The Long and Winding Road

Aimingforthegoodlife

Measuring progress is so good for keeping the momentum, love your ideas! Some fab changes made already, I would say that your beauty costs are totally worth it in the long run if it makes you feel good, and having a cleaner frees you up for other things! Wishing you all the best!

t2rry

Another month, another payday...

and a lovely double payday it is for me as I have had my first 'proper' self employment payday of FY24/25 (I've had a couple of nominal ones but nothing to write home about), bagging me an additional £2k for the month, which is going straight into savings, just need to decide which savings.

Another month of mortgage payments and interest, I'm not going to update every month on this just yet as it's only the standard payments going in, but still nice to monitor and see the daily interest cost coming down.

Looking ahead it seems to be quite a spendy summer coming, meaning whilst we're saving our set £1,000pcm, we may struggle to add anything over and above that except my self employed income, of which I do have one more invoice outstanding already, but not much else lined up just yet.  I guess we wait to see how that turns out and in the meantime make a good effort to stick well within all budgets and hopefully find ourselves some extra here and there, because it all adds up!

t2rry

I had a second self employment payday last week of £4,500, my biggest to date and probably last for a good while.  I've kept £1,000 back for what looks like a spendy summer ahead, the other £3,500 squirreled away to savings.

Spendy summer involves:
- weekend away for OH: upfront costs paid ~ £800: £400 spending budgeted
- weekend away for me: upfront costs paid ~ £300: £200 spending budgeted
- family summer: upfront costs paid ~ £500: £1,250 spending budgeted
- holiday clubs for kids: £400 budgeted
- half term break: upfront costs paid ~ £300: additional upfront £500 budgeted: £350 spending budgeted

Technically half term break isn't summer but the balance is to be paid during the summer holidays and it contributes to the fact our budgets currently don't allow us to save anything above the automated savings (£1,000pcm) until November.  Nice problem to have, 'only' saving £1k per month, I know.

Listing it all like that, the £1,000 held back to supplement the summer doesn't look like it will go very far. That's £3,100 spending to come, so £610 average for each of the next 5 months.  Grateful that we have budget enough to cash flow these things but we won't be committing to so much next year!! At least the summer holiday and half term break means we should be able to save something in our usual food/spends budget those months.

Speaking of which , we somehow managed to save £140 on May's spending budgets, which feels amazing (very rare), I haven't decided what to do with that yet, squirrel it away or keep it as a bit of a buffer.

Otherwise, I will no doubt spend the next few weeks debating clothing purchases required for the whole family for summer and how we keep that well within budget for maximum impact.

mark55man

enjoy your breaks - good plan on the savings

t2rry

Spendy summer update:

- weekend away for OH: £400 budgeted - £180 over
OH was actually spot on in his spending, I forgot a hotel he paid for that was due to come out on arrival so I should have included that in the budget to begin with

- weekend away for me: £200 budgeted - £50 under
Always happy with myself for this one, we keep it simple and it just works

- family summer: £1,250 budgeted - £500 over
bit of an 'eek', but I should have known £1250 was unachievable as it was a longer trip than we've done in previous years and £1250 was optimistic for those.  We also had last minute cost additions like insurance (used to be provided by bank account but not now as I downgraded that, so that was £50 or so), fast track at the airport due to ongoing reports of delays there that worried me plus additional luggage due to aforementioned increased length of holiday and also last minute worry.

Still to come:

- holiday clubs for kids: £400 budgeted - reduced to £200
After some discussions with family and, most importantly, the kids, I've reduced this budget in line with what we think we need.  We will manage more time with them at home whilst we're working but I think we can make it work.  We will see.

- half term break: £350 spending budgeted
Leaving this as-is, it isn't until October so shouldn't drastically change at all


This all covered, I said in my last post that we wouldn't be able to save more than our standard £1k per month now until November, actually for August I'm taking £1k out of savings to cover all the above and some extra recent spending on summer clothes, so it's looking like August we will save a net £0.  That means we will be able to save something above the £1k next month (I had planned to cover some of the above with next months disposable but easier to pay it now rather than carrying forward a deficit) and now we've had pay rises confirmed we'll be able to save more again moving forward.  Some of those pay rises will go towards redressing the additional cost of living we have absorbed in recent months/years, some will certainly feel like 'extra' so we should be back to a better level of standard savings per month and we're both working hard to improve that even further in the near future.  Hopefully.

mark55man

well done @t2rry

summer holidays always hard to keep under budget - I mean you need to have some fun as a family and that gets dear very quickly

t2rry

t2rry said:

That means we will be able to save something above the £1k next month (I had planned to cover some of the above with next months disposable but easier to pay it now rather than carrying forward a deficit) and now we've had pay rises confirmed we'll be able to save more again moving forward. 

Pahahaaa thanks Oasis, now I can eat my optimistic words about September's budget

t2rry

Just here, wishing our life away to the payday with our pay rises in.  I wonder what it's like to not be like this; I've done detailed budgets for so long now, I struggle to fathom how people *don't* and at the same time, if there's something freeing about not measuring/tracking life by financial markers.

Our next financial marker is a growth bond maturing in early October and I have calculated that with our new salaries, which will land in October's pay, the interest our savings bring in (for both of us) are maxed out in terms of personal savings allowance and are actually very close to pushing us both into the higher rate tax (I already top up my SIPP every year to avoid it for myself but with the new salary will have less flexibility).  So that growth bond isn't going to renew, I need to get it into an ISA and as our various fixed savings pots mature, they'll go in too.  I'm quite looking forward to this as it'll really simplify our savings.  As much fun as I find it, identifying the current best rates for different pots, we have some good regular savers and it will be nice to fill our ISA allowance for the first time ever, even with it being existing funds rather than new savings.

On the budgeting aspect, I'm going to contact a local charity to potentially volunteer as a budget coach.  It genuinely surprises me how many people I have come across over the years that don't know some personal finance basics, how to budget, renewing insurances, tax free childcare etc etc.. professional people too and I realised I'm pushed by my interest in it all, some might call it obsession, but it's not a bad one to have is it?!  I've thought about how I could do this to help other people for a few years now and I just think I may have something to offer, at least I hope I do.

mark55man

If you are going to have an obsession make it one that works for you

I've been thinking about volunteering for CAB but as I near full retirement my overwhelming feeling is not to over commit myself - so maybe that's selfish but I will think about it when I have sorted out my house etc.  Very near to getting one room out of 10 done (so that's my obsession - oh and pension spreadsheets)

I'm not quite sure of your employment situation but I found it strange you said you were restricted with your higher rate tax and SIPP/pension contributions - you may be restricted by work but you can always open a personal SIPP and although salary sacrifice is very efficient (where available and under the quite generous contribution/allowances limits) you can claim back any HRT from contributions to a personal SIPP (I do mine via the self assessment but I think you might be able to let them know).

HTH - if you have a specific technical question on contributions ask the pension board they are very helpful although can be direct

South_coast

t2rry said:

I've done detailed budgets for so long now, I struggle to fathom how people *don't* 

I know exactly what you mean, it just seems such an alien concept to me when people don't have a handle on the basics of their money 🤷‍♀️

The volunteering sounds like an excellent idea, I hope it comes to something