Savings diary of Lifeatthekings

Ngozi

DairyQueen wrote: »

My family have introduced 'Secret Santa' for the adults this year. We will each buy a reasonably expensive gift for the randomly selected recipient. I have also slightly increased spends on birthday gifts but, overall, it will save every family member 100s.

Really is a great way to do it and not only money, saves so much time and stress not having to hunt for endless gifts. We refined ours a bit, secret santa but start of November we write down what we would like to the value of £75, give it my Mother and she redistributes.
Even less time spent hunting for gifts and funnily enough, when you try and think of what you actually want, more often than not I can't think of anything.
Xmas is where I get a years supply of second hand books, about all that gets put on my list.

(sorry for derailing the thread)

[Deleted User]

I actually didn't know that Prime Music was included. I will cancel my spotify and give that a go.
Out of the two I'd rather keep Amazon since i use fairly often , so thank you for bringing that to my attention, Ngozi I will cancel spotify now.

The wedding ring is 0% , I couldn't afford to buy the ring outright as was £200 more than I had saved for it. I can afford this in my budget comfortably and spoke to my fiance about doing this in the first place. If it was an every day piece of jewellery , I would never get it on finance and look somewhere else but my fiance said it's our wedding day and 'I deserve to get a really nice ring' instead of the budget one I was originally looking at.

We dislike our neighbours and things in our neighbourhood has gone down hill,
I hate the house, how small and no storage space and yeah we do want to start a family and our house is only built really for 1 person, not for 2 - we really really struggle. Me personally living here is stressing me out a lot.

My fiance can easily save £3,000 in 3 months. I just want to help him out by saving for extra funds to buy furniture etc. Then it won't take him long to save for a deposit, I don't earn a lot , what I earn in 2 months, he earns in 1. He can comfortably put £1,000 away in savings and have £1,000 left for bills & personal spends.

Having to buy for family...its more hassle than worth and just can't be dealing with that on top of the added family troubles I already have. Although will defiantly be cutting back on gifts this year. All i had was cheap smellies. Literally . from everyone... not much else and I have a big family.

Anything i don't spend will be there for birthdays & other occasions.
*edit* will be buying a token gift for adults and 2 things for kids.
My fiance on the other hand gets a lot & so does my sister.

Ngozi

Also, saying to use more cash and also having "save the change" running, they kind of cancel each other out.
As someone else said, better of not using money, you'll probably spend less. And what interest do you get on Llloyds savings account for save the change? Would you be better to not save the change and keep the money in higher interest current account or just put £15-20 a month in the LISA/H2B?

Put your spending on a cashback card and if you're looking at any big expenditures look at AMEX cash back that gives 5% for the first 3 months, just check that AMEX can be used for the payment, possibly your holiday.

Your current account that all your bills go out of, could you look at a reward account like the Santander123 that gives a % back on water, phones, council etc...
I'm a hobo so don't own a house or pay any bills apart from rent so I don't know if there is any value in them but they sound good.

Wish I looked at sorting out my finances when I was younger, so well done.

[Deleted User]

I only use Lloyds for personal spending so it's there for me to be spent if i want to. All change from cash goes into a piggy bank... some places I go I like to use cash.

We may be looking into opening a joint account, he suggested this morning in a quick random conversation but nothing came out of that yet.

Zero_Sum

lifeatthekings wrote: »

I only use Lloyds for personal spending so it's there for me to be spent if i want to. All change from cash goes into a piggy bank... some places I go I like to use cash.

We may be looking into opening a joint account, he suggested this morning in a quick random conversation but nothing came out of that yet.

For small spends, you could look at co-op everyday rewards account.
£4 reward each month plus 5p cashback on debit card transaction with a max of 30 (so £1.50)
It does need 4 DD, but that can be done via a PO savings account set at £1 a week

[Deleted User]

Edit
I will be opening the co-op bank once I get paid on Friday (pay day)
Can I take money out of it & still get the bonuses?

[Deleted User]

Today's round up.

£40 spent from wedding fund on 2 replacement fridge doors.
Cancelled Spotify
Applied to open a co-op everyday rewards account & waiting for reply
OH gave me money for takeway the other night so moved £10 into new home fund

Zero_Sum

lifeatthekings wrote: »

Edit
I will be opening the co-op bank once I get paid on Friday (pay day)
Can I take money out of it & still get the bonuses?

Yeah. The funding thing is same as others. Transfer £800 in then transfer it straight back out.

katsu

You can do shoppix and receipt hog, I do, so download Shoppix and get twice the benefit

[Deleted User]

thank you everyone.

Today's Update

• got paid
• I sorted my budget
• Forgot lunch and brought food from work... Owe work £6.50(?) , my card didn't work for some odd reason so they wrote me on pay back sheet.
• Purchased take out - £23.90 on Chinese used lloyds to pay so I get spare change saved.
• Work owes me a lot of money as have been on under 25's pay rate for 2 months and looks like i will be for august But i am 25!
• Need to check contract as work has given me a day off just because I am not needed... I didn't ask for it off & not been asked if it was okay so may loose 1 day pay ...
• Still waiting on co-op bank account info / confirmation
• £100 in Christmas 2019 fund £265 left to save woot!
• £145.55 put back into payments , only £60 left to put back in/'save'.
• Fiance said he'd happily pay for my driving lessons... not official