Thirty something dreaming of not paying mortgage

debtfreeoneday

I need to find The Durrells. 

Great planning on the maternity savings…

South_coast

I'm tracking all my spending this month too! I'm reading "Your Money or Your Life" at the moment (I'm finding it a bit wooooo for me in places, but I can see why it gets such good reviews) and it's spurred me on to work out how much things cost me in terms of my net pay per hour. So far I've learned that my OP from April's pay took me 10 days and 4 hours to earn 😮😮😮! Have a feeling I won't be quite so excited to see how many days I have to work to earn the petrol money to get to work!

kaycastle

@debtfreeoneday
Its on britbox - which I'm half way through 6 months free as BT were doing an offer around christmas for this  

@South_coast

That sounds really interesting - I've put down a note to add a "time cost" in my spending analysis. Intrigued to see what your other time costs come out of. Indeed it is hard to feel bad about OP but petrol is probably crazy. The only reason I'm not immediately buying that book is that I've just worked out that me and my OH spent £1384 on amazon last year and £967 last year and I almost want to cry because I don't quite know what we're spending that on   

 I'm getting to the end of categorising, although still got some refining to do - I'm absolutely loving the new XLOOKUP function in excel, its just amazing. Very useful for work too.

Its the first time I've downloaded everything from mine and joint account and I mostly feel sick.... and absolutely shocked....and excited that maybe I could do even more towards early retirement. Trying to reach for that excitement right now because I feel so so guilty looking at these numbers.

I feel really sad I know on the surface it looks like I'm doing really awesome and I try to tell myself that but I'm actually a high earner so £1000 a month OPs isn't hard for me like it would be for others. And all that other money - I'm not making hard decisions or cutbacks really...I don't know how we've spent almost £1000 on amazon so far this year....

I keep double checking in the hopes I've done something wrong but I haven't. And this is not even the worse one.... I need to finish the spreadsheet and refine my categories to really analyse this....and take away some good actions.

South_coast

Awwww, don't be disheartened. Definitely use it to galvanise yourself rather than feel bad about what's done. You can look up your purchase history on Amazon if you feel brave enough to confront it head-on?

P.S. And for books, I mostly research on Amazon and then buy on ebay - much cheaper as the sellers can set their own postage prices, rather than having to charge what Amazon set (and then take their commission from). A lot of the books I read are then moved on to somewhere like We Buy Books afterwards, so I don't mind if they're a bit tatty or old editions x

kaycastle

South_coast said:

Awwww, don't be disheartened. Definitely use it to galvanise yourself rather than feel bad about what's done. You can look up your purchase history on Amazon if you feel brave enough to confront it head-on?

P.S. And for books, I mostly research on Amazon and then buy on ebay - much cheaper as the sellers can set their own postage prices, rather than having to charge what Amazon set (and then take their commission from). A lot of the books I read are then moved on to somewhere like We Buy Books afterwards, so I don't mind if they're a bit tatty or old editions x

I shall try not to be - definitely some opportunities here. 

Unfortunate my amazon purchases aren't even as noble as books....its like a whole wide range of random stuff. hehe. 

I do have a separate books category as we try to support local book shops and get passed on lots of books from family - total was £128.51 in 2020 which equates to 0.89 days of work which I think is pretty good. 

I can't believe the illusions I've been living under.... groceries are £379 on average and sometimes a maximum £574. I have in my "budget" spreadsheet £150 for groceries....its starting to amuse me its so terrible.

That's pretty bad considering we are mostly vegan and still managing ~£50 on lunch each month..... 
And rather terribly £111 on takeaways each month which seems to not exist in the summer months and goes up in winter...

debtfreeoneday

Our library let you request a book if they don’t stock it. My requests must have exceeded £500 this last year!  To be fair, I only ask for books that others would make use no and they’ve only said no once. It’s certainly saved me buying books. 

Chiglepig

debtfreeoneday said:

Our library let you request a book if they don’t stock it. My requests must have exceeded £500 this last year!  To be fair, I only ask for books that others would make use no and they’ve only said no once. It’s certainly saved me buying books. 

Libraries are seriously under rated, they are also easy targets for council cuts, so it's vital we use them.

kaycastle said:

That's pretty bad considering we are mostly vegan and still managing ~£50 on lunch each month..... 
And rather terribly £111 on takeaways each month which seems to not exist in the summer months and goes up in winter...

Have you examined your takeaway experience, KC? I find it really easy not to indulge because I almost always find them disappointing, no matter how much I have been looking forward to them. So I acknowlegde that sometimes the convenience is worth the cost, and there are some that are occasionally worth the extra (we have one local Indian restaurant that is worth the drive and the cost). We probably have one every two months. But our shopping bills are almost double yours (three adults, two meat eaters and the supermarket has been practically our only spending on 'things' for almost 18 months!).

What I'm trying to say is use take aways mindfully, but don't beat yourself up

kaycastle

Thank you @debtfreeoneday , I know a lot of our family make use of libraries and I think I shall visit our local one soon as that's a very good idea.

@Chiglepig
Thank you, that's very good advice. We did something similar a couple of years ago so we aren't having typical takeaways apart from the one really nice Indian,  the takeaways we are getting are very restauranty due to covid strategies, it's been quite a novelty to be able to order such variety in our small town hehe. I never usually even go to restaurants that often before covid and we had stopped takeaway habit before covid. I guess I should well done myself for supporting local businesses so well hahaha!! 
Had a bit of a chat with OH and we are going to get ourselves down to one takeaway a month and we've also agreed before we order anything random on amazon we are going to discuss why we need that item right now with each other. 
It's going well so far this week, I've been writing down what I spend as well and will update every Saturday with spend for a week as I find it really interesting when other diarists do that.

kaycastle

Spending 1st March - 8th March 9am

1. £63.63 - weekly shop
2. £2.49 - Film rental
3. £3 - guided tour (virtual) on local history. 
4. £4.59 - Medium subscription
5. £16.60 OH's lunch/misc spends

Total: £90.31  - not bad vs. the average £383 weekly spend so far this year. 
We also sold old bit of furniture on fb for £40   
My thoughts:

• I'm well proud of this and I feel like I have a new found appreciation for what I have
• The weekly shop really isn't too bad as that included my OH needing new slippers and also a new ironing board cover as ruined last one accidentally. I can't sew without ironing! I mean I'm still  learning so I can't sew much with one either :P but I'm working on it hehe. We have a little top up shop tonight - just enough ingredients to make a quiche lorraine for non-veggie guests tomorrow.
• It was a film we really wanted to see out of curiosity - Disney's attempt at a horror film, "The watcher in the woods". But we are trying to cut down on these as well because we should be able to find something free in subscription.
• Guided tour completely worth it - very interesting and nicer way to spend the evening than watching TV
• I've cancelled medium subscription now, I  wanted to try this out for a month but I'm very bored of the same old rubbish on there after just 1 month but I forgot to cancel in time before this came out....)

Not going to include the standard bills that come out like phone, energy bill for now. I will have a process of loading in spending each month for overall analysis - I've set up the spreadsheet now so that won't take too long. 

South_coast

Good to see the breakdown is getting you thinking, and the guided tour sounds interesting. Plus the furniture sale means really only £50 has come out of the bank 👍 

Would it help to split out things like the slippers and ironing board cover into a different category, so the "weekly shop" amount just identifies what you are spending on food/toiletries/cleaning? Just thinking aloud, as 20% of the cost of my Lidl shop this morning was actually on dog treats rather than things for me to eat (and it's not even my dog 🤦‍♀️!)