Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

Ah well, that is March's budget put to bed & April's written out in the trusty Money Book & ready to go. No nasty surprises, but unsurprisingly, there was noticeably less money available for putting in our savings pots. There's no mystery to this, the council tax & water bills are now operational after their winter break & it is also the first month of increased energy DD payment without the mitigating factor of the £67 government subsidy. Despite this, I did manage to make useful payments to the clothes, presents & meow pots, as well as to the holiday pot. The holiday pot is not negotiable atm, as I was not comfortable booking that lovely cottage for my big birthday next year unless I had a firm schedule in place for ensuring that we had the money saved ready for that, as well as our cottage holiday up north this year plus 2 cattery stays for Soot & Ash. I wrote the holiday payment schedule out in the back of my Money Book & I tick off each month when I've paid the required £90 into the holiday pot. Of course, I never used to save for anything, as 2 full-time professional salaries meant we never had any trouble borrowing, but I do now very much like both the security & control of saving for things. With both the holidays & our Car Fund, I started with how much we needed to save & when we would need to have the money available & worked backwards. For our holidays + two cattery stays, it worked out at £90 to put away per month. That's not a lot of money in the scheme of things, but if I used it for something else for 2 or 3 months, it isn't as easy to find a spare £270 plus the £90 for the current month, which I think shows how worthwhile it is to do the 'working backwards' thing & absolutely ensure that the monthly amount is paid in.
I have also paid into our Car Fund. This isn't the same as our Car Savings Pot, which is to cover servicing/maintenance costs. The Car Fund is our savings for our next car, so that we are able to buy it outright, rather than using car finance or bank loan. I did it exactly the same way - discussed with Mr F how much we thought we'd need, deducted the sum already in the fund & also our best guess at what we would hope to get for our current car in part-ex, then divided the resulting sum by 72 months (as we intend to keep our current car for a minimum of 6 years). This worked out at £100 a month & so far, I haven't dropped a single month of paying it into the fund. It had never occurred to us to do this before, but the main problem buying cars outright is that by the time we decide we are thinking about changing vehicles. unless one is pretty well-off, there is insufficient time to save the money. This time, we decided to do things differently & the very next month after we picked up our car in Jan 2022, the first £100 payment went into the Car Fund thinking ahead to the next one. So far, the 'How much will we need?/then work backwards' method seems to be working. Determined to keep it up!
Right, that's enough number-crunching for one day. I'm off to find some lunch.
Take care,
F x

Elisheba

That's a good idea for saving for a new car.  I think I'll add that a new saving pot for that.  I can't really work backwards as I've had my car for 6 years already, and although I am planning on using it until it can't be used anymore I can't really say when that will be.  I suppose I could guesstimate 5 more years roughly before it is scrap, and budget accordingly.  I'll price up what I would like in the next few weeks and work out a monthly plan - thanks

Cheery_Daff

We do similar for new cars (well, not NEW...). Although our pot is pretty small as we only ever buy bangers and run them into the ground. We've got £1500 in there at the minute and are not currently adding to it, but all our previous cars have cost less than that... I'm contemplating upping to £2000 for next time, but hopefully that won't be soon, as I want to build other pots up first. We've not had either of our cars that long (one about 2 years, the other maybe 4) but they've both done about 140k miles now so who knows how long they'll last, hopefully a while. 

I am definitely a big advocate of pots for everything though! I'm currently filling a 'replacement income' one for a month's worth of income. Possibly daft, as I am unlikely to be sacked (!), if I'm made redundant I'll have several months payout, and if I'm sick I have 6 months full pay & 6 months half pay... but all the rest of the savings are allocated to pots (new car, emergency, specific DIY or maintenance tasks etc) and I felt I needed a more general one. We might repurpose it at some point though, we'll see.

Makingabobor2

Great idea of how to save for a new car. I might have to adopt that idea

Cottage_Economy

Suffolk_lass said:

From memory I grew
Sungold F1 hybrid orange cherry, and
Black Opal (larger) purple cherry,
Costaluto Fiorentina (prone to blossom end rot)
St Pierre and
Cuor Di Bue (both of these are field grown in France and Italy) cooking tomatoes
Black Russian as a beefsteak slicing tomato.

I had 17 in the greenhouse (it is a 12x8') with all in pots, in trays that I filled daily, and mostly fed twice a week. And another 6 on the patio, against the house in the sunniest place. I had 40 large ziplock bags of cored and prepped (as in imperfections removed) in the freezer. I cooked the tomatoes in three batches exactly like the Nonna Gina (Here is the YT link if you want), except I blitzed mine in a liquidizer instead of sieving the skins and seeds out as we just use them in cooking and sometimes soups.
Sorry to hijack FG x

Thanks Suffolk lass. Apologies for hijacking Foxgloves

2Scratters

@Makingabobor2 - if you can, have you considered moving bank accounts to your advantage when the banks offer some free money?
I have just moved our bank account within the same bank to an account that gives £200 for free. OK I have lost the reward benefits for now but the extra cash has gone towards my new water butt  Oh I also reduced my breakdown renewal by half so £66 saved there too. In fact my water butt is now free!!!  
For those adding a car fund to their pots, have you checked out online accounts and other banks to consider as some of them have better savings rates with instant access. i.e chase is 3.1% and first direct at 7% (max £300 per month deposit - it is advertised here on MSE) especially when the funds are likely to be there for a while. Better returns is very helpful for our money. 

2 Scratters xx

Suffolk_lass

I have been looking at water butts like this one. Very tempted. If we move I shall get more than one (roof water and grey water from the house, roof water from the outbuildings)

EssexHebridean

We use our general long term savings pot to account for car replacement funds at the moment - this works well for us as those funds (currently money is going into the main EF pot, after some was moved out of there to fud a couple of fixed rate options last year) tend to sit at a reasonably decent interest rate - albeit still an easy access option. The key points for us is that money has to be in a joint account that we can both easily access in an emergency, and it has to be genuine easy access too - rather than requiting any notice to withdraw. Oh and that it has a straight online banking option as well as apps - as MrEH isn't particularly keen on using app-based banks at the moment - mainly because his main phone isn't a smartphone. I'm setting a mental limit after which I'll be starting to transfer money from there elsewhere though as we do have a few options where the interest is actually higher than that one, even if only slightly. I may muse more on savings on my own diary I think as I've been doing a bit of thinking of late on that subject. 

SL - something to bear in mind with any diversion of grey water from the house is that it can apparently cause issues with there then being insufficient "flush" through pipework on the way to the main sewer to stop paper etc going hard and then causing blockages - I'm not sure how much of a problem this might be, but it is worth bearing in mind perhaps and researching at least a little. 

milann

Hi Foxgloves.
 Not sure how I missed your diary for so long, I must have unsubscribed by mistake. Anyway I’ve been catching up for a while now and I’ve finally finished. 

I’m so pleased the feline wanderer  came back home. What a worry.
Everything seems to be running smoothly, as usual. You’re so organised.
Hope the teethy scans work out ok this time for you. 
I’ve subscribed again.

Suffolk_lass

EssexHebridean said:

SL - something to bear in mind with any diversion of grey water from the house is that it can apparently cause issues with there then being insufficient "flush" through pipework on the way to the main sewer to stop paper etc going hard and then causing blockages - I'm not sure how much of a problem this might be, but it is worth bearing in mind perhaps and researching at least a little. 

Thanks EH - if we move we won't be on mains drains so not blocking would be entirely of our own making. DH had already said we should consider collecting only shower/washbasin upstairs as well as roof water (the new place has gutters, all be it shot and needing replacement), and let sink, washing machine and DW downstairs go into the septic tank or anaerobic thing, whatever it is, with black waste from toilets.