Rawr_'s Saving Diary

rawr_

Thank you both!

It's exciting, and I can't wait to go shopping for a few new bits but am holding off until things have progressed a bit more! Want to paint a couple of the rooms, will need to buy a dishwasher, couple of furnishings but other than that we'll be quite happy for a while until we need anything major!

We're going to need to get a new sofa, as sadly we don't think our corner sofa is going to fit. But we're going to just live with it separated for a while as it splits in half, and see how we go until we're desperate. It's going to be hard to not get things that make the house look nice though as we've been waiting a long time for it :rotfl:

Homegrown0

I know what you mean, it'll be hard to restrain yourself and figure out what is NEEDED vs what is WANTED. We have been in our house almost 4 years and when we moved in every single house needed attention (still does). But we got all new flooring, every room got a lick of paint and we got new blinds, and that's pretty much all we've done because of affordability. Once our youngest is in school in two year,s we'll be in a position to start cracking on with the major work. There's no point in doing little bits now when massive stuff will be getting done in a couple of years. But it's hard to look around and not love the place.

It'll happen in time though

*little.squirrel*

Congratulations on the house Rawr_!!! That's fantastic news.

I would keep an eye on selling sites for furniture too. Some people appear to buy new sofas and then sell them on really quickly. We got ours for £50 each and they are in great condition. Plus, with a couple of small kiddos we didn't want to spend too much and then find them getting stained really easily.

ChasingSunshine

Congratulations!! That is fantastic news, fingers crossed everything progresses smoothly so you can get in and start making it your own.

rawr_

Thanks everyone you're all too kind! And thanks for the buying second hand tip. Don't think any of our furniture is brand new - we bought our sofa second hand when we moved in together 4 years ago and will probably do the same again. Mum's also giving us her dining room table as they want to get rid of it anyway, hardly been used and it's nice.

I made the big mistake of popping into N3xt on the way home last night and looking at all their home stuff :eek: forgot how expensive they are! So won't be buying anything from there

I love a bargain so will be on the look out for anything second hand or mega cheap! May even wait for January sales for some things that we can hold off buying. Its just the wait now that's not so fun, I just want to get in there now!

Quick update on other things, Mr Rawrs money went into savings yesterday so up to £3200, plus I rounded it off as it was annoying me being an odd number! Also did the food shop yesterday. Haven't added up what I spent yet as went to 3 different supermarkets (we are vegan and can get certain things from different supermarkets) but think its around the £65 mark which is about right for us at the moment.

Hope you all have lovely weekends! :j

rawr_

Current Savings: £3300 (55% of 6K)
Current House Savings: £18,355.83
Expendable Income left: £239.15
Food Budget left: £97.87

So week 41 (officially starts tomorrow) - just a little update on how the budgets are going, and our savings pots too.

Current savings: Otherwise known as our baby fund at the moment. Super happy with this number so far - once we have a completion date on the house, Mr Rawr will stop paying into this account and then start paying into our joint account ready for when the mortgage starts coming out. He gets paid weekly so it makes sense to start putting the money in earlier, otherwise I'll have to try and cover it. Once this happens, I'll be the only one paying into this account - I aim for £200 per month - some months I manage more. I've recently opened another savings account for Christmas/Birthdays, which now has £31 in. So I anticipate putting more excess from my expendable into this ready for Christmas. After Christmas I'll be able to reassess and decide whether I need to start putting more into the 'baby fund'!

House savings: This has depleted slightly as I've paid out of this for the searches for our solicitor (£250) and have transferred £188 to my account ready for the valuation survey money to come out. Everything is ticking along very slowly, hoping to have some news on that soon.

Expendable Income: Spent £68.35 so far this month - a few shop bought lunches here and there, coffees with friends and my mum. Also spent a bit on some vitamins - I wasn't well a few weeks ago so have bought some cranberry tablets and also some probiotics from H&B. It all starts adding up doesn't it? But I'm still pleased I have over £200 left, as I'm still contemplating a big gift for Mr Rawr's 30th at the end of the month. I'll probably use some of this months pay and some of next because of when it falls!

Food budget: I overspent a little last week - but I should still have plenty to cover us until the 25th, which is the end of the month for us.

Seems like it was a bit of a long update tonight! Nothing else new. Apart from been having a hard time at work lately - been really stressed and to be honest unhappy. I'd cut out caffeine since being ill, and I went and got a coffee on my lunch break on Thursday, and forgot to ask for decaff - and then I felt absolutely fine. So basically my lack of caffeine was causing me to feel depressed. I've also felt fine all weekend, so may have to have a caffeinated tea/coffee in small hits! Weird though, really didn't think it would make me feel like that.

Hope everything is going well for everyone else

rawr_

Oh and it turns out we won't have to buy a dishwasher, as the inlaws have said we can take their old one, and if it doesn't work they'll buy us a new one they're so generous and have helped us so so much, I'm so grateful. So this means we'll have around £480 left of the house budget to spend on other bits! I've recently decided I really want an american style fridge freezer, which I'm planning on getting second hand from facebook marketplace :j want to spend around £250 so we'll see!

rawr_

I've been spending the last two days tearing my hair out going from company to company about buildings surveys :eek: but think I've finally found one that I am happy with, so will be booking that tomorrow (a nice £700 out of the house fund...). Will probably mean I'll have to pay for the solicitor fees out of our savings pot, but needs must. Just a little disheartening to know it'll go down and also take a lot longer to go back up!

Things are moving slowly on the house. Had a load of stuff through the other day from the solicitor and had a few things to query - starting to understand why this is such a long process now.

Current Savings: £3400 (56.67% of 6K)
Current House Savings: £18,355.83
Expendable Income left: £188.79
Food Budget left: £23.20

My expendable income went down slightly as we went for a meal on Saturday and was my treat . Food budget has to last us until Tuesday, so will need to be careful. Who am I kidding, I'll end up going into my money probably.

I'm really looking forward to Friday, as mum has booked us to go to a Spa for the day and have a couple of treatments too! I so so so need this, I'm so burnt out! I'll then be shopping on Saturday with my friend, she has a graduation coming up, and I'm going to her graduation ball. She needs a dress - I have a dress that I haven't worn before, so will save money there. Will need some heels though, but I have about £100 of my birthday money left (which I keep in a separate purse otherwise it'll just get spent in everyday stuff). So an unusually filled weekend for me which I'm really looking forward too!

I've also been thinking a lot lately about starting to pay a little more back each month on my car loan to get it paid off quicker - but I think this is something I need to revisit once the house purchase and Christmas is out of the way...

rawr_

Payday today! :j Yesterday was a crap start to the week, Mr Rawr broke his phone (luckily his sim only contract ends this month) so we'll be sorting that out after work today. Not something he needed and feel a bit bad for him, horrible when stuff like that happens!

The building survey for the house got done yesterday, so should get the report for that by the end of the week. Not as worried about the results as I was, as they said they'd call if there was anything major.

This months an expensive month as will be buying Mr Rawrs birthday present tomorrow. His big 30 on Friday so it warranted something a little more special and something he really wanted. I also need to get new front tyres for the car this weekend before the weather starts getting bad. And a new headlight. I'll also want to be putting a little bit away for Christmas my pay is going to have to stretch quite far this month! Luckily it's only 4 weeks until the next payday.

I've been mega stressed this week. I have a charity event I'm running on Friday at work and people are so unreliable!! This is the last time I do something like this. I do it all off my own back on top of all my other work - and it is just not worth my sanity. What annoys me is people jump to say they'll help you to encourage you to run the event, then when it actually comes to it nobody wants to know. What's more is I didn't want to do it because I'm not going to be here for Mr Rawrs birthday. I'm hoping it's all over very quickly and pain free... and then I can have a 3 day weekend and put it all behind me!

No updates on money this time as we're at the start of the budgets so they're all healthy. Hoping to save quite a bit on food this month so will be trying to be careful. And I'm into the 10k for my car loan - hoping I can start paying off more on this next year to get it paid off quicker.

Have a good week people :cool:

rawr_

So it's been a few weeks since my last update - sorry about that

We've had a bit of a rubbish week or so. Stuff with the house purchase has gone a little pear shaped - we have the buildings survey back, which flagged up a few problems (one of them being a fairly expensive job). And on top of that, the sellers (after three weeks since we asked might I add) have finally admitted they have no OFTEC Compliance Certificate for the oil boiler :eek: which annoyed me to no end. Things have just been stacking up, and it's starting to feel like they've done nothing properly, trying to cut corners everywhere, and we really don't feel like we should take on that risk.

We're gutted, as not only have we lost out on around £1300, but we're not going to have to go through all of this again! :mad: They were so dishonest and I'm so so angry. Today was the day we actually pulled out, after having the weekend to discuss and decide, as we had the bulk of the info on Friday. I'm feeling really down now to be honest, but trying to focus on the positives:

- It's not like we are renting and need to panic about getting out of our house - we've spoken to Mr Rawr's parents about the situation and they are in complete agreement with us. They just want us to find the right place.
- We can easily save the money lost back up again in a few months (even though that will now mean we are not paying into the savings account anymore this year - sorry that was a bad point )
- Don't have to worry about moving all our stuff just before Christmas!

I'm not going to do a total update on budgets right now cause I'm really not in the mood - but everything else is fine apart from we had to take £300 out of our savings account because Mr Rawr misjudged how much oil we had left - so we've been without hot water or heating for a week we'll have it by Wednesday though so all is ok and I wasn't angry at him cause we've both been under a lot of stress lately.

Hope everyone is having a better start to the week than I am!!!!! :T