Young And Dumb

Mx_Emmin

enthusiasticsaver said:

You have done brilliantly with your savings. I am glad you are getting on ok with YNAB. 

Thank you I was hoping to say something more emotional and nostalgic and inspirational, a reflection on where I've been and how far I've come and how far I want to go, but words failed me haha

Mx_Emmin

Payday! So naturally the first thing I did was go out and buy a whole ton of onions, I want to experiment with making slow cooker caramelised onions. I plan on doing a mix of red and white onions, with some demerara sugar, balsamic vinegar, whiskey, and a touch of bicarb soda to help break down the onions a little more. I'll chop them all up tomorrow morning before work and leave them for like 8 to 10 hours. 
~*~
I'm grudgingly proud of myself for one smart decision I made. I had a little leftover money when I met all my goals and I decided to put it into my Diploma study fund rather than into hobbies. I've always been able to find hobby money before, I'm sure I'll find it somewhere again if I need it.
I find traitorous thoughts sneaking in, like "I'll put it in takeout and if/when I have some leftover I can move it to the Diploma category", but I just need to remind myself that if I put the money in groceries or takeout or hobbies it inevitably gets spent and if I put it elsewhere it magically doesn't. I just need to stay strong. 
~*~
I technically put slightly more into my E-Fund than usual as well - 42p more haha. When I went to fill out my saving thermometer I realised I was 42p short of the next notch, so I added a little more to the pile to make it an even £2100.
I also filled out my GC2B binder goal, I just to get around to ordering it. Christ these things are expensive. 
I slightly renamed my "New Degree Certificate" to "Name Update Documents" - the initial goal is still the degree certificate, but after that I might as well continue saving for my passport update as well. 
~*~
I've been thinking a little bit about my next YNAB-year. Obviously the immediate goal is to hit 3K E-Fund, then I want to focus on getting a month ahead, and I really want to pick up the pace on my FA Diploma study. Hopefully early next year I can kick off the divorce proceedings, assuming the other party is cooperative, if I can get that done then that's a BIG chunk of my budget available to be repurposed. £75 a month I won't be setting aside for that, and fingers crossed I've over saved and I'll have a little leftover money to treat myself/repurpose elsewhere. 
~*~
I've also been thinking about how weird it is that, despite how much less I'm spending now than a year ago, two years ago - evidenced by my growing savings - I don't often feel like my quality of life has suffered much. I use "often" and "much" because there are still moments, but 98% of the time my quality of life feels the same, if not better than, a few years back. If someone had told me that I'd have just casually dropped £80 on a bottle of whiskey for a celebration, and then a few months later had another £80 ready to go for Christmas/New Year Whiskey (I plan to buy it early December) I'd have laughed at them. That was just beyond me. And now I've dropped to a single income household but I can just, do that. No big deal, just a little foreplanning. 
Christmas has been weirdly chill so far this year. I mean, its not exactly a normal year, no socials to worry about - but also I've saved up a lot more this year and I have three Christmas categories ("Family", "Friends" and "Misc"). If it had been a normal year I suspect I still would have been slightly short, but I'd have made it work. Next year I'll save up more. 
It's a good feeling. I hope YNAB stays around a long time  

Mx_Emmin

I should put a line item/savings goal in my budget for Sims Packs  **longing sigh** 

Mx_Emmin

Mx_Emmin said:

I slightly renamed my "New Degree Certificate" to "Name Update Documents" - the initial goal is still the degree certificate, but after that I might as well continue saving for my passport update as well. 

So as I said, I'm going to start saving up for a new passport with my new name - £80 😬😬 but I'm not happy with my middle name, and it suddenly occurs to me that it would be better to make a decision BEFORE I drop money on the passport. Got a few months to figure it out but I don't know what to do.

Mx_Emmin

Christmas Shopping Update! I think I've got everything roughly now, barring some festive munchings at some point. I'm £21.90 overspent on presents - which in the grand scheme of things isn't too bad - the only mildly annoying thing is that I've spent £21.94 on a Christmas present for my girlfriend who I've now broken up with. I'm a little sad about it because she was genuinely a nice person, but I'm also not really that sad, which was kind of the point - after 8 months I should have more of a reaction than "Ah that's a shame. Oh well." I just don't know what to do with a Harry Potter bath bomb when I don't have a bath and aren't particularly enthused about Harry Potter?
~*~
According to my budget I have £30 left in "Christmas Misc" and I suspect small things will crop up closer to the date so I need to be hands off that category for now. I'd love to buy another Christmas jumper or something though. I've ordered myself a couple of personalised decorations with my new name on, I just thought they were cute and I don't have much with my name on yet, everything like that is in my deadname. If you cant follow the links, one is a wooden snowflake tree decoration with your name carved on it, and one is a mini wreath with a tiny bell on and your name on a slip of parchment/card. Technically the mini wreath is a place setting but I'm going to use it as a door decoration. 
~*~
I've decided to stop therapy. I'd been wanting to for a while anyway. I'll try to keep putting money aside for it for a few months until I hit £200, so I have a mini store of funds if I need therapy suddenly again. That would give me time so my immediate thought isn't "but how will I budget for it?" I would have a month or so to work that out rather than scrambling to do so. 
~*~
I'm also embarking on another money saving scheme, but it involves uteruses (uteri?) and bodily functions and cycles and reusable eco friendly products, so I'm going to throw that under a spoiler tag as I'm not 100% sure if I'm allowed to talk about that stuff here? But basically I want to save up for reusable products but HOO BOY are those EXPENSIVE!

So yeah I want to save up for those period panties. Mobibodi comes very highly rated but a single pair (of the ones I like) are £28!!!! The bundle packs are almost entirely £100+ !!! I've bought some reusable pads off Amazon as a bridging product, partly to see how I like them. I'm hoping in the long run this will save me money, but oh boy this is going to hurt when the time comes to buy.

I have a lot of temporary savings goals right now, I keep thinking of new things I want. I think I'm just excited that for the first time in my life I'm successfully saving up for stuff and I'm getting carried away. I'm putting all the categories into my budget right now and we'll review how many actually make it through to the new year. 
~*~
In an update to my previous post about names - I am going to change my middle name, just not my first name or last name. I'll change it in the new year. Which will be a faff in terms of admin, but I'd rather do that than pay £80-£90 for a passport with the wrong names on. 

Mx_Emmin

Also! Earlier in November I said I'd saved up for a plain black GC2B binder - more of an under-shirt binder than a statement piece on it's own - but it turned out they were out of stock in my size. It finally  came back into stock today, and in time to take advantage of Black Friday deals too!
This might be the first Black Friday I've participated in...

Mx_Emmin

I saved up £50 for "one last Brexit shop"... the idea being some people are worried about a sudden temporary shortage of staples or spike in prices post-Brexit, similar to what was seen in spring/summer 2020 with covid panic buying. But now would be the time to buy any more food, before the transition period ends, and ideally before the Christmas food shopping really ramps up, but I'm not sure I have space for it in the cupboard  

Mx_Emmin

I've done it. I ordered the last Brexit shop to arrive this Sunday. I may be a fool, but I'm a fool who wont have to buy Pasta for like 6 months next year.

Mx_Emmin

 
I bought my New Year Whiskey today! I bought two bottles actually - the expensive one, and a cheaper one I can be a bit less precious about and don't mind being communal. I'm not going home for Christmas but I am seeing my aunt for New Year. The ancnoc single malt was £25 so I'm happy for that to be passed about if need be. The first editions Aultmore was "only" £70 (I'd saved up £85). I realised on the way into town that, due to Covid, they wouldn't be doing tastings like the last time I visited so the Aultmore is a bit of a gamble for me. But I've had the ancoc before.
~
I've spent a little more on general Christmas stuff than I intended so far but I'll wait until post-Christmas to do a real run down of that.

Mx_Emmin

I've also decided to move my Emergency Fund into a different bank than my main bank account. It's not on a particularly good rate (sorry, Martin) but it's something that's been bugging me lately.
I work in a bank, in customer service, and I often deal with the people who's accounts are blocked by the bank. And when we do that, we don't just block one account, we block them all. So often people are panicking/upset/hostile because we have locked up all of their money and they have literally no access to money.
Now, ok, 9.99 times out of 10, their accounts are locked because they did something naughty, but it still bugged me. I don't intend to do anything naughty, but I've seen people's accounts get blocked because they tried to buy Bitcoin and our bank doesn't like that. That usually gets sorted out pretty quick but I still want to have some money in a separate bank that can't get locked up due to a misunderstanding. 
So I just moved my Emergency fund from an Everyday Saver at bank A to an Everyday Saver at bank B. It's instant access, might as well be 0% interest, but it holds the money separate to my main account. Because I already had a current account with bank B the whole thing took about 10 minutes to set up - though because I was moving a larger amount than normal for me, bank A did pause the transaction for an hour and send me a security text to double check.