Onwards and Upwards - Next Steps!

ImpulseSpender

Today was payday!

First month back using YNAB and I can remember why I loved it in the first place now. There's something nice about being organised and doing a budget. 

So with everything budgeted for, for the next month, as my outgoings are so low at the moment, that leaves me with £1000 to budget. I think I am going to move £500 into the rainy day fund which will means it takes it to just under £1000 so I almost have a good EF so that if anything does go wrong I can cover myself and not have to put it on CC. I then think I'll move £250 to the house fund and then I realised today I need to start saving for Christmas so I will move £50 over to Monzo where I keep a Christmas fund. 

That leave me with £200 technically still green and available to budget on YNAB. I feel like I should move this over to savings but it makes me a bit nervous that I then have 0 left to budget. Even though I know everything is covered. Anyone else have a fear of having their YNAB - to be budgeted being at 0 straight after pay day 

Also, I paid £60 DD off the MBNA debt which takes it down to £190.96!

ImpulseSpender

So after my message last night I decided that I would move £500 into the the emergency/rainy day fund. My saving rate with Coventry has dropped to 0.5% now after the first 12 months, I was speaking to my boyfriend a few weeks ago whose pretty savvy with personal finance (part hobby, part his job as financial planner) and he asked why I hadn't thought of opening a LISA for the house fund deposit. 

So this morning I opened a LISA with The Nottingham and as well as getting 25% up to £1000 a year from the gov there is also a 1.25% interest rate. So I've moved £300 into that account, when I get back to London and get my paperwork I'll move the rest of my Coventry account over too.  

ImpulseSpender

Not much to report on from the last few days. 

Sunday I had to transfer my sister £14.50 for our dad's father's day present. 

Yesterday I did buy a new pair of sandals however I'm thinking of them as an investment   Every year I buy sandals for £15-£25 and they're not great quality and after an hour or two of wearing them my feet are dying. So I decided to invest in a pair of Birkenstocks which I know are better made and comfier. The pair I bought were £65 but I got 10% student discount as I'm studying for an additional qualification alongside work at the moment. In the long run these sandals will last me years so instead of buying a pair each year I can now use these ones each year. 

Today so far I've spent £4.05 on a birthday card through Moonpig for someone in my team. Normally I get them each a card on their birthday when we're in the office so I've started doing it now through Moonpig.

ImpulseSpender

Been a week since I updated and that's simply because not a lot is happening! 

All DD are coming out at the moment which is the most exciting thing happening to my bank balance  The only other thing I've spent on recently is paying my mum £25 for food shopping, other than that, no spends. 

As we closed our account with BG and moved our electricity to EON, they've sent the final bill which apparently we owed £40. Luckily my flatmate has paid me for the whole of that because the overuse on electricity is most likely down to her being off work for 3 months earlier this year and 6 weeks last year. 

In other news, I was really lucky to receive £500 from my grandad as part of the money my nan left to him when she died earlier this year. He's given £500 to every grandchild (9 of them) which is really sweet of him. I've promised him I'd put it towards my house fund so thats gone into the LISA account.

I've also set some goals on YNAB to make sure I'm on track for different pots etc this year. So the house fund pot I want to make £10K by April 2022 which means I have £8100 left to make for this, this works out at roughly £368 each month which is pretty doable. 
Holiday Pot goal is £1000 by June 2021 as me and boyfriend are planning a slightly bigger holiday September/October 2021. Currently there is £313.59 in this pot so another £686.41 to go which works out roughly £60 a month which again is doable. 

Hopefully having these goals keeps me focused and I'm hoping I can add more to it each month. 

ImpulseSpender

No spends today as luckily seems to be the case lately, this will change when I go back to London in three weeks so need to make the most of it now! 

I've started using usertesting.com and have been testing apps/websites/UIs. I've done surveys in the past when I was focused on debt busting and while I did make a small amount extra every so often I found them quite time consuming for not a lot. So I decided to give this usertesting.com a go. So far its been pretty good! I've done 4 tests in the last week and a half or so and you get paid $10 per test which normally takes between 10-15 minutes. The good thing is that the money is paid directly into your paypal once its credited which is normally a week after the test. So I've got £7 in pay pal with another $30 pending which should work out at £24ish. Would definitely recommend if you want something different to surveys although it does take a while to get a test, they aren't as frequent as surveys. 

Once I've cashed that money out of pay pal I'll transfer it to the house fund. 

I've also got £19 payable on T0pcashback but I have £33.59 confirmed too which I'd like to wait for before cashing out. 

ImpulseSpender

The weekend was nice and quiet, I did have a couple of spends. First one was I picked up a few things for my mum from the local shop so that came to £5.88 and then since we've been in lockdown I've really missed going for coffee or grabbing a takeaway coffee so I went through the Costa drive thru on Saturday and bought myself and my sister a coffee and blueberry muffin which came to £8.30. Because I haven't done that for months I forgot how expensive coffee here and there can be and how it can add up massively, this was definitely one of my problems pre-lockdown and I'll definitely not be going back to that. 

I did another UI test on Friday night and then another one earlier today so I have $50 (£40ish) pending now which will be added to Paypal this week with the $10 already in there. I'll probably withdraw it by the end of the week and then add it into the House Fund.

ImpulseSpender

Completely forgot that my YNAB trial was going to be up so forgot to budget for that. But I was able to move some existing budgets around to cover most of it. I still needed a bit extra so I withdrew £19 from my Top Cashback account, still have another £28 confirmed in there but not payable yet. 

All the UI tests I did last week are now paying so I have $40 dollars in my Paypal account and I should get another $10 dollars tomorrow so I'll cash it all out tomorrow which should add up to roughly £40 which will be going straight to the house fund. 

I've also done another 4 this week too so will have $40 coming my way at least next week. 

ImpulseSpender

Cashed out £38.48 for the UI tests so put that straight into the house fund. Thought I’d do a round up of my pots so far as I hadn’t really looked at them for the last few weeks:

House Fund: £2015.21
Rainy Day/EF: £964.84
Holiday: £327.31
Sod It/Treat Fund: £12.06

Pleased with my progress so far but partly worried that with things going back to normal my saving will go out the window. Learning how to say no to things is something I’m going to have to practice!!

Bizzywizard

Hi,
You are doing really well!
Have you looked at having a LISA account for your house fund? If not here's Martin Lewis's link.
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/lifetime-isas/
I'm currently saving £50 a month for both of my children, so they can transfer this into their LISA accounts once they turn 18 (and if they are still going then).
Best of luck
Bizzy

ImpulseSpender

Hi @Bizzywizard,
Thanks for your message! I do have a LISA for part of the house fund. Its a bit confusing but I originally had a Coventry saving account which has £1100 in it. I have recently opened the LISA with the Nottingham BS, which has £915.16 in it. Because I'm at my parents, my paperwork/login grid for Coventry is in London so I can't move the £1100 over to the LISA yet. As soon as I get back to London in two weeks I'll be moving everything over from Coventry and closing it down so I just have the LISA.