Spend Nowt, Buy Nowt, Owe Nowt

apple_muncher

Missing you.

Happy New Year!

XSpender

Hello lovely ladies.  Thank you for checking in on me. I hope you are keeping safe and sane in lockdown.  This week has been a struggle for me trying to work, homeschool and do everything else without the promised help from DH and not feeling I am doing any of them very well. Things need to change this week or I will either crack or blow under the pressure.

I have been meaning to do my 2020 recap and share my 2021 goals since the new year but life, work, homeschooling and everything has got in the way, so here we go. Please be gentle, I’ve been 100% honest 😬😂

2020 Overview

Bought a camper van 🚌(with a bank loan🥴). It was one of our lifelong dreams and when we saw the perfect van at a fabulous price it was meant to be😍

Paid £8114 off the credit cards 💳(used 1 once in Nov 2020 for a big🎅🏻gift for DS on 0% that we hadn’t budgeted for which will be paid off by Easter at the latest)

£1000 in an emergency fund💰

£800 in sinking funds💰

Cash flowed garden clearance/makeover, utility room makeover, conversion of bedroom to office including filing cabinet, wardrobes, notice board and office chair, new double oven (all bought 2nd hand), camper MOT and new window mechanism💰

Cash flowed new central heating boiler as our 21 year old one finally died💰

Cash flowed £850 19/20 tax bill💰

Absolutely ridiculous food spending continued throughout the year🐷😡We could have achieved so much more this year but overspending in this area derailed our budget every month and ate up what we could have put to extra savings and debt OPs😡

DH much more on board, particularly with saving goals🙂💵

Found a way of budgeting and saving that really works for me.  We would not have achieved as much as we did, and had such a good start to 2021, if I hadn’t discovered it in the summer👍💵

 2021 Goals

New furry family member joining us in March (6 days old today)😍🐶This is my other lifelong dream come true.  Purchase price, insurance, immediate equipment needs and vets bills already covered and will have a sinking fund for next years insurance and maintain a rolling pets pot for other stuff as he grows or if the old boy needs anything💰

Save £10,500 to cover 6 months mortgage payments 💰🎉  I know where all but £2000 of this is going to come from

Pay £7,000 off debt 💳

Make £2021 extra income (excluding work bonuses) in 2021 from sales, vouchers, surveys, selling my soul etc.💡💵 So far we are on £1.60 for Jan 😂

Create new passive and non-passive income streams in 2021 to provide additional future income (sell DH soul maybe??).  I do have some ideas but they will take a while to come to fruition.💡💵

Have mirror wills written 📄👪

Read 52 books including 12 non-fiction 📚

Complete a new fitness challenge every month (January’s is to walk 100km but is being somewhat hampered by the ice)🏋️‍♀️🚶‍♀️🏃🏼‍♀️🍎🥦.  I’ve managed a 5.3km circuit of the village this morning.

Halve food spending (January is looking good so far 😉)

Fund 6 sinking funds (2 will be fully funded by end of Jan)💰

Cash flow all camper weekends, DS bedroom makeover and garden planting (and some decorating if it doesn’t impact savings goal)💰

Survive.  Happy, healthy and employed at December 2021 would be fabulous.😀

I know this is a debt free forum and we are prioritising saving a bigger emergency fund over paying off debt which many would argue this is back to front but there is method in our madness.  My project contract is up in December 21.  If I threw all our money at debt I would reduce our outgoings by maybe £170/month.  If I get made redundant my redundancy pay and EF will cover a little over 3 months mortgage payments or about 2 months income.  Finding a similar role, at a similar salary will be a challenge so I am prioritising having enough saved that, with redundancy pay, will pay the mortgage for a year.  If I don’t get made redundant, in 2022 we will keep the big EF as is and clear most of our debt.  The goal is to be debt free before my 53rd birthday in summer 23.  

All our CC are on 0% and our loan is a very low rate.

f0xh0les

Wow, Captain Organised.  All sounds great.   Congratulations on your new arrival.

badmemory

Don't forget 2 each of POAs.  4 @ £82 if you DIY.  These can be even more important than wills in some circumstances.  After all if you are married & not VERY well off then the default on the first death is everything to the spouse.  But if one of you gets really sick, then without a very expensive court order (sorry I've forgotten what it is called) then access to what is probably much needed funds is denied just when you need them most!

Honeysucklelou2

Camper van sounds exciting and the ability to have holidays pottering around, as soon as lockdown is finished, must be wonderful! Congratulations on the new furry family member. How is the old boy doing? Mine is plodding on, almost 14.

You paid a sizeable among off the 💳 last year, well done. All the best with the goals for this year.

XSpender

Honeysucklelou2 said:

Camper van sounds exciting and the ability to have holidays pottering around, as soon as lockdown is finished, must be wonderful! Congratulations on the new furry family member. How is the old boy doing? Mine is plodding on, almost 14.

You paid a sizeable among off the 💳 last year, well done. All the best with the goals for this year.

We have camper trips to Cornwall, Arran, Northumberland coast and Whitby on the list so far for this year, lockdown and local restrictions permitting.  I am going to start booking some sites next month as there is supposed to be a massive increase in UK holidays this year and we wouldn’t want to miss out on our preferred sites or electric hookup for leaving it too late.

The old boy is doing well.  He sleeps an awful lot, is always willing to go out and is still sprightly on his walks but half an hour is about his limit.  He can still manage a regular zoomie up the garden though. He was 16 last September.

The new dog is a completely different breed, size and temperament.

Suffolk_lass

Good plans @XSpender - very sensible to up your buffer with all that is going on.

We also bought a van, in late Spring 2019 and an old one for cash. As with these things, after a few years bits go wrong and water ingress occurs. We spent late autumn 2019 using a friend's barn to completely overhaul the outside and make sure no water was getting in, then lockdown re-modelling the bathroom and replacing lights, fittings, flooring and so on while we could not go out. We joined the Caravan and Motorhome Club (£60) which gives us access to many CL (certified location) sites that take only a maximum of five caravans or motorhomes (normally all with hook up) and we like the relative isolation from others, but we are equally happy on a tent camping site with tents going "wild" with no services for short breaks. I appreciate it might be different for you with a child but the club is worth considering (and we are making a note of sites that stop being CLs because they don't want to remain restricted by the club rules) - you really need to look at Lincolnshire down into (esp North) Norfolk too if you get into it. We are also hoping to do some east coast meandering. I could go on (and on) - it's great!

So glad you have found a system that works for you. Don't forget the Reverse Meal Planning thread (over on OldStyle) where we make stuff with substitutions and make-do with xxx approach to food! all are welcome to reduce grocery shopping by joining us or just reading for ideas

Honeysucklelou2

That’s a good point Suffolk Lass made. My parents had a caravan once and they joined the Caravan Club and found some really lovely sites that were only open to members. Even locally to me, I can think of 3 sites that are Caravan Club only and all 3 are great sites. Well worth considering.

XSpender

We bought the van in Lincolnshire! We also had a week at a Haven site in Norfolk a couple of years ago. 

The van is 16 years old, same as the dog 😂

We joined the camping and caravanning club when we bought the van as we used their sites when we had a tent a few years ago. We only managed one weekend away before DS went back to school but have had lots of days out and he gets a weekly run to Morries or DH work to keep him ticking over 😂 The van is a VW conversion so does not have it’s own facilities.  

We have used up a lot of the stuff in our freezers this month which has definitely helped the budget. They still look pretty full though.  Realistic meal planning that fits our life and time/desire to cook (e.g. on a Saturday nobody wants to cook or eat a proper meal for some reason so we often have frozen pizza), Sunday meal prep (but not big batch cooking because I don’t want to eat it if it has been hanging about in the freezer for weeks) and the occasional freezer dive (whatever odds and sods I can find) has helped a lot. 

Last debt DD went out today and we have paid off £841.95 this month.  A bit more than planned as the bank had not set DH new BT CC DD up for some reason so we paid the amount they said we owed but which actually includes the February payment and a bit extra. Not sure how they came up with that figure but we paid as we didn’t want to lose the great 0% deal and it all comes off the debt anyway.

Hoping to save a small amount this month. We hadn’t budgeted to save this month (except to the sinking funds) as we have the 19/20 tax bill to pay. I am hoping to pay most of the money I have saved doing a couple of fun savings challenges over to the EF this month (£150), will depend if we can stick to the £34 I have in the food budget so the rest of money in my spending categories can go to the tax bill. 

DH wanted to do the 365 penny challenge this year so we are doing one each. 

apple_muncher

It is so lovely to hear you 'having fun' with saving money rather than it being a constant slog. You guys have come such a long way!!!!