"The Save £12k in 2024" challenge

Gem-gem

KrsyW said:

Good evening everyone, hope we are all well.

With payday fast approaching I have done all of my money moving as we had a sudden downpour ruining my Sunday afternoon plans!

#59 KrsyW £1,330 for March

I have had a bit of a rethink over the last week while going through my spreadsheets and have pushed back my mortgage free target.  I had targeted being mortgage free by 50, and was so hyper focused on it that I was stopping myself spending any money and it was making me miserable.  Every time I went to buy something I would feel guilty as it was eating into my mortgage fund.  I have decided to push back my target by a couple of years and allowing myself some discretionary spending each month.

@KrsyW there is no point in being miserable. I believe that you need to live life now as well as save for the future/ get rid of the mortgage ASAP. I have seen too many people die before they reach 60. I pay myself first and build in a small 'me' pot. This means that I don't feel guilty / miserable. 

Gem-gem

Jellybaby said:

#7 Jellybaby £1,500 for March total for me 

Almost 10 weeks into early retirement and still working on my monthly budgets and pots! Likely to be a third of this amount going forward but with DS2 buying his first home and DS1 moving (again!) it’s likely to be a month or two until things settle down (says I busier than ever and wondering how could I have possibly fitted work in 🤣).

@Jellybaby i'm on the final count down. I only have around 20 days of work in the next four months. Like you I am going to give myself some breathing space before making any decisions / start planning anything.

Since January, I have only been working an average of 1.5 days and I am struggling to fit that in!! So I understand what you are saying. 

Gem-gem

#16 Gem-gem reporting an interest payment of £110 to be added to March plus a £7 train refund. £117 to be added in total.
£350 total for March.

Angelica123

Gem-gem said:

KrsyW said:

Good evening everyone, hope we are all well.

With payday fast approaching I have done all of my money moving as we had a sudden downpour ruining my Sunday afternoon plans!

#59 KrsyW £1,330 for March

I have had a bit of a rethink over the last week while going through my spreadsheets and have pushed back my mortgage free target.  I had targeted being mortgage free by 50, and was so hyper focused on it that I was stopping myself spending any money and it was making me miserable.  Every time I went to buy something I would feel guilty as it was eating into my mortgage fund.  I have decided to push back my target by a couple of years and allowing myself some discretionary spending each month.

@KrsyW there is no point in being miserable. I believe that you need to live life now as well as save for the future/ get rid of the mortgage ASAP. I have seen too many people die before they reach 60. I pay myself first and build in a small 'me' pot. This means that I don't feel guilty / miserable. 

Agreed. I think it's about balance. I think it's important to have a "for fun", savings pot that's separate from the long-term savings pots. We have to make the most of the life that we have. 

Suffolk_lass

Gem-gem said:

#16 Gem-gem reporting an interest payment of £110 to be added to March plus a £7 train refund. £117 to be added in total.
£350 total for March.

Hi @Gem-gem - the spreadsheet says £360 with £117 added... to £243  better than the other way round

Karrlas

#58 - Here is my update for end of Mar24, Total to add - £878.29

Which leaves an avg of £850 a month to hit the £12k

Rough breakdown :-

To savings accts/bonds - From Wage - £804, From cISA Int - £20.40

Int on EA accts - £3.89 (Low until new FY)

Premium Bond winnings - £50

Not bad after needing to buy new tyres, and alloting cash for fixing leaky porch.

Let's see what April brings.

Gem-gem

Suffolk_lass said:

Gem-gem said:

#16 Gem-gem reporting an interest payment of £110 to be added to March plus a £7 train refund. £117 to be added in total.
£350 total for March.

Hi @Gem-gem - the spreadsheet says £360 with £117 added... to £243  better than the other way round

Yay! Thank you @Suffolk_lass.😀 
That is even better. 

MrsCautious

Number #56 MrsCautious £73.33 adding for March 

thank you, some monthly interest paid from easy access saver. 

Gem-gem

#16 Gem-gem reporting an interest payment of £56 to be added to March. 

Final total for the month £416 

george4064

#4 declaring £1,186.78 for March

No S&S ISA or LISA contributions this month, we're hoping to start some pretty major renovations works soon so need to keep money aside for that. Off to France next week, so very much looking forward to a week off work and relax!

However we must continue contributing to ISAs as we are on a journey to be mortgage neutral. Our mortgage is mostly IO and we intend to pay it off when we turn 60, where we will sell sufficient ISAs (and maybe also pension withdrawal) to pay it off. I don’t want to rely too heavily on the pension to pay off the mortgage incase the age we can access increases, but the tax relief for both of us means it’s better than ISAs.

Net-net we’ve agreed to roughly contribute the same between pensions and ISAs, however more are going in pensions as employer contributions are on top of ours. We used to contribute to LISAs but stopped when lifetime allowance was lifted, but I do think about maxxing LISA each tax year and then move onto ISA after for the ‘ISA half’.

I always say we need to investment minimum the difference between the payments if our mortgage was 100% repayment and no IO element, currently that’s about £1,000 per month. Always the danger that we don’t really invest more and fall short when we come to repay the mortgage, albeit there’s a long time to that point (about 29 years!)

Thoughts/opinions welcome, sorry for the long post!

Great work all and some really encouraging posts