The Mental Debt Struggle...

Makingabobor2

Sounds like you are doing really well now. x

beanielou

Great progress on the flat.

Keedie

Yes @daisy_1571 I'm hoping that a clearer home will give me the clarity that I need to get to the next phase of life. And seeing what I've done so far, is making it easier to envision the end result. If I can get everything decluttered by the end of summer, then I go into autumn getting the flat painted. Then I can order the carpet for the hallway and living room in the Back Friday sales.

Me and my son made a promise to ourselves that we wanted to spend the Christmas period chilling at home with the flat completely done. So I'll keep chipping away at it. I've been taking pictures so that I can see the before, during and after the transformation for each area.

And once I have established my budget properly and I am in a position to do the odd bits of freelancing, I can start to save quicker and pay off the debts. I have £125 a week as well:

• food (£75)
• personal spending money (£15)
• home + family sinking fund for me, my son and Silver (£15)
• gift sinking fund for Eid, Christmas and birthdays (£10)
• buffer (£5)
• debt (£5)

I need to get the Attracting Abundance pot (income buffer) back up to £1,000 and my emergency fund to £500. I can then start to put more into debt and sinking funds (to prevent me slipping back into debt). I have to sit down on Sunday and have a proper look at everything, so that I can update my signature and get back on track with my finances. I need to start using my debt tracking spreadsheet again. That used to really help me before, so it should be able to sort things out now.

Keedie

When I get a little further with the flat I'll be able to post some before and after pictures to show you all x

Makingabobor2

Really sounds like you have some clarity now as to what you want to do and how to do it. Love the idea of an "Attracting Abundance" pot….I might try that.

Been thinking of you @Keedie and wondering how you are coping in this awful heat, being in London and also high up in a flat. Hope you have plenty of fans and are managing to get some breeze and stay cool. x

Keedie

The Attracting Abundance pot is a lifesaver @Makingabobor2 for me. It's also helped me to see where I have a future income issue. I looked at the value of the AA pot last night (£500) and checked the Universal Credit statement for my upcoming payment on 1 July 2026, and I can see that the shortfall between the UC and PIP, even with the AA money is too wide. I would need £439/£500 to meet August's budget, but the new budget requires £214/£500 instead.

So I've redone my budget into two different thresholds; Frugality (baseline at £1,750) and Idealistic (full budget at £1,975). I've created a new Monzo pot so that the frugality and idealism standing orders come out of different pots so that it is easier to defer the additional payments based upon the accrued budget. The £125 still stands, but is split between £90 frugality and £35 idealism per week. The overall amounts are the same, and as the money that people owe me trickles in, that will go straight into The Noose debt pot, and is separate from the budget.

Frugality Weeklies @ £90 per week = £75 foodies, £10 Keedie spendy and £5 bufferoo

Idealistic Weeklies @ £35 per week = £15 home pot, £10 gift pot, £5 debt and £5 additional Keedie spendy).

So overall, this is where I now stand:

Frugality £1,750

• The Burden (£1,275) - bills
• Golden CareCuffs (£150) - care fees (this is lower than the actual amount as I put a £500 surplus in this pot as well)
• Super Saver (£50) - Help to Save standing order
• Frugality (£275)

Idealistic £1,975

• The Burden (£1,275)
• Golden CareCuffs (£150)
• Super Saver (£50)
• Frugality (£275)
• Idealistic (£150)
• Dice Decider (£75) - this is the remainder of the Idealistic budget per month and will go towards savings challenges/sinking funds top up.

The Frugality Pot has £1,000 in there, as I added the £500 for July's budget on the weekend plus the £500 from my final pay. Initially, all of the standing orders were set at £125 a week total, and I was paying £500 a month into this pot so that 5 week months would slowly reduce the surplus as a 4 week month would be £500 at £125 a week, and a 5 week month would be £625. But now, a 4 week month at £90 a week is £350 and a 5 week month is £450. If I pay £275 a month into this pot, the money in there will fund this element of the Frugal budget until December 2026's budget.

By working with the Frugality £1,750 budget for the remainder of 2026 will mean that I have recalibrated everything for 2027. In the months that I have the normal £1,975 budget, the difference of £225 a month will sort out things like birthdays, Christmas or anything that we need, without it being tied up in a set standing order. It will also help to naturally and slowly boost the Attracting Abundance pot. I can then start afresh in January 2027 with an Idealistic budget.

My round ups pot on Chase matured today and so £156.92 went into the home pot for anything that we might need. I have stocked up on litter and cat food for Silver, so we're good for the next few months, and my current budget allows for £10 a month to accumulate to do another bulk shop when needed. I also went through every cash binder that I have and spread the money across all of the whittled down sinking funds, including the ones that I now have just for me. And I added £185 to these binders to boost the overall amount. It means that I have the following buffers in place, in cash/digital pots in relation to the overall amounts that would render that pot fully funded:

Adulting sinking funds

• Rainy Day Fund (emergency fund) = £200 cash /£1,000
• Homely Home = £100 cash + £155 digital round ups = £255/£5 00
• The Gift (birthdays, Christmas & Eid) = £150 cash + £25 digital = £175/£350
• Bufferoo = £50 cash/£100
• Munch Munch (food shop/eating out buffer) = £150 cash/£150
• Birthdaze (me & my son's birthdays) = £10 cash + £40 digital = £50/£200

Keedie sinking funds

• The Keedie Fund (large purchases/personal buffer) = £100 cash/£250
• Fossin (beauty pot) = £100 cash/£200
• MentaPhysical Reset (wellbeing/self care) = £100 cash/£200
• Socialite (meeting friends/family) = £50 cash/£100
• This Too Shall Pass (bipolar buffer) = £50 cash/£100
• Sweet Treats (whimsical fritter fund) = £25 cash/£50
• Social Solitude (solo time away in the UK to reset) = £0/£500

Savings challenges (for 2027's budget and sinking funds)

• Bookish (multiple challenges to save for Kindle Unlimited for a year and guilt free book purchases) = £25 cash/£300
• Annual Challenge (currently Ducky Dots) = £385
• Seasonal Challenges (summer) = £90

I also have my coin challenges to bank at the end of 2026, and I should have a few hundred pounds in the £1 and £2 tin and maybe around £80-£100 in the penny challenge tin.

Keedie

I didn't sleep too well last night. I had all sorts of nonsense dreams, so I'm a bit frazzled today. But I've got a lot of papers to go through to declutter. I'm doing my order of the KonMari Method of decluttering. It is meant to be clothes, books, paper, miscellaneous and sentimental items, but I've been bouncing around between categories and decluttering by 'zones'. As in, seeing a small section that looks doable and overhauling that area.I've been clearing things in 'zones' like my bookshelf and we swapped the TVs around, so that the temperamental one is in my room as I rarely watch TV, and my smaller but fully functional one is now in the living room. My son loves it as she can watch the World Cup on the sofa, and Silver likes having his company. I like it because the living room TV is a bit too big for my chest of drawers, so there's no hope of clutter appearing anywhere.

My own order was meant to be paper, books, clothes and then miscellaneous and sentimental items. But rather than take everything of that category out from all rooms and place it in a pile (which I would inevitably abandon as I'd run out of steam), I've been doing my own order in the little zones or by room. My mum finds shredding soothing (🤷🏾‍♀️) and so I started with papers first, and my Reablement Worker is coming next week Friday to help me go through my remaining papers to implement some kind of filing order to things. I've got two flat tubs of shredding to get to my mum's.

My East London Sister was meant to come on the weekend just gone, and transport the papers and my rollator to my mum's (it's too heavy for me to get in and out of the flat without my son's help so I need a smaller lightweight one). And my East London Niece is 16 and an avid bookworm. But they were running short on time, so they went straight to the hospital to see Granny. My niece was meant to go through the rest of the books on the weekend just gone, but my niece wasn't able to come around, as she has first refusal for all the books that I have. About 80% of them are brand new, as I've stopped reading physical books as I've been reading via the Kindle app on my iPad for about 8/9 years. There's a lot of thrillers in the living room media unit that she needs to go through. The rest will go to the library as a donation, and anything that I might decide to keep will go on the bookshelf in my room as I have one last shelf to fill. So at some point in the next couple of weeks, I'll go through the unit and remove the few items that I am likely to keep, so that everything in there she can legitimately keep or it will go to the library.

I'm going to go through the tubs of clothes today that are in the corner of my room. My son has helped me to make them more accessible to prevent a risk of me falling or straining myself. And as everything has just been dumped together, I am going to separate it all, so that his stuff has his own tubs and mine does too. And then when the carer comes tomorrow, she is going to help me with actually sorting my clothes. As they've sat in the tubs for a couple of months, we need to create washing piles, figure out what will go to charity (which will be the first in the laundry queue), and what I am keeping. I anticipate that around 60% of what I have in there no longer fits me, and I'm tired of pretending that I'm going to magically slim down into them (I don't eat well or exercise so why I thought that is a mystery). Some of those clothes can go to my sisters if they're interested. I know the MSE thing would be sell them on VInted or something, but I know I won't do that. I'm just way too lazy and I need a definitive deadline of when everything is removed from my flat. My South London sister is taking me to the dump site at the end of July once she has finished her coursework. So I know that a chunk of stuff will be whisked away in a month's time.

Anyways, onto money matters. My £50 Help to Save payment came out today, so only 6 more payments to go. The £150 into the Natwest Digital Saver was transferred as well. I'd set aside a £750 when my agency contract was renewed, before I went off sick at work. So there's a standing order to transfer £150 a month from the current account to the digital saver. There's 3 more months of that (£450 left in the current account), then that transfer money will run out. Or I could change it to £75 a month, and that will take stretch it to February 2027. Then when the Help to Save account matures, I can put some of that money into the Natwest account as that is my emergency fund. I'm trying to eventually build a year of bills and expenses, one month at a time. It might make more sense to pay in less per month, but know that there is something ticking over rather than paying in the maximum and then nothing for a few months. What do you think?

I went down a pensions rabbit hole yesterday, as I was talking to my colleague before I left work the other week, and she was taking redundancy and retiring as she's 59. She was telling me that she paid AVCs (Additional Voluntary Contributions) into her pension for years, anything from £50 to £500 a month, and that she would essentially have a great pension/salary, without the work. That me panic a bit, as my working history is about 90% part time work or unemployment. So I requested an authorisation code to be able to see my council pension on their new swanky online portal, and the code came yesterday. I was pleased to see that it was higher than the £4k a year that I thought it was (I realised that was the lump sum figure years ago), and it's valued at the moment at £9.8k a year. That's my largest pension and is roughly the same as my accrued state pension predictions, as I still have 11 years of contributions before I can get the full state pension in 2049. I wasn't paying attention to my agency contract and was auto enrolled onto the pension scheme and didn't get around to opting out, so when I registered on that portal, it showed that I will get a whopping £40 a year 😂, or a £620 lump sum. My other job that was really mean to me and I ran off from, has a pension of just over £2k a year. So I need to get saving, as if I live to pensionable age, my outgoings won't reduce as I don't have a paid off mortgage and will still paying rent, so I need to give that some proper thought. My sister said that I should open a SIPP, which I'm not really sure what it is, but it's some kind of personal pension, but the idea of figuring out what you're meant to invest in or whatever makes me a bit anxious. So I'll have to look into that a bit more. And then once I know more, help my son to set up a pension as he's self employed and so he doesn't have one.

daisy_1571

if your monthly saver tots up the interest on a daily or monthly basis, get the maximum in you can each month as it then has more months to gain interest

£75 at 1% will earn you 6p a month.

£150 at 1% will get you 12and a half pence per month.

So its not huge figures unless your interest rate is much bigger. (I did 1% so its easy to see what 2, 3, 4% is.)

daisy_1571

pension

Your £9800 plus £40 Plus £2000 equals £11,840 a year. Thats going to be £986.66 a month if you were able to take it today. I suspect there will be some sort of inflation type figure added each year so any oor all of them might go up. You won't get the full amount if you take any before the age - usually state pension age but some might say 60 Or 65. Usually the earliest you could take them is 10 years before that age/date with a bigger reduction the earlier you take it.

there might be some merit in combining the pensions. There might be merit in keeping them separate as you could access them at different ages. That though is a conversation for another day.

If you plan to take them all at state retirement age you will have that annual payment to factor in too.

the £40 one might offer a buyout at some point if you opt to take the annual as it might be worth it to them to pay you off. You just need to decide you'd rather have the lump sum and be done with it. The arithmetic suggests if you get the annual payment, by the 16th Year you are better off however the lump sum even in an isa earning interest will probably be a better comparison but I didn't work that out.

for what it's worth: at the moment you don't have spare cash to put into pension so shelve thinking about it just now.

daisy_1571

Heres how I do my filing - I've tried to write it really clearly which might make it look complicated but you might already do something like this in which case apologies for teaching grandma about eggs 😆

Get a file (binder, cardboard, plastic popper etc), mark it pension. Put individual poly pockets inside, each marked the name of the pension.

Any paperwork you find regarding pension just shove it in the relevant poly pocket for now.

Once you are all sorted and organised in the house, one winters rainy day, you can go through each poly pocket and get the papers in date order but until then you have one place to put it in so you know its all together.

on the rainy day-

Put a big no 1 on the earliest dated letter you have (I always put a circle round it and keep it towards top right hand corner, easier to find when flicking through). Get a blank A4 size sheet of paper for each individual poly pocket. Write name of pension provider, website name, any details you want etc then on a new line write a 1 (also in a circle) and a few words what number 1 is ie

1 letter from prudential, 3/6/1992 scheme details.

2 annual statement 2001/2002 £1200 per annum, at state pension age xx

3 annual statement 2005/06 £1250 per annum at spa

Then when you are searching for a bit of paper you knew you saw with a figure or a phone number or whatever you can check the first page and you know you are looking for item 6 or whatever.

If you Later find a bit of paper that slots in between two already marked up bits, ie if you come across an annual statement in the above example for 2002/03 just number it 2A, put a wee star beside 2 on your cover log sheet and write a fresh line for 2A. If you do ever need it, the paperwor will be in date order and the cover sheet will show by the wee star that there is an entry further down the page.

Each year take a print or keep the letter they send you so you can see what the new projections are.

Once you have this system, its easy to keep it up to date as when a letter or email comes, you number it, add it to the cover sheet and tuck it at the back of the poly pocket. Any file that has enough obviously gets its own binder, cardboard envelope file, plastic popper file of course.