Everything you could possibly imagine saving for 'diary'!

Kate.Trotter

Hi!

So I'm a Newbie here, but I've been reading many threads on MSE for quite sometime, I've just never joined in! I have recently been reading MoneyWaster2007's thread on saving and it inspired me to start my own diary of mine and my fianc!'s savings and goals and to give us another boost to stay on track!

To give you a little background info (sorry this maybe quite lengthy!)...I am 22 and my fianc! 24, we are due to get married in August 2014. (This year :eek:) We've been together nearly 9 years now

We bought our first house in July 2012 for £173,500 - £155,500 of this mortgaged on a 2 year fixed rate costing £850pm. It needed a lot of work doing to it, and we finally moved in on 23rd Dec 2012 - just over a year ago now! Unfortunately costs of the renovation were more than expected, and we ended up with £3,500 on credit cards and owing £1,500 to my parents for a kitchen. Not the ideal situation we wanted to be in as new home owners! My fianc! also had finance on his car and the amount left to pay off was around £9k and was costing us £250pm.

After having our mortgage for a year, we decided to pay around £3k in fees to terminate our contract and move lenders, in doing so we remortgaged with Tesco for £170k (after renovation house now worth around £210k). This allowed us to pay the fees for the mortgage move, the car finance off and pay some of our credit card debt. Some may not agree with this method, however our mortgage payments have dropped to £687pm and we no longer have the £250pm car payment, we added this saving up and realised within 1 year we would have gained the get out fee we paid back, so in our eyes it was worth while, whilst still keeping £40k of equity in our house.

When we first bought our house, I was on a wage of £18k - I have since been promoted twice and now earning £24k. It sounds silly, but I am a very ambitious person, and I have an aim to be earning £100k by the time I'm 30 - maybe this isn't achievable, but maybe it is...who knows!! My fianc! is on between £30k-£35k a year, depending on additional overtime and bonuses.

So down to what we're left with and our savings plan....

We now only owe around £1000 on credit card and £500 to my parents.. nearly there now and almost debt free! (Excluding a student loan..we will ignore that for now though!!)

We have been lucky enough to have been given £5k towards our wedding with a few additional extras paid for as well. We have planned to save in total by end of June £8,500 - £3,000 for our honeymoon, the rest towards the wedding. We have been saving £550 every month without fail, and from this month we are upping to £600 for the last 6 months, just to give us a boost in case we tip over (which I think we might by quite a lot tbh! ) After spending out for several things already, we still have £3,100 in our savings, with another £3,600 due to come by June, fingers crossed we should have enough to pay the total costs at the venue by the end of it!

We also save monthly towards a 'car fund' - this covers insurance, mot, tax, services and extras like tyres for both our cars (£150pm). And also a house insurance fund to pay our yearly insurance (£15pm).

We are just beginning to save for a holiday in June, this will mostly be paid for by fianc!'s bonuses and also after the wedding we will be looking to go to Australia at the end of December for 2-3 weeks - we are anticipating this will cost between £4k-£6k!! Oh and also going to be putting by £20pm towards Xmas presents (pre-planning:))

After all of this is out the way this year, we will beginning saving towards being able to move house (looking at over £250k which means a lot of stamp duty/fees:() and towards having a family and new car!

Phew!! If you've got this far you are probably completely confused!!

We work hard and save pretty hard, however don't completely restrict ourselves, quite often treating ourselves, but do only allow ourselves between £100-£150 each spending money a month some of which I save myself towards OH's birthday presents and more extravagant things i might want! The rest at the moment is saving towards the wedding and paying off the parents and credit card.

I am pretty good with savings, OH..not so much and he makes me take complete control over the finances to try and counteract this - however I try not restrict him completely, if he wants something, i try and find a way to get it (through saving etc). We still want some of the luxuries in life, we love love love our holidays, and like the occasional piece of new tech (e.g. iPad, iPhone). As an example we just bought a new tumble dryer, but paid for by selling our old one and fianc!'s bonus! We always said that if we were going to move into our own house, we wanted to be able to afford the things we liked, and not completely scrimp - and so far I think we're doing ok! Although I'm sure OH would sometimes disagree

So basically to cut a massively long thread (sorry) short. Our short-term goals:

- Pay off £1500 debt
- £1000ish towards a June holiday - Current total..£30!!
- £8,500 towards Wedding/Honeymoon - Current total £3,100 (with some costs already taken out)

our long terms goals:
- £4k-£6k for Australia Dec - Jan 2015
- £10-£25k towards house fees & topping up mortgage (will probably need a lot more than this, but will be looking into nearer the time to sort a savings plan!)

So yea... if any of you managed to make your way through my rambling, and actually understand where we're currently at, then thanks for reading. If you want to continue watching our journey then thank you very much! If you don't then that's ok, as I'm hoping this will just help keep our thoughts and savings on track

Kate.Trotter

Can I just apologise for the spelling of 'fiance' in the above post, it seems to have had a mare with the accent above the 'e'!

cathybird

hi Kate, reading your post with interest, you seem in a pretty good position to me to be on the housing ladder and with a good idea of what you want to achieve, especially at 22 - at that age I was totally all over the place. I can vouch for the effectiveness of a savings diary too - writing it all down really seems to help with keeping focussed. Well done you so far and I look forward to reading more of your thread.

Archi_Bald

Kate.Trotter wrote: »

- £4k-£6k for Australia Dec - Jan 2015

sounds rather tight if £4 to £6K is to pay the tickets, hotels, transport, eating out, and a bit of spare spending cash for 2 for 2-3 weeks.

londonlydia

Hi Kate,
I wen to a work course a couple of years ago that said people who write down their goals are more likely to achieve them so you go girl

One thing, at the end you mention you're saving for you wedding at the same time as having existing debts. My advice would be pay off your debts with your savings, as overall you'll be in the same position financially, but by paying them off now you'll not pay the interest between now and your wedding.

Also, have you considered asking for contributions to your honeymoon fund instead of wedding presents? Especially as you already have a house and probably have all that you need for that anyway. My friend did that and actually ended up with a huge amount...

Ken68

Sorry Kate, I read you as a spender and going over to being a saver is doing without non essentials like holidays, high tech gadgets and even weddings.

cathybird

Ken68 wrote: »

Sorry Kate, I read you as a spender and going over to being a saver is doing without non essentials like holidays, high tech gadgets and even weddings.

Er no it doesn't ... plenty of people who save also travel (ask Tara747 from these forums), buy computers and other devices, and get married.

Being a saver does mean (as I read it): not going into debt to pay for those things; setting a budget for them; saving up for them; and potentially going without them if they interfere with long-term savings goals.

She's 22 - she has time on her side when it comes to long-term goals.

Kate.Trotter

Hi Everyone!

Thanks for all your lovely and motivating comments

Archi - we have some friends who live over there so some of our accommodation costs should be free, but you are quite right - this figure might be unrealistic! I've been trying to find out flight prices as a starter, but obviously these are yet to be released for Dec 2014!

LondonLydia - Completely agree about the debts, however we aren't paying any interest on these at the moment, and won't be for at least a year, so the debts are coming second to the wedding at the moment. This might not be the right attitude, but I am more cautious we won't have enough for the pending wedding! But we still pay off a certain amount each month - just more goes into the wedding fund!

Ken - I'm sorry but I completely disagree! Who says you are not allowed to spend anything in order to save? We've done pretty well saving so far and still manage to have luxuries such as our holidays. In all honesty, we cut back on a lot of what we want, so we are compromising in many ways. But who says you have to give up everything you want in order to save money? It just means you save money at a slower rate! I don't want to work hard and earn my money to not have anything to enjoy in my life! I think saving £600 a month so far for 9 months towards the wedding is definitely 'saver' rather than 'spender'.

Thanks for all your comments, I look forward to keeping this diary up to date and seeing where it goes!!

Kate.Trotter

Thanks Cathy, my thoughts exactly I am quite ashamed that we managed to wrack up money on credit cards because of our house renovation, poor judgement on our part, and it did upset me having to do it as I had previously never had any debt (partner did and I helped him get out of it). If it wasn't for this debt we would been in even better shape now. But oh well, no regrets!! All will be sorted soon

Kate.Trotter

Sorry londonlydia - forgot to reply to your mention about money as wedding presents. This is something we are planning to do, and this will probably be used towards either spending money for the honeymoon or towards Australia, depending how much we receive/need. I've heard many people who have got married have received large amounts, people seem very generous at weddings :eek: - We of course won't be relying on or expecting this!

Ken68

Still don;t get it Kate, how, for example can an iPod save you money.
It has to be bought and running costs.
It probably keeps you up with your peers but no way can it save you money over cheaper alternatives.
And any money SPENT is lost cumulative interest FOREVER. which in your case is, say 60 years.
Can someone do the maths ?