WTBSEs 'Starting From Scratch' Savings Diary.

WantToBeSE

Morning All


I hope you all had a nice Christmas? I am back from 'up country' and came home to a broken gas meter, so its been freezing! Had it fixed at 9am though, so enjoying the nice warmth before I go out food shopping at Aldi.


Plans:
-Start saving £50 a month towards Christmas (already done this morning)
-Put £200 into savings
-Pay off CC in full


Once January is done, I can start putting £500 a month back into my savings, but the car had its MOT in Jan, plus I need to buy a small laptop for work (only a cheapie from ebay if I can find one).


Have reduced my grocery budget from £400 to £300 for the month, decided that school dinners is much cheaper for us that packed lunches (the teenager eats it all before I can put it in the packed lunch boxes) and withdrawing cold hard cash is MUCH better than using card.


Right, time to get on with my food shopping!

JoJoC

Hi WTBSE,

I hope you had a great Christmas with your boys and that the business is going well?

Sorry for doing a disappearing act later last year, it's been a crazy few months and my head is only just about stopped spinning!

I'll give you a little update

An opportunity came up for us to rent our flat out and buy a second property but we'd only got to just over £4.5k savings (nowhere near enough!) so my parents kindly offered to loan us the rest of the money to make it happen.

It all seemed to be going well, we'd found a forever house that we loved, had our offer accepted on it and found a tenant who wanted to take the flat on a longer term lease.

Then I found out I'm expecting baby #2!! We were happy, as we were planning another, but a bit surprised as we were thinking later in 2015 we would start thinking about it again. Shocker!

So that shook things up a bit but we realised that we'd still be able to afford the house and would just need to seriously cut back and save before #2 arrives (late June) and I'm on maternity leave.

Then my sister got engaged, we moved on December 1st (really quick turnaround), it was my son's 2nd birthday then Christmas. So basically, my head has been all over the place!

I am now looking to plan for 2015 and the number one thing on my mind right now is saving!!

Hopefully, i'll be back in the saddle (if you'll have me) and I can start my savings journey again from £0!

Current savings status:

Savings account: £0
Savings tin (£1 and £2 coins): Around half full

Plan for saving:
- Get back to meal planning
- Get back to Aldi
- Go through all bills for the new house and budget
- Get into the zone!!

Hope you're all well,

Jo

WantToBeSE

Hi Jo! HUGE congrats at expecting again! Really pleased for you!
And wonderful news about the house too So does that mean you are paying your parents back at the moment, or a bigger mortgage, or both (or none?).


Of course I'll have you back! No apology needed, just jump back on the wagon and all's good


Any idea how much you'll be able to save each month? After January I should be able to save £500-£600 a month, all being well. Depends on how the business goes really. I am hoping for a minimum of £200 a month in my 'proper savings' plus £50 a month into my Christmas Savings account.


Have been food shopping and spent £100 exactly. This included enough meat to almost fill my freezer, with the exception of chicken. In order to rein in my food bills, I am planning on a few evening trips to the supermarkets to get stuff when they have been reduced.


I need to shop at Aldi again, instead of Morrisons, and I want to avoid Tesco like the plague!

JoJoC

Thanks for the warm welcome, I felt guilty for just abandoning ship after receiving so much support and encouragement on here!

We do have a bigger mortgage and we are paying my parents back, so our finances will look a lot different to mid way through last year, but it's all affordable. We'll just need to be a lot more careful with what spare income we do have.

I cannot stand Tesco! I think I've been in once this year, and that was just last week to pick something up that my husband had ordered. While I was in there, I picked up a full leg of lamb reduced from £13 to £6 (will do us at least four family meals) and a large pork loin (£8 down to £4) which will do another 4-6 meals.

Quite pleased with that, although I still don't like Tesco! haha

Glad you got your freezer stocked, ours is looking not too bad, but I need to do some batch cooking soon before I go back to work on 5th January to make sure we have plenty of healthy meals to eat after work.

Wow- £500-600 would be awesome! We won't be able to save that much anymore, but I'm hoping for around £250-300 when I get paid in January to start us off. My husband is asking for a pay rise in January as he's second in command, often runs jobs and looks after all the apprentices and all the other tradesmen who are less experienced and he found out the other day that he is getting paid the same as a boy who hasn't even been qualified for a year (was given the wrong pay slip). He does a lot, over and above his normal job and really helps the boss out, and has worked there 11 years, so I think he has a good case. The boss would be lost without him!

Have you any plans for tonight?

We have my MIL, BIL, nephew, aunt and uncle coming round to the house for a takeaway (we do this about twice per year) and to play some games.

I was so glad that I'd been doing my £50 p/m credit union savings for Christmas, especially with the house move!! I just treat it like a bill and was delivered £600 in November, which basically sorted Christmas out. Phew!

Has anyone heard from Cathy? Or has she not been around?

WantToBeSE

Not heard anything from Cathy I'm afraid. Although she may be back again, who knows.


Don't feel at all guilt, definitely no need for that, just happy to have you back again now
Now that the business is up and running properly I hope to be able to get back to saving again. It's been horrible living from month to month like I used to, but I knew that would be the case when I took ownership of the agency. At least it wont be ongoing, just January to get through and then I'll be back to how I was earlier in the year (so long as I don't spend ANYTHING unplanned).


Do you know how much Maternity leave you'll take when the little one is here, or haven't you worked that out yet? Did you keep much stuff from when you had your son?


Did you have a nice Christmas? We went up to my mums and sisters in Kent for a week. It was lovely and relaxing. I haven't laughed so much in ages. It was great.
I have decided that 2015 will be the year of socialising! I want to join some clubs or maybe adult ed classes to get me out of the house and meeting people. I find it very hard to get to know people, and can be very shy. But this had led me to become isolated a bit, with only 1 friend in this town. I want to change that this year. I know the classes/clubs will cost money, but I am hoping that I'll be able to afford it with the reduction in grocery bills.


What kind of batch cooking do you do? And what do you store them in, bag/tubs etc?


I am on the hunt for a quick and easy pizza dough is you have one? I might post in the OS (Old Style) section and ask for one.


Sounds like your husband is in with a very good chance of a raise then, I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for him.


Not doing anything tonight. Getting back to normal after the festivities. I am sick of the rich, indulgent food and want to get back to normal. So just having a glass of wine and watching the TV. Dinner will be spag bol, nothing glam!

atush

if you need the laptop for work, dont forget you can deduct the cost as a business expense? So maybe you can afford to buy new from Amazon?

I know why some dont like Tesco, but we dont have aldi or lidl here, just tesco. So tesco it is. and you DONT want to know what I spent xmas week with 3 boys age 20-24 in residence. Yikes.

But got a great deal on two PS4 games for only 22 each thru clubcard boost.

WantToBeSE

Morning All


Going to do all the invoices to clients today, and send them out this afternoon. Hoping that most will make payment quite quickly as usual, so that I can save some and work out a budget for this month.


Planning a NSD today. I have lots of baking and cooking that I can do, and I simply MUST get on with cleaning my kitchen in preparation for painting it.
I also am going to clean my oven, as it needs it!


January is going to be a TIGHT month, so I must make sure that I keep an eye on every single penny.
Trying to keep the heating off as much as possible, but don't want to freeze! Its been very cold here since I got home on Sunday.

edinburgher

Pizza dough recipe (and it's wholemeal, so practically health food!)

I've made this one several times, works really well.

WantToBeSE

Thanks Edinburgher, I'll give that one a try Do you have a way to test the temp of your water, or just use water from the hot tap without taking the temp?


And 500 degrees Fahrenheit is 260 degrees Celsius, my own only goes up to 220 (its a fan oven), would 220 be OK do you think?

JoJoC

I'm so glad that the business is doing well long may it continue! I'm sure I said this to you before a while ago but it'll feel so good to be able to save money knowing that it's your hard earned cash from your own business!

I haven't really worked out mat leave properly yet but I'd like to work up until 36-38 weeks if I can then take up to 9 months off. It'll all depend on how much we can save beforehand though. I don't want to get into debt to pay the bills while I'm off! Need to work out a plan when I have a minutes peace.

We still have most things from when I had my son (except clothes as we have them to a friend who didn't have much and has a son three months younger. We still do actually). We'll need things like new mattresses for the moses basket/ cot and to check that everything else works but should be minimal spend. Phew!

We had a lovely Christmas, thanks. Saw lots of family and my son had a blast! We still haven't stopped though, I feel like we have constant visitors and constant plans so I'm looking forward to chilling before work next week.

Your plan for more hobbies/ classes in 2015 sounds awesome! It's nice to see someone take the bull by the horns to go out there and meet people and make friends. Have you any ideas what's on nearby that you could go to?

How are your boys by the way? Did they have a good Christmas?

I'm a bit of a novice when it comes to batch cooking really. We did it a few months ago to make portions for us and little portions for my son and did things like Spaghetti, chilli, Mince and potatoes, soups etc. I know I could do a lot more and did some searching on pinterest but it kind of scared me...these people mean business!!

I'm in desperate need of inspiration for things to cook and freeze!

I've never made a pizza dough so no can do let me know if you find something though, because I'd like to make little pizzas with my son.

We had a good night with the inlaws last night and BIL and nephew stayed over so they're here for breakfast this morning. Hopefully, it'll be a fairly quiet day. Might pop over to ikea to look for a dining table and chairs as that's quite high up on my list. I want family meals round the table!! It'll just be something cheap to tide us over though.

Your plans for today sound good, what are you baking/ cooking?

Atush, I hope you're well?