It's the final countdown...£10k to go

t2rry

Tightpants24 said:

Wow, I looked away for a few days you have cleared your debt    Excellent effort.  Good luck with your carboot sale 👍

Thanks!! I would say it was a success, cleared a lot, sold the vast majority for £1 or two, made £180 👌🏻  It’s not easy going though, not sure I’ll do that again for a while 😅 

t2rry

Hello Diaryland,
Thought I'd do a little almost-mid-month update.

After my weekend carboot, I am up to a very nice £315 'extra' funds found for the month, mostly from the car boot but £135 from other selling and surveys (I have kept these up but at a much slower rate).

I have saved a little here and there on budgets, but also had to pay out £200 for something that I wasn't anticipating until next month, so the extra funds I've made so far have gone towards that and then buffering the main account as I'm concerned we will be short on normal spending (food etc) this month (we have £200 left for the rest of the month but an £80 buffer so it will be fine but the less spent the better).  The good news is that it means I have an extra £200 come payday for saving than I had budgeted, so it's not lost, just delayed profit.

If the house move goes as we hope, we're going to have our fully funded emergency fund (approx 6 months outgoings) then, as we will take some equity out (keeping the best deposit for mortgage rate still) to do some necessary work on the new place.  Of that, I've decided to set £10k aside as the full emergency fund, we'll still have our £1k buffer too (current emergency fund) and then the rest will be our house pot.  I will then still be able to save approx £2k per month between now & the end of the year to make another £10k+ (more if we don't get to have a holiday this year) by the end of 2021.  I was going to add these savings per month to the house fund, but I think I'm going to try and save it separately.  If we need to use some of it, fine, but if it's set aside then it will inevitably make me give more considered thought to spending it.  Not that I won't give considered thought to spending the house pot but I just know I'll be less worried about removing from that pot as it's for its intended purpose.

I'm not sure, if this does all go to plan, how and if to keep track of our targets here... maybe I'll worry about that when the planned things have actually happened and we have money actually in the bank for once.

t2rry

I popped on to ask if anyone had any advice re: a specific question - I will go and have a search on the other boards now too, but I'll leave it here for pondering:

Where would you keep your full emergency fund (our £10k as mentioned above) - this covers us for approximately 6 months of outgoings, just in case, so we theoretically want it to be accessible in that emergency event, but it also seems silly to just keep it in an instant saver as that makes as close to 0% as you can without being nothing.

This goes for money we save from here on out too.  I've never been in the position of having pots of money to do anything with in terms of saving, I've never had an ISA, I've never had real savings unless for a specific project where I'm saving them up to a certain level in order to then spend them so I'm totally clueless at this point!!

joedenise

We keep our emergency fund in Premium bonds.  I know the interest rate isn't particularly good but at least you never lose your capital and it's easy to get your money back, takes a few days but we can cover it from "pots" if necessary before that time.

Sarahwithlove

I agree I would go with premium bonds. 

mark55man

I have seen that advice (Premium Bonds) given quite often as the most useful place for EF type money

t2rry

Whoosh a month goes by quickly when you move house!!! We're still living out of boxes but it all went through pretty smoothly so that's great.  

So financially, we have our emergency fund in place, we have money set aside to work on the house which I'm keeping a very close eye on and budgeting the same way I would for normal life by making sure that whilst I can tinker within reason, the overall budget cannot go over and it seems to be working well so far.  

I am also continuing with the mindset about living costs, we don't need for much after the basics are covered and we should be able to still be saving £1,000-£2,000 per month without too much difficulty.  We didn't manage it in June but we had to cover more than a month mortgage, plus summer childcare etc. so that wasn't a surprise.  We still managed to save £500, which I've added to the emergency fund pot for now as I've run out of savings accounts to hold things and that's the one I know I won't ever want or need to touch.  I need to sort out premium bonds soon for that.

Bills are all still settling really, we're on water rates rather than a meter, which I am in two minds about changing.  It seems like a lot more at the moment but with two growing children I'm not sure that will last.  Council tax has gone up, which I expected so is fine,  broadband is much more limited as to suppliers here and has also gone up but we're definitely on the best rate.  Gas & electricity I'm still trying to sort but the old suppliers don't seem to want to final bill me and won't answer their phones so I'm going to cancel their direct debit in hope that forces their hand.  Still need to set up a DD for the new suppliers but have gone for the standard rate just until I can find time to sit and work out the most cost effective supplier for us here.  Really need to do this.

Anything else?  Not sure.  Hope you're all doing well.  Life here is about as busy as it could ever be!!!

t2rry

Another month AND a bit this time, diaryland!!

With another payday gone by we are up to £4,000 saved for the next target sinking fund pot.  I'm not sure that this will last though as we're coming to the end of the money set aside for the house.  We knew it wouldn't be enough to do everything we wanted, but I knew we'd be able to save from income as we went, too.  So I'm being really frugal about it and making sure we finish things off before moving onto another space.  I'm not entirely sure we really need an additional sinking fund pot, either, as everything we'd use a sinking fund for is already well budgeted, and we save money each month over and above them.  It would feel like we'd just be moving money around for the sake of it.  

Since last post, I've arranged for a water meter to be installed.  We seem to be very low users according to their own calculations on the previous house so no way we should be spending £50+ per month.  Still need to sort gas/electric though so this has given me a good reminder for that.

After now 3 months new mortgage payments going out I've realised that from our payment of circa £1,300, around £900 comes off the balance (rest interest) so I'm quite pleased with that as each month the total clicks down into another £1,000 mark!  A long long way to go but it's nice to feel like we are paying decent chunks off each month/year.

We've bitten the bullet of reality and put the kids back into wrap around care for the sake of our sanity, but the £200 or so per month (after tax free childcare) seems worth it.  Our monthly savings do seem to be varying quite a lot in my budget plan moving forward, some months as low as £1,500 (December, obviously but also October as lots of car things then!) and others as much as £2,300 possible.

We have definitely felt an increase in spending since moving, partly the move, partly the summer, partly the easing of lockdown.  It's a shame that they have all come at once as it has felt like hundreds every month that we would have previously saved that we now can't/don't.  Hopefully the coming of Autumn will mean that calms but we will see.  I'm still incredibly grateful for the position that we are in and the saving capacity that we have, even in a 'bad' month.

I'm not sure what to do regarding this diary now, I feel like it is not reflective of our targets anymore, but not quite ready to hit the button for being a mortgage free wannabe yet.  I'm an inbetweener!  Mostly we now want to get the house sorted, no extensions or anything, but getting what is here up to a really good standard, which we are confident will add more value than we spend, but it's a long road to the end point of that. Longer term we have 5 years on the mortgage fixed rate and by then we should have a house worth significantly more than we paid for it and tens of thousands of pounds paid off the mortgage balance, which means if we want to extend by then (very likely, if not even before!) we will be able to fairly comfortably with equity if not with additional savings we have by then.  

Once the house is 'finished' in terms of getting each room decorated, that's really our current target point, so we can have it valued, check we're right in what we think we're putting in versus getting out, then taking some time to build other pots up and dare I say living a little...!

t2rry

Hey world

I am officially an inbetweener. Neither a debt free wannabe anymore or a mortgage wannabe yet

I am happily solid in my debt free status (honeymoon period of a lifelong love affair, is where I'm putting myself) and with a not-insignificant £10k emergency fund which has gone perfectly untouched since it's inception.

We now earn too much to just rely on that emergency fund, we don't want to cover emergencies, we want to cover an element of freedom and future with our finances.  Dare I say, to start having a retirement goal in place (Quietly thinking we want to retire around 60 and I see no reason if we focus on it, that we couldn't achieve it)

So, I've mentioned we moved into a house that needs some work, we've done some, we have lots more to go but it can take time.  I'd like to be somewhere near finished with it by the end of the year though, that doesn't seem unrealistic, so I've added it to my signature.  I'd also like to save money in an ever growing pot at the same time.  What we've saved in the last 6 months has gone to the house, so it's been very up and down.  Whilst that's nice, I don't see why we can't do both.

We have 'leftover' after the budget each month, an average of around £2,000.  I'm going to keep things simple and split it down the middle; half goes to the house, half goes to additional savings.  I reckon to have an additional £10,000 saved by the end of the year (building in a buffer of that £2,000 extra for maybe a holiday if possible or just for leeway generally) would be fantastic, so that's my official target.  Hopefully I'll beat it.  Then there will be another £12,000(ish) saved and spent during the course of the year on the house.  That surely has to get us close to a 'finished' house and adding value along the way.

I just need an inbetweeners board to start a fresh diary now!!

mark55man

Well done that's a great position to be in.  If you can afford to lock it away until you are old enough to draw it down, then some of your savings could go into a self invested pension where you get tax relief and much the same investment choices as in ISAs.  Saving for the long term you don't want to rely on cash/savings especially with current disparity between interest and inflation.

If you need an inbetweeners diary just start one - or keep this one going - there are no rules.  And probably fewer here than MFW boards which are laser focussed, whereas I find DFW more diverse