Tm's MFW ramblings

turtlemoose

oof, didn't quite make it out for that celebratory meal - i fell over in a pot hole while crossing a road, badly sprained my ankle. It meant i missed my last shift at t£sco as I couldn't stand up, it's been a looooooong and painful week, but the last couple of days the swelling has finally gone down and the pain level has dropped down a few notches. Also, my partner (who I was going to go out with) caught covid from a wedding last weekend, so even if I was well, we couldn't have gone out anyway. Double disaster! We shall just have to make up for it in a fortnight   I've had a week of resting it, very frustrating as it overlapped with half term too. My mum has come to the rescue and been driving my kids everywhere all week for me! I do have to admit that a week of enforced resting (it's been too painful to walk around) has actually been beneficial.... perhaps a sign I needed to take things easy! 

I'm looking forward to the new job starting on Tuesday. They confirmed I'll get a little bit of pay in this month's pay day so that's good as it means it doesn't 'waste' my UC work allowance. UC continue to be absolute nonsense, despite me telling them that yes my job has ended but I start a new one on the 6th, they booked me an appointment with a work coach ON THE 6th JUNE! I had to leave a message saying no I will not be attending the job centre in place of going to my actual paid employment   They've rearranged it for the Monday now thankfully, but it's still stupid and a waste of both their and my time for them to make a compulsory appointment for me to tell them that no i won't be doing any job searching because in less than 24hrs after the appointment i'll be actually working, in a job they already know about - gahhhhh.

£25 added to mortgage op pot though, which feels GREAT to say, running total £80 now. I've joined pavlovs 1% thread, as large OPs aren't on the horizon but I still want to keep my find focused on MFW being the goal, and chipping away with small amounts is better than nothing

turtlemoose

Hi all, settled in to the new job and all ok. Very flexible employer, have been able to start early/work late to accommodate things like going to my child's sports day etc - except for the pay, it's perfect for my life situation right now. A little boring/easy, but meh, I'm not complaining about that either tbh, leaves me plenty of brain space to focus on other things that are more important to me right now than a job

I was wondering about buying extra annual leave, and wondered if anyone could sanity check my calculations?

I can buy up to five extra days, at 1/260th of my annual salary. At £27500, that's £105.77 gross. Used a salary calculator online to work out that that is £83.16 net. So - at this point, £83.16 less in my pocket (overall) per extra day off. I'm happy with that maths. Next part though....for every £1 I earn over my work allowance, UC deduct 55p of it. So... 55% of £83.16 is £45.74 , meaning for every £83.16 income, I lose £45.74 UC, meaning it actually ends up as £37.42 in my pocket. As buying holiday counts as a salary reduction, I pay less tax, less ni, less pension, and my income that counts for UC purposes is also reduced.

My thoughts are that, in terms of cash in my pocket, per holiday day I buy, I earn £83.16 less, but gain £45.74 of UC (because I'm not being deducted for it), meaning my day off actually costs me a net lost income of £37.42.  Does that seem right? If so it's a bargain and I'm tempted to go for the max this year...

SuperSecretSquirrel

Good to hear things are going well TM! That flexibility/respect means so much doesn't it? I couldn't work for a rigid employer for any real length of time now.

I have no UC knowledge so can't say whether or not that's all correct, but if it is I'd certainly be taking the extra 5 days 😎

turtlemoose

Mortgage balance has dropped sub 94k. In the absence of massive OPs, I feel like I should celebrate the small wins, so dropping past another 1000 level seems as worthy as any! 

I have a small OP pot set aside (higher savings rate than mortgage), as I'm doing Pavlov's 1% challenge, and I'm on target for that. I'm not counting that in the mortgage balance for now. 

I've finally finished uni, it's been a nightmare of poor administration on their part and I'm relieved to finally be done with it, and I now have a postgraduate diploma, woo. 

Although work is going OK, it's so dull. The tasks are boring, repetitive and easy. The quality of their data is appalling, making it impossible to do the job properly anyway. I spend most of my time going "ok here is the report you asked for, but X is an estimate and Y is incomplete and Z there were no figures for".  Ugh. The pay really isn't enough when I'm responsible for not only myself but two other people too.  I got approached by another housing association asking me to apply for a data analyst role with them, for 5k a year more than now... so I thought hmm can't hurt. I got an interview and then they were awful around booking it, completely inflexible and unreasonable, so based on their behaviour I declined the interview. Ah well.

BUT as i had clicked on their job advert, LinkedIn started spamming me with job ads, and I saw one that is very similar to my pre covid job - supporting a specific specialist piece of software in a specific specialist industry. They're asking for really niche experience - and  I've got 14 years of it (and half of that in a support role). The application process was only cv + 3 sentences saying why you'd be a good fit, so seeing as I'd already updated my cv for the other job, I whacked an application in. Pretty much a two minute job. Forgot all about it, was weeks ago.

They've got back in touch and offered me an interview ...  it's  a little more money than I'm on now. Jeeeez. What an emotional rollercoaster. Guess I'll see how that interview goes then! 

turtlemoose

I hate the jobs market, that one I talked about in my last one went brilliantly and everyone was so positive... and then they withdrew the role entirely.  I seem to have  real knack for companies or connections being super positive, I go through the process, then they say something along the lines of "everything about you is great, but we had a change internally and the position is no longer available".  Gahhhh.  

Despite this, I've applied for an internal vacancy at my current place, haha. My experience more than covers it, it'd be a bit more to do on a day to day basis than my current one, and it's a little salary bump (nothing massive but not insignificant either). I had the interview yesterday and should know by end of next week what the outcome is. 

On MFW news, I completed this year's 1% challenge, finishing up the pot with £615 in it against a £560 target. That's not actually 1% of my balance but I joined part way through the year so pro-rata'd it. I'll do it again next year - rounded up - target for 2024 will be £930 which will be a stretch if I don't get a better paid job, but manageable if I do. 

Oh also the UC thing I wondered about before with buying extra days hol did work as I thought it might - so as it stands, extra days of annual leave cost me half what they should do, between NI saving and UC top up. Nice. Might as well get something good out of being stuck in the situation I'm in!! So I maxed out my extra days hol (5 days), and will do the same again in April when the new leave year rolls around

My company does a bonus at the end of the financial year - it can be as much as 10%, half that is based on company performance, half on your own personal performance - but if we fail a particular H&S target then nobody gets one. I joined partway through the year (will be a few days short of 10 months) so not sure if I would get it, and presumably if I do then pro-rata'd down, and then it will be subject to tax, ni and student loan, and then what ever is left I will lose 55% of it in UC reduction. Sigh. But perhaps I will end up with a small bump around then, which should help with the 1% challenge, in lieu of me being able to afford bigger OPs right now. 

turtlemoose

Snapshot:

Mortgage £93010 at 1.77%
Mortgage OP: £615 stoozing at 6.25%

Realised I should probably keep track of non mortgage debt too!

CC1: £158 at 0% (until Jul 2024)
CC2: £1812 at 0% (until Dec 2024)
Stooze: £579 at 4.5%

turtlemoose

I didn't get the internal vacancy but apparently came a close second.... and my senior manager just called me to give me a 13% pay rise as a demonstration of how much they appreciate me and don't want to lose me from the team  I'm in total shock, I've never had an employer be to proactively generous like that, in the past I've always had to fight for every pay increase etc. I'm amazed! 

The only thing that's quite galling though is that it is £300 gross per month extra, but after the usual deductions AND accounting for the UC i will lose, I will actually only receive £70 net of that.... I get to keep only 23.3% of it    BUT I can't dwell on that! £70 is £70, and it'll be very handy for paying off those 0% CCs that have snuck up on me this last year! 

SuperSecretSquirrel

That's a great percentage increase, it must feel great to be appreciated and have your worth recognised 🙂

turtlemoose

I just checked my mortgage balance and it was £93004.69 .... only one thing to be done about that!!! Little OP pinged over. 

That means I'm going in to 2024 with exactly £93000 in mortgage - I have c. £66k with 15 years left, and c.£27k with 29.5 years left. Seeing it like that makes me think that in the long term, it'd be amazing if I managed to pay the second chunk off at the same time as the first, but the world feels too unstable to even consider how I'd do that. Shorter term then, I've had a think about what I'd like to see financially in 2024:

* Don't take out any new debt
* Save enough in stooze account to pay off CCs before 0% ends
* Complete Pavlov's 1% challenge - OP/offset 1% of your mortgage balance in the year so £930 target
* Buy 5 extra days of annual leave
* Increase emergency fund by £800 (currently £1970)
* Minimise grocery spending by using up stuff I already have (dual financial and house sorting goal) 

turtlemoose

I'm going to try to remember to do a monthly update to keep myself on track and accountable.Álso money is (yet again!) a hard slog at the moment, so it'll probably be a helpful reminder to stay on it, and also to look back on and see progress, no matter how small.

CC2 took a little jump in balance with extra xmas/holiday spending, I'm not going to beat myself up over it though - I'm confident it'll be paid off before the 0% ends.

Mortgage OP: £640 stoozing at 6.25% (£25/£930 1% challenge)
CC1: £132.50 at 0% (until Jul 2024)
CC2: £1993.79 at 0% (until Dec 2024)
CC stooze: £725.86 at 4.5% (34.14% of the balance)
EF: £2020 (£50/£800 target)