Rawr_'s Saving Diary

ToTheBatcave

Sorry to read about your ongoing housing troubles rawr! I can't imagine how frustrating it is to feel like you've wasted £1300 but it has probably saved you far more in money and stress in the long run if you had bought the house which might be a bit of a silver lining.

Hope something comes along sooner rather than later

rawr_

Thanks ToTheBatCave

Well we've since had some good news? And I think maybe fate is a bit at play here? There is this street we pass on the way to work everyday that we really like, perfect to the cats, school right at the end, quiet - nice houses - and we always said 'ahh if only a house came up down there'...

Well you guessed it. THE DAY we pulled out of our house sale, a house popped up on rightmove down there. I couldn't believe it! We went to see it last night and it was perfect. There isn't anything we didn't like about it, nothing we needed to compromise on. It is so meant to be. Well long story short we put an offer in this morning and it's already been accepted! :rotfl:

Angel in disguise or what?!!

rawr_

Current Savings: £3500.31 (58.34% of 6K)
Current House Savings: £17,755.83
Expendable Income left: £168.70
Food Budget left: £49.26

A quick update on the budgets for this week. Got the in-laws here so had spent a little bit more than usual on the food shop this week. But should have enough to see us through the week after - may have to dip into my money (really need to stop that habit).

Current savings is doing ok, apart from the £300 I had to take out for the oil. It also may take a hit because of the house costs - will all depend on when the sale goes through as your vendors are looking for somewhere now. We're hoping after Christmas now as it will then let us replace the costs we spent on the other house, and plus it's getting close to Christmas now and would rather worry about it all afterwards now anyway!

Expendable income took a hit due to Mr Rawr's 30th a couple of weeks ago - but I knew this would be the case. Trying to put some money away for Christmas now, but at the moment it's a struggle! My mums birthday is also coming up so will need to get something from this months pay.

House savings is all ready to go - will be a little bit left over once the deposit is paid - we'll need to buy a cooker for this property so this will probably cover this.

A quick update today but as I hadn't really done one in a while thought I had better!

rawr_

So it's been a while since I updated, apologies for that it's been a busy few weeks which I'll explain...

Current Savings: £3700.31 (61.67% of 6K)
Current House Savings: £17,279.83
Expendable Income left: £191.87
Food Budget left: £181.81

Current savings have taken a real hit, and will continue to do so now until the new year, which is due to the house - we'll be moving into our new house in January. No date as of yet but our sellers have found a property now with no onward chain, so will be early in the new year. Our house savings have took some hits in the last few months due to us pulling out of a previous sale - but the good news is we've now paid for searches, building survey and the valuation survey with just a little bit over the deposit money left. So instead of putting what we have been into our current savings, this money is having to go into the house fund to pay the solicitor fees which should be after Christmas. It's been quite lucky really, as it's going to give us just enough time to save for the fees, and still have some left over to buy a cooker which we'll need to get quite soonish when we move in.

Expendable income wise, I'm not doing too bad. I was hoping to have around £200 left over after this month to put into Christmas savings (which is in another account, currently at £92) - but I already have less than that so will just have to put in what ever is left! I've just started going to Kuk Sool Won (Martial arts) which will be a monthly fee that will come out of this budget. I'll find out tonight how much that will be, but my mum has offered to pay the £45 joining fee for me for Christmas so I don't have to worry about that

Food budget wise we're doing fairly well. Not too worried about going over this month, I think we'll manage to come under. We're going to have a house full over Christmas so I'm hoping the in laws contribute to the bill like they did last year!

Today should be a NSD - hoping to start keeping track of these again. I'm staying late at work today, so as long as I can resist going to get a coffee before training later, I'll be fine! Hope you are all having good weeks so far

Rawr_ x

rawr_

Current Savings: £3700.31 (61.67% of 6K)
Current House Savings: £17,579.83 (£279.83 over the deposit)
Expendable Income left: £93.55
Food Budget left: £91.43

It's been a whole 10 days since my last update. As you can see from my budgets I've been behaving myself since my last post current savings are still the same (explained why in my last post).

Current house savings are slowly on the up. By next Friday that number will grow to £579.83 as I get paid next week it's nice when you can see the numbers growing, it's hard on the days in-between where it doesn't seem like your making much progress!!

Expendable income wise, I've spent around £100 on Christmas presents this week, so I'm feeling ok with this spend as it needed to be done. I've also spent most of the £93 I had in another savings account I opened for Christmas spending. I reckon I still have roughly £200 left to spend on gifts - and I haven't even thought about the extra food spend yet...

I'm so proud of us for the food budgets this month, this is good for us as means I won't have to dip into my expendable income to cover the food costs. Mr Rawrs doing the shopping tonight so I can go to training, which I'm really enjoying been ages since I've been able to focus on something fun that doesn't really matter

I've had quite a few NSD's recently too, so that has deffo helped! Hope everyone has had a good week. :cool:

rawr_

Happy new year to you all! I know a lot of people don't like that 'new year, new me' rubbish, but a new year is always a good excuse to set some new goals a refocus.

Current Savings: £3263.67 (54.39% of 6K)
Current House Savings: £18,579.83 (£1479.83 over the deposit)
Expendable Income left: £72.47
Food Budget left: £173.12

Main goal for this year is to hot the 6K mark in the savings. This will be harder now that it will just be me putting in money as we'll be starting to pay the mortgage later in January (still not sure when yet as haven't signed the contracts yet on the house). But I'm confident that if all goes well I'll be able to hit it. It's gone down a bit in the last few months as we had a few unexpected things to pay for, and Christmas was a struggle as we had guests round we were feeding (next year I'm not offering to do it because it just crippled me and now I'm exhausted!).

House savings are going good, now enough to cover Solicitor fees and to buy an oven which was the goal. May even have some money left over to get some other house bits, we'll see!

Goals for 2019:
- Get to 6K in savings!
- Get our food spend down by cooking more meals from scratch.
- Stop buying things I don't need.
- Focus more on what I want and stop worrying about everyone else (be more selfish!).

Mr Rawr will be starting his online course that he needs to do in order to go to Uni, so we're thinking he won't go now until 2020 which should ease some pressure off future finances for now. He has shares with work that he's going to cash in for his first years Uni fees but thats a problem for later. This year I need to do some 'trial' months for when he is at Uni and on placement to see how we handle it financially, but I need to wait until we're settled in our new home first.

I hope everyones had a lovely new year and have some goals to focus on in 2019!

rawr_

Current Savings: £3263.67 (54.39% of 6K)
Current House Savings: £18,779.83 (£1679.83 over the deposit)
Expendable Income left: £148.74
Food Budget left: £71.51

How is it not the middle of the month yet! January is dragging so much! Nothing much happening money wise, house fund is still going up gradually, but that will come to an end soon as we now have the contracts through for our exchange. :j So hopefully the move will happen in a few weeks time!

Food budget wise, as you can see we're pretty screwed this month :rotfl: tonight will be a challenge but I think we can have a really cheap week this week. We have a fair bit in the freezer so it should be fine.

Expendable income wise however I'm pretty happy, I've not really spent a huge amount since Christmas. This of course could vanish when the move happens - will all depend if we have enough to cover the solicitor fees, the oven and the hire of the van.

Anyway... not much else to say! Hope everyone had a good week.

rawr_

Meal plan time - I did a very small shop last night as I couldn't be bothered to go to Ald!, and didn't want to do my full shop In T*sco cause it's always more expensive.

Today I had to take a trip to town anyway and take some stuff to the tip. I want to recycle as much as possible as we have a lot of stuff to get rid of. A lot of it's going to the charity shop, but theres some stuff like old bedsheets that I wanted to recycle. After that we went to Ald! - I'm used to doing the shopping on my own but it was nice to have Mr Rawr there for a change to help with the packing

Meals this week:
- Tonight we are out for tea and a trip to the pictures!
- Vegetable tarts with Cauliflower cheese and roasties (Sunday)
- Bolognese (Mr Rawr like to cook this so I save this for Mondays when I go to my martial arts class)
- Bean, burgers, chips and salad
- Hot dogs (using some reduced soysages I got from MandS)
- Jacket potatoes, beans and soysages.

We usually have pasta more than once a week and this meal plan brings us up to Thursday, as I'll do the shopping on Friday. I'll probably need to top up on bread for packed lunches, and maybe some bananas for me, but apart from that I'm hoping I won't have to buy too much. I haven't added up my shops yet but I spent around £38 this week. So should still leave me enough in the budget for the final week before I get paid!

I'm also going to be making slowcooker bread tomorrow (whhaaaaaa?!) as I saw a recipe and really want to give it a go. I want to do a 'sugar-free' February next month to cut down on my sugar intake, so trying this recipe with bread will be good as all the store bought ones have added sugar. I'll also be making some Profiterole Donuts (after I've just said I want to cut my sugar intake :rotfl: ). I made them last week and they were soooo good. Since being vegan we do miss all those cream cakes, so this is such a lovely treat for us!

rawr_

Today was supposed to be a packing day. We popped into town this morning to close our Help to Buy ISA's ready to give to our solicitor next week, and popped to Sainsbobs to get a loaf tin. Also looked around and drooled over their kitchen ware. Spent £2.50 on the loaf tin and happy to say I didn't cave to anything else.

Got home around lunchtime so me and Mr Rawr had some soup, and then he went on his computer to chat to his brothers. I don't like to deny his time with them as one is in South Korea working, and the others up in the Highlands. I packed one box, after struggling to know whether Mr Rawr wanted to keep a lot of it, so I came downstairs and relaxed for a bit.

This afternoon however I have made my first ever vegan lemon drizzle cake, which we're yet to try later. Also made a white bean casserole which is bubbling away on the hob as we speak. Just need to mix in some dairy free coconut yoghurt and it's good to go. These meals have come in so cheaply, I really need to remind myself to use my weekend time to cook meals from scratch!

Todays spend: £2.50 (Personal Account)

rawr_

So I've been going through my budgets tonight, and trawling through my personal account on online banking because I seem to have spent quite a lot this month with nothing to show for it. With it being Xmas I guess it makes it a bit of an odd month, but still! My biggest spends it seems have been lunch and coffees (seeing people over the holidays) which is a whopping £50 roughly. I also meet up with my mum for a coffee once a week, which we take in turns paying for. This is something I really need to get under control next month.

I also over paid in my fuel spend (went over my £100 budget) by around £20. Not too much but will keep an eye on this incase I need to up my budget to cover it in future, again it might just be because of Christmas. I also spent nearly £40 on flowers this week to send to my grandmother-in-law as Mr R's step father passed away this week. I said I'd go halves with him so he put the other half into the joint account, which I rightly thought I would need for our food shop this week.

Current budgets: All empty now apart from my personal spend which has £45.43 left. There is some money left in our joint account, but this was paid in by Mr R ages ago to go towards some extra electric he was using (long story) - so will need that when we settle the account in a couple of weeks due to moving.

Speaking of moving, we have our completion date which is 31st January! We'll be waiting until the Saturday to move, which is the 2nd of Feb - so it's all systems go (and 100% why I should have been packing today...)

Meal plan for the week as it stands is:
- Tonight we had the white bean casserole which was a first for me, really liked it so will be making that again. Plus it was CHEAP and easy, and full of protein. The lemon drizzle cake was amazing and I'll be putting lemons on next weeks shopping list so I can make another one next weekend!!
- Tomorrow will be vegetable tart (which I have in the freezer from Christmas) with roasties and brocolli.
- Monday - Mr R's speciality bolognese (he likes to cook this as I train on Monday nights).
- Tuesday - Spicy bean burgers and chips, may do it without the rolls we'll see (another easy meal as I'm intending to go training Tuesday night this week too).
- Wednesday - 'Cheesy' Pasta - Vegan style, white sauce with nutritional yeast. Bit more time consuming but Wednesday nights is Mr R's driving lesson night (he is still learning...) so I have until 7.30pm to get dinner ready.
- Thursday - Hotdogs and chips - I like a nice easy meal on a Thursday night for the run up to Friday. 'Soysages' that I got reduced from M*S last week for 60p, bargain!! Need to remember to stop in on the odd night after work to get these reductions. So good to stick stuff like this into the freezer!

Friday is then payday (and our shopping day), which I'm counting down the days too (literally, 6 days to go!). Don't really know if anyone is reading this anymore, and don't know if anyone is interested in my vegan meal planning, but holla at me if you are?