10 years to go .... maybe, with a fair wind

savingholmes

Well done on all your progress. Holiday pots looking good too.

Lauraebrad

Wow - the end of the summer came with a bump.  We had a hectic but mostly delightful summer with some amazing trips away.  Back to work / home life isn’t so delightful.  I may have ended up sobbing in the car park of a distant shopping centre on the hunt for a non-delivered blazer!  

So, with the weather turning in, and a damp non-working day, I thought I’d recap where I’m up to.  Probably this one will be more about the repercussions of excessive spending rather than winning at mortgage OPs!

As with last year I’ve totted up our holiday costs.  This isn’t to show off or infer any position of smugness - it’s just for me to see what we are costing ourselves and as a bit of a motivator for continuing to save hard.  Also it’s a bit of a comparator for myself when I see other people off on all-inclusive sun holidays to understand where our holiday choices are at money-wise.

So ….. Scores on the doors.

1. One week (6 nights) in a really lovely cottage in Kirkcudbright, Scotland with the not at all small boy and my mum.  This is ⅔ of the costs as my mum obviously paid her share.

Accommodation - £601.92

Spending - £318.48 (including fuel, food, souvenirs, activities etc)

TOTAL £920.40 for 2 people.

2. 11 days (10 nights) interrailing with my son through France to Spain.. A mix of budget hotels and Ai*B&B apartment..  

Accommodation - £1014.14

Travel - £592.20

Spending - £1216.97 (this includes £380 of activities / entrance fees)

TOTAL £2823.31 for 2 people

Saved for through a combination of monthly reg saver, saving my last year’s increment/payrise monthly, scrimping, surveys and overtime from work.  This was a lot more than last year when we had some awesome free accommodation in Islay, and didn’t trek all over Europe! Probably not a sustainable annual level of holiday spending as the overtime won’t continue and I’m hoping to step down into a less pressured job at some point that will presumably pay considerably less.

Having said that, I wouldn’t change a thing - travelling has always been one of my favourite things to do, even if it means a lot of bread whilst sat on trains ….!

So August’s OP / investments came to £320 - partly due to the interest on a matured (very high interest - now sadly disappeared!) savings account.  I think September’s OP / investments will struggle to get over £200. Not much left over at the end of August, and not much surplus at all in September after such a busy August.   I’ve decided to try and be a bit more relaxed about it though - I could probably squeeze some more OPs but Sept / Oct / Nov look like they’re going to be extremely challenging work-wise, so I don’t want to make it even more miserable by denying myself the odd tasty coffee or cooking more interesting meals. 

Speaking of which, pizza Wednesdays are back, and the not at all small one is back from school - so better get on with making sauce and getting mozzarella out of the freezer. 

Happy September all … x

South_coast

That all sounds excellent 😀 Looks like very good value for memories that you and your son will share forever 🩷

savingholmes

Sounds an awesome use of time and money - and memory making to boot.

Lauraebrad

Goodness, it’s October already.  September was pretty full-on, and overwhelming at times.  Quite a few changes around here as the teenager has been living at home with me full time – and consequently eating a lot of food as well needing a new bed / desk as he’s taller/bigger/older.  Starting Y9 at school also turns out to have been relatively expensive for a few reasons – including enrolling in DofE, funding for technology lessons etc.  On the upside I have a few days overtime to request, and we did receive our agreed backpay for our pay rise since April.

Excitingly, he has the opportunity to travel abroad for 4 weeks in 2027 with a schools expedition which is going to require A LOT of fundraising, and hopefully not too much parental input.  So money, thriftiness and side hustles have been very much at the forefront of our conversations recently.  He’s very motivated with a lot of fundraising ideas …. So let’s hope that lasts! 

In mortgage OP news, the receipt of my backpay, as well as annual interest on a couple of savings accounts means I’ve managed to reach my stretch-OP target this year (well, if I take into account my normal monthly mortgage OP’s that will go in for Nov/Dec).  So that means by the end of the year I’ll have £1,800 cash OPs in addition to £1,800 invested for 2025.  This is massive for me with everything else that’s been going on and also having had a couple of nice holidays.  I’m really happy with this, although don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up at that rate next year – depends a bit on what mortgage rate I get for remortgaging.

This months budget looks absolutely terrible – I was away with friends last week and had massively underestimated the amount of eating out / drinking that would be involved.  None of it was unreasonable – I’d just not thought it through properly.  Then the food spends are massively up as a result of the boy being at home – as I tend to eat a lot of loose ends up whilst I’m without him usually.  So looks like it might be a frugal couple of weeks coming up.

Happy that it’s the season of soups again though.  Just need to clear a bit of space in the freezer which seems to be mostly filled with cheap bread products.  I made some chocolate beetroot brownies yesterday as a friend had passed on some spare beetroots.  They taste delicious but unfortunately I dropped them coming out of the tin so they’re in many many pieces / rubble rather than the nice neat squares for packed lunches that I’d hoped! 

Anyway, happy soup season all.

debtfreewannabe321

All sounds fab - holidays, back pay and the OPs! ☺️

beanielou

All sounds good. 

savingholmes

Commiserations on the brownie dropping - as long as they are still edible and taste good that's the most important thing. 

Well done on the OPs. The opportunity for your son sounds amazing for both of you - as presumably you would also get a bit of a rest.

Lauraebrad

Somehow it’s December - happy advent all.  It’s belting down with rain outside but I’ve taken a week off work to try and restore some sort of order to my household after a ridiculous autumn and I don’t even care about the rain - I’m sat with coffee and laptop jobs, perfectly happy.

It was payday on Friday so just moving December’s money around.  My bank account has become a bit messy.  I can’t remember if I wrote before, but the not-at-all-small-one is fundraising for a school expedition to Costa Rica in 2027 …. So life now is all about fundraising and I’ve had bits and bobs of money arriving for his various ventures.  The weekend was taken up with foraging for wreath kits that he and a friend have been selling, and we spent all day on Friday (inset day) selling cakes and crafts after a heavy week of baking.  Anyway, I think I’ve now got to the point where everything balances.

This month’s mortgage OP takes my to my stretch target for the year.  I’m up to £1,800 OPs/savings and £1,800 invested so £3,300 in total compared to my original target of £2,400.  This has mostly been achievable because it’s been an unusually tough yeat at work and the flip side has been overtime.  I’m really happy with this and can see the mortgage free life inching closer. 

I’ve also sorted out my new mortgage product that starts early in the new year.  It involved a phone call to the building society as I want a short ‘window’ between this product finishing and the new one starting to make a chunky overpayment from the savings / investments I’ve built up.  All of that will take my basic payment down by about £50 a month (well about £90 less than current static payment) so keeping it at the same level will keep the OPs healthy. 

Next on today’s list is to tackle some of the Christmas shopping - mostly niblings - so it shouldn’t be too hard to cross off with some online shops.  Fingers crossed the Christmas fund stretches far enough!

Hoping that amongst the busyness of the festive season everyone can find some time for relaxation, joy and a little bit of sparkle. 

beanielou

All sounding good.