Playing with fire

ShineALight

Small wins this week:
Plumber has been to look at our leak and will come back when he’s got the parts. Our water bill has been a ghastly £108 for the past few months. Reckon our supplier might be next port of call once he’s fixed it.
Week’s groceries: £39.63
Meal planned: HM lasagne one day (total cost £6.67), and made sure there was enough sauce left over bulked out with sneaky veg (carrots and courgettes) to do a spag bol. So, eight meals at a princely 83p a head. Not quite cooking on a bootstrap but good enough for me.
Onion: 25p
Red sauce: 69p
White sauce: 69p
Mushrooms: 65p
Courgettes 80p
Carrots: 35p
Passata: 35p
Cheese: 50p
Linguini: 69p
Quorn mince: £1.70
(lasagna sheets were back-of-the cupboard leftovers)
Am very pleased with that.
Matched betting £20ish so far with more races this afternoon. Small steps.
Surveys: £5.03 at Prolific
Week 1 of Couch To 5k will be finished as I'm off for run three as soon as I’ve posted this. How unfit can you get after four months of no running (Well, plodding)? Owwwwww, my aching bones.

Small defeats this week:
DD’s school trip cost is set to be an eye-watering £250 this month. £125 was in the budget. (There’ll be another £225 next month, then £50 the month after - as well as one for £200 for DS at some point in the next few months.) We don’t want to have to say no to these because of our bad planning, they are the sort of life experiences they need. No, not a need, it’s something we want for them.

Big win this week:
Thanks to some serendipitous timing, my employer offered to increase pension payments to 8%, matched by the company. Figured this was a long-term no-brainer and signed up, increasing my overall contributions from 9% to 16%.

ShineALight

This week's food shop: £34.02. However, this is a bit of a nonsense as we found we nipped out last Friday, Saturday AND Sunday for 'extras'. These may or may not have included wine.:o

I have a spreadsheet solution...and a real-life one where we have now decided to give it up for Lent. Wine, that is, not spreadsheeting.
My groceries budget is a whopping £750 a month. But [STRIKE]I've got a feeling that[/STRIKE] I know for a fact that I include all sorts of household purchases, clothes and petrol when we buy it from a supermarket as well as vino on there. I've got another three lines on the budget tracker now, household, clothes and 'fun stuff' (which I'm not monitoring too closely). But half-way through the month and apparently we've still spent half the budget...more work required.

On the money-making front: matched betting total: £25.78
Have started setting up this week's bets too. It will take time to get this going. Put around £100 into it and cycling the money round, then withdrawing it from the different bookies is taking a wee while. Trying not to make mistakes and ensure I've understood everything.

On the money-spending front:
Another £20 is needed for a school trip (this is spends for a trip that is actually taking place this week, rather than some far-off event). DS may return with all cash intact. We shall see.

And the tumble dryer is playing up, it started screeching at us just before the end of its cycle last night. Have rotated the drum as well as googled, youtubed etc the fault. It may be a bearing or it may have come to the end of its useful life. I'm sure I've just [STRIKE]lurked[/STRIKE] read on another diary about a white goods fail. Must be the time of year for it. Anyway, I'll do my v best to fix it, but it could well be that we need a new one (which I'd sorta be secretly pleased about as I'd like a condensing one). :undecided So much for getting that emergency fund cooking.

And it's finally stopped raining so week 2 of the c2-5k beckons.

ShineALight

A little update:

Matched betting this week: £32.54.

Still one offer at a time. Have placed £200 of bets, which is more than I'd staked in my life before. It's a little nerve-wracking.
Messed one up this week, as hadn't realised my lay had not been matched in time before a race. The odds moved too quickly for me to keep up. Ended up with around £4.50 instead of £8 from it, so it could have been a lot worse.
Including an aborted attempt in January, that's over 66 quid made so far.

In tumble dryer news, have taken as many screws out as I dared... and put them all back in again without being able to reach the bit of the drum where the noise is coming from. :think:

And, we've had a bit of a windfall (kept reading about these on other diaries thinking, 'that'll never happen to us'). £1,000 from family, of which £130 has been allocated to new fencing being delivered tonight. We've got rotting panels strewn about the garden, haven't been able to look the neighbours in the eye recently. The rest has gone towards the EF savings. We're very grateful.

Also, it's payday, and one of the few times I've never really had to count the days down because we have a decent buffer in our current account. Is it really sad to be so excited 'bout reckoning up the month-end budget?

ShineALight

I'm such a dope. A broken tumble dryer, plus a week of sunshine equals a blessing in disguise. Feeling like a bit of an MSE charlatan.

Anyway, said this diary was for keeping me in check, so tomorrow's to-do list (my day off) comprises...
1. Sort mum's mother's day gift (easy, something for the garden).
2. Sort wife's mother's day gift (parma violet-flavoured gin, yeck, but two of Mrs S's favourite things in one).
3. Mow lawn.
4. Tackle ironing mountain of doom (bleh).
5. Research whether it's worth signing up to one of those online MB companies.
6. Clean bathroom.
7. Cook full English. Yum.
8. Optional extra, see what state the so-called veg plot is in. Was full of mint at last inspection.

kaycastle

Well done shinealight for saving so much of that windfall - thats so kind of relatives. Our parents do similar things for us throughout the year sometimes and because its coming for them I always find it much easier to be disciplined with it then I am if I get a bonus through work or something like that

We just mowed our lawn as well and all the little birds are having so much fun hopping around on it this morning It was the first mow after winter...it was...quite something. I have one of those cheap manual lawn mowers - I told my husband it would mean we don't have to exercise/gym as much as it would be so hard work I think I'm still in trouble for encouraging that decision to this day.

Mint grows like crazy - love the smell though. I need to dig up and build my veg patch but I've kept procrastinating about it.

I can't wait to read about discoveries of that £750 groceries budget. I used to do the same thing a few years ago - and include basically all my extra spending outside of bills each month in one budget. Revelations were had when I looked at it more closely It was in my early 20s and I always used to tell everyone I don't really spend much on clothes in a year....then I downloaded statements and pivot tabled it and my spend in clothes shops was more than £3000....I think I cried from the shock lol and I felt so bad as we were supposed to be saving for a house deposit. And I didn't even like clothes or shopping at all. crazy times.

Bank accounts usually have a way to download a csv or excel file of statements, what I did is downloaded my statements and then I turned it into a pivot table and looked at the totals for each descriptive thing for the whole previous year. Its massively eye opening and scary. It changed my habits completely.

ShineALight

Thanks for posting kaycastle! To-do list went like this: 1, 2, 3, skip a few, 7...

We just mowed our lawn as well and all the little birds are having so much fun hopping around on it this morning It was the first mow after winter...it was...quite something. I have one of those cheap manual lawn mowers - I told my husband it would mean we don't have to exercise/gym as much as it would be so hard work I think I'm still in trouble for encouraging that decision to this day.

I did exactly the same thing with our front hedge. Bought manual trimmers as it would 'be good exercise for me'. We now have a very unruly hedge.

Mint grows like crazy - love the smell though. I need to dig up and build my veg patch but I've kept procrastinating about it.

No.8 on the list. Well, likesay, I looked at it. Never put off until tomorrow what can be done just as well the day after.

Bank accounts usually have a way to download a csv or excel file of statements, what I did is downloaded my statements and then I turned it into a pivot table and looked at the totals for each descriptive thing for the whole previous year. Its massively eye opening and scary. It changed my habits completely.

I've spent four long hours reconciling my budget spreadsheet with my downloaded excel file this aft. Complete with pivot table and teething troubles, mostly caused by attributing spends to categories correctly.

FIREdoc

Pleased you managed the breakfast! Sounds like my approach to a to do list too!! Looking forward to hearing more about your budget spreadsheet discoveries!!

ShineALight

Money In:
Wages: £4,170
Child benefit: £136.20
Family windfall: £1,000
Bank interest: £23
Matched betting: £100.33

Money out:
Fixed expenses: £1,628
Mortgage: £1,020
Everything else we’ve nailed down: £608/£604
This includes council tax, gas, electric, water, professional fees, children's savings accounts, house and car insurance, broadband, phones, bus pass and credit card payments. Tick. Actually, looking again, our water is still too high and one of the car insurance payments hasn't been taken for the past two months. Wonder if I did a 10-month payment scheme? Must check.

Variable expenses: £1,729
The highlights (lowlights) are:

Groceries: £548/£750. Chopped off £200 in first month of focusing on this. Not bad. We did spend £150 ‘nipping’ to the shops, which is next on the hit-list.

Petrol: £256/£170. Hmm. Am I under-budgeting here? Looks like I’ve been counting Mrs S filling up at our local Sainsbo’s as groceries rather than petrol.

Presents: £116/£150. A cheaper than expected Mother’s Day.

Amazon/xBox: £123.85/£5.99. Ahahhahaaahahaaaaaah. Ha. Haaaaaargh. Ahem. Might need to look at this. First time it’s been a category of its own.

Eating out: £140.5/£100. This would have been on budget until a fail last week when work was really busy so grabbed a Domino’s. Meal planning needs to improve.

Fun: £135.27/£200. Not enough fun being had. Clearly.

House stuff: £131.70/0. Those danged fence panels. Again, I need to rethink this and put something in an annual house maintenance pot.

Totals:
In: £5,429
Out: £3,357/£3286
Savings: £2,072

Boom. But hey, this is a bit of a one-off. In reality, we are up to £3,850 of our £6,000 6-month savings goal.

So, what have I learned in the first month of doing this diary? That we are able to have £1,700 of discretionary spending for ourselves each month and we are so lucky? That we wash money away without blinking? That we can do even better? And that there's a balance to find where life is for living too.

Next month the aim is to save £300. And that doesn’t include any MB, or other side hustling which has taken a back seat as work has been quite busy. Am expecting flak for putting all this out there, because it looks like we're not doing the fire things right, not putting money aside right at the start of a month and so not saving to be able to pay insurances annually rather than monthly, for example.

But, we're learning, hopefully wasting less and spending less.

AnotherJoe

Holy moly how much mileage are you doing ?
You haven't stated pension payments I guess they are subsumed into wages (eg taken off before you get them) but most make inadequate pension contributions especially if they just do whatever the minimum is. As you must be a high rate taxpayer you will make the biggest possible gain by upping pension contributions.

ShineALight

:hello: Hello FIREdoc, I've read your diary and am super impressed with your progress, you're doing brilliantly! Thanks for dropping in. :coffee:

Holy moly how much mileage are you doing ?

Couple of loops around Saturn, turn left at the international space station...

Thanks for stopping by, too, AnotherJoe. I've got a feeling that 'petrol station' spends might include sweets and the odd bit of vino too. We don’t have gas guzzlers, just normal cars. It’s been at the £250 mark for the past two months.

Pensionswise, I've been on the phone to our company pensions people today. Have got 9% going in at the moment, which ups to 12% in a couple of years. Nowhere near enough. They're offering to match it to put it up to 16% in total. I'm not sure we're secure enough to take a drop my income at the moment. But, it might be forced on us as I have no pension with my 'second job' and need to check if I'm being opted in with these April reforms.

Mrs S is a teacher, and our planning so far basically relies on her pension tbh. (Nb. teaching, I think, also explains much of the Amazon spending - it's sad what schools can't afford to pay for any more but that's a debate for another day...and probably another place)

If I retire at 60, my pension is an underwhelming £4.5k a year (it’s only £8k at 67). Mrs S's is forecast to be around £9k at 60. Figured we'd be spending around £26k a year between us in retirement and wouldn't hit that mark until we're 65. Hence this diary, a 'ping' moment and a whole heap of navel gazing. Right, best stop that and do some work!