New Mission, New Diary

MoneyMission2015

It's been a while since I updated on here but I have been reading through the forums every day to make sure I stay on track. I did find towards the end of April I was wobbling a bit, I didn't go over any budgets but I did buy things that weren't really necessary, so if I hadn't bought these things I could have saved a bit more this month or put some money towards a credit card payment. It was only little things like popping in to the supermarket & buying some things that weren't on my grocery list. I had money in the budget but now that I've got to the end of the month I am a bit annoyed with myself because I could have kept that money for something more useful.


Anyway, it's done now so lets not dwell on it.


I've set my budgets for this month now that our wages have gone in. I am still waiting for one more payment from OH. He gets paid weekly so he pays his first 2 weeks of every month in to the joint account. Everything is covered though so his payment next week will just be extra to budget towards credit card payments etc. I'm hoping to overpay something on his credit card this month too as he pays interest on his card, I keep telling him to try for a 0% card but he has been really busy lately so not been able to find the time. I will see if he can set some time aside this weekend as we have an extra day


I was a bit annoyed with Halifax. As soon as the card came through I set it up so that I was paying a fixed amount Direct Debit of £150. My plan was that I would let the DD go out & then after that I would pay any extra I could towards it every month. Anyway, the DD came out but it only took the minimum amount. I called them & the lady I spoke to checked the system and even she confirmed that it was set up as a fixed amount so she couldn't understand why it only took the minimum amount. So she cancelled the DD & set up a new one, so hopefully next month it should take the correct amount. She also gave me the account details so that I could make a payment through internet banking, which I've done now so that's all sorted for this month.


My savings pot is building up which I am happy about. I still haven't looked at savings accounts that can be split in to pots, so at the moment I can't see at a glance how much is for Christmas, Birthdays etc, but I can use YNAB to calculate this if I need to as all the payments for each month are in this anyway. I think it works out that by Christmas I will have around £1000 in the Christmas pot, which will be great. Hopefully it will be the first January in a long time that I wont be worried about getting the cards etc paid.


I am looking forward to the bank holiday weekend. We haven't got any plans, we will wait to see what the weather is like, but I do hope to get out in the fresh air if the weather allows it.

snowscreamer

Hi MM,

Glad to see you are still pootling along nicely. Us too; April was quite a lot more spendy than February or March but mustn't get down-heartened - we still spent £627.26 less than we earnt and £450 of that went on debt repayment. It's not like we're back in the scary pre-budget days

I'm going on a practice bike ride with some colleagues tomorrow morning. Doing 17.5 miles in total and climbing 1200ft. We are all doing a charity ride next Sunday 10th which is 45 miles and 2400ft climb - yikes! Relaxing for the rest of the weekend though which is nice

MoneyMission2015

Thanks SS. Good luck with the bike ride and the climb! I would be useless because I'm afraid of heights so couldn't do the climb and I'm fine on a bike as long as it's a flat surface :rotfl:



April was quite a spendy month for us too with some decorating being done & birthday parties. But it was all budgeted for (apart from the odd overspend which I was able to scrape back from other categories) & nothing was paid for on credit, which is so new for us! In the past we would have just put it all on the credit cards without even thinking about it.



I've been slowly putting a meal plan together the last few days. I made a list of the meals we enjoy & am slowly fitting them in to the meal plan. I have this week's plan done, so something to stick to. Tonight I am going to work on next week's plan. I am using the easier meals during the week so we're not spending all evening in the kitchen after a long day in work, then I am keeping our more extravagant meals for the weekend. I am trying to eat more healthily too so have decided Saturday will be my treat day.



I need to start decluttering again around the house. We just seem to accumulate so much stuff. Hardly any of it is of any use either. We have a bookcase in one of the bedrooms that is just full of books and DVD's. But we don't really watch DVD's anymore because we either watch things on TV/Sky or we download or stream things. Also with the books, there are ones on there I have read so there is no point me keeping them, because I'm not one of those people who can read a book more than once so I should just get rid of them but then I don't know where I should take them. I'm not going to bother trying to sell them on Amazon because it's not worth it, most of them sell for 1p. I will have to find a local charity shop to take them to. I think that will be my mission this weekend, clear that bookcase & find a local charity shop that will take them off my hands.



This week is just passing me by so quickly. I haven't been to the gym yet this week either so I will force myself to go tonight & tomorrow night. We were paying £5 every time we went, but as we have started going more frequently I have paid for a monthly card which is £30. Luckily it is one of those ones where you don't get tied in to a contract period, so if I decide next month I don't want to bother I don't have to pay the monthly fee.



General Election tomorrow! I should hopefully be able to get in to our polling station first thing in the morning as it is near to my daughters school, so I will probably go in to vote after I've taken my daughter to school. Unfortunately if I can't get in there in the morning, I don't think I will get chance to vote and I really want to have my say, for what little difference it might make. I read the BBC summaries of each parties policies on various issues today & I think I've made up my mind on who I am voting for, but will read a bit more this evening when I have a bit more time.



My card statements have both come through for the new month. It's nice to see the debts going down & no interest being charged now. I am so excited to see the debt amounts reducing at a much quicker pace now.



My total balances are



BC - 7669.20
Halifax - 3018.01



So there is already a difference of around £1250 from what I started with. I would have liked it to be more than this but I knew I had balance transfer fees to pay, so the balance did go up slightly before coming down. Also I am now saving, whereas I wasn't before, so actually I am in a much better position financially than I was before I started this diary and overall I have more money than I used to. Plus my savings are earning interest and my debts aren't incurring any interest anymore, so as each month goes by my net worth will increase as the debt reduces and the savings increase :j

snowscreamer

Well done MM - fantastic progress!! First month to see credit card balances coming down for me too and it felt so good!

My bike ride - I'm feeling good about it. The climb is fairly evenly spread over the ride so I think the highest elevation we actually get is only 250m above sea level. So no major heights. I actually find the long shallow climbs a bit tougher than short steep climbs as it's such a slog! But we did a bit of both in our practice ride last weekend and I managed fine so I'm feeling really good about it. Sadly one of my colleagues had to pull out as in our three-person collision 1 mile from the end she bore the brunt and is now hobbling with a written off bike. Thankfully I seem to have escaped with a couple of grazes and an impressive bruise and the bike is also fine!

MoneyMission2015

snowscreamer wrote: »

Well done MM - fantastic progress!! First month to see credit card balances coming down for me too and it felt so good!

My bike ride - I'm feeling good about it. The climb is fairly evenly spread over the ride so I think the highest elevation we actually get is only 250m above sea level. So no major heights. I actually find the long shallow climbs a bit tougher than short steep climbs as it's such a slog! But we did a bit of both in our practice ride last weekend and I managed fine so I'm feeling really good about it. Sadly one of my colleagues had to pull out as in our three-person collision 1 mile from the end she bore the brunt and is now hobbling with a written off bike. Thankfully I seem to have escaped with a couple of grazes and an impressive bruise and the bike is also fine!

Oh no, your poor friend. Hopefully she will recover soon & I'm sure she will be cheering you on at the end of your ride.

MoneyMission2015

This month feels like it's going slow so far. We're only 12 days in to the month & I seem to have spent lots of money. I've also gone over budget on my very vague 'Spending Money' category. I set myself this small budget each month, usually around £30 and it covers for things like music I download, an occasional new book or if I give money to my daughter for something that doesn't fall under the 'normal categories.


Anyway, I had £30 budgeted but have already gone over because something is going on with our iTunes account & stuff seems to be coming out of the bank account every week lately. I usually remember when I've bought something, so can account for some of the money but not all of it. I need to check the iTunes account to see exactly what it is that has come out.


All my other budgets are fine, although my grocery budget is already half used! But I suppose the way I should look at it is we are almost half way through the month anyway & we do have a few evenings planned where we are not eating at home anyway, so the other half of the budget should last us until the end of the month.


We shall see. I will update at the end of the month to see if everything has stayed on track.

MoneyMission2015

I haven't updated for a while, but there really hasn't been much to update. The budgets have been a bit erratic over the last fortnight. I set my budgets at the beginning of the month but during the course of this month I've found that some budgets have already overspent but then others are massively under, so I've been adjusting the budgets as I go along. It's all a learning curve I guess, for instance I always seem to budget quite high for fuel because I always thought I spent quite a lot on fuel, but every month I have come quite considerably under the set budget, so I think next month I will start budgeting a bit lower & put the remaining money towards a different category that could do with a little bit more generosity


I've been trying to keep an eye out for coupons lately, just in case there are any useful ones I could use. We get coupons from Tesco clubcard when the quarterly statements are sent. Sometimes they are useful because they are for things we always buy anyway, some are not so useful. I know it's all a marketing ploy to try & trick us in to thinking we're saving money by giving us 25p off something, but if we would have never bought it in the first place then obviously we're not saving!


I have come up with the idea though of using my Tesco credit card to pay for everything during the month & paying it off in full at the end of the month, so I can earn clubcard points as a little bonus. I want to get a cashback credit card but I checked the eligibility calculator on here & the highest came out at 40% probability, so I don't want to risk it. I'm still sticking to the budgets for all purchasing, but all that's happening is the money will just stay in my current account for slightly longer because it's all being taken in one go to pay off the Tesco card each month, instead of being paid for on the debit card. I am determined to not get back in to debt, so I am not worried at all about doing things this way. It just means I'm getting a little extra back by using the Tesco credit card. I will then save my clubcard points for Christmas.


Apart from that there really hasn't been much else going on. It was my birthday recently so I had some birthday money & vouchers. I keep my vouchers for when I know there is something I would like to buy, but my birthday money is being used to pay for a hair cut for myself.


I have a note of the dates that my 0% deals end on my credit cards. I've got ages yet but I want to make sure I am prepared. In the mean time I am constantly looking for ways to save money or make a bit of extra money. I've got a few things around the house which I want to sell, I just need to get some photos done & then get them listed. Most of it is household stuff, like curtains, cushions etc from when we redecorated, so I will just put them on facebook and see if anybody wants them all for a few ££. I've also had some money recently redeemed on my TopCashBack account so as soon as that goes through to my account I will decide whether to put that straight in to the savings account or make a payment to a credit card.

snowscreamer

Hey MM,

We are doing the same as you. All debt onto 0% cards but we are keeping our 'reward' cards and still spending on them - just set up monthly full repayment DDs. That means we get a little bit of cashback that we wouldn't have otherwise got if we'd cut up the credit cards. Now we have YNAB I am not at all worried that we will revert to bad habits. It's completely revolutionised our relationship with money. Once we are in the black, YNAB will ensure we stay in the black (and hopefully start regular savings!)

I can quickly see on YNAB that on OH's cashback card we earnt £26.21 in four months which is not at all bad. On my card I've earnt £8.66 in four months. So we are making £9/month which could be worse. As long as you learn that no cashback or reward bonus is worth buying something you don't need / isn't in the budget then any incidental cashback or rewards are a bonus.

I also recently after my boss mentioned it enabled Barclays Rewards (see http://www.barclays.co.uk/P1427536139906) - as we already have a Barclays Current Account and mortgage we should get a £12/month bonus for a £3/month fee so that's £9/month reward. Every little helps!

snowscreamer

Hey MM,

How does everything look at the end of May for you? More debt busted? In need of an update!!

SS

MoneyMission2015

I'm back!


Hi SS, thanks for the update. I'm glad I'm not the only one doing this with the reward cards then. I just thought I might as well get something back and because I'm now comfortable in my spending habits, I know that I won't revert back to just running up credit card debts & not paying them off. I have already set up the DD to repay the full statement balance each month. Another positive is the money stays in my bank account for just a little bit longer so might even earn a bit of interest :T


We went away last week which is why I was pretty quiet. We spent quite a lot of money!! But it was all budgeted for in our accounts & then my daughters were given some spending money from their grandparents so they had a little bit extra to spend themselves. We were so lucky that the weather was nice, we even got a little bit of a suntan.


Budgets last month were fine. However some were a bit over & some slightly under, so I think I am still learning & adjustments still need to be made on what I budget to begin with & then what I spend. Most of the spending last month was needed, so I know I'm not spending money unnecessarily, but there were some spends that I was unaware of until they came out of our bank account (iTunes being one culprit :mad:). This is under control now though because we have changed the password so our daughter can't download anything & we have also set it as a separate budget under spends, so we know we can buy a few things in a month but once that has been spent the answer is NO to any of us.


SS - you are right about making sure we're not buying things just because of the cashback. I have a TopCashBack membership & they are constantly sending me emails with big offers of cashback, but they're for opening accounts on gambling sites, casinos, new credit cards etc. They must tempt so many people with the offers, but I'm pleased to say I've not been sucked in to any of them :jOn a positive note I have earned over £500 on TopCashBack over the last few years just from things like renewing insurance policies, opening my Santander 123 account and remembering to go through the website if I am buying something online. It's always worth checking.


I got paid last week & spent an hour on Monday reconciling YNAB and then setting up this months budgets. I've still got some things that aren't budgeted for yet but they aren't necessities so I will wait until my OH has paid his money in to the account. Until then I'm just happy that all the necessities are budgeted for. Once my OH's money has been paid in I can set the budgets for savings, spending money, gym visits etc.


I want to look back over my diary soon to check I'm still on track with everything I've targeted myself to do & also to see what changes I have made in the few months I've been recording everything. It will help me then to start setting targets for this month & longer term goals, like more family holidays, spending money savings for school holidays etc.


I hope everybody else's money saving missions are going well. I look forward to catching up with some of the diaries I am subscribed to & hopefully finding a few new ones to read.