Managing Mat Leave

FacelessNumber

Thanks, I'm trying to check in on my spending more often so that I know where it's all going, as I often just do it once a month, and by then I've often forgotten what I've actually spent my money on!

FacelessNumber

Been a relatively expensive week due to both of us being super busy at work, but still within all of our budgets for the month. Looks like we could have as much as £900 to add into savings at the end of the month, although I haven't worked it out in detail so not sure how accurate that will be. Would be a great boost to the savings if we're anywhere near that though!

Spending this week:
15.12 - food and snacks on Monday, this was due to not being able to have my packed lunch at work and then having to get something quick on the way to an appointment, the diet I'm on at the moment makes this quite expensive!
5.00 - recipe subscription, again related to current diet, well worth the £5 a month I pay
19.98 - Netflix and Prime subscriptions
13.65 - work related spending - chocolate and coffee for the office, and my lunch because we didn't have any pack up stuff in
10.00 - contributed to flowers for a colleague
9.65 - specialty bread and wine (groceries)
50.00 - nursery deposit for new baby
70.23 - groceries, including two TGTG bags, one was better than the other
16.00 - window cleaner
5.50 - dog food
40.12 - meal out tonight (end of a very long week for both of us), was some nice family time with our son

Money saving activities:
*Redeemed topcashback credit for vouchers to buy my sons next pair of shoes
*Direct debits set up for new credit cards
*Ziffit order packed up and sent today
*Started sorting out the baby room

Next week should be a bit quieter so hoping to get a few more things organised, as well as the end of the month money sort out to update savings figures. Hope everyone has a good weekend, I'm out all day Sunday but tickets are paid for and will be taking a pack up so shouldn't cost much extra, maybe a coffee or two over the day.

FacelessNumber

Checking in with spending for the last few days, I am planning to do an end of month review to see how much we've spent in various areas but that will have to wait until later as I have my son at home with me today (currently he's distracted by the TV but that won't last long!)

Saturday 27th
4.99 - ipad game - non-essential but quite a rare purchase
3.30 - milk

Sunday 28th - was out with friends at an event all day
4.50 - drinks
18.99 - ordered some cereal boxes on Amazon as my 3yo likes to eat 5 different cereals in a bowl so trying to keep them fresh for as long as possible!

Monday 29th
6.20 - lunch - completely forgot my packed lunch for work, kind of annoying but overall have finished under my budget for the month
18.43 - few bits from the pharmacy, all essential
30.00 - cleaner - essential whilst I'm still at work, she's only coming twice more which I'm a bit sad about 😅
6.00 - laundry liquid from a refill shop
54.46 - groceries - we had a £12 off an online shop voucher from Sainsburys so used that this week instead of shopping in Aldi

Tuesday 30th
NSD

Wednesday 31st
6.30 - paid off the last few pounds on one of the CCs that we've balance transferred

Overall pretty happy with this month, at the moment it looks like there's more than £1000 to go into savings at the end of the month, on top of the £250 that has already gone in. Will wait for any final transactions to go through before transferring it. New budget month starts tomorrow so hoping to find time later to go through the month and see what figures might need adjusting, we're away for a few days in Feb for example so will need to budget for that.

Hope everyone has a nice Wednesday!

FacelessNumber

Oh I forgot to add onto the above post - we also received 29.61 cashback from offers that we just select and load onto our debit cards - this is mostly from Christmas spending so a nice little bonus!
I also redeemed my topcashback money into Clarks vouchers, will pay for the next 2 pairs of shoes our 3yo needs hopefully!

FacelessNumber

Well it's been a while since I posted, busy at work and we've been away this week too, so thought I'd pop in with a bit of an update.
In January we managed to add a total of £1298.67 to savings. I'm very happy with this, if we can repeat anything close to this for the next 3 months (whilst I'm on full pay) we should have enough to cover almost all of the deficit from mat leave (based on very rough figures only).

So far in February we have already spent more, as we have bought most of the bits we still need for the baby (pushchair, new mattresses etc) and have been away for a few days. But there are a few things that hopefully will offset that, so I'm hoping we can hit £1000 in savings again. I've put £450 into savings accounts already. The things that should help are no council tax (an extra £200) and my pension contributions have been changed meaning I'm bringing home an extra £125 a month. I will need to look at this after mat leave and decide what best to do with that additional money but for now it is best covering our mat leave deficit I think!

Current Standings:
Credit Card Balances (all at 0%)
£3490.41
Savings
£2794.25

Hoping to keep updating more frequently, I'm starting to cut my hours down now over the next few weeks so this should get a little easier!

FacelessNumber

Bit more spending this month but so far still looking good for savings. I put £450 in savings at the start of the month and I think we can add close to £1000 again at the end of the month if we have a good week this week.

Overview of Spending:
13th:
1.10 - Hospital Parking (paid for street parking which is cheaper)
10.80 Lunch out
14th:
2.50 Coffee
15th:
NSD
16th:
3.30 Coffee at work
17th:
20.50 Takeaway for both of us - we had an unexpected child free night and were late home so had a takeaway rather than cooking, basically due to poor organisation
19.75 Hospital bag stuff - all essential
18th:
NSD
19th:
2.50 Extra bits for lunch - poor organisation
5.22 Bread - I need specialty bread at the moment which is quite expensive, got 3 loaves which should be enough to see me through until the end of pregnancy
20th:
20.55 - Lunch out with a friend, £10 of this coming back to me

Mostly OK with this, could definitely have avoided the takeaway but the lunches out were planned / social so budgeted for. 

Money actions to be completed:
*Check on HMRC - we've just been told we owe them another £1300 which seems wrong, so need to look into that, we just paid them our last bill last month.
*Get a few things on Vinted - haven't done any of this yet.
*Change my professional subscriptions to maternity subs
*Order next weeks grocery shopping to make use of Sainsbury's online voucher
*Start to work out a mat leave budget to continue to maximise savings whilst I'm being paid for the few months.

Current debts:
CC 1: 2850 (0 paid in Feb due to balance transfer)
CC 2: 635.25 (24.75 paid in Feb)
Family: 10200 (50 paid in Feb)

Debts reduced by 74.75 in February.

FacelessNumber

I really must get better at updating here! We've had some good news with HMRC deciding we didn't owe them an additional £1300. I think this means I can just about cover the savings needed for mat leave now, although will still be keeping an eye on spending and the credit cards for the year.

Will try and remember to jump on later with an update for February, and to do a bit of planning for March!

Aimingforthegoodlife

Busy Feb for sure! Sounds like you are continuing to make good progress, well done on challenging the 1300, so much money to get wrong! Looking forward to seeing the round up if you get chance

FacelessNumber

Thanks @Aimingforthegoodlife, they've also sent us a refund on the back of the appeal for a couple of hundred so that will help too!

I've been going over the numbers based on the end of Feb and our headlines are as follows:
Debt (as of 1st March):
Family £10200
CC1 £2830
CC2 £635.25
Total: £13665.25 (reduced by 75.16 in Feb)

This isn't reducing very fast and won't, everything is 0% so I'm just leaving things at minimum payments for now. Over the next 18 months we need all the spare cash we can keep hold of so will re-evaluate this when our 0% deals are up.

Savings (as of 1st March):
Easy Access £3896.51 (increased by 1352.58 in Feb) - goal for this is £6000, I have 2 more months of full pay so hoping we should just about hit this by the end of that period.

I'm not going to track our investments savings here, as they are fairly irrelevant in that we won't be touching them. I'm hoping to start adding to them monthly, as we don't do this currently. I would also like to start a new car fund at some point - I've had my current second hand car for 8 years, and although it should have at least a good 2-3 more years in it I'd like to start thinking about building up at least part of the cost of replacing it, I've always bought my cars outright and would like to continue doing this if I can!

I've just spent a bit of time setting up my money / productivity notebook that I'm hoping to use whilst I'm on mat leave to keep track of things like weekly grocery spending / weekly coffee and cake spending etc. I have budgets set for these, and since the start of the year we've more or less managed to stick to our monthly grocery budget for the first time in ages, but it requires almost constant monitoring, especially with the cost of everything at the moment! Once my restrictive diet ends (when the baby is born) I should be able to get this down a little more. March is looking like a budget breaker for groceries at the moment though, this week alone has hit £100 and I aim for £70.

FacelessNumber

In terms of March spending so far I am planning to go through and update that too, we have sent £750 to savings already, hoping to hit at least £1000 for the month again which should be doable with the refund from HMRC. We do have some car costs this month though in terms of MOT, service, a new wheel (already paid for) and alignment, so that will probably impact how much we can add to our savings pot.

Other money activities:
*I have actually listed something on Vinted, it's my first go at it so will see how I get on, will have plenty of baby stuff to add on there over the next few months as this is our last one.
*I have a couple of toys / bits to also list on Facebook, a lot of this needs sorting first though so not sure when that will happen
*Also need to look at mortgage rates, we can lock in a rate now ready for the end of our fix in July and then still switch it if rates continue to drop before then so seems like a no brainer!

I think that's everything for now, quite a lot of rambling for the day. Will try my best to check in a little more regularly to save the super long posts!