BritishBibliophile Wants A House

BritishBibliophile

TT of £4.75 today. Been quite pleased with keeping spending under control this month, means I've been able to start saving towards my anniversary trip with the Gentleman Caller in May. Only going to Edinburgh, but it should be lovely.

This weekend has been nice as I've had lots to do, but getting it all done has made me feel a bit more positive. Been applying for a lot of jobs recently, with no success, so my confidence has been knocked quite a bit. At least by getting lots of things ticked off my to-do list at home I'm feeling a bit better, I can still make small positive changes even if I can't make the big one of leaving London.

Going sit down with a cup of tea, a homemade cookie and a book this afternoon and just relax.

Yearly total; £116.67
New total; £6155.57

BritishBibliophile

Payday tomorrow so I've cleared out the current account this evening. Shuffled a bit in to the every day saver to go towards the Edinburgh trip, which left me with a delightful £48.26 to go in the house deposit savings! That includes £0.70 from Amazon for getting some eBook sales.

Yearly total; £164.93
New total; £6203.83

BritishBibliophile

Pay day yesterday!

Money shuffle day today!

£106.28 (including interest) added to the deposit savings.

Yearly total; £271.21
New total; £6310.11

BritishBibliophile

A £3.39 TT has been moved in to the deposit savings.

Myself and the Gentleman Caller booked our hotel in Edinburgh for our 2 year anniversary in May, just need to book the train tickets. Wanted to get the hotel sorted first as train's are pretty frequent but hotel rooms are limited :rotfl: Staying at a Premier Inn as the one we stayed in in York was decent and we can't afford a £200 a night place.

Got a job interview early next week. Was a little bit disappointed as there was one I applied for that I really REALLY wanted but I haven't heard anything back from them. I just had such a good feeling about it. Oh well, never mind, these things happen for a reason, and I'm just relieved that I got an interview, it's all good practice.

Yearly total; £274.60
New total; £6313.50

BritishBibliophile

£4.21 has been TT.

Had a rubbish week and a half. Went for the job interview on Monday, ended up taking me longer than usual to get home due to train delays (some poor kid jumped in front of a train ) and then the District line was delayed as well. Had a rubbish day at work on Tuesday, which led to me crying in the office in the morning and was followed by an email telling me I hadn't got the job in the afternoon. Friday I spent another £130 getting my filling re-done. Gentleman Caller came round at the weekend, which was nice, but ended up overspending on Saturday as we went to Starbucks for a late lunch, and then on Sunday I felt ill (sore throat, aching joints) which culminated in me having Monday and Tuesday off work as I quickly got worse. Oh, and my laptop charger broke (went "bang!" and left a mark on the rug) so I've had to buy a new one.

Went back to work today but still don't feel 100% and generally wished I'd had another day off, but as I'm job hunting I don't want to ruin my chances by having sick days.

The job hunting is really starting to get me down, I get a lot of positive feedback from interviews but just seem to quite get across how awesome I would be for another company

One of my housemates is a great believer in positive thinking and told me that every job rejection is a step closer to my dream job. I'm trying to hang on to it as a thought, but I wish that the dream job wasn't quite so many steps away.

But looking on the bright side, there's only two days left until the weekend! I've got some more old beads listed on eBay, one of which has got 2 watchers. When I went home for the job interview my Mum gave me her old iPhone as she got an upgrade, and I downloaded Field Agent last night. My plan for Saturday is to check for jobs near me and then go on a long walk to get one or two done, depending on what's showing up.

Apart from that I will aim to have a relaxing weekend, not spending anything, and just doing my best to get over this horrible cold.

Yearly total; £278.81
New total; £6317.71

BritishBibliophile

Pay day on Friday so moved the last of my pay around.

£10.68 moved to the house deposit. Would have been more but after booking the hotel for our anniversary and paying for the dentist my other savings account is looking a little depleted, so I moved the rest there. Got to start putting cash away for the anniversary trip train fare next The £10 part of that was actually a bag of 20 pence pieces that I've been saving. Paid it in to the current account rather than straight in to my ISA as I couldn't be bothered to dig out a statement for the account number XD

Yearly total; £289.49
New total; £6328.39

BritishBibliophile

Got paid so moved the money this morning.

Eventual moving savings/holiday savings are now looking much healthier. I've been playing around with ticket prices online and need to come to a decision about whether to get an open return or 2 singles. Two singles comes out much, much cheaper, but you can only use them on the specific train time you've booked for. Open return has more flexibility. I doubt we'd miss a train booked for a specific time, but you never know if London Underground is going to stop working at some hideously inconvenient time.

I'll have a chat with Gentleman Caller about it and see what he thinks. I'd like to save money, but on the other hand I prefer the flexibility.

Apart from that I've moved £103.97 in to the house deposit savings. I'm now very close to the £6500 mark so I'm going to try and be very careful this month. Annoyingly there's 5 weekends between this pay day and the next one, so money will end up being a bit tight. I also promised myself I'd buy some new books this month as I've already devoured all my Christmas ones. I settled on three in the end, all for the Kindle. My new policy is to get non-fiction in paperback as I tend to use them for eBook research and I can use sticky labels to mark out interesting bits, and can find them again easily. Anything fiction either needs to be bought from the charity shop, or bought for the Kindle. The Kindle saves space on my overflowing bookshelf, but I still prefer hardcopy over digital :rofl:

Today is my only day off work this week so I've given myself a small list of essentials to do; laundry, bedsheets, hoover, blog post. First three should be done by lunch time, and then I can have the afternoon to write the blog post, play Sims 2, and watch the two recent Star Trek films, since I don't like the old ones and I want to commemorate Nimoy's passing.

I also need to sort out more beads to list on eBay.

Savings update!

Yearly total; £393.46
New total; £6421.68

asajj

Best of the luck

savingwannabe

Blimey! Well done. I love Spock almost as much as Daniel Craig. Good taste!

BritishBibliophile

Whoops, take a break for a week or two and it suddenly turns in to over 2 months!

Lost track of the savings as I had two expensive months, my best friend is getting married in September and I've been invited to go away with the Hen Party for a weekend about 3 weeks before the wedding, so paid for that a few weeks ago. Also diverted some extra savings towards the anniversary trip to Edinburgh, and then had another job interview so that was more money on train fares, and April was also expensive due to a family member's birthday, etc etc etc

So in general I wasn't able to save that much but today I finally stopped procrastinating and got myself back on track. Counted up my penny, five pence and twenty pence pieces in to bags and found I have a lovely total of £17 so need to pay that in this week.

Applied to open a new ISA with Nationwide. I know I should be looking at going with a higher-interest paying regular saver account but I find most of them require you to switch over your current account (and I know work would screw up paying my wages in to it one way or another) and have 2 direct debits coming out of it, and I have no DDs as I like to control payments myself, so an ISA it is. Once the paperwork comes through I can apply to have my old one transferred in and then I can start paying in to it properly once more.

I some how managed to get enough interest and mini payments (I've stuck them in my e-saver with "DEPOSIT MONEY" as the reference so I know what to add once the new ISA is open) to break the £6500 mark! New total is £6585.43, my only problem is that I have no idea how much of that is on top of the £393 savings made this year, so I'm just going to update that once I've paid in the loose change and then just carry on from there, if I miss the £2500 target by a few quid then I'll know it's probably because of this XD

So looking on the bright side, onwards to £7000!

New total: £6585.43