£15,000 to 0

EssexHebridean

Please make sure that you give your germs to as many of your current colleagues as possible, and certainly to any who are a) senior to you and b) perpetuating the vileness that is the working environment there. That'll teach 'em!

(And hope you're feeling better soon!)

Silver_Queen

EssexHebridean wrote: »

Please make sure that you give your germs to as many of your current colleagues as possible, and certainly to any who are a) senior to you and b) perpetuating the vileness that is the working environment there. That'll teach 'em!

(And hope you're feeling better soon!)

Thanks EH! I seem to have cursed myself because I'm STILL SICK. Almost on the mend now though, and made sure to cough on as many people as possible

My mortgage broker has told me that if I cough up an extra £5k deposit, he can get me a mortgage without having to worry about the cladding issue and with a better interest rate.

Problem is...if I go ahead without sorting out the cladding issue, I will only cause myself trouble later down the line, when I go to sell the property...

In moneysaving news, I got paid yesterday and somehow still had £950 in my account from last month's pay, even with all my credit cards paid off, and having impulsively spent an extra £200 this month booking a last minute holiday...I have no idea how I've managed this?

Silver_Queen

Checking in

OH has now moved in, started his new job and settled in well. Housing/bills costs the same for me as he is just paying the difference. He's also down to £550 owed to me and will be getting his deposit back for his old place (in the region of £900) so hopefully his debt to me will be fully cleared by the end of this month - for literally the first time since we started dating!

I am seriously considering pulling out of this property purchase, because it's taking so long and the market has gone down dramatically, so I think I can get a better deal elsewhere. I'd lose about £2k that I've spent on various fees though. Something to think about.

In money news, things are looking OK. Bit of a pain because my phone went kaput, so I've had to redownload and re-set up all my apps, so I haven't been able to access some of my accounts just yet. Luckily, the phone was under warranty so I got a shiny new one for free.

Things stand like this:

Balances
LISA: £8,950(ish - this fluctuates!)
2nd savings: £14,000
Current acc 1 (daily spending): £360-ish
Current acc 2 (bills): £112.05
Current acc 3 (other & random): £51.03

I also have about £30 in Tesco vouchers, but can't access them right now because the app won't let me...
And £2.50 in Nectar points.
£2ish on prolific, pretty sure I'm never gonna get to cash out
£8 on populus, same as above...
Just over £3,000 in my pension - need to up my game on this.

Outstanding debts
£7,500 to parental loan
£20,000 to family member loan
£315 or thereabouts outstanding on my amex
£20 roughly on my Barclaycard - no idea tbh, can't log in to check, remember I used it for a small transaction. Direct debit will sort it out.
£13.32 on my clarity card from a few bits and bobs from the supermarket whilst on holiday.

It's already been a really expensive month. I've spent around £180 on sporting supplies but I'm not overly worried about this, because I really need to do exercise and I've found a hobby I love!

It's various family members' birthdays on either side of the family this month, so I've spent about £120 on presents.

Phone bill and gym have already been paid this month and a large food order already done.

Still working out what OH's contribution to food and other sundries will be, but it should make things cheaper for me!

3 weeks til payday.

Silver_Queen

Another quick update.

OH's deposit will not be paid for another month, apparently...

Quick round up of balances again:

Account balances
LISA: £8,950(ish - this fluctuates!)
2nd savings: £14,000
Current acc 1 (daily spending): £394.81
Current acc 2 (bills): £112.05
Current acc 3 (other & random): £39.25
Current acc 4 (new account for sign up bonus): £150



Outstanding
£7,500 on parents loan
£20,000 on family loan
£308 on my Amex
£0 on Barclaycard - turns out it was £11, just paid it.
£13.32 on Clarity - it has a DD set up so I'll just wait for the DD, otherwise it will be overpaid


Goal
My next goal is to have £25k across my savings and LISA, so that I have a bigger deposit to play with. Currently have £22,950 so another £2,050 to go.

Starting to shop for Christmas now, so expensive! Ironically, this year will be cheaper because I'm buying one big gift per person rather than multiple small ones that end up costing more.

In non money news, I tried a "luxury" tights brand recently after being relentlessly advertised. Tights are the bane of my existence and I'm always looking for ones that don't fall down. Well, I love these luxury tights! I got 2 pairs for £13 in the end but they usually cost in the region of £20 each...definitely out of my budget. However, I've just found out that M&$ do a knock off for way cheaper, so I'm a happy bunny.

Silver_Queen

Long time no update!

I made a rookie error this month. Got a bit mixed up with my numbers and transferred all my savings, including travel card savings, into a high interest account. My travel card is expiring shortly!

Can transfer the money out but will lose out in interest. I do have a 0% deal still on my Barclaycard until 2020, but was not wanting to use that anymore.

Thinking of just whacking it on my Amex and then having a really, really poor month next month. December is a short month...

Kicking myself for being so silly, though. Argh.

EssexHebridean

Apoogies, picking up on this late.

OK - is the account you've transferred into one that you can withdraw money penalty free after a certain amount of notice? Or is it fully locked away? If the former then I'd say whack in the notice for the withdrawal, use the Barclaycard, and then 0% be damned - just clear it off when the saved money becomes available?

Silver_Queen

Hey EH. Long time no "talk"!

In the end I put it on my amex for the sake of the points (we're trying to save up points to go on a big holiday in 2021!). I'm going to have a poor-ish month and will take out £500 from my savings to pay the amex off. Combined with my various stashes of cash in my accounts, that should be enough. The travelcard costs just a smidge over £2k.

I'll get hit with a penalty but it's only a 0.5% reduction of interest for the month, so it's not gonna kill me!

Silver_Queen

Things are getting shaken up a little bit in the SQ household

I now have a joint account with my OH and will be splitting all household costs with him 50/50. This translates to us each transferring £600 per month into the joint account. We're keeping an eye on this to see whether it needs to be more, but the intention is for it to cover rent & bills (£750 per month), groceries, eating out, travel to visit either family, presents (all xmas presents already bought though) and holidays. We'll probably bump this up to £750 each after xmas so we can have a good buffer.

I'm a bit confused about how to organise my own finances around this, though! Any input from people with a similar set up would be helpful...

EssexHebridean

We work on the basis of having an agreed amount for ourselves each month with the balance landing in the joint account for general bills and "joint savings" - our split is not 50/50 because he earns rather a lot more than I do.

It's then up to us to sort out what we do with our own money outside of that - from my perspective I split it between longer term savings, budgeting for clothes, fun stuff and the expenses that come, for me, with the airshow season, and covering things like routine spending money when out and about, my monthly gym pass, my handful of DD's (2 magazine subscriptions, my phone) and anything else I need to spend in a month.

We cover the bulk of our travel costs from joint expenditure - as most of the diesel and MrEH's Oyster top-ups are work travel related. We do top up Oysters when needed ourselves though if a lot of personal travel has been made. Other travel together usually comes from joint expenditure. We budget for transfers to come out of the joint account each month into our savings "pots" for holiday costs, car costs, presents and other bits and bobs, as well as the longer term savings. Anything that is surplus at the end of the month gets transferred out - currently to top up the EF after it took a battering earlier in the year, although once that is sorted we'll be reverting to that surplus going to the longer term savings pot.

Silver_Queen

EssexHebridean wrote: »

We work on the basis of having an agreed amount for ourselves each month with the balance landing in the joint account for general bills and "joint savings" - our split is not 50/50 because he earns rather a lot more than I do.

This is something I need to talk to my OH about! He earns about £8k less than I do, so it would make sense for me to pay in more, but his pension is much, much better than mine (think 4 x the amount of employer contribution every month) so I need to focus more on my pension. (Slightly) annoyingly, he is very laid back so I could probably tell him I'm going to contribute half of what he does, and he'd be fine with it :rotfl:


In other news, I've been told there's been some movement on the flat! The inspection has FINALLY taken place and my solicitors reckon I might be able to complete before Christmas, if the report comes back this week as expected. Trouble is, I have outstanding balances on my credit cards so when my mortgage company run a final check on me, they aren't gonna like it. To this end, I took out £1k from my high interest saver and paid off my credit card, and will just take the hit on the penalty. It should only be about £5 penalty anyway so that's fine.