Ongoing Journey to being a Frugalista..

brizzlegirl

Beanie Lou.. you say the nicest things Thank you!!!

Just finishing off some testing and cooking dinner for DD2. You apparently can’t go wrong with spag Bol (have secretly added lentils for bulk tho - very :money: and healthier too!)

Have a good week all

X

brizzlegirl

By the way that’s History testing rather than food testing...

In many ways maybe Food Tech testing would have been more fun!!!! :think:

Sun_Addict

I love the way you all pull together in your family, it makes a difference when you’re all singing from the same hymn sheet. You’ve set your girls up well to be financially savvy in the future xx

And I agree with Beanie you are an awesome mum

greent

All sounds good, brizzle :T - most impressed you have DD1's first rent payment already taken care of in YNAB! :T

jwil

Have a good weekend

brizzlegirl

Thanks all

Weather looks promising here for the weekend..love it .

I will go for a run later..just making sure my dinner and essential morning coffee has settled!! I am alone in the house so have had a look at the scores on the doors for May. Its better than I thought :T:rotfl::cool:...crazily so. So despite the following 'failures'..

- new upholstered chair for our bedroom (now designated as my 'reading' chair ) It was good value from a company we have used before but a treat. OH also replaced his broken headphones (apparently they are essential?)
- £200 a week on groceries!!.. :eek: I am blaming my regular trips to the SM to pick up treats for the revising child plus a shop at Trose.. this HAS to go down next month. Its the worst month for grocery spend this year.
- went out with OH three times (and once with friends) and we spent a lot on amazing food and drink..but cheaper than counselling I guess
- motorhome spend has rumbled on. This month it was storage fees. But should be reaching end of the tunnel on that before the main car needs to be serviced, insured etc. Again deep joy (but said with slightly more reluctance...)
- not a failure but definitely an unexpected spend, sending DD1 some money to cover a few unexpected health bills and well, cos she's my daughter and she's overseas

Have to say by the Dominguez/Robin mark these are all things that I am happy to spend money on, so maybe 'failures' isn't the right phrase exactly. But they have not always been forecast or budgeted for and thats what we need to get better at.

But despite ALL this we managed to save, invest and put against debt 37% of our income for the month :T

Not bad at all. Maybe we are learning? And hopefully this is growing into being a habit. However also shows how much more we could have done if we had kept the purse strings tight...:o but oh well. June is another month

Seriously though we do need to be careful. I may have a tax instalment to pay next month plus I am now fairly sure that my tax code for the new role is wrong. I have asked the accountant to look at it when she does the company stuff. There is also a child to start helping with uni costs from October onwards. Any of the tax/company sorting out could result in payments I guess which have the potential to massively throw my debt busting plans awry. But its great to see all the debt totals going down on the spreadsheet and the investments (despite market corrections) going up. And if we do need to pay tax etc, the money is there in an ISA rather than having to put onto a CC. Thats a big change.

So a quick round up of the Super Six Brizzle Household Financial Goals and how we are faring against each of them...

1. Savings Rate - 40%. Not achieved but close, 37% (and just reminded how much better it is than April )
2. Debt to be completely gone by April 2020 - on track. All CCs have gone down and the spreadsheet forecast looks tough but doable.
3. Remove reliance on CCs for cash flow - this is tricky and think we will need to go slow turkey rather than cold turkey. I have pensioned off one but we have two we tend to use to ease cash flow and then pay back on pay days...but it'd be much better to eliminate
4. Build up EF - nada. Hopefully the FL money will help this and it needs to be more a priority as all the stuff I read (which makes sense) is that in order to resolve 3. I need to have 4. to deal with emergencies and 'stuff' which happens over the year. Like vehicle repairs.
5. Build up MOJO fund - ravaged by recent cashflow problems. Also work in progress. But the words of Mr. Barefoot Investor are still being worked to so we are keeping a MOJO fund in play...
6. TT every day - this happens most days. Love it. Its a great little way of making baby steps towards the goal. Can't wait to start flipping it towards the pension and the mortgage rather than credit card debts...

Have just updated signature goals too. Have already done a big de-clutter yesterday so well on my way to that target but LSDs and NSDs are proving elusive. Need to get the exercise into being a habit also. As ever, always work in progress me

Think that's it folks, have a great weekend, hope its sunny and calm where you are. Its perfect cricketing weather

Brizzle xx

pennywisepoundstupid

All sounding pretty fantastic Brizzle, have a great weekend xx

XSpender

Hi Brizzle

Well done on the great results for May. Glad the weather is looking good for you, it's miserable up here.

Can I ask a couple of questions please?

- Do you include capital repayments to your mortgage in your savings rate calculation? DH has just had an epiphany about paying the mortgage off early (at last :j) and I am trying to think of figures and things that would keep him focussed on what will be a 10 year goal as we also need to save and pay off some 0% debt at the same time

- Did you find the Barefoot Investor very Australian based? I looked it up on Am@z0n after reading about it here but the reviews put me off a bit as many said it wasn't relatable but I have read here how it has worked for you

Enjoy the rest of your weekend x

brizzlegirl

Thanks PWPS and XS

Great to see you XS! You’ve been missed

Have put on a brew and pulled up a chair...:

No I don’t as I regard the Brizzle mortgage payment (which is on a repayment mortgage) as neither savings or an investment really. I regard it as a bill or an expense so that’s in the 63% if you see what I mean. Get your OH to read some FIRE blogs...they are very inspiring. Think my faves are Frugalwoods and Our Next Life but lots like Mr MMM etc.

I would use hard figures as your target if you can (eg. 5% overpayment?) but anything is better than nothing. I would also think about asking your OH what he would do if he didn’t need to work for a living? What could he change or do more of? That’s acted as a better incentive for my OH rather than asking him to retire early. As someone who lives for his work he just finds that scary. Not suggesting your partner is necessarily in that camp (it certainly pains me,!!!) but it’s the independence rather than the retirement bit we tend to focus on here.

I liked the Barefoot Investor as it was really Mickey Mouse step by step. It suggested Date Nights and a team approach and that got my OH interested :rotfl: we even took a copy out to dinner one time to work through a step together. Mainly I liked the percentage split. The Splurge money has made this Money Budget seem doable for almost the first time ever and that has kept us both committed. I got my copy on the Kindle otherwise I would post it to you to borrow. Some sections are hugely Oz, like about the super...but I just took the message and would apply it to the UK when we have a different state set up. I found it a bit like the American messaging from blogs and other things, when they fret about locating affordable healthcare coverage with pre-existing conditions for example I just thank god for Nye Bevan and our NHS

Brizzle xx

jwil

37% is amazing, well done :T