Crunchy pays off the loan early, and other stories

crunchy_time

Hello all!

just sitting down with a herbal tea after doing the food shop. Work out next followed by dinner and family dog walk.

A couple of money things:

- husbands 0% credit card has come through. Unfortunately we can’t balance transfer my credit card just his so I have had to have a shuffle round of what is owed on what so we can pay mine off before the 0% finishes.

- husband and I have agreed that £2000 is our medium term savings amount to cover any car and home emergencies. So the plan is to save this up and then start to pay off the debts again. Still going to save £150 a month in each of our ISAs as a long term buffer that in the future May pay off large chunks of debt like the loan.

- weekly food shop done £84. Weekly budget is £150 normally. For dog food and toiletries as well.

- I went food shopping on my own so I was able to get some stocking fillers! Two mini notebooks for 50p each not noticed in the food shop so won’t touch my budget. They were selling chocolate.

- we are thinking about things we can cut out of our outgoings and Netflix is one. We feel we watch stuff for watching stuffs sake.

- Have tweaked signature with latest figures. This includes new bed costs and the juggle that I had to do.

I can’t wait for some cooler weather now tbh.  Enough to wear jeans and a jumper but not put heating on yet. That is going to stay off as long as possible!!

Crunchy x

crunchy_time

Wow what a day at work.

Nothing has changed - so political. Lots of BS and power struggles.

Overt the summer I created a game plan to deal with it so I must get on with this.

Sigh

Crunch x

crunchy_time

Evening all

Ive just done my annual household bill sort out from our folders and got rid of a lot of old statements we no longer need to burn on the chimnea tomorrow.

I found a receipt for an oil delivery last year and got a quote for filling it up this year. Last year it was £250 for 500 litres.  Now its £450 for 500 litres. Bonkers! We have £200 saved up for the next lot so far and about 2 months left in the tank. If we aim to keep it off until November and up the monthly savings from £50 to £85, we should be able to order some more in December. Frightening though.

Our mortgage is up for renewal in august 2023 so I had a quick look to see what the monthly payment would be if we went from 1.9% to 4% and it’s £1136 to £1350 a month!!!!! Hopefully it won’t come to this but it’s good to plan for if it is on the horizon.

We have managed to have two weekends now where we haven’t gone anywhere which is good for the bank balance. I forgot that it was a 5 week month when I did our food budget so we are going to have to borrow a bit of money from our slush fund but that’s ok.

I do our annual plan for the academic year so I’ve started to plan out our expenses for the year so we can set up pots on Monzo.

So lots to keep me busy at the moment and not out spending money. Although I think the kids are a bit bored. We keep telling them that things are getting more expensive and we are having to cut back in some areas to help pay our bills and they understand.

We are going to watch a bit of the funeral tomorrow but then go out for a bike ride to make the most of being together.

Hope everyone is ok? The weather has definitely changed now hasn’t it!

Crunchy xx

ohdearhowdidthathappen

All sounding goood Crunchy
We tend to do shorter UK hols.... we did a 4 night and a 7 night this year.
Next year we've booked 3 lots of 4 night breaks.  It divides the year up a bit and gives you stuff to look forward to, I find it easier to budget for too.

crunchy_time

ohdearhowdidthathappen said:

All sounding goood Crunchy
We tend to do shorter UK hols.... we did a 4 night and a 7 night this year.
Next year we've booked 3 lots of 4 night breaks.  It divides the year up a bit and gives you stuff to look forward to, I find it easier to budget for too.

Thank you!  Because we are changing our tactic and saving to pay back the debt it feels like we are stuck in treacle at the moment.  This blasted budget is now putting a spanner in the works again but we are more determined than ever to get out these house renovations paid off.

I'm hoping it will, regarding the holidays.  We have already got a plan for one for the easter holidays now.

crunchy_time

Evening all!

Husband's pay day today thank goodness!

I've just completed the money shuffle over a glass of wine - my idea of a fun Friday night!

Husband and I have started a group of pots that we are calling the champagne glasses.  Each month we top up the following pots in a cascade manner as if we were pouring champagne into glasses in one of those towers.

This is our tower:

£500 Spending money (although we never plan to spend this it is an overestimate) kids clothes, birthday parties etc, topping up food/petrol pots.
£1000 for emergency fund (car services, appliance services, emergencies etc
£2000 home improvements (a pot for next year so we don't put stuff on 0% again)  We need to cost up what we want to do though so this might change.

Once these are full then I am going to set up pots to save to pay off the debts.

I'm excited about getting stuck into this strategy.  For the last ten years we have had an emergency fund but one that we can't really access and although we budget, we always end up underestimating how much we spend so don't budget enough although we are quite frugal.

So far the pots look like this on day 1

£500 spending money
£559 emergency fund
£0 home improvements
£0 Debt neutral fund

We have a boiler service and a car service coming up next week alone so although this looks like a strong start, it isn't.  We may need to use the credit card for the car service because it's a big one and we also have a slow puncture to fix well. I'm going to see what the bills look like before we make a plan.

So, like everyone at the moment, the horns are rained in and we are being as tight as we can for things that are in our control.  The heating went on for an hour today to take the edge off.  Husband has been working in the house this week to keep the costs of using the electrical heater in his office nil.

Thank goodness this is only a 4 week month.  Hopefully we won't use as much fuel this month either.

Crunchy x

t2rry

okay two main things I feel the need to comment upon:

1.  LOVE budgeting with a glass of wine on a Friday night.  Absolute bliss in my mind!
2.  LOVE the champagne tower idea

May steal one or both of these in future!

crunchy_time

t2rry said:

okay two main things I feel the need to comment upon:

1.  LOVE budgeting with a glass of wine on a Friday night.  Absolute bliss in my mind!
2.  LOVE the champagne tower idea

May steal one or both of these in future!

Ha ha! I love that you love it!

We’ve tried so hard to budget so many pots like hair cuts, pet supplies etc and on holiday I realised that this doesn’t work for us. Let’s just have a big pot for everything that we won’t want to spend from and be done with it. I plan to add more champagne glasses going forward but £500 spending and £1000 emergency fund is good enough so far.

It’s a nice visual as well!

enthusiasticsaver

I would agree that lots of individual savings pots don't work for everyone.  We did it for a while but now just have two savings pots.  One emergency fund and one pot for everything else albeit in separate savings spaces in a starling account. We also only have three savings spaces, car, house, holiday. Champagne glasses tower is a good visual motivator. 

EssexHebridean

If the method works for you then that's the most important thing - however I'd urge caution on conflating "emergency fund" with stuff that is unquestionably not emergency spends. An EF should be sacred - ONLY touched for the sort of financial panics that simply can't be seen coming, if it is used for things that should be part of a budget like car servicing etc then it won't be there for the actual emergencies, and that's when the credit cards come out. The other risk is that it blurs the boundaries of what constitutes an actual emergency where the money there SHOULD be available to be used.

We do run with a fair few savings pots, but the transfers to them are automated (standing orders from the current account at the beginning of the month) so we don't have to worry about remembering to do transfers. I do have one regular saver at the moment where it's not possible to set a SO from the feeder account and that's bugging the life out of me as I forget it every month and have a bit of a panic account the balance after the current account level dips! Mental note for the future not to use that set-up again!