DrSpendingLittle's New Home - staying accountable and responsible

Isitdoable

I loved having my cleaner!!  It used to cost me about £200 a month for a weekly spruce round our three bed.  Honestly life changing!!  But right now too expensive as I massively shave the budgets.  When I'm back in the black in will be the first thing I bring back!

I really struggled a bit with YNAB - I'm doing everything manually at the moment, but unsure as to whether I should give it another go.....

DrSpendingLittle

Isitdoable said:

I loved having my cleaner!!  It used to cost me about £200 a month for a weekly spruce round our three bed.  Honestly life changing!!  But right now too expensive as I massively shave the budgets.  When I'm back in the black in will be the first thing I bring back!

I really struggled a bit with YNAB - I'm doing everything manually at the moment, but unsure as to whether I should give it another go.....

YNAB changed my life - I love it. However, I think its a personality thing. I'm a very visual person, so I like to 'see' my progress as I make spends (or don't!). I also like organising, so arranging my money into pots in the app is enjoyable and planning budgets ahead of time gives me a visible goal to work towards. Others hate YNAB - my DF certainly wouldn't have the patience or inclination to record every spend.  I think you can link some UK bank accounts - Barclays perhaps? I'm not sure. I can't link mine. 

I'd always say give YNAB another go! See how you get on for one month and then decide. 

moving_forward

DrSpendingLittle said

YNAB changed my life - I love it. However, I think its a personality thing. I'm a very visual person, so I like to 'see' my progress as I make spends (or don't!). I also like organising, so arranging my money into pots in the app is enjoyable and planning budgets ahead of time gives me a visible goal to work towards. Others hate YNAB - my DF certainly wouldn't have the patience or inclination to record every spend.  I think you can link some UK bank accounts - Barclays perhaps? I'm not sure. I can't link mine. 

I'd always say give YNAB another go! See how you get on for one month and then decide. 

Anothwr vote for YNAB here. The videos are really useful to learn the methology. YNAB and spreadsheets are my babies ☺

DrSpendingLittle

A successful NSD yesterday and I plan for today (and tomorrow!) being the same. I'm WFH so it makes it much easier to avoid spending any money. The bonus is saving on fuel and car parking costs, which I reckon is approx. £9 each time I go to the office. Luckily I can WFH if I have no meetings (usually about twice a week), though I do like the routine of going in and seeing my colleagues now and again, so I'm glad I can't WFH all the time. 

We've got a cleaner! Starting next week. We got a decent introductory deal with an agency which discounts the cost for the first few months. We've gone for 2.5 hours a week which they recommend for the size of our house. I cannot wait

What else? No much really. I'm having a very quiet month, socially speaking, so no spendy plans are on the horizon at all. I can't believe its nearly the middle of the month. I love short months! Only two weeks and 12 hours until payday

I spoke to my conveyancing solicitor last week to ask them to double check our title was fine. I was worried that an additional section of our garden might now be affected by the previous the freehold title issue (relating to the boundary wall at the end of our garden) being resolved. Ugh. The new title plan is a bit ambiguous for my liking and I'm worried the shed / land underneath it that abuts the wall now appears outside the freehold red line plan. Anyway, they just contacted me to say they are happy that the title is fine. Phew. The market here is slow at the moment, so we're going to wait a bit to go to market. Gives us time to get some more redecoration done and wait for the trees to start blossoming - I always think winter pictures on rightmove look so bleak. We haven't seen anything we want to buy so we don't feel under any immediate pressure to leap back into the fray. 

Right, a spot of lunch and back to work! 

DSL

DrSpendingLittle

Oooaf, I've had a busy few days. In the office today and having a quiet lunch break (brought from home) before an afternoon of meetings. 

I haven't spent any money since I regretfully bought that TV season 1 early in the week. I've enough petrol to last me this week and we don't need any food shopping done for the foreseeable future, so it should be another NSD today and tomorrow. Whoop!

 DF treated us to a takeaway the other night because we both ended up working late (we were both WFH and in the flow) and we didn't realise the time until it was suddenly 8:30pm! Dinner tonight is planned.  

I do need to book my car in for a service at some point soon. I've got £200 in my car maintenance pot, which should cover it. I can't recall if I did a big service or little service last time. Hopefully it'll be just over £100 as normal.

This weekend we need to do some more decorating and I need to do some gardening to keep on top of things. But, no significant spends planned, maybe a tin of paint. 

DrSpendingLittle

Forgot about the storm, so I'm not going to get much gardening done today! 💨💦

Will resort to tidying the house in readiness for the cleaner next week (🙂) and get some more painting done. 

Had a ridiculously long lie in - I wont tell you what time I woke up - but I definitely needed ☺️. Luckily I have a quieter work week coming up and will probably WFH a couple of days. I do feel like I've wasted some of the day now though. 

Spends are still very good 🙌. I've taken lunch into work all week and my colleague treated me to lunch on Friday which was lovely. I got a £3.50 refund from Ocado as some eggs and yoghurt arrived damaged. I did make one purchase this week - an item of clothing that I'd intended to purchase in March appeared in a one day 20% off sale so I decided to take advantage of that. Lets see whether its worth keeping when it arrives. I'm quite pleased with the discount and the item will compliment my capsule wardrobe perfectly plus do the intended job in March (a friend's special occasion). Feel a touch guilty about making the purchase in February as I had every intention of making no clothing purchases until March but what's a girl to do with a 20% discount ??! 😃 

I don't envisage any spends today or tomorrow - I may need a small tin of paint but I'm sure B&M will serve me well  - bog standard white emulsion for a small space.  Dinner tonight is sorted - DF is going bake bread and make a winter stew, which we have most of the ingredients for but he'll probably need to pick up some carrots and celery when he pops out to get a beer later.  Tomorrows dinner is planned and we have everything we need except for chillis and fresh coriander, but a quick visit to Aldee will sort that out. 

Right, time to attack the laundry basket! 🧺 💃🏼

DrSpendingLittle

A mid-month financial update 

So far this month, I've spent £620.53. That includes mortgage & bills so far and £200 on builder work. 

I've got £37.99 left in my immediate obligations categories to pay 3 direct debts that are charged towards the end of the month. 

I've £133 left in my food, fuel, misc. household and personal spending categories. I think I can manage this. The amount I've saved into my yearly savings pots this month is £750 and I've put £1000 into general savings. 

Back to painting and decorating! 

Sarahwithlove

Wow that's a lot saved per month if you can make it to the end. At least it's a short month. I have almost finished reading your debt journey you've done so well to come this far. 

Sarahwithlove

Ohhh just finished thats gutting that the sale fell through but it will be nice to make the changes you want and not take on a new mortgage, hopefully it means you can look at overpaying and then retiring earlier. 

DrSpendingLittle

Just jumping on to keep things up to date. Only spends today have been bin bags (I bulk buy Brabantia ones on Amazon) and a stand for my computer monitor in my home study - the monitor is not adjustable and sits too low on my desk for the recommended eye sight angle.  It's been driving me mad for ages but I've been too tight to spend the money 😂. I figured since my Amazon prime ends tomorrow, I'd just bite the bullet and get it whilst ordering the bin bags! £35 later.... 😊

The window cleaner came but they invoice us every three cleans so we'll pay when that arrives.

We had our first clean today and I am so so so so so glad we decided to get a cleaner 🙌 🙌. Everything is sparkly clean and with zero effort! Feels a bit odd not cleaning myself and a bit like I've lost that satisfaction you get from spending hours cleaning. However, I think this will work very well for us. We did a pre-cleaner tidy yesterday and I know we'll get into a good routine of tidying before the cleaner comes and then keeping the house tidy all week. Lets see how we get on this week. I also need to get into the routine of washing the bed sheets and towels before she comes so everything is extra clean. 

I was WFH today and I will probably WFH tomorrow though I'm not sure as its school holidays and the traffic is always nice and quiet which makes driving in and getting a parking space much more pleasant. I feel the need to indulge in an easy commute, so I might go in on Wednesday for sure and then decide how I feel about tomorrow in the morning. DF is WFH tomorrow and always likes my company if I'm about too. Lets see. We could both WFH and go for a nice pub lunch somewhere I guess. 

Plenty of food in the freezer and fridge. We're using up some leftovers from last night but need some halloumi, so DF is picking that up from Sainsbury's on the way home. 

Got loads of diaries to catch up on - I wish they'd put a 'bookmarks' short cut at the bottom of the page, so I didnt have to scroll all they way back up to the top to get to unread diaries!