Dream. Believe. Achieve

[Deleted User]

Enjoy your celebrations!

Dxxx

kittykatneedscash

Well this has been a mixed weekend it was my birthday yesterday so I’ve had a lovely few days celebrating, meal out with the girls last Thursday. Night in Manchester Saturday and meal and drinks out with friends. Sunday dinner at my mums yesterday which Included pass the parcel with my nieces and nephew. My OH did disappoint me a little though we’re planning a trip in the next couple of months so he’s putting money towards my part for my birthday present when we book it but other than that nothing, zilch, nadda, no card or anything I don’t want to sound ungrateful but it would have just appreciated a little effort a card or a bunch or daffs or just something isn’t much to ask I don’t think.

The other really annoying thing is on Saturday I was rushing around getting ready to set off to Manchester and nipped to the loo before we set off. Phone in back pocket went to sit down and straight down the ( unused thankfully) toilet:mad:. I thought at first it was fine dried it off a little and it just had a small white dot under the screen I carried on using it and whatapp’d my sister to tell her what had happened then started getting strange black lines across the screen and then it all went blank:eek:. Called at a co-op on the way to the motorway and bought a bag of rice but it would have been a good 30 mins after getting wet. I tried turning it on yesterday morning and still nothing it’s just dead going to leave it for a few more days and try again. I’m so annoyed it’s not insured and I’m guessing it’s about 6 months since I last backed it up. I’ve read online since that the worst thing you can do is use it and it needs turning off straight away which I didn’t do so I don’t hold out much hope. It’s silly really how much we rely on mobiles but all my banking apps are on there that just use my finger print so can’t remember the online details. Email, TCB, social media, the app I use to track all spends, don’t even know if anyone text me happy birthday yesterday and they will just think I’m really rude not replying.

In MFW news another £8.69 paid off bringing my January total to £78.40 there will be another payment later this week not sure how much yet but it will easily bring my total to £100+ which I think is pretty good for my first month. I get paid on Wednesday I’ve still got £65 in my purse and £80 in my current account so another great week:j.

kittykatneedscash

Another £35.51 sent to the mortgage last night I’ll get paid later today which is my last pay of January. I get paid weekly every Wednesday, most months I get 4 pays but some months have 5 and January is a 5 Wednesday month. After this it’s May, July and October. As this is my first month without having to allocate money to debt I can start to build my pots up. Out of Januarys pay I’ve saved towards the following.

Holiday / Travel £300
Total £700

DIY / House £80
Total £80

Bills annual fund £20
Total £20

Christmas / Birthday £50
Total £50

Clothes / shoes £30
Total £30

I also had to fork out for a new fridge / freezer at the beginning of the month. The fridge part was not holding temperature at all and I couldn’t risk the freezer giving up too as it was full to bursting with things I’d prepped and batch cooked over Christmas while I was off, my lodger also had quite a lot of food in there too. At the time I was gutted as it was the first month I could spend / allocate money how I wanted and didn’t want to pay out £300 for a new fridge freezer but as my BF pointed out at least I had the money there to replace it straight away and had one delivered next day the only thing I threw out were two yoghurts out of the fridge. If this had happened 12 months ago it would have meant me adding more to debt to sort it. So even though it was an unplanned purchase it’s not the end of the world.

My phone is still dead I tried it again this morning nothing I just keep putting it back in the bag of rice and hoping for the best but don’t hold out much hope now!

Mortgage OP total for January so far stands at £113.91 with the possibility of a small tilly tidy later on when I get paid. I’m happy with that for my first month. Counting down the 1st now when my lodgers standing order comes in and kicks of Feb’s budget.

kittykatneedscash

Another £4.16 sent to the mortgage last night bringing Januarys total to £118.07. Standard payment comes out tomorrow to kick off February.

dunstonh

Now I have money available that was previously all allocated towards debt I’ve jumped ship to join you lovely MFW’s the plan is to build my EF up to 2K, start saving to various virtual pots and start to make OP’s to my mortgage.

How is your pension? At age 35. you should be looking at around £35k to be in your pension now.

I only mention it as on another thread in a different section, it was remarked that people posting in this section often get so blinded by the need to repay their mortgage earlier that they take financially poor decisions in other areas.

kittykatneedscash

dunstonh wrote: »

How is your pension? At age 35. you should be looking at around £35k to be in your pension now.

I only mention it as on another thread in a different section, it was remarked that people posting in this section often get so blinded by the need to repay their mortgage earlier that they take financially poor decisions in other areas.

Hi dunstonh yes you're right to flag up my pension even worse as of last weekend I'm 36 up until I'd say October 2017 I had no pension at all this is when my employer rolled out the workplace pension scheme. Both myself and my employer only contribute the minimum I think this was 1% & 1% I think this has now gone up to 3% and 2% although I'm not sure which way around I guess I pay more. I think it goes up again in April. This is something I really need to look into and get my head around a bit more. So there is no where near the amount I need more like 1K if I'm lucky not 36K so lots of catching up somehow.

Am I right in thinking that it always better to increase contributions to your workplace pension rather than setting up a private pension for the tax relief. I'm not at the stage yet where I'm comfortable upping my pension contribution yet as this is my first month debt free with an EF but absolutely something to look at in the coming months. I am going to make sure I find my details to log in this weekend and see what I have at the moment and what the current contribution split is. Thanks for giving me the nudge to think about this.

dunstonh

Am I right in thinking that it always better to increase contributions to your workplace pension rather than setting up a private pension for the tax relief.

Not always. Larger investors or more experienced investors are often served best with a combination (maximise the employer payment but use your own pension for everything else). However based on what you have said, sticking with the workplace scheme is likely to be best.

I'm not at the stage yet where I'm comfortable upping my pension contribution yet as this is my first month debt free with an EF but absolutely something to look at in the coming months.

Remember that it is very easy to put off pension contributions of a sensible level. It gets harder the longer you leave it. Phasing into it is a good way. i.e. increase in bite size chunks rather than big jumps;

It's also worth noting that in financial terms, paying into a pension is usually financially better than clearing a mortgage earlier. If you are a Scottish taxpayer or a higher rate taxpayer then even more so. Clearing a mortgage earlier is sentimental. Driven by the heart. Pension planning is driven by the head. Many people do a bit of both. The risk is to avoid doing all of one and none of the other.

kittykatneedscash

£3.96 payment made to the mortgage yesterday to start February off rounding down my weekly wage.

I've had my iPhone in for repair in the hope that they could do something and heard back yesterday that it would need a new screen and battery for £95 I only replaced both in November but much better than having to buy a new phone. The guy was going to drop it off last night but then messaged saying it had just turned off and something wasn't quite right. He's going to do some more work on it and bring it back tonight. It hasn't been backed up since April 2017 :eek: which I didn't realise till it drown in the toilet. First thing I'm going to do is back up to my computer so I don't lose all my photos if it does decide the die.

Going out for a meal with the meetup girls tonight to a Greek place with a 2 course offer on which I'm looking forward to will try and keep the spends low as I'm planning on going to Manchester tomorrow as need a few things for my wardrobe.

In other news me and BF have booked a trip to Iceland for 6 weeks time. He's put £300 towards mine for my birthday I can't wait I'm so excited. It wasn't cheap and I will need to buy some warm gear before I go as I don't think my dog walking coat and wellies will cut it. Any tips and suggestions for Iceland greatly received

kittykatneedscash

February is proving to be quite an expensive month. Firstly my phone couldn’t be fixed they sent it away to the ‘tech team’ to do more work and came back after another week and a half that there’s nothing they could do. I explained that it hadn’t been backed up so they tried to do data recovery on it but couldn’t do it. They’ve said it will be ready to collect this week with no charge so seems they’ve taken the battery and screen off that they’d replaced which is good as I’d already agreed to pay £95 for those when they said they’d fixed it. Bit the bullet and bought a new iphone Saturday and just have to not dwell on the 2 years of pictures I’ve lost but it does make me so sad when I think of it. I’ve now signed up to icloud 79p a month is worth it to not lose everything if anything stupid happens again. 4 weeks without a phone it’s good to have a new one. I didn’t want to go back to a contract so I bought a new phone and can keep my £8/month sim only plan.

Another thing that I hadn’t budgeted for was a trip to the vets on Friday morning little pooch had sliced all her pad open on something at the park I’m presuming glass but it was in the grass and couldn’t see anything. She was on the lead and just walking nicely so no idea how it happened. It’s quite a deep cut and bled a lot. Manged to stop it bleeding and kept her in and it clean but she still wasn’t putting any weight on it 24 hours later off to the vets we went. They wanted to put her under GA to reopen it and stitch it but I didn’t want to go for that option as I felt she didn’t need it and didn’t want to sedate her if there was another option. So they cleaned it trimmed all the fur around, 3 day antibiotic injection, pain relief to give at home and bandaged up. Cone of shame to bring home that we haven’t used as she’s been brilliant with it not bothered her at all having it bandaged and walking much better now. Nearly £70 proved a costly quick trip to the park on our morning walk.

Made a few small OP’s £6.66, £7.44 & £7.71 so that brings Feb to £25.77 so far I’m going to wait until Friday before making my final payment for this month once I have worked out what I can afford. I’m hoping to hit £50 in total for Feb due to these other expenses then hopefully will have a better month for OPs in March

kittykatneedscash

Bit late with February’s final update. Two more payments made of £3.96 & £27.86 which brings February overpayments to a total of £57.59. I’ve transferred money to various savings pots

Holidays / Travel £300
Total £1000

DIY/ House £80
Total £160

Bills annual fund £20
Total £40

Christmas / Birthdays £50
Total £100

Clothes/ Shoes £30
£60

It’s been a very expensive couple of weeks on top of a new phone, fridge freezer, vets bills, I’ve booked a hotel for a friends wedding in April and been and bought a few things for our Iceland trip today, base layers, hat, gloves, snood all bought at an outlet shop and extra discount on top so as MSE as can be but just seems to be spend spend spend at the moment going to try and have a few quite days now and reign it in a bit.