It's the final countdown...£10k to go

t2rry

Thanks as usual Mark, looks like you've got an exciting countdown started!! 

I have taken two plunges recently:

1. I've entered the foray into the pension boards.  Just the process of explaining our circumstances and being forced to look at things has pushed me over a hump I was experiencing in terms of understanding our current pension set ups and what they mean.  This is great progress for me, now I understand them I can target what we need to do.  It's also confirmed to me that I'm not a total idiot when it comes to it all but I've started to get my head around the tax implications of a number of options, which has made decision making a little clearer for me.

2. I had an annual interest added to our main cash savings account, a whopping £8 for 10 months hard saving, so I've opened a fixed savings account instead for a year.  Seems like a good compromise rate for a relatively short time period when we know we're going to want to access the money at some point, and don't want to tie it away for too long.  Happy with this decision and it will be nice to see it increasing.

Technically it means that I've hit my additional savings goal for 2022 already.  I had put £8,500 / £10,000 in my signature but I did cheekily have some more savings elsewhere, so rather than wait to December for income to make it up to £10k, I've stolen from the other savings to do that and will just top that smaller pot with what was intended.  It's weird how I categorise savings just because of where they came from or where they are sat.  I'm not going to add the 'extra' additional savings onto my signature as that is earmarked for spending, but nice to have hit that target early and to have maintained some consistency in saving from last year, especially with that extra money also going into the ISA.

In other MSE news, we've resisted putting the heating on yet and will continue to avoid it for as long as possible!! MOT is due this month, I have £500 budgeted for it but very much suspect it's going to need a lot more than that.  It's planned for the end of the month so if I need to make it up, it will probably come from next month rather than taking out of existing savings.  Fingers crossed on that one, I can suck up an additional £500 but any more than that, I will be pretty gutted. 

mark55man

Ha ha - yes I forgot your thread title - nothing like a good countdown.  Mine a little longer than usual perhaps

Well done on keeping going, sometimes that's the hardest thing - and moving money between buckets does count, as you need to have the money in the first place

t2rry

Ugh, £1700 for our car to get sorted and through its MOT.  Hopefully that puts it in a good state for years now because that's wiped any savings over and above the ISA this month    

Hard bill to swallow when we don't even use the car that much, but better than neglecting such an expensive asset (liability!) I guess.  

Honestly, if we can get to the start of 2023 maintaining our balances from now, I'll be okay with that.  We're above where I'd targeted already and I must remember that with automatic savings going away now, we are still better off at the end of every month than the start.

Another target for me within the next 6 months is to work out what we want to do in terms of making additional pension contributions vs house extension vs paying down mortgage.  I think at least for now I've decided that mortgage overpayment is off the table because we're fixed at what is now a very good low rate for years, and with the work we're doing to the house we should be well under 60% LTV rate by the time we need to secure a new rate.  In the meantime, saving what we can I suppose means we have all the options still available to us.    

t2rry

whoosh another 2 months flown by.  That's the end of the year though I guess.

Summary for 2022, I wanted to:
1. Complete 10 rooms of the house.  We managed 8 - 3 during 2021, 5 during 2022 - I'm very happy with that.
2. Save an additional £10,000.  Done and it's been in a fixed savings account since October so is already up to £10,100.

During the year I added an additional target because no2 was achieved with months to spare:
3. Invest £2,500.  We also achieved this via setting up a S&S ISA and we have a direct debit of £500pcm going in.

How about some 2023 plans written down, making me more likely to achieve them...

1.  Complete the remaining rooms of the house, will leave this as the current signature line so we get to 10/10

2.  Save £15,000.  This will include the ISA but still means an additional £9,000 on top.  I think we can do better than this but with the house stuff still to do (some expensive things like restoring all the original single glazed windows, which will be very sensible for our heating costs!), I don't want to push it so far that it quickly becomes unachievable.  I have set up a new linked regular savings account with 5.2% interest, paying the maximum £150pcm in, which means £650 savings per month is now automated and we need to ringfence another £600pcm average to savings.  If it becomes clear that we can exceed this pretty well, I'll review and possibly add an additional savings target on top like I did last year.

I still toy with overpaying the mortgage/increasing pension contributions (I'm counting the S&S ISA as pension now, that's a long term setup) given we have over £20k in savings and still a pretty strong disposable income, but I think I have to just keep plodding on with savings to keep all options open, especially since we still want to extend the house (I'm not closed to moving either, this may or may not be a forever home but our fixed rate isn't up until 2026).  £20k savings when we had none this time 2 years ago is huge, especially when we've also moved and spent tens of thousands on the house in that time too, I'm sure to some it's just the makings of an emergency fund, so I keep going!

crunchy_time

Lovely to ‘see’ you again! And the new goals sound awesome!!! Xx

mark55man

Well done @t2rry - please tell me your secret of getting rooms done - I'm 0 for 10 and have been for years

t2rry

mark55man said:

Well done @t2rry - please tell me your secret of getting rooms done - I'm 0 for 10 and have been for years

Ah it's nothing more than the fact that I love doing it, it's my absolute obsession; when I'm not doing it, I'm thinking about it!  To the extent I'd love to turn it into my full time job one day, I've made a really good side hustle from it already but constantly back and forth about putting the faith in myself to let it replace a day or two per week at work or even all of it.  The weird thing is, if I earnt a lower wage I'd be more inclined to go for it.

mark55man

I don't feel quite so bad about my record of non achievement now, but I do need to pull the rabbit out the hat on this one

I do know exactly what you mean about the higher you earn, the more the risk about going early.  For me - its more about the interesting roles I get from being a long termer, but yes earning £60k and making that leap is a bigger risk than at £20K

t2rry

Payday came a little early for us this month as our employers decided it was fair, since we get paid earlier in December, to also bring January's forward to split the difference between what is otherwise a very long January and very short February,

So the first shuffle of the year has commenced.

I'm feeling a bit down about a few things, cost of living wise, we worked so hard to maximise our ability to save and it feels like swimming against the tide at the moment, every month seems extortionate and there's always a reason we end up in theoretical minus at the end of the month (we never actually do because I manage it and we have different paydays so I just start the next month early etc.)

A £500-£600 single month winter fuel bill here, a standard food & expenses month coming in at £850-£900.  I know it's everyone, but the lack of at least keeping up with months that have gone before feels very demotivating.  

I type all of that but then due to a couple of things, we're doing very well already against annual savings target.  This is mostly because some work we had booked in for the house (boring and expensive but sensible work on the building fabric) has been pushed back because of the trades availability.  The aim is really to have that done before next winter so we have the whole year to do so.  This means some funds that would have gone straight to that can now be saved instead and I can make it up as an ongoing sinking fund.

I have quite a few savings pots going on now to try and maximise its efficiency so from next month I will have the following savings automated:

£500 to S&S ISA
£300 to 7% regular saver
£150 to 5% regular saver
£100 to 5% regular saver

That's £1,050 in savings automatically made every month, that's probably amazing in today's climate.

We've also now already got £3,600 saved for the year 

That means between now and the end of the year, if we save nothing more than the automated funds, we will meet our £15k savings target for the year.  That seems easy, except I'm sure other things will come up AND I haven't accounted for a holiday yet this year, I've been looking but flights are just so expensive now for the school holidays we want to go in, I can't bring myself to drop £1k+ on flights alone.

It's so weird how 2 years ago to be in this position I would have thought 'oh I'll be able to relax then', but now we're here and the ability to relax about money still seems so far off.

mark55man

Great post - lock the savings away at the start of the month and then don't touch them is about as MSE as it gets!!

Yes cost of living is outrageous - no signs of getting better