Hope is not an Effective Financial Strategy 13 March 2015 at 12:18PM edited 3 March 2020 at 7:18PM in Mortgage-free wannabe 4.3K replies 359.1K views

badmemory

Glad to hear the school is reverting to what was the original purpose of school uniforms - which was not to see how much they could bleed out of the parents.  I wish more of them would do that.

savingholmes

Sounds good about the uniforms.

Suffolk_lass

Oh goodness, I remember well the constant loss of kit. Football (hockey) boots at least twice a year, and lunch boxes (how?). Our son went to a prep school until 11 and it was a licence for the school outfitters to print money. 

shangaijimmy

Thankfully school uniforms have come in significantly under budget due to the changes. A small ray of sunshine amidst all the other price increases!

Another week begins of juggling attended work, home working, online meetings and school holidays...

Yesterday I OP'd our payments round up pot which was £4.97 and then some interest from our savings pot which was £5.29. The savings are very short term and is just stuff like Christmas money, car maintenance cash etc..., so not a large amount of cash in there.

Pooch number 1's pet insurance has renewed this morning, and only a minor increase considering we claimed every penny of it last year and he's now 8 so it starts to climb naturally. Pooch number 2 is due next Monday so need to encourage Mrs SJ to give them a ring to make some adjustments.

Tomorrow I'm going to detail our 'savings section' now that I've finished moving a few bits of cash around.
 

savingholmes

Glad you didn't feel too robbed by the school uniform spends.

shangaijimmy

Savings
Avid readers may recall my posting about our home ownership and mortgage journey and a notification that I would detail about further segments of our finance pie chart. Well this afternoon I'm going to talk about our savings.

It's fair to say that everyone does this differently in a meaningful way to their situations. Ours has changed and moved around at various stages of our journey and this is how we currently work things (without mentioning specific amounts).

We currently classify our savings as money that we are putting to one side to pay for things in the short or medium terms. Any cash that is allocated towards retiring early or reducing working hours doesn't count. However... one such 'pot' that is outside pension wrappers is also there for any major emergencies that could crop up (but isn't included in my 'savings').

Overall we allocate 15% of monthly income into the following savings pots:

• Holiday Pot
• Christmas Pot (also includes a January birthday element as we have 5 family birthdays in January and 2 are our own kids)
• Car Pot - Tax x 2, MOT & Maintenance
• Kids 'University' Fund (may well get used for other things if University isn't their route)
• Kids Miscellaneous Fund - uniforms, school shoe replacement, coats, parties, school trips etc...

• I do allocate money to a new car fund, however rather than classing this as a saving I mentally put it as 'car loan' so that I'm, not tempted to tamper with it. It ends up a set & forget and hopefully won't be required for another 5yrs yet.

Monies have recently been in premium bonds and this was started as a place for our holiday money to nestle once it wasn't being spent during the Covid years. However as this cash has slowly gone (lots of it on poorly pooch number 1) I moved it into a instant access savers (Marcus and Tandem). From there some has gone into a 1yr fixed account (some cash that we'll be spending on a new bathroom and our new car cash), and then I recycle £300 a month into a reg saver with FD.

Whilst the cash is only small amounts in the instant access saver I shuffle the interest each month into an OP (approx £5 a month) for the psychological benefit of trying to make regular OP's. I will then move the interest from our reg saver as a chunky OP next summer, and start the process again.

Hopefully these parts of savers interest, alongside TT's and payment round ups will get me to an overall total for the year of £526 which is equivalent of making 1 extra mortgage payment per year. 

savingholmes

Sounds really well organised - not that I'm surprised!

LadyWithAPlan

shangaijimmy said:

LadyWithAPlan said:

Indeed, this forum is full of new figures to aim for for motivation. I am currently just TTing daily but it all helps keep me focused forward

Following your lead I TT'd to the mortgage 87p yesterday and £1.01 this morning. Onwards and downwards 

I actually cant wait to have a mortgage just so I can do daily Ops and TT's - forget the buying of the home - its OP challenge that feels most exciting to me right now!