10 years to clear £334K - our FIRE journey

CCW007

Organisation I work for is having to make significant savings - recruitment freeze and serious oversight of spending coming up.  Concerned there may be redundancies.  OH works in private sector but main customers are public sector so his company are cutting costs too.  Time to get serious about budgeting and cutting costs here.

Have suspended payments to SIPP and S&S ISA for the next few months (from September as too late for August) to build up a bit more savings / EF.  Still paying into DB through work so these are additional savings.  Can always pay in as a lump sum later - will lose out on some compound interest (although instant access savings at 4% isn't too bad).

£50 compensation from credit card due to bungled balance transfer and their handling of the investigation.

Vet visit today and OH was hinting at getting a takeaway - casserole in the slow cooker using food from freezer and cupboard instead.  We're too quick to get takeaway and spend £10 to £20 each time.

CCW007

£17 prescription at vet means we can get 100ml of medication for the price they charge for 30ml  Our vets are very good about doing prescriptions for us to save money. 

savingholmes

Good luck with the EF building and retaining jobs. 

South_coast

Good luck with the jobs 🤞 You said you wanted to pay more attention to budgeting - this will be a great opportunity to do so! Hope all works out well

CCW007

Mortgage value - £314,531

WIOTW - £277,923 - reduction of £1,900 compared to last month and finally going in the right direction - £3,076 reduction compared to April 2023 and we have bought a car in that time. 

£500 higher than prediction for end of July - £500 in cash needed for something so pretty much accounted for.

Target to reduce by end of year - £17,923 or £3,584 per month.

Projected by end of July - £274,994.

CCW007

Got something to sell this month which should bring in around £300. Got three cars to get ready to sell but all need something doing to them before we can move them on so none will be that quick.

Workshop roof needs ordering which will be around £1,500 but will be ordered after CC statement is generated tomorrow so be on September statement to be paid end of September, keeping the money in our savings for a little longer.

OH has easy access saver getting 4.6% so shoving everything over there at the minute. Need to be careful as we are both HRT payers not to end up paying tax on interest.

My cash ISA matures end of September so scraping together what I can to max out a new ISA with transfer in - current best rate seems to be 5.7% fixed for one year.  Need to make sure we don't leave ourselves short of cash though. Do have my S&S ISA as a fall back but that's part of my retirement fund so don't really want to touch that.  Already paused payments in for the short term so don't want to deplete it as well unless completely essential.

OH's ISA matures in March so we then have time to try and build up a pot to go into his next ISA.  Happy to look at stoozing if there are any good options to borrow the money to put into savings, need to spend some time doing that this weekend.

Also OH has a company share save scheme he is in which matures end of this year so that will be a little boost in January, maybe a couple of grand.  His boss is confident that their section is well insulated from redundancies but nothing is guaranteed so we still need to be careful and build up those emergency funds.  Lots of eating out the freezer and cupboards and seeing where we can reduce outgoings.  Another SO for £22 cancelled so that's a bit more in the pot each month.

savingholmes

You continue to motor along with the mortgage clearance.

Positive vibes on DH's job.

CCW007

Before I started this job, I had a little side hussle doing some consultancy (all above board, agreed with previous employer as there was no conflict of interest and I registered as self employed with HMRC).  So the last few years I have done a tax return - in fact as I registered that I started self employed work on 1st April I had to an extra tax return as I forgot the tax year starts on 6th April, the irony being I didn't actually do any work until May - but that's beside the point.

When I knew I was starting this job in May 2022 and that I wanted to stop the side hussle, I made sure all work was completed and invoiced by March 2022 so I didn't need to do a tax return this year and in fact on 6th April I logged onto the self-assessment site and declared that I am no longer self-employed.

Just realised that, as I am now a HRT payer, I need to claim relief on my SIPP payments so need to do a self-assessment after all! Ho hum, nice problem to have.

Roof ordered for workshop so credit card bill will be high this month but planned expense and working towards getting the workshop water tight before winter.  Expensive vet bills, we've ended up looking after a cat with lots of health issues (long story) but don't begrudge him, poor fella has been through a lot and there's no-one else to help.

New BT credit card applied for which I will use to pay off spending credit card for two months and get the money we would have use to pay the card off in full into savings to earn interest.  28 months at 0% with 3% fee, will be going into my cash ISA end of next month and getting 5.7% ish over a year   OH has also applied for a money transfer on one of his cards with 3.9% fee at 0% for 18 months so that's straight into his savings account getting 4.6% ish. 

Next week I get the interest from an instant access account which only pays annually, OH has the same account which matures the following week.  Kept the minimum in them just to keep them open long enough to get the interest at the anniversary so can close them down then.

Last year's cash ISA will be maturing end of September so working towards getting enough cash together to max out this year's allowance given how good the rates are but conscious we need access to cash as well.

Booked for a plasterer to come and quote to do our kitchen - it needs rewiring and the ceiling needs replacing and has done for about 8 years but we've lived with it because of the disruption.  It's now become urgent due to a cat-related issue so it will give us a deadline to get sorted, rewire, clear the room etc but will obviously need to ensure cash is available to pay.  Will be great to get it done and have more sockets and in the places we need them! 

South_coast

Ooh, I am jealous of your sockets before you even have them 🤣! My kitchen has three, including for the appliances. It was built in the 70s, but surely even then they had more to plug in than that 🤷‍♀️???

CCW007

South_coast, we currently have four double sockets but one is in a completely pointless place so involves running extension cables up and over a door frame - cannot wait to have enough sockets.  Our house was last wired in the 70s too so it seems to be a theme.

Each bedroom only has one double socket, the living room had two double sockets, the utility had a double socket and a shaving socket!  We are gradually getting there, it's only taken eight years so far