Keep calm and carry on....

Jessy103

Awesome SC, well done! Happy New Year and all the best for 2021! ❤

Busy_Mee

Happy New Year SC. Loving the free money totals, you must have the patience of a saint to do all those surveys. I have stopped doing them because they drive me potty.

South_coast

Thanks all!

Challenge accepted DFOD - £105 it is!

Cheery_Daff

Wow SC, what brilliant free money totals, well done you!! Xx

Cornish_mum

Happy New Year SC - fabulous free money total that’s amazing! X CM

South_coast

Thank you both 😍

South_coast

Right, never let it be said that I take a long time to make a decision! I have scraped the barrel of all my savings pots and collected together £3794 of the £4000 needed to max out the LISA when the new tax year starts in April. So job number one is to top this up by £206. Then everything is going on to the mortgage for the rest of the year.

(Let's hope the bank have indeed changed the monthly payment, as I'm not doing my calculations again!)

I've amended my goals post below to reflect the moving of the goalposts 🤣

These are the 2021 goals:

Money....
* Save up £4k to transfer into the LISA at the start of the new tax year - This will earn me the maximum bonus of £1k for The Future and the overall "money needed" figure
* Once I have the £4k ready, pile all money into the mortgage - Simples!
* No clothes purchases, except for work clothes, underwear and tights - I don't have loads of clothes, but I definitely have enough and they're all in decent enough condition. The exceptions are to a) make sure I look professional and b) ensure public decency, so are sensible enough omissions!
* 1% of monthly salary to be donated to local homeless charity - Rolled over from 2020, as not yet a habit

2021, the year of health....
* Buy a 12-month prescription pre-payment certificate - I have been guilty of not using my inhalers at the prescribed dose to save on prescription charges in the past, so this feels sensible and grown-up. It will also save me money overall
* Act promptly on health concerns - No more ignoring back/chest pain for two weeks and telling myself it's down to sleeping on a lumpy mattress (although this did at least prompt me to buy a loooovely mattress topper 🤣!)
* Continue to minimise alcohol consumption - No explanation needed here, I think!
* Avoid all processed sugar - I'm not going to refuse birthday cake if someone has taken the time to bake it, but I'm not going to go looking for it either. The same goes for biscuits, chocolate etc
* Take steps to minimise processed food - A bit tricky as I'm veggie (I do eat fish, but not at home - mostly to make it easier for other people catering for me), so I can't just base meals round a piece of meat, but some of the meat-alternative products don't feel very natural so I'm trying to cut those out as much as possible. Just need to make sure I leave myself something to eat!
* Exercise outdoors once a week and indoors once a week - I know this will sound really lame to you fit lot, but I have to start somewhere and also try and keep it achievable
No weight loss goals per se this year, but hopefully the above will add up to some improvement....🤞

themadvix

Fab totals! Plan C sounds sensible (although given the interest rates I’d have gone for the S&S option - opened one with Nutmeg this year instead of using my cash one and it’s doing well - wouldn’t normally recommend mandated funds but think their involvement has helped to weather an extremely volatile year!)

killerpeaty

I won't harp on about stocks and shares. but I would like to encourage you to consider whether a LISA is a good place for all of your savings, you would bare a penalty if you withdraw the cash before... 65? Or is it 60?

Do you have a good experience with Nutmeg themadix? I may be slightly snobbish and am put off by the name!

Brilliant non-work earnings for the year, you must be so impressed with yourself SC!

South_coast

Thanks both. I *think* I can swap to an S&S one at some point in the future if I change my mind, but with the ups and downs that 2020 has brought I wanted guaranteed certainty at the moment. It's 60 when you can withdraw KP and you can only pay in £4k a year, so hopefully that won't be all I manage to save each year and there'll be some accessible stuff alongside it. Reading it back, I may have been a bit over-dramatic saying I'd scraped the barrel of all my pots! Most of it was already earmarked for OP's anyway so would have been inaccessible once paid, and I still have 6 months' full expenses (including my standard payments into savings), so not quite as bad as I made it sound!