Journey to... adulthood?

Urchhhh

Just made a list of everything in my freezer... its a lot! I'm going to make a meal planner for the foreseeable furture
There is so much!
Can't wait till payday though, this month has been horrible. Onwards and upwards though!

Urchhhh

Not managed to update as I've been busy and its been stressful.


Currently we stand at
emergency savings: £340 = 68%
personal savings: £220 = 49%
Car tax: £40 = 27%


I also have decided we are going to save £1500 for our holiday in July. I've worked out how much we'll need and this number is £500 more than I think we'll need so hopefully that will be more than enough! Goal date will be 31/05/16 so 6 weeks before we go. So we stand at...
£825/£1500 55 %
We have 9 pay days until then so it is definitely doable:)

Urchhhh

Well things aren't going very well...

First of all I was suckered into a photoshoot for my daughter. £4.99 for shoot plus a free 10 x 12 picture to take home. Bargain... if I had stopped there. I told myself when I went in that I wouldn't spend any extra except £31 for a picture from my mum (she gave us the money for it) After the shoot I couldn't help myself, the pictures were gorgeous and ended up spending all my personal savings on pictures.

Secondly, my partners work haven't paid him for 2 weeks of this month so we've used some of our America savings to make up the short fall

Thirdly harry Potter and the cursed child tickets came out today. I am a massive fan, like huge huge fan. I could not resist it so that was £200 gone.

Fourthly I caved and bought a fitbit... on finance. Its a buy now pay 6 months later thing. Impulse thing and really annoyed at myself for it. I'm going to pay this off next week with my birthday money.


But we've put more money into the emergency savings. I'm so frustrated at myself.


First is what it stands at now and the second is what I aim to have it at by the end of the week when I get paid.


Emergency savings: £400/£500 80% £430/£500 86%
Personal saving: £0/£450 0% £150/£450 33%
Car tax: £50/£145 34% £60/£145 41%
Holiday: £595/£1500 39% £700/£1500 46%

savingwannabe

Hello Urch,

Don't stress so much. Your partner's wages will be paid soon and you can put the money into the account you borrowed it from.

Some photos of kids are essential. You need the memories and it's not like you bought drugs or alcohol. A fitbit sounds like it is a healthy thing so again you have invested in yourself. I am rubbish on anything electric we didn't do playstations and stuff when I was a kid. I don't even know what an ipod malarkey is. So don't stress if it makes you healthy it is money well spent.

As to Harry Potter next time invest in an android box and you can treat the whole family for ages on it and any other film.

You may have fallen off the wagon a bit but you have to live and as long as you continue to save you will be back on track. Hugs, sw

Urchhhh

The Harry Potter thing is two plays so I cant get it anywhere else.


I've paid off the fitbit so I'm happy about that.

I also done some maths. Our rent is £395 a month, the average life expectancy in Scotland is 86 years old, so say if I have 65 years left of my life and pay rent every month. I'm aware that prices will change but I can't predict that. That's £308,100... which is crazy. I told OH this and its made him realise why we should own our own house. Hes now decided that after Christmas, every penny of his wage is going into his ISA so we can save for a deposit... wooo!

Its just the motivation we need to get ourselves saving properly!


To get my qualification completed before my maternity pay stops (I'm a apprentice) I've decided to put my daughter into nursery one day a week so I can focus on my coursework. With tax credits helping we will only be paying £7 for a session so its a small price to pay for a bigger pay off in the long run.

Urchhhh

So much of our money this month has went on electric. We have storage heaters which are so expensive to run. Although we didn't realise this until most of our money was gone! I'm going to make an effort to constantly check on how much electric we have.
I've bought a dressing gown for each of us to keep us warm instead of using the heating. £26 for the 3 of us, how come an adults one is a tenner but a 6-9month one is £6?! Surely you use a lot less material which would mean it would be a lot cheaper?! In hindsight I should of just bought a bigger size for her to grow into instead of the size she's in now. Its not like she walks around so she isn't going to trip over if its too long

Urchhhh

I normally buy cat litter freshener from Tesco since its the only local place that sells it. It £1.19 a box. However today we happened to be near an Asda as we went out for tea with my granddad. I seen on Asda's website they sold the same stuff for 80p, brilliant so I went in aiming to get as many as possible as I really like using them. The price sticker said they were rolled back to 60p, there was only 4 left on the shelf so picked up the lot and went and paid. They came through at 80p but I didn't realise until I got back to the car. So I went back into the shop and to customer services. They refunded me my 80p they had over charged me for the 4 and then gave me a £2 voucher as an apology for overcharging me... which means I got 4 boxes of cat litter freshener for 40p! 10p a box! Absolute bargain!


We took advantage of the 99.7p petrol, I seen it talked about a few days ago so I've not fuelled up in the hope of getting a whole tank full of the cheap stuff! Full tank for £35 so very happy!

Urchhhh

We've both decided to open the new help to buy ISA with Halifax, its 4%. I checked my current ISA, its only 0.5 % how crap is that?!


I want to set a goal for a house deposit but I'm not sure what to set it as. 3 bed houses in my area go for between £120,000 and £150,000. There is really nice ones for about £200,000 but the ones in the price range I've said are nice enough. There was a lovely 5 bed house for £795,000 and it was amazing but maybe a tad out of our price range!


I think our first goal is to get to our £12,000 each towards the house. Providing the rules don't change on the help to buy ISA, we would get a £3000 bonus each from the government so we'd have a combined total of £30,000 for a deposit. I am thinking to maybe go for a higher deposit as I keep hearing 40% is when you start to get really good rates. If we go for a estimate of £150,000 for a house that's a £60,000 deposit which is such a scary number!


Some maths...


£60,000 deposit
I want to buy my house when I am 30 so 9 years.
That's £6666.66 a year (what a horrible number)
or £555.55 a year (another strange number haha)
£128.21 a week
or £18.32 a day..


I guess if you break it down, it doesn't sound too bad... a bit scary though...

Urchhhh

So to break down my last few weeks, off track majorly. Lots of things happened at the same time so ended up getting a credit card, using our savings and getting a store card all at once.
Car needed repaired, new washing machine and new computer (needed for my coursework as its done all online and so is our bills but our local library is rubbish and not reliable enough to make do with)


Goal is to get emergency savings back up to where they need to be.
Credit card and store card are both 0% until a certain date and aiming to pay these off by March time.


I estimate I've spent around £160/170 on Christmas this year. Not sure on exact spend as for months and months I've been picking up bits and bobs!
For next year we are taking part in the £1 a day savings challenge as this will make it a lot less worrying and we will be able to spend a lot more on ourselves. £366 isn't too shabby!