Road To Financial Recovery

Humdinger1

Gosh I'm late to the party @FootyFanDan but happy birthday, Christmas and new year! You're doing brilliantly- you've well and truly had your lightbulb moment.   Onwards and upwards love Humdinger xx 

FootyFanDan

Humdinger1 said:

Gosh I'm late to the party @FootyFanDan but happy birthday, Christmas and new year! You're doing brilliantly- you've well and truly had your lightbulb moment.   Onwards and upwards love Humdinger xx 

Thank you 😊. I am definitely making good progress and feel a lot more in control of most aspects of the finances, there are still some areas for improvement. One area that needs to be looked at is the food / meal planning, we tend to just buy what we are used to buying without any real thought, so that is something we need to work on. I hope you had a nice Christmas.

FootyFanDan

Today has been a nice relaxing day and I have managed to work through some of the stuff needed and worked out a pretty consistent budget for the upcoming year. There are some months that income is a little higher but I have worked it based on our usual monthly income and any extra that month will just go to paying either extra to holiday or in savings.

In regards to savings I have collated all the funds into one pot for the moment, today I paid for my service and MOT and got it booked in (very organised this year ). This takes the savings down to £500, I have used some to pay off the remainder of the CC. Although that card was really been used to put work expenses on, it always bothered me that I was funding that with credit when I shouldn't need to. It is going to be good going into the new year with new goals and targets. The main focus will be to maintain a consistent level of savings every month and also our big holiday.  I have also setup up salary sorter properly on Monzo now, I used it for the first time in November and it worked great, although maybe if I am going to do this i could trim down the number of pots

I am going to spend rest of evening reading diaries and catching up, I do need really to catch up on some work tasks that I should have done before annual leave, a colleague should have picked up buy hasn't so I will need to do that tomorrow before football. 

EDIT : I also need to book in tyres before the MOT in Feb so I will do that towards mid January, they have needed doing for ages and pretty silly to have neglected it given the amount of travel I do. I have just been so busy, added this to my to do items for the upcoming week. On the topic of to-do list I need to start looking at proper system to manage my work stuff, so will do some research around methods and stuff.

There is also prospect of a pay increase in January, the company normally gives annually based on performance reviews, but they have been a bit slack with the reviews so we will see. Last year it was a 2k increase to my basic, I suspect it won't be that much this year.

daisy_1571

morning,  I've read through your diary.  You are doing really great getting a handle on your finances and what you actually spend over the year.

I maybe wouldn't cut down on the pots just yet, wait till you see what areas you have missed, under/overestimated etc. 

One tiny tip if you'd like it.  I don't think of the money that I save as a twelfth of an annual expenditure or a portion of a known expenditure as 'savings'.  Lumping it in as savings skews my thinking.   I now know these monies aren't 'mine',  they are being kept for a purpose and will need to be spent.  I saw earlier in your posts you were feeling a wee bit aggrieved when the time came for these pots to be spent on their purpose so it might help you to reframe your thinking too.  Saves that high of 'yippee savings' and low of 'aw my savings are being depleted' and has a more calm 'I put money aside for this purpose and now can service the expense'.  Ive tried to always have a calm level nowadays rather than the higgs and lows like it was in my earlier days when I was just getting to grips with it all.

Well done ffdan, you are going into 2026 in a much better place and you will hopefully be ready to start actioning 10% of any payrise into maybe a high percentage interest regular saver to start off long term savings giving options for the future, or increase pension contributions maybe???  Always lots to think about  😀 

Daisy xx

FootyFanDan

daisy_1571 said:

morning,  I've read through your diary.  You are doing really great getting a handle on your finances and what you actually spend over the year.

I maybe wouldn't cut down on the pots just yet, wait till you see what areas you have missed, under/overestimated etc. 

One tiny tip if you'd like it.  I don't think of the money that I save as a twelfth of an annual expenditure or a portion of a known expenditure as 'savings'.  Lumping it in as savings skews my thinking.   I now know these monies aren't 'mine',  they are being kept for a purpose and will need to be spent.  I saw earlier in your posts you were feeling a wee bit aggrieved when the time came for these pots to be spent on their purpose so it might help you to reframe your thinking too.  Saves that high of 'yippee savings' and low of 'aw my savings are being depleted' and has a more calm 'I put money aside for this purpose and now can service the expense'.  Ive tried to always have a calm level nowadays rather than the higgs and lows like it was in my earlier days when I was just getting to grips with it all.

Well done ffdan, you are going into 2026 in a much better place and you will hopefully be ready to start actioning 10% of any payrise into maybe a high percentage interest regular saver to start off long term savings giving options for the future, or increase pension contributions maybe???  Always lots to think about  😀 

Daisy xx

Thank you Daisy,
I think you are totally right about the pots to be honest. I think in hindsight whilst there has been frustrations seeing it disappear the fact I have been able to fund things and knowing they are covered is a great relief. This year xmas has been saved up for through the year, same with car expenses. I do like the idea of having a little pot of savings for the future getting built up, so I think having pots as they are works it is just a bit of juggling around on payday. I do need to try reframe my approach to these and not really see them as 'savings' in the traditional sense so I will work on that.

I like the idea of putting that increase into a long term savings area tbh, so that could work. I do think I need to look at becoming a bit more calm around finances, I am not watching every penny but I need to remember that there will be good and bad moments and that can be totally fine too.

FootyFanDan

Today has been a bit of a resting day, we went for early breakfast and just had a bit of us time over coffee before we picked up little one from her friends. Then just sat and lazily watched YouTube and also football. This evening I need to look at meal planning.

Last night I decided to try get stuff out of my brain and down on paper....its scary just how busy my January at work looks already 😂 but I am hoping that by getting some solid time management stuff (and my own boundaries in place) I can start developing. I am keen to really progress in my role and just learn to be a bit more accountable. I think as everything is so fast paced there is no real time to sit and take stock of successes but also the failures to learn from.

I want to have a place to also make sure all important stuff or even the random stuff can be put so it is easy to find. Today's task was to make sure I got my car tyre sizes so I can start looking at sorting those...my car fund is slowly emptying ha.

FootyFanDan

Happy New Year All.
I hope everyone had nice night however they celebrated bringing in the new year, for us it was just a quiet one at home with some films and then fireworks on tv and bed for me (although little one and Mrs stayed up late.) I have never really been into resolutions as such, but there are certainly areas of focus I want to fix this coming year. I need to work on getting a better balance on life and also enjoying the family moments more, as well as working on my own health(physical & mental) and getting that in a better focus. I dunno it feels like I haven't be 'me' for such a long time so that is my goal. 

Financially I want to focus on putting us in a secure position and build a solid habits with this. We do go into the year with some savings which is a good start. I have gone through and set up standing orders for all my transfers that I normally do manually and have also recently set up a transfer to investment pot. I am hoping setting up auto transfers I can just let things go into savings and stuff and just set and forget. The investment pot isn't anything extreme but just another method, I do need to setup a proper life insurance policy and not really sure where to start with it. I do have cover via work but would feel better with it separate, so that has been added to the to do list.  

I have finally got round to sorting out the little one's room and decluttering it, as well as taking down the broken bed ready for the tip, I did a tip run a few days ago to get rid of a lot of stuff so will probably look at another trip over the weekend. Also ordered a new bed and this was funded out of funds we have had spare, plus funds would normally fund entertainment and eating out. It does feel good to get that out of the way, the next purchase needs to be Fridge Freezer but that will probably be end of January before that can be considered.

2025 overall on reflection has brought some challenges, but financially have been pretty steady. Here is to 2026

Rhyddid2026

Happy new year!🥂

lucielle

I can so relate to not feeling me. I’m at the stage I don’t know/remember who me is anymore. 

Sounds like you have a plan. 

L

FootyFanDan

lucielle said:

I can so relate to not feeling me. I’m at the stage I don’t know/remember who me is anymore. 

Sounds like you have a plan. 

L

It isn't a very nice feeling is it?, my frustration is I am not particularly sure what the cause is. Although in reality it is probably a combo of quite a lot of things right now to be honest. I am overthinking a lot, which is affecting sleep which then in turn is probably affecting work and poor food / diet choices and then feeling pretty lethargic so not really doing much socialising so yeah a lot to fix. The things I used to enjoy just feel a mile away at the minute.

The last quarter of year as been a bit hectic, and having to work a combo at home and office around the school runs hasn't helped. The first aim for me to fix is to try sort work stuff and get on top of that, hoping the rest will fall in place once I sort that

Have you any plans of working through you situation, or know where you feel you lost yourself?