Barebones of my budget

QrizB

How is one homemade cottage pie with veg costing you £4.50?

It's £4 + £1.50 = £5.50. I think they're buying the cottage pie as a ready meal, something like this? And I guess the veg are also pre-prepared?

elsien

fair enough. I was going off their other thread where they were talking about making one.

danny13579

Coffee £3, Tea £1.50, (while at work outdoors)

Invest in a Thermos flask and fill it with tea, coffee or hot water. It will keep hot for the day. Buy a box of teabags, they'll last for months. You are throwing money away.

lunch (2 items from greggs) £4

More waste. Bring a sandwich with you that you've made yourself. Save money and improve your health by ditching this muck.

dinner £6.50 example a cottage pie £4 plus some veg £1.50 and a yoghurt £1

This sounds like ready meal junk food. Buy some mince, potatoes, carrots, onions, some stock cubes, herbs, garlic and make your own. Divide it into portions and freeze them. Buy multi packs of yoghurt (natural if possible with some fruit thrown in). Flavoured yoghurts are ultra processed. A banana would be far healthier, maybe eaten with the natural yoghurt.

I'm not being totally frugal but not exactly splashing out?

You are wasting money as well as having a very unhealthy diet.

trickydicky14

I'm wondering how you have 165k in savings what with your small wage and high spending.

danny13579

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82126068#Comment_82126068

The proceeds of the sale of a property prior to moving in with his partner, who seems to have mysteriously vanished!

olb81

haha thanks for the jokes. So my current line of thinking is I need to be self responsible, not just go move in with the first person that offers.

I am thinking of

1. topping up pension by up to 40 k (which will give me 50k with tax back) ( i can do this 20k this year and 20 k after april.) My pension pot will then be over 100k which feels more substantial and will grow quicker.
2. Using the remaining 125k……. 5k in current account to live with
3. 20k in cash isa as emerggency
4. 100k Deposit for a one or two bedroom flat, with a mortgage of around the same give or take, the less the better, just enough to get a reasonable standard flat in a safe and quiet location.

Any thoughts , my only uncertainty is whether to put more into the property and leave the pension pot as it is.

Yorkie1

It may be worth starting to research property before making irretrievable decisions about your pension (you could, for example, put a little extra into the pension this year but not the full envisaged amount to start with). That will give you a better idea of how much you might need to spend for a property which meets your criteria. If you have put too much into your pension you can't get it back if it would have made a difference between finding a place you're happy to buy, and not finding such a place at all.

Do some mortgage calculations at up to 6% interest using the calculators on the main site, perhaps, to get any idea of monthly outgoings at different amounts of borrowing.

Don't forget that in addition to your emergency fund, you will need money for legal expenses, stamp duty (if applicable), decorating, minor repairs, removals, furniture etc. That all adds up more quickly than you anticipate.

olb81

So I 'm thinking of the purchase being a minimum 40% LTV Ideally 50% which works ok with my 100k deposit, and a mortgage of £100-120k , which is achievable on my wages of 28k

I can then put 20k into pension immediately with uplift and decide next year whether to put any more in

The flats in my area for 2 beds are £200-240k roughly

Yorkie1

Your conveyancing is likely to be slightly more for a flat purchase, and don't forget to budget for ground rent and service charges as ongoing expenses too.

olb81

yes some of those round here are 4000 per year! (Newbury Parkway)