It's the final countdown...£10k to go

mark55man

I could have written that - but a great way of tracking the different types of spending.  Grocery is an eternal downer in our life, but we are not wasteful or extravagant so short of down branding I think we just have to deal with it as it is, and maybe try to avoid the snackier/treatier element of it

  the emoji's 

t2rry

An age old question that I'm sure I have every couple of months in a different guise:

1. Savings £9,940/£15,000
2. Replenish EF used for Student Loan £3,070/£5,000

These two, updated for the month as all savings standing orders have gone out.

I have a decent house pot built up again, around £3k with another £2k coming in next week, we have plenty to do with the remaining 2 rooms and this would probably cover the trades we need and the purchases we need to make to get us across the finish line BUT we also have plenty of free DIY to do that doesn't need anything else doing first, so I could very much wait until all that's done before doing any of that purchasing & getting trades in.

Realistically we will also have other more expensive house jobs to do, the garden for one and plenty of others.  Now obviously I'm going to steal £60 from the pot to get the savings up to £10k  because that's just satisfying, I don't know whether to take the opportunity to get the EF replenishment done and dusted now too, then moving forward everything else that comes in goes to the house pot without worry or debate.

It's maybe also worth noting that we do have more savings than my signature suggests, I don't include round ups, interest or the savings we put aside for the kids, which I keep in our names because who knows what may happen in life between now and them going off to uni/needing a car/house/bailing out...!

t2rry

Another month, another payday, another £1280 in the savings pot.  

I haven't done anything but the ordinary payments, but we have been moving on the house stuff, which I'm feeling really good about after my last considerations (above).  It does mean that I will need to work harder to get the EF replenished in full by the end of the year but I think I can do that *and* get the house stuff finished too.

I could do with having a good clear out, maybe get back into selling stuff over the next couple of months as we need some space back and that could chip away at the EF target.

t2rry

Another day, another payday and I thought I'd do another spends summary, quite liked that before:

We spent (emoji denotes over/under budget):

  £563.95 on food/supermarket 
  £70 on petrol 
  £164.64 on social (includes sports clubs for OH & kids)
  £54.17 on kids (includes school trips/treats etc.)
  £182.34 on clothes (blame OH)
  £34.72 on other (this is otherwise unforeseen, collections at work etc.)
  £50 on birthdays

So lots more under than over for September AND mostly under what we spent in August too.  This is now 3 months itemised spending on my record, I'm keeping a tally of the average to inform future budgets and it's nice feeling like we have more control over where we can make some extra savings again, when it was all lumped in together it never felt like we had any room for that when things just cropped up, like kids needing 3 new pairs of footwear in 1 month!  Overall, we were around a total of £150 under budget for the month so that felt wonderful.

Auto saves are in for October already too so that's another £1280 put away, now at £12,500 for the year (not including savings interest).

Still some work to do to get the £5k emergency fund filled but certainly still possible, as is the target for getting the remaining 2 rooms finished before xmas...they're both really close, just need a last push on a few things (with cost attached, of course) so here's hoping for a good last quarter!

t2rry

ooh didn't mean for the XL emojis but not sure how to change it!

Sarahwithlove

Sounds like you're doing really well and have a good balance between saving and doing the things you want with the house. Good luck with replenishing the EF for the rest of the year. I think you did the right thing paying off the student loan.

t2rry

Hi sarah!  Hope you're well, is that a new diary!?  I shall check it out!

I am doing something I don't usually do, I'm going to count some of my savings interest as new savings.  My £10k fixed savings matured, netting me £410 (best rate as at last year!) so I've put the £10k into another fix - the 6.2% NS&I guaranteed growth bond, the remaining £410 I'm going to put to the FFEF but round it up by another £20 to make it a nice round figure for my signature line.

Part of my issue is where to save the additional FFEF, most of my savings are now in fixed accounts, so nowhere to add as I go except my instant saver, which I use for the house fund and goes up and down a lot.  I've gone old school and I'm going to separate them out just on my spreadsheet and hope that's enough to ensure I don't touch the extra FFEF, then when it's a decent amount I'll put it into a fix itself.  Hopefully having that line to add to will be incentive enough.

t2rry

MOT month for us, I'm looking at the halfords motoring club because it looks like the free MOT & service discount might make it a net gain.  We do need a service and we had advisories last time that might now be necessary, though we don't drive many miles so hopefully nothing too bad.  This is the kind of thing that normally I'd be all over and understand the weigh up, but because it's car stuff that I have zero knowledge of, I'm doubting it.  

In other news, the spreadsheet lines splitting my savings versus house spends available in my instant saver is working.  It makes sense because I use the spreadsheet for checking what funds we have left, not the accounts themselves.  I knew this, I do it with the main spending account literally all the time, I should have done this months ago but hey ho, we're making progress now.  

Genuinely think I'll be able to hit both my savings target and my EF replenishment too before the year is out.  The house rooms complete is a different matter but it's still possible, certainly 1 will be finished (supplier timeframes dependent) but the second might be more difficult. We will do our best and either way good progress continues to be made, it might just be slower than initially hoped.

t2rry

MOT result is in and costing us £250 all in to pass, very happy with that, I had budgeted £500 - despite not driving many miles, I have only once had a car immediately pass it's MOT.  Brilliantly, that car was stolen all of 2 weeks later and written off by the thief so actually very much felt wasted!

Anyway, that's an unexpected £250 left just at the end of the month and when I work so strictly to a zero based budget I NEVER have funds 'leftover' so it feels like a real bonus.  It's going to the house pot for now but I'm anticipating having enough in there soon to allocate enough to complete the EF replenishment of signature line 3, which I'm very happy about.

Will be back next week to record our October spends

t2rry

October Spends:

£664.72 on food - over budget 
£125.01 on petrol - over budget
£141.20 on social - under budget
£66 on kids - under budget
£151.67 on clothes - over budget
£78.96 on other - over budget
£103.20 on birthdays - under budget

Not a great month but not wildly over budget either, all those over are close and some (petrol) means that we should be well within this month as the over spend came on the last day.

That all said, over and above the C word, it's the most expensive time for us now until January.  It's also the time I am most likely to say 'sod it' and allow myself to let go of the daily budget check.  We historically always have a good January/February for a few reasons, which usually swallows any overspends from xmas but it would be good to keep it in check enough to really make the most of those good months.  We shall see.  I need to start shopping....