Road To Financial Recovery

daisy_1571

£25 a month is £300 thats a 'huge' amount not an 'only' amount- sort it now and s/o that money somewhere so It doesn'tget lost.

maybe next year set up a regular saver at a decent percentage then once a year you know you have that coming out. Getting one to finish in the June to use for extra summer school holidays expenses and every year thereafter you know you have a regular saver plus interest due out at a point in the year you need it.

FootyFanDan

I like the idea of the regular saver @daisy_1571, this last year we have taken the family allowance money out of the budget as if it doesn't exist this then is put into a seperate account and then has paid for a variety of stuff that daughter has needed be it shoes, or uniforms or stuff and this has worked really well actually. We've never been in a position to do that before so that will continue. Overall I feel our finances are in a good place but I also feel that I earn enough to not feel like we aren't making progress.

FootyFanDan

Happy Bank Holiday, hope everyone had a good weekend.

That is the first week of my annual leave over, glad that I have another one left haha. It has been quite a productive week, after the initial first few days of just been lazy we've managed to finally get to grips on decluttering the living room and it now is starting to come together. I also spent Friday re-arranging the bedroom which I have been putting off for a while, there is now the task of decluttering that a bit but that will happen over next few weeks. This weeks main task will be to sort out daughter's room and try get that in a decent shape. I suspect this is going to involve quite a few tip runs, but as kids go back to school this week I am hoping it's a little less busy.

It's actually been nice to have time off and not been worried or doing work, although it meant I had to do some additional work on that Saturday it meant I knew all was in a good place.

Finance wise all the pots and bills stuff is sorted out ready to leave the accounts. We will need to order some shopping online later for the school lunch stuff.

FootyFanDan

Here is to September!, I find it crazy that we've hit the 'ber' part of the year It has flown by. I managed to get food shopping sorted and delivered today - also remained under budget which is always a bonus. I also shouldn't require any petrol this week due to being off work. There is some travel to do but I should already have enough in the car to cover those until I reset the budget on Sunday. I have been doing a lot of thinking and playing around with numbers and trying to figure out the best way to try run the budget. I like the idea of having it all in one pot at the end of the month and then paying everything out and we have a lump sum left. I just don't think we quite have the will power to just leave money in the account. I have looked at our expected income and looking ahead it seems that 3 x Friday's in the month we will have a payment hit our account (due to the way our monzo is setup). So I think the better idea for us is to have a weekly amount that covers groceries, petrol, entertainment and a little buffer. Then whatever is left on the Thursday night before the next payment hits gets transferred over. This also means if we do over shoot on an expense we only have the week to wait. Last month we under planned on our food and petrol budget which meant I had to move. money out of savings to cover it. Now that has been put back and no major drama. I have also found that by having a big lump sum in the food pot the budget just gets thrown out cos it doesn't really register unless there is no money in there. It also means that if there is an event we know we have coming up we can say ah we will actually save our eating to/entertainment money this week cos we know we have an event that we will prob spend a decent amount at. I maybe am just over thinking it, I like playing around with the figures and stuff but maybe I am just changing stuff for no reason through my finances been boring now. It sounds silly but when there was lots and lots of debt to pay it was like a game to reduce the figures so that doesn't quite feel the same with savings.

Anyhow less waffling. I aim to also put a lot more effort into getting fitness / work / life balance back a little. I've really enjoyed my time off and whilst it has made me realise work is a cause of lot of stress, if I could maybe learn to switch off then that might be half the battle. I am going to try start reading more, I need to either start trying to run again or go to gym. I have been once in the last two months and it was crazy busy so I need to re-think that.

There is so much I want to fix/change but this is going to be slow process. The goals are to try take things a little easier and try enjoy some of the simple things. I haven't really done any real sorting in daughters room so that is tomorrow's task to complete.

EDIT - One of the main goals is to cut down possibly quit social media. I love watching Youtube for stuff and also listen to my podcast but I am really starting to have a genuine dislike for social media and what it is starting to show. I need to have a think about this, I do have a lot of family who contact me this way but yeah I think if I could reduce this it would help.

FootyFanDan

We've also started looking at our holiday away for next year, which will probably be Spain again in May which we've done a few times and we have really enjoyed it. Although I think we would like to maybe try eat and explore a little more next time….daughter would probably prefer 7 days by the pool 😂 but at least this would give us a target to be aiming for.

DancingInTheRain

No harm in putting your thoughts out there while you come up with a plan, all part of the process.

Good luck in sorting you daughter's room.

No Transfer Tuesday update? 🤔😂

FootyFanDan

@DancingInTheRain I think the weekly one is the one that would likely work the best for us. It also ties in with been able to keep up properly with doing my transfer once per week. We plan to do shopping to be delivered though the week rather than the weekend when substitutes seem to outweigh the stuff that comes. We did quite well today to only have 2 subs. This would then also allow me to keep transfer Tuesday in place which I have really got into the habit of.

haha since you insisted 😉

Transfer Tuesday

£25 into the newly created vacation pot.

£25 into the xmas pot - this current sits at £50 as we have spent a bit from here. The plan will be now to keep topping this up from now on. We need to sit and discuss what our plan is for gifting this year but I am so past going out and shopping for all the family and worrying over whether it is enough.

EDIT - XMAS fund actually had more than I thought in :D - this is £70.00 not £50

FootyFanDan

Current Savings Position

Type	Amount
Emergency fund	£700
Car Funds	£350
Xmas	£70
2027 Vacation	£25
Total	£1145.00

Other Funds

Type	Amount
Monzo Investment Acc.	£335.24
Lifetime ISA	£387.01
Trading 212 (this is a personal one and will only be funding using small amount of my personal spends	£10.00
Total	£732.25

We are funding the lifetime isa pretty regularly now, so had a bonus payment added in August of £25, plus one to add in September. These amounts do fluctuate and don't include my workplace pension that is funded via salary sacrifice which is consistently now around £293 getting added monthly. I will hopefully keep them updated each month

FootyFanDan

Today has ended up being quite productive, I have managed to make a huge dent in sorting out daughters room which is a big step forward as been putting this off for a long time. We've ended up finally ordering her a wardrobe and some drawers which will arrive tomorrow so I am hopeful that by the time I go back to work next week this should be finished. There is going to be quite a fair bit of decluttering to do so I expect a pretty full on weekend.

First day of high school went really well for her and she came out smiling so that was a nice positive. Work ended up calling me today to try sort an issue out that they were struggling with…so I made it til nearly the end of my leave before that happened 🤣

FootyFanDan

Forgot to add that the furniture was purchased through toipcashback link so should be a little coming back our way for that. I also had £12 in there from previous Cashback so when this has all gone through will just do one withdrawal for it.