Nikadi's Saving Log - trying to keep myself accountable!

Nikadi

I lurk more often than not but thought I'd set out somewhere where I could keep track of our savings as I'm rubbish at popping on regularly and keeping up with the We're Saving For A Deposit thread! I have apparently had a savings diary in the past, but that was 3 years ago and got abandoned and closed!

I'm 27, DH is 28. We share finances entirely. I'm currently on Mat leave (first child due this month!) and won't be able to go back to work when it ends in May/June, my career is over :eek: We're hoping to find other ways of me earning money and potentially take on work on weekends (childcare costs would negate most of my earnings during the week), we'll see how that works nearer the time though.

DH is working in a graduate job, started in September so it'll be a while before a wage increase happens and there's no scope for overtime unfortunately. But he's earning well thankfully.

DH also does matched betting and will be teaching me so that I can take over the bulk of that and ramp up our earnings from it a little. Obviously I'm not allowed to earn anything taxable until my Mat Leave is over though and I'm keen to enjoy the first 6 months with my child anyway! We're planning to start siphoning money out of his MB account and into a decent savings account as it's at a comfortable level for what we need it for now.

We budget often, we have areas we know need to be improved but we're working on chipping away at it rather than trying to suddenly cut areas! We've had an expensive few months thanks to relocating, needing to buy furniture (mainly bedroom furniture as we've been house-sharing or have begged/borrowed furniture until now), needing to buy things for baby, needing to buy a new cage for our pet rodents, said rodents having repeated vet trips and so on, but we're back at a steady place now and can budget more effectively now that everything is back on track and normal again.

We're living with my parents whilst we save for a house deposit, we have our own living space so it's not too horrendous :rotfl: We're looking like we'll be here until the end of next year, if we survive that long!

We're putting £400pm into the HTB ISAs we have set up each month. We're hoping to open another savings account and get another £200+ put away each month too. Our budget is about £400 over what I'd like it to be currently so I need to get to work on chipping at it! We have no debt but we do use our CCs for some day-to-day spending, like the travel expenses for DHs work or big purchases and pay them both off in full each month. We need to switch to cards with better bonuses though!

We use TCB and Quidco wherever possible.

Current savings:
DH ISA: £3000
My ISA: £2400

Total: £5400