Aligning the Stars

WelshKitty85

Congratulations on the new job!

Star_Mummy_2

Hi All- It's me SM.
It has taken me 3 weeks to try and get back onto my account since the change and It just won't work. So new name but same diary.

We are just back from a lovely half term near Lisbon, my 'glow' is making the girls in the office rather jealous. It was a lovely frugal break. £300 per person all in (parking, flights, car hire, food, entertainment, rent of an apartment). We stayed in Cascais- would really recommend it. Such a beautiful place and a really good sea front for a morning run.

I'm on the wind down with work, 12 working days until I move on to pastures new.
I'm really excited about the new job, but I will be moving to a mid-month payday and for some reason this is thoroughly confusing my little brain, given I've always been paid month end.
So any tips on adjusting to a new pay date welcome. Thankfully Mr Star can pick up the slack in the budget for a couple of weeks. ( I leave her on 11th- start new job 16th, so last pay day here will be 11 days salary a end of March from current job, then full payday for new job on 15th April)

Star_Mummy_2

DrSpendingLittle said:

DrSpendLittle said:

Hope all is okay Starmummy x

Oh look, its my old self

It seems we have the same issues with technology- I have a masters degree- it shouldn't be this hard    

Star_Mummy_2

Hi All.
It's payday at last- and my last full payday from my current job.
I've syphoned off Credit card payments and paid the final little bit on the car I bought in January.

I have decided the new forum and new job warrants a new diary so that's what I will be doing once i've had my first pay cheque from my new job (mid April).
The extra salary has awoken a slightly new approach along the Dave Ramsey baby steps route, which i'll go into detail with when I start my new diary.


We are still umming and arring about the extension- siding on not doing it right now as the stress and disruption probably isn't worth it, a new boiler and bathroom will be far cheaper and easier and will satisfy our needs in the house.

Star_Mummy_2

I suppose I sould update on February spends ha ha

Well we spent half term in Portugal and it turned out to be a bargain break. It was £1040 all in. (apartment rental, flights, airport parking, car hire, groceries, eating out, icecreams, train fare to Lisbon...) It was soooo nice to get some winter sun. The trip was paid totally from the joint account, so I don't count this as personal spending.

Personal spending: I've been busy off ebay and have bought 2x whistles blouses, a zara dress, a reiss suit trouser suit (BNWT) and 2x separate reiss blazers for £150. The new job requires me to be well dressed (suits for meetings) so I needed to update my wardrobe and I think I've done really well. Not cheap but excellent value.
I spent my £10 book token on two books (paid a balancing payment of £3.98.
I spent £5 on a new swim cap.
I spent £20 on valentines gifts for MRS and SC (beer and chocs)

March is going to have to be a low spend month, as I will only receive 7 working days pay at the end of March as new job payday is 16th of the month. I need to make sure I can survive the gap between paydays as the last pay I will receive will only cover basic debt payments and essential bills and a small contribution to the joint account.

I have talked about the joint account a lot but never really explained what it does.
The house is Mr S's So the mortgage and all household bills are paid by him. I transfer £800 a month into our joint account. This covers food, holidays, gifts, fuel, meals out, child expenses like uniform and additional club costs and holidays childcare, small house costs (paint, small maintenance items- MrS pays big expenses like getting the chimney swept or the boiler service- big renovation stuff) etc.
It might not be agreeable with a lot of people but it works for us. It sees him paying 30% more than me as he benefits from the equity in the house, but we both feel like we pay our share to live the lifestyle we live. Nobody is carrying the other or feeling taken advantage of.

In the future we will look to probably buy together and this will then all change.

Star_Mummy_2

I just did an overview of Joint account spending - we technically kept in line with spending under £60 a week on groceries. The reality is we didn't as one week we were in Portugal, so if we divide the monthly spend by the days we were in the country...we overspent.
March is already up to £80. I shouldn't need to buy anything until MrS is back from his work trip next Tuesday though.

All my debt payments for the month have gone out £340, for the final payment of the car I bought in Jan, £350.51 for my usual loan payment, £196.24 to my credit card. This brings the CC to a round £4k.

I'm so annoyed at myself for hovering around the 10k mark for the last 6 months, being annoyed won't change the fact though so forwards I go.

I've created a shiny new budget spreadsheet for my new mindset. It has 2 budgets, the first covers March through to mid July. I'm calling this my 'transition' budget. I've done this because the change of salary and payday is going to mess around with things for the next few months. I'm not sure what my true salary will be in take home payment terms as the new job means messing up pensions and childcare vouchers as well. By July this should all have settled down.

My Baby steps for the new Approach.

1) Pay off last car payment (March 2020) DONE   
2) Pay off professional fees on CC2 (April 2020)
3) Save £1000 in EF (May 2020)
4) Snowball debt, first CC1 (current £4000), 2nd Loan (current £6300)- (Jan 2021/Sep 2021)
5) Get EF to £9k (could live off that comfortably for 6m, would also be enough to replace car/get me back on my feet in worst scenario) - (March 2022)
6) Save £30k to buy a rental property (Currently c.£3k)
7) Increase my pension contribution to 30% of salary (should already be at 15% when WBP kicks in at new job)

The plan should see some easy wins over the next couple of months which should keep me motivated.The above plan does see an average of £1100 a month going towards putting myself in a better financial position. I am so lucky I am able to do that. For those wondering how I got into this mess if I can now afford to do this- 5 years ago I was a single parent with private rent in an expensive area earning half my new salary. - The sacrifice I have made to get qualified has definitely paid off salary-wise.

As well as the baby steps I'm going to start putting money into pots each payday. I know this isn't a new idea but I was always playing catch-up before. I'm ready to be strict now.
my pots will be as follows (from April)
* Car Maintenance/Insurance £75 (this is high, my insurance is only £300 a year and no VED, but anything left can go towards replacing the car in the distant future- I say distant, my car is only 5 years old but it is high mileage and diesel)
* Clothing £50
* Holidays £100 (this is also fairly high but I have a couple of solo commitments this year which don't come out of the joint budget)
* Gifts £50 (it will be interesting having a budget for the first time- annoyingly I have no pot to pull from this month and have MrS birthday, my Nephews birthday and my Grandmothers 80th all in the next 4 weeks- as well as mothers day)

I've set a S/O to go from my current account to Monzo on payday and recurring payments in Monzo to go into the pots.
I hope this works and I don't cheat myself.

Suffolk_lass

Just reassure me you are not paying interest on any of that debt - while having an emergency fund is essential, £3k in your aspirational savings place only works if you are making more from that than you are paying in debt interest. At the very least you should be moving any interest accruing credit card debt to a 0%, £0 fee card, and making minimum payments while you push the rest of that money to paying down and off a loan as fast as possible then, to free up that cash to get the next one, in the way of the magic snowball. I like your sink funds (pots) for the different things - that is all good. I don't suppose any child maintenance has miraculously appeared?

Star_Mummy_2

Hi Suffolk,
The current £3k savings are in a LISA so i have the tax-back bonus, definitely better 'interest' rate than the 2.9% of the loan. It also means I can't access this to repay the loan.
Rest assured I will be throwing anything spare at repaying the loan quicker. I have had some luck with CMS, it's now been 8 months since I had received anything. They threatened him with legal action and judging by my online statement he has started to pay something, I haven't received it yet though- this will all be going to loan over payments.If I do receive at least half the maintenance payments this year and I'm super frugal. I'll be debt free by christmas....we shall see.

I'm actually not sure if I can overpay on a First Direct loan, the small print is vague. I need to phone and find out, otherwise i'll tidy it into my Marcus and earn something on it until i can repay in full.

I think my approach the past 2 years has been so scattered as I just wanted to fix it all. So small, achievable, focused goals is this years approach.

Star_Mummy_2

The Credit card(CC1) is interest free for another 18 months too...CC2 isn't hense paying the £298 balance is the priority for next pay day.

I guess I should overpay the loan first...I'll look into increasing my DD. I've never ever missed a payment on a debt- bills always get paid- If It just goes out of my account I can't spend it elsewhere right?

Let me play with my spreadsheet

Suffolk_lass

Well done (and I am reassured, in an aunty sort of way)