£15,000 to 0

enthusiasticsaver

Silver_Queen wrote: »

I feel as though I'm stumbling back and forth when it comes to balancing work/social life/financial matters. I think because for a while work was so intense, I felt like I had no social life so whenever I socialised I splashed out. Then I went the other way and got so scared of spending that I never socialised. It's a case of finding a happy balance.

I've been looking around on Rightmove and have found an absolutely perfect property that I would love to buy. It's a reasonable price, reasonable size and good location. The problems are, however, that a) I don't earn enough b) I don't have a deposit! I feel as though this is the perpetual problem of the millennial. Wanting to buy but also wanting to have nice things, spend money and have fun.

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I think getting the balance right between saving/repaying debt versus spending and "having a life" is a problem for most of us unless you are seriously wealthy and financial objectives change constantly throughout life. Your present life versus your future life you may say.

I think so long as you are spending on things or experiences which add value to your life and not frittering or wasting money whilst also saving for the future I don't think you can do much more than that. None of us know what is in our future for certain and our priorities change throughout life so your percentages pots will also change.

One thing I would say is for most of us buying a property is a bit all or nothing especially if you live in an expensive part of the country. It takes all your money in the early stages and often I found as a debt counsellor many got into trouble by buying a house and continuing to live the same lifestyle as they did pre mortgage afterwards often funded by credit which compounds problems. So if you have a yearning to travel I think it is best to do before buying a property or resign yourself to waiting until you have saved for it.

Silver_Queen

enthusiasticsaver wrote: »

I think getting the balance right between saving/repaying debt versus spending and "having a life" is a problem for most of us unless you are seriously wealthy and financial objectives change constantly throughout life. Your present life versus your future life you may say.

I think so long as you are spending on things or experiences which add value to your life and not frittering or wasting money whilst also saving for the future I don't think you can do much more than that. None of us know what is in our future for certain and our priorities change throughout life so your percentages pots will also change.

One thing I would say is for most of us buying a property is a bit all or nothing especially if you live in an expensive part of the country. It takes all your money in the early stages and often I found as a debt counsellor many got into trouble by buying a house and continuing to live the same lifestyle as they did pre mortgage afterwards often funded by credit which compounds problems. So if you have a yearning to travel I think it is best to do before buying a property or resign yourself to waiting until you have saved for it.

I think you are absolutely right. You are a fountain of infinite wisdom! Honestly, whenever I see you've commented I go a bit because I know you're not afraid of telling me the truth if I've gone off the rails, and yet you're always right...

Striving to achieve a balance is definitely the theme of the year for me.

lonelyrat

It's hard to strike a good balance but I'm sure we will get there. Give it another year and we will be wise / sage MSE'ers

The holidays you have planned all sound so lovely and worth not stressing yourself about overpaying the parental loan. I like what enthusiasticsaver said about experiences that add value I feel like what you're spending on isn't frivolous frittering so it's OK and you aren't getting yourself into debt over it.

Silver_Queen

My total debt is officially down to £10,000! Over 1/3 paid off! I'm very pleased with that.

I'm not sure if I mentioned on here before, but I had decided that instead of paying money to my credit card every time that I spent, I would transfer the money into a separate current account to earn a little interest (a measly 1%) and set up a direct debit to clear the whole balance instead. This was good for me in two respects; - 1. The measly 1% interest is still free money and 2. I have an extra direct debit for doing bank switches. This has actually been going very well for me, I have no temptation to spend the current account money as it's with a bank that I don't otherwise bank with, so I just transfer the funds and forget about them. It does make me slightly anxious seeing my credit balance go up during the month though, but I do remind myself that I do actually have the entire amount put aside earning interest. I suppose I'm accidentally stoozing in this respect.

I now have three credit cards, which is also quite scary, but they all have a purpose. CC1 is for my daily spending and reward points. CC2 is for foreign spending. CC3 is new and is meant to be for when CC1 (which is an AMEX) cannot be used in daily spending. Direct debits to clear the entire balance are set up for all of these into my aforementioned separate current account.

I just did an enormous spreadsheet to help me keep track of all my DDs and bank switches, I'm feeling very organised now!

I got my first pay which was affected by pay rise at the end of April rather than end of March like I'd expected. This slightly scuppered some plans that I'd made but things have stabilised a bit now since it's now been two pay rise paydays, if that makes sense. I've been siphoning money away into separate accounts and savings so that I don't fritter my pay rise money away, but I must admit that I have loosened my belt a little due to the extra funds.

I bought a phone for my younger sister at the weekend, she now owes me £100 and will be paying it back either monthly or when she gets paid. I told her to pay me £25 a month but she told me she prefers to pay it back all at once when she gets paid. We'll see.

My OH now owes me a grand sum of £650 and it looks like he'll be paying me £250 a month. After our very exciting May with two holiday bookings and a gig booking, we aren't planning any other major spends in the next few months so hopefully he will finally be able to clear this. I'm not worried about this debt anyway since I would honestly trust him with my life and know that even if things went south, he would pay it back.

My next major expense will be my train ticket coming out in November. The prices have gone up, grr, so I will need to save an extra couple of hundred on top of what I expected. Thanks to bed-bug-gate and said loosening of belt, and said holiday bookings, my train ticket savings were slightly depleted so I will need to save £800 in the next 4 months to have enough for my train ticket. This should be perfectly doable so I'm not too worried.

Sadly my house savings are a hilariously meagre £75 at the moment. The % divisions that I did a little while ago didn't really work due to my lack of emergency funds and again, said holiday bookings. I think I will try again after next month when my money has stabilised and isn't put out of whack by pay rise.

Silver_Queen

Morning. It's lovely weather here today so we're probably going to have a barbecue.

Set up another bank switch today and will get OH to let me refer him so that should be an extra £200 coming my way!

We found an elder tree at the end of my road so we made some strawberry and elderflower jam yesterday, nearly four jars out of 1kg of strawberries. The total cost was just over £1 per jar and these will form parts of Christmas presents (I'm nothing if not overly prepared for Christmas). I'm such a wild millenial, spending my saturday nights making jam with my boyfriend :rotfl:

In the weight loss front I've lost 4.2kg since the beginning of May. Still got around 22kg to go until I'm at my ideal weight but slow and steady wins the race. I've been sticking to a simple calorie restriction of 1500 per day. I've been struggling with my daily step count, averaging around 6k-8k rather than the 10k I was aiming for. I struggle with this because if I just do my daily commute it's around 4k steps in total and I find it hard walking around in circles to make it up to 10k!

Not much else to report, ticking along nicely.

lonelyrat

I'm loving the sound of the spreadsheet! I find everything feels better when I have things mapped on a spreadsheet. Fiddling with my debt one has actually become a firm favourite of mine hobby wise.

I wouldn't worry about having the three cards. You have everything organised down to a T and like you say, they all have purposes... You aren't just meaninglessly spending on them! Also £75 is a healthy house saving pot as far as I'm concerned!

Jam sounds lovely Can you send some up north at Christmas time?! :rotfl:

Massive well done on the weight loss :cool: You're doing really well. I can't stand just doing circles.. I find walking with no purpose really frustrating. What I did at first was try and add a little bit of length onto my normal journeys. If I'm going to the Tesco on whatever I won't go the normal way but I'll map out a walk online first that adds in some distance. It's quite a good way to add steps on without feeling like you're forcing it. I have only done 6,390 today feeling quite cheeky!

EssexHebridean

Lonelyrat is absolutely right about adding steps into trips you're making anyway. In terms of the commute can you make it a bit more active by getting off the train/but one stop earlier? Or walking round the block rather than straight to the office or to home? If we arrive into London earlier than I need to be here in the morning, even if just by 5 minutes, I always go a circuitous route to get to the office and that adds a fair few steps. As long as I tell myself I'm going to work just via the long way round it's fine! I also always walk a mile at lunchtime - it does my head good to get away from my desk and my waistline good to do the extra 2,000 steps or so!

that's brilliant on the weightloss - for my money you're doing it in exactly the right way too - it's fine that it's slow - it'll stay off better that way! :T

Silver_Queen

You two are both very right I think!

Walking to and from the office is a bit difficult. Even with walking the extra stop before getting on the train on the way home my steps only get up to about 9k. Walking two extra stops is too far as it adds about 4 miles on! I could get off the train one stop early and walk the rest of the way and have been planning to start doing that, but I live in a bit of a rough area and getting off the train one stop early means walking through an even rougher area. I think it should be fine really because it's so light out but I just need to bite the bullet and stop being so pathetic

To that note I'm reducing my daily step goal to 8k until I can comfortably hit that every single day, then I'll increase it again.

Had a bit of a blip weight loss and money wise this weekend. Saw some old friends and we got a bit merry... 7 bottles of prosecco and numerous gins between three of us.... two days later and I'm still hungover! It's resulted in some interesting life choices diet wise in the last few days. I'm finally feeling more alive again so am planning to get back onto the bandwagon and back on calorie counting.

Silver_Queen

I'm up in Birmingham today for work, waiting for a client at the moment so thought I would check in. Whenever I'm outside of London I realise how much I actually dislike living in London and how nice it is outside of the city.

I am having a really hard time being MSE recently. I now have only one outstanding debt totalling £10k and it just seems so unachievable for me to clear it. Personal life wise, it has been 9 months since OH moved to Brighton and therefore closer to me. Typical though, im now getting angsty and wishing that we lived together. It's been bringing me down a bit.

Absolutely nothing to report MSE wise, nothing is happening which is also making me a bit angsty. I wish I could report that I'd magically cleared a load of debt this month, or something else major, but nothing is happening. Just ticking along.

Silver_Queen

Forgot to add, from next month my rent may increase by £100. Still in consultation stage with the sister/landlady but if it does go up then I might need to redo my budget. Considering paying for YNAB but I did the free trial and just could not get my head around it...