Simple living in the country - back to basics

KajiKita

I think think that’s a great idea. It’s similar to what I am doing in the garden atm - I am deliberately focusing on areas of the garden I can see from the house as it will be encouraging to see them as tidy, productive, ready for planting etc. rather than an utter mess …. I will gradually then start on the the bits that I see as I use the externals of the house - so that will be the sections of the garden between us and the neighbour that I wince at as I walk between the front door and the entrance to the cellar aka my ‘shop’ 😉

Also, I like the idea of you working in your bedroom first as it feels like rewarding you! Having a nice, comfortable, well set up space to rest and recover in. I suspect you will find it as transformative as decorating and carpeting your office. 😊

KK

Cheery_Daff

Thank you all 😊😊 I do think I do better with a bit of a focus. Not to say I won't ever do anything else of course, but a bit of focus is good! 

And in that spirit, I've been investigating savings accounts 😁 Everything we have at the minute is either in current accounts or premium bonds - oooh, hang on, high value winners announced today, let me check!

.... and no 🙄 It's quite a long list to check now they've increased the number of higher value prizes- but of course that also means it's even less likely we'll have won anything at all when the full results come out tomorrow. 

Hey ho. We've got £5500 in there, and I wasn't considering moving it out, but... we won £25 in total last year. If we put all that into even the lowest paying easy access account we'd get £143 in interest this year (although my dreams of Agent Million would be dashed, of course!) 

Anyway. I don't want a fixed saver, or anything with too many restrictions on withdrawals. We don't have loads of savings, and some of it is earmarked for specific things, so I'd be happier if we could get at all of it. There are also various banks I won't use for various reasons, which also limits options. 

So, potential options:

* Principality building society - £125 a month regular saver, 5%, no penalty withdrawals. Would be £40 interest over the year

* Halifax £250 month regular saver, 4.5%, £73 interest over the year

Nationwide monthly saver (already have an account with them) £50 a month, 5%, £16 over the year

Ecology building society - normal savings account 2.85%, no restrictions

Zopa (never heard of them) 2.86% no restrictions

I suppose I need to decide how much we'll be planning to save. I'd like to aim for £200 a month plus whatever MB income I can make. I don't want to be plonking stuff in regular savers then having to remove it - but I suppose i can take out of premium bonds if necessary instead since they're pretty much no use at the minute 😂

I suppose there's no harm opening a few, especially if we share them between us. So we could do

Nationwide £50 a month (this would be linked to the account I use for MB anyway, and they have a draw every 6 months where you have a 1 in 34 chance of winning £250, although of course I won't 😂)

Principality £125 a month

We could definitely manage to fill those, and that would give us £56 in interest.

Then we could open

Halifax £250 a month

Which we might not achieve, depending on how well I do on the Happy Wheel that month - but anything that does go in there would get 4.5% which is better than nowt.

We could possibly have an Ecology one at 2.85% as well for any overspill, although that would mean we'd be saving over £425 a month, which is probably unlikely.

BUT, at the minute, aside from the premium bonds, everything is just sitting in the current account. Partly I do want to leave a decent float in there to give Mr Cheery a chance to get his head together in case anything happens to me, but it doesn't need to be as much as it is I don't think. If we can set up the Ecology one as an easily accessible joint account, that's probably worth doing anyway.

And I suppose it might be worth swapping at least some of the premium bonds dosh over to that anyway since we're increasingly unlikely to win anything. I don't think I'd choose to put that much in there if I was starting from scratch now - but I'm also not sure how I feel about taking it out now it's already in there 😂

Lots to ponder!

Karmacat

Another one agreeing - that's kind of what I did in the pantry - decluttered, cleaned with bleach soap and vinegar, mended a hole.  And KK's points about what you can see, and rewarding yourself by setting up your bedroom to be pleasant, are good as well  

Cheery_Daff

Thank you for your continued support! 😊

So, I am (unsurprisingly...) in a cafe 😂 and I have concocted an elaborate plan, which should, I think, get us around £350 ish in interest. I think. 

Currently we have £5500 in premium bonds (solely in my name), and everything else in the current account (apart from a small MB float and the odd few pence in spare current accounts here and there)

What my plan entails:

* £500 each in Premium Bonds - can't ditch the idea of Agent Million completely! 😂

* All other savings, including some of the current account float, transfered to Ecology savings account @ 2.85% and used to drip feed....

* Principality regular saver - one each @ 5% (max £125/month each, so £250 total)

* Halifax regular saver - one each @ 4.5% (max £250/ month each, so £500 total)

* Nationwide new saver - just me @ 5% max £50/ month

So that's £800 a month drip feeding into regular savers at 4.5 or 5% a month, and the main lump sum staying at 2.85%. I'm planning to add £200 a month savings, plus whatever I earn from MB, and any other sundry income to the 2.85% too, so it shouldn't run out before the year of drip feeding is out.

Some things to bear in mind

* obviously this relies on us both being accepted for all these accounts - no reason why not, but not counting until they're open

* haven't actually checked any of them allow an account each!

* I've already got a Nationwide current account, but Mr Cheery hasn't, and I'm taking the view that there's no point opening him a current account just to open a regular saver which is only going to generate £16 interest in a year. Given that I'll be doing the vast majority of this paperwork,  and it's already going to involve opening six new accounts, I'm declaring that another two a step too far 😂

All together, that should generate somewhere around £350 worth of interest over the year (that's roughly based on me saving £400 a month, including £200 a month of MB, so will vary as that's not guaranteed). Obviously there will be various things that need to be paid for through the year too.

Still, definitely worth doing I reckon! 

Just need to make a list of what to do in which order now... 😱😂

Cheery_Daff

Right, that was easy - Nationwide saver opened from within the app in the space of two minutes 😁 So that's one job ticked off! I suspect the others might not be quite so easy, but at least it'll give me something to focus on this evening! 

themadvix

That is indeed an elaborate plan!

Ramouth

Great idea using one savings account to fund all the regular savers.  I have been too lazy to bother with them but your illustration shows why it is worthwhile and by funding them all from the one account keeps things simple.  All very sensible. 

Cheery_Daff

It was the lovely folk on here who helped me see about drip feeding! A couple of years ago I couldn't make head nor tail of it, I was considering regular savers, but they needed you to have the linked current accounts as well, and they all had different requirements (pay in £1000 a month, have 2 DDs set up etc) and I was about to give up. 

Then some lovely MSE folk, TDQ among others, talked me through how you could get one current account to feed another etc, and it all slowly came together, one little bit at a time.

There's a drip feed calculator on here which shows you how much you can save by having your lump sum in one account and drip feeding the smaller, higher interest ones.

Yes, it's a faff, but I find most money-saving is 😂 I don't mind admin. I loathe price comparisons though, and you'll always find me complaining come house/car insurance time (Feb round here) 😂 Every year I contemplate not bothering, and so far I've always decided that it's worth just checking... I do put limits on the amount of time I'm willing to spend doing that though!

themadvix

See regular savers are the admin I have drawn a line under - so much faffing around to do the drip feeding (given you can't transfer directly from the savings account to the RSs), so I've stuck a load of my EF into short-ish fixed bonds and kept the rest in an Atom easy access account at 2.55%. I'd rather do the price comparisons (although I also hate them too!).

Cheery_Daff

Yes, that is rather annoying, I grant you! After the initial transfer I'll be setting all mine to do automatically by standing order I think (and then checking each month to make sure I'm not going to run out because I've paid the gas bill or something!) 

Realised the 2.85% rate I'd written for Ecology is their regular saver, not their normal savings account, which is only 2.25. Hey ho - I'm happy to go with them, the difference won't be that great, and it's all better than the 1.85 I had last time I had a main savings account 😂

Although the house Internet does seem to have conked out in the middle of making the application 🙄 So I might be here a while!