Getting it together...one £ at a time!

Homegrown0

I did read through all the technicalities last night so I'm confident that we're not eligible for it this financial year. Until now, I wrongly assumed it was if you earned under £100k joint then you were eligible, but I think that I'm thinking about the Tax Free Childcare subsidy. Who knows? They don't make it easy! 

You're right, though. The logic is illogical I mean, the payrise is still worth it, but it seems much less so now I know what I know. 

Homegrown0

Nice update today... 

I had a chat with my boss today and brought up the pay rise issue and he apologised for forgetting and confirmed there and then that I would receive the pay rise that had been agreed last year. And that he'd action it straight away. I've since had confirmation from HR that it will be processed from this month's wages. Excellent  

It should be another £250 per month in my pocket after extra tax, NI and pension contributions. Although now that I've dropped the child benefit but saved £32 per month on energy, it's more like a net 'profit' of around £140 per month. Not to be sniffed at. 

I've been through my spreadsheet and noted all of these changes to make sure I'm on track. I generally forecast ahead by quite a bit to make sure that my sums work on a rolling basis and I'd done up until December at the beginning of the year. I figured that now was a good time to forecast until next summer so I know what's happening and what our finances *should* look like. It also gave me an opportunity to note things that are coming up like car insurance renewal etc. 


House
I also drew down the funds from our remortgage that will partially be paying for our renovations. The bank account looked VERY healthy for a few minutes before I transferred it to an empty savings account. We are expecting the work to start in early August but haven't heard from the builder for a while, so don't have a set date. The sooner, the better for us as I want to be done, dusted and settled in before the Christmas period begins and the work is expected to take around 12 weeks. Eek. 


Signing off for tonight - I've stared at the screen long enough today. Tomorrow is a new day, hopefully filled with productivity! 

Homegrown0

Afternoon all, 

The productivity that I'd hoped for today has been a bit hit and miss today. Although it could've been a lot worse. Did a 30 minute HIIT work out this morning, showered and had a couple of work calls. Then had a nice lunch with the kids (it's so nice to do that every day while they're at home, i'll miss it when schools go back and I'm on my own for lunch again) and we had husband's aunt and uncle stopped by for a visit. The first they've been allowed indoors to us, and the first time they got to cuddle the kids. It was lovely. Been on calls for the last two hours, so i'll do a couple more hours of graft to get some things ticked off the list. 

When husband's family were in, they handed us an envelope with a lovely note and some money inside. They said it was a thank you for helping them out so much over the last 5 months. It was so generous of them, but of course we help them because we love them, not for reward. We will keep the money aside and use it for a family day out or something special for the four of us when we feel a bit better about going into the big wide world again. 

Instead of talking about having a productive couple of hours, i'm going to get on with it

Homegrown0

July 2020 ROUNDUP!

I know it's a bit early, but I have one fixed payment to come out for the CC early next week and I'm reviewing the finances today, so thought I may as well do the roundup for July while I'm here. 

Balances and paid amounts
Loan: Paid off  (yes, i'm still displaying this on my totals 5 months later)
CC1: £3,789.87 / £4,736.59 (£946.72 or 20% paid off) - £100 paid this month
CC2: £2,997.00 / £5,031.14 (£2,066.56 paid off - 41% paid) - £70 paid this month

Total: £6,786.87 / £25,619.44 (£18,832.57 paid off, 74% paid)

Highlights

• CC2 broke into the £2k bracket
  
• Super close to 3/4 being paid! One teeny tiny percentage away. 

Savings

• £11,685.09 in savings (saving hard for extension contingency and furnishings, hence why debt payments above are less than usual and we're saving like mad)
• Had a savings goal of £11,500 by the end of July so have met that
  
• Goal for savings total by end of August is £13,000 
• £0.00 in clothing/ gifts account - wiped out entirely by new school uniform x2, school bags x2, school shoes x2 and new trainers x4 (I had to add a chunk from our spending account, despite having £400 in here but they both needed absolutely everything! Growing like weeds). Still putting £100 per month in here so it'll receive it's next deposit 1 July
• £400 in Christmas saver (payout mid-November)
• £452.01 in credit union (I usually use this for Christmas activities and presents in November/ December)
• £0.14 in holiday savings account... 

Things of note/ coming up:

• In August we will commence the planned lending that will pay for our home renovations. This will likely start being repaid in September 2020 but next month, the figures will come into play. Keep your eyes peeled for a MASSIVE increase in debt numbers in my August update! 
• Received confirmation of my pay rise, effective at the end of this month. Judging by my calculations, it should be £250 extra, but I'm down £140 child benefit so have tweaked my figures accordingly. Will make any more amendments required at the end of the month when I get paid. 
• Our savings more than outweigh the remaining debt that we have left, and although we could clear it, we have both CCs on 0% and I'd much rather have money available for contingency/ finishings/ furnishings once our renovations are complete. It's comforting to know that the money is there though, especially given that the economy is precarious. 

Days until pay day: 13 (longest month ever!)

Homegrown0

Morning all! 

So happy that it's the weekend. Have a nice day out planned with the kids to a local park with one of their friends and in true MSE style, we're taking a picnic. Might splurge on a couple of ice creams if the ice cream van is open. Otherwise, it'll be another NSD. 

I topped up on fuel yesterday but other than that, I haven't spent since last Sunday. 

£170 paid to debt this month which is on the low side, but we're still focusing heavily on savings for the renovations which should be starting in a couple of weeks. 

Savings - where to draw the line? 
I've been toying with the idea of setting ourselves a savings goal and once we've met that, extra cash will go into debt overpayment. I'm not sure how to work this, though, as it's hard to know exactly what we'll need for contingency and furnishing the place, since contingency budget is to cover the 'unknown' so I can't really put a price on that. Our plan until now was just to hammer the savings and then if we end up using less than we have in savings, we can use it to overpay the debt or at least use it as our emergency fund. 

But I don't want to just ignore the debt and keep paying the basic (more than minimums but not a lot more) if we have 'enough' in the savings pot. 

Basically, I just think i need to have a figure in mind that I'd be happy with to have in our pot and then anything beyond that we can overpay. 

We have 10% of the build cost saved as contingency and then over and above that, we have around £3,500 saved.  But this will  need to cover: flooring, a new couch, quite a few pieces of furniture, fitting costs of the kitchen and flooring, decorating costs... 

Any advice?

Homegrown0

Mortgage update
We just drew down the funds from our mortgage provider for the equity that we released to cover some of our renovation costs. The funds arrived and are tucked away nicely in an empty savings account until we need them (potentially soon). 

Paperwork to confirm everything came through today and our monthly payments are lower than what we'd originally agreed (back in March). Although we agreed the interest rate for both parts of the mortgage, I wonder whether because the base rate has dropped since March, we have now secured a lower overall interest rate? I won't claim to know a whole lot about mortgages, but that's my best guess. 

Our first payment will be £43.18 lower than expected and subsequent payments will be £4.77 per month lower. Not life-changing money, but better in my pocket than the bank's! 

Mortgage overpayments
We have never really been in a position financially to make mortgage overpayments, and we probably won't be for the next few years until we've paid off the debt that we're about to incur to pay for our renovations. However, it's always been on my mind that I want to make this a priority as soon as we can just because it's something I thought we should do. 

A little thing popped up to show Martin's overpayment calculator yesterday so i thought I'd take a look. Overpaying by £200p/m for talking's sake would save us just under £20k in interest and shave 7 years and 1 month off the term. 

I've probably been living in ignorance, but until i saw the figures laid out in front of me, I've never truly realised the impact that overpaying can have. I've just spend some time crunching some numbers to see what different scenarios might look like. Although we won't be in a position to do it anytime soon (probably 5 years from now unless there's significant pay rises etc), it's something to aim for and work towards in our longer-term planning. 

Homegrown0

Just nattering away to myself here. 

Grocery win
Managed to get this week's groceries for a lot less than I have been spending in recent weeks. My groceries were up around £200+ per week since lockdown (haven't yet pinpointed why...) but this weekend I spend £117 in Ald1 and £23 in M*rrisons which is a big improvement. I know our weekly shop could be much lower but we're all at home at the moment, all eating food all day and we're eating well (high protein and good fats, lots of greens and low carb). This means I'm forking out on steaks, salmon, chicken, prawns and everything for four, as I refuse to make multiple dinners for me, husband and kids. But it is bloomin' expensive!

enthusiasticsaver

I think that given your credit card debt is on 0% and you have some home extension/renovation works coming up I would hold off on paying the debt off until maybe Christmas? When do the 0% deals expire? 
Interest rates have dropped so that is why your mortgage payment is lower than expected even with presumably the extra lending for the building work. Once that is done and you know what you have to pay out I would then focus on repaying the debt and then overpaying the mortgage or investing extra in pension or wherever. 
I hear you on grocery overspends.  I have been doing online shopping at Tescos and Morrisons rather than a supermarket shop at Lidls and Food Warehouse and it is much more expensive.  Just a lot more convenient though. 

Homegrown0

Thanks for the input @enthusiasticsaver - I think that's a good plan. Just keep on saving until Christmas. By then, we'll have completed the works on the house (well, the initial extension anyway) and will know what we have outlaid and what's still to come to get it finished (by this point, i'd imagine it may just be furniture).

Then we can look at what's left in savings (if anything...) and take a chunk of debt or put towards the next phase of house works (which are lots and lots of smaller, more affordable jobs in comparison to the extension). 

The first 0% deal expires in May 2021 so 10 months from now. That should be around £2,800 by then. And the second 0% deal expires July 2021 so 12 months from now and that will be £2,200 by then. Of course, this is all dependent on payments being maintained as they are now, not including any overpayments etc. 

Once we've cleared the extension debt in 2025 (seems a lifetime away, but i'm sure it'll come around quickly), our focus will absolutely be on overpaying the mortgage, a focus on pensions (both mine and husband's) and potentially overpaying the mortgage of our rental property. We didn't buy it to rent it out, but couldn't sell it and we needed to move (negative equity), so it's there by default. The way we view it right now is that we should just keep hold of it for as long as we can afford to. Ultimately, when it's paid off it could be a nice little pension lump sum in the future. We'll see. A lot can happen in the next 20 years.

I'm sorry you're also suffering the financial impacts of grocery shopping during COVID-19... I'm hoping things will calm down soon and we can get into a new groove that doesn't cost an arm and a leg!

enthusiasticsaver

Sounds like a good plan.  If the credit card deals do not expire until next May and July you wont need to worry about the interest.  I would set it just above the minimum on both cards and save as hard as you can towards building work and then reassess when it is finished.  If you do not have the £5k to clear them then a balance transfer maybe ? If you have to borrow then that is the cheapest way (depending on BT fee of course) and you are adding value to your home so it is not frivolous borrowing. 
You have a lot of sensible objectives there but for now you have a young family and making your house work for you should be the priority.  You have time to sort out the mortgages and pensions.