about pensions as a whole, so easy to understand language would be helpful

Agreed with atush, that's a great savings total. ... atush is very good on the subject of pensions and I am quite sure she can help.

cathybird

atush wrote: »

Good to know, thought we caught you impulse buying lol!

ha ha, no In fact I hate going into shops generally. They tend to make me feel "crowded". So I'm sure that must save money.

I got my car serviced today, which cost just north of £300. I was expecting round about that amount, so that's not too bad.

Also set up a spreadsheet to track my savings so that's another thing that will help.

I do feel as YoungBusinessman does that I have fallen in love with saving now, but the question is, can I make it a permanent commitment? I've fallen in and out of love with saving money before. Worried I might do the same again. I need not to though, and have a goal - saving an adequate amount for retirement.

Eco_Miser

cathybird wrote: »

I do feel as YoungBusinessman does that I have fallen in love with saving now, but the question is, can I make it a permanent commitment? I've fallen in and out of love with saving money before. Worried I might do the same again. I need not to though, and have a goal - saving an adequate amount for retirement.

To give you further encouragement to save, there's a little niggle at the back of my mind, that you can't be certain that you've saved enough, until it's way too late to do anything about it if you haven't.

longleggedhair

Hello All,


Spent the last couple of nights reading this lovely thread! Really inspiring, I have always had the savings bug from a young age.


I grew up with a father that loved to spend money on booze and fags and a mother that was very frustrated by it! It led to my parents being in a lot of debt and all the trouble that entails.


I started saving as soon as I started working and it really does mount up. I was lucky that I had enough money to buy into shares after to crash and made some pretty good gains.


On a note to those looking at funds etc I have personally never bothered with these but have invested in investment trusts. They are cheaper than funds and a little easier to understand. I have a few but F&C tend to be the best. You can save directly with the fund manager and at very low dealing costs.


My reasons for building up my savings are having a health condition which will probably make working to normal retirement difficult. Im 26 now and have worked since I did my A-levels, and am already finding work difficult because of my health.


I have managed to save approx. £110,000 which is split between a a few good fixed rate cash isas, got about 20k in a Halifax 5 year fix I took out in 2012 at 4.5%, aprox 50k in my investment trusts and various shares which are all good dividend payers and the rest in zopa, regular savers and index linkers.


I do have a FS pension with work, although given my health may not reap that much benefit from it!


My plan is to have enough behind me to live off the income from my investments without having to take any state benefits when I do eventually have to finish work.


Im lucky that my costs are quite low as I own my house but live with mom so we share the bills and share my car with mom and not a drinker or a smoker (quit last year and loving the smokefree life!) I do enjoy the occasional night out though!


Probably spend around £600 a month or so so then to save around a thousand per month!


Anyway enough of my ramblings!


xx

Lomcevak

cathybird wrote: »

where's Lomcevak? ... Just wanted to tell you, I went and got a gait analysis yesterday at Runner's World, bought a pair of Asics Gels and went out this morning for a half-hour run. A very slow run but a run nevertheless Thanks for the push - it helped.

I'm here, it's been a long hard week at work; passing 50 hours billable by Thursday morning is a bit depressing. At least I still managed to keep off the booze during it, although it was a battle on a couple of evenings after 15 hours in the office

Well done on getting fitted and out running, remember to keep it very easy as you get started. Should really feel too easy at first; there's plenty of time to pick up the pace if that's what you decide you want to do, but priority one is to stay injury free

I have found that an app called Strava is very good for running. It tracks your gps, mins/km etc and also has challenges to keep you going and motivated.

I'm hooked on Strava, although i'm a longtime Runkeeper user too. Great to see the miles build up and times fall; i'm in the build-up phase of spring marathon training when the miles ramp up hard (17 miles tomorrow, then 20 the next week) and nice to see how much quicker I am than this time last year


No progress on anything savings-related, although one silver lining to long weeks in the office is overtime and no time to spend it. I must get pension plans figured out over the next month, still torn between a low(ish) cost PP and the higher cost but flexibility of a SIPP, as i'll never be paying in the same amount each month

Lomcevak

cathybird wrote: »

ha ha, no In fact I hate going into shops generally. They tend to make me feel "crowded". So I'm sure that must save money.

Me too, hate shopping - helps too that there's not really very much that I actually want, and over time i've learned that buying 'stuff' isn't very satisfying.

I do feel as YoungBusinessman does that I have fallen in love with saving now, but the question is, can I make it a permanent commitment? I've fallen in and out of love with saving money before. Worried I might do the same again. I need not to though, and have a goal - saving an adequate amount for retirement.

What has helped me is to split things down in to smaller, more concrete goals - I should always be within a few months of achieving one of them too. So over the last couple of years i've been working through the standard things (no non-mortgage debt, 6 months income put aside, costed emergency funds - from small, like dental work, to more major, like significant home repairs) but all in small chunks. Alongside that the bigger stuff keeps rolling along, but there are steps there too.

I think i've mentioned before that i'm very goal-oriented, and having something near-term to work towards is an effective way to keep myself on track. Although I have more major goals like repaying the mortgage, saving enough for retirement, etc., those on their own are too far out and nebulous to motivate me so I have to break them all down.

mark55man

longleggedhair

well done with your results to date very shrewd.

I would ask a specific question on te pensions board about your health. you should get good advice on how to approach your scheme - a number (especially public service ones) have a number of different categories - eg never going to work again, never going to do this job again, ... and the scheme may provide for a fuller pension than you might expect.

be honest and provide as much detail as you can when asking

atush

I agree with Mark. should your health deteriorate so that you can no longer do your job, you will get to retire earlier.


Also, I invest in investment trusts (incl F&C and their PE one, Graphite) and they have done well for me. Most I do in their savings plans (yes the costs are low but they have now introduced annual charges- not such a fan of).


With cash rates so low, I would look into moving some of that cash into S&S isas as having 66% of savings in cash at todays rates will see you losing ground to inflation.

longleggedhair

Hi both, thanks for your replies, I am in a public service one its the LGPS. I have looked into the scheme and if I was granted an ill health retirement it would only be for quite a small pension due to my low number of years service (5) although there is an uplift I think I would be lucky to have a pension from them of much more than 250 per month. Given why im saving to make up the difference!


atush regarding my levels of cash savings I do agree and most "new" money I invest each much goes into my Investment Trusts to try to reduce my cash, that said I have got most of the cash on deposit earning between 4-6% with about half of that in ISAs. I do like having a good cash buffer because of my health and for any market drops!


Im just another voice that finds having cash in the bank great security. No designer clothes or widescreen TV could ever mate the comfort I get from having savings behind me.

cathybird

Lomcevak wrote: »

Me too, hate shopping - helps too that there's not really very much that I actually want, and over time i've learned that buying 'stuff' isn't very satisfying.

Well, I quite like shopping online, unfortunately - it's bricks and mortar shops I dislike. Shopping online is something I have to resist, at least when it comes to food and books.

What has helped me is to split things down in to smaller, more concrete goals - I should always be within a few months of achieving one of them too. So over the last couple of years i've been working through the standard things (no non-mortgage debt, 6 months income put aside, costed emergency funds - from small, like dental work, to more major, like significant home repairs) but all in small chunks. Alongside that the bigger stuff keeps rolling along, but there are steps there too.

I think i've mentioned before that i'm very goal-oriented, and having something near-term to work towards is an effective way to keep myself on track. Although I have more major goals like repaying the mortgage, saving enough for retirement, etc., those on their own are too far out and nebulous to motivate me so I have to break them all down.

Agreed what I said about saving for retirement seemed rather nebulous - it's very much the long-term view. I have split it down into smaller goals (saving £12,000 this year, for instance - a concrete and achievable goal in the short-term).