Giving every £ a job

savingholmes

What a lovely gift 🎁

Blackcats

Pleased to report that the asset transfer has taken place.  The first costs are all paid using a savings pot.  However, there will be a tax liability due in January 2025.  I do have funds to cover it but it will be good to save some money towards it as it's a fair way away.  

Currently, I've almost saved enough to be council tax neutral.  My council tax bill is nearly £4000 a year 😣 and I've paid 3 month's payments and I have the balance saved in one of my chase pots.  I've thrown all my spare money and accumulation of marginal gains into the pot and I'm feeling really happy to now have an offset account for the rest of the year.
I'm thinking of doing the same with the future tax bill and seeing how much I can accrue.

I need to keep topping up the other pots too, particularly our holiday pot as we have seen a good deal for a week away in September.  

We are enjoying the glorious weather - spending no money whilst walking in our local countryside.  We will stop at the ice cream van on Friday for a 99 (it's only Tuesday but I'm already excited) but other than that we take flasks of good coffee and snacks with us.  Doing ok with grocery spends too although we need to visit Lidl this week.  I'll do a list and we will see how well we can stick to it.

savingholmes

Sorry Blackcats - I've lost track. Are you still working part time or are you fully retired now?

Spinayarn

I just wanted to pop on here and say I have started reading your diary from day 1. I’m currently just in the first few days -Christmas 2019/ New Year. I want to jump ahead to see where you are now, but I’m loving the enthusiasm and ideas from your early days and it’s kind of weird to know the pandemic is just around the corner. So I’ve decided to read it all through and not jump to now. Love the ideas from you and Foxgloves about shopping from home. Definitely a mantra for me to use.

Blackcats

@savingholmes - I'm still doing my 2 days a week until the end of July.  It's a nice thought to not have to fit in with booking annual leave or have to ration my annual leave time off.  I will miss the money and a couple of colleagues but I'm more than ready to stop working now.  Still can't quite believe it's true.

we are doing quite well with our spending so far this month.  We will need to do a grocery shop tomorrow but won't do that before doing a meal plan and check of existing supplies. I'm doing the grocery challenge again this month so I really don't want to bust the budget with an aimless and expensive wander round filling up my trolley.

 Gammon, egg and chip shop chips for tea tonight - yummy.  £3.80 for a large portion of chips though is a bit eek. leftover gammon, hard boiled eggs, jersey royals and salad tomorrow.

savingholmes

It's good that you have been able to flex your hours down. Any thought on what you will do with the extra 2 days once you have them back?

Blackcats

Hello @savingholmes - I'm not sure how to spend my time when I finally finish.  There's some office politics afoot at the moment which reminds me of why I wanted to leave and I'm now keenly counting down the days to full retirement.

Reducing my hours has definitely been a good thing though.

I'm reviewing my various savings pots and adjusting the caps on some of them.  I probably need to add more into the holiday pot as we are hoping to book a few trips away in the next 12 months.  Our long weekend away in July is covered and there's over £250 left in the pot but a potential trip in early October will be £1100.
Once I've finished my deliberations I'll summarise here to help me keep track and in case it helps anyone else.

savingholmes

Definitely good to plan in your travel while you are fit and enthused enough to go for it.  What sort of holidays are you planning?

lucielle

I love having pots but absolutely hate using them, even if it’s on the item I’ve saved it for. 

L

Blackcats

Thanks @savingholmes - travel plans are not massively adventurous yet but it's nice to know that there's no constraints because of an annual leave allowance.  I'm a carer for my dad so long trips aren't very practical.  We booked a week away in September at our favourite hotel in Spain so I now need to save the overall cost of that (not forgetting cat care costs)
@lucielle - snap!  I really don't like spending from my pots, even though that's what they are designed for.

I've spent time this morning organising savings pots whilst sitting in the garden room with lots of cups of tea.

to summarise 

car pot £640 will drop to £600 when I transfer the breakdown cover costs

council tax £1835 (I hate, hate spending this money)

Christmas £701.20

entertainment £87.48 (lots of concerts, subscriptions and days out have already come from this pot so it's being built up again)

Replacement tech (my least inspiring pot) edging up slowly and now contains £243.48

holiday £781.47 - will drop by £400 to cover Spain holiday deposit.  Need a ruthless focus on this pot to save £800 by end October.  I'll throw all my "accumulation of marginal gains" money into here as well as a set monthly amount.

HMRC pot £2424 ( this is for my big Jan 2025 bill)

Emergency pot £1671.17

I have to try to ignore the irritation of the odd pennies in each amount 🤦‍♀️

Time to raid the freezer for an ice cream.