Jak's 'I will not spend any money on rubbish and I will pay off my debts' diary

simonSE15

jak wrote: »

Savings list:

House ISA: 57
Holiday Thrift Club: 660
Holiday Spends Money: 545.17
Baby Spends: 124
Christmas Cash: 81.40
Christmas Quidco Pending: 174.33 Profit
Vouchers: 62.78
Total Christmas: 318.81

(20p Club: 3.20 - to be cashed into Christmas money when reaches £10)
Inclusive Total: £1707.88
I will update my savings each time they increase adn keep a running total of cash/vouchers/christmas etc. Obviously some of the funds are fluid- baby and christmas esp. I also intend to open a sep. emergency fund savings account for the CB and CTC to go into to see us through the winter if dh can't work again. I worked out we can just about afford it if we save an emergency fund of 600. This will give us 120 pcm on top of my mat, allowance 470, cb 75.20 and ctc 100 (i'm guessing) plus hopefully we can claim some kind of benefit, not sure yet. So 765.20pcm to live on. Or 645.20 without the emergency fund...HENCE the need for one!

Does anyone know how savings work against you if you claim for housing benefit/council tax benefit etc? We hope to save £4000 by Christmas but if we do, will they make us live on that instead?

Anyway, that's all for now.

J
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you can have up to £6,000 savings before benefit will be affected.

http://www.dwp.gov.uk/lifeevent/benefits/council_tax_benefit.asp

jak

That's fab thanks ever so much!

I went to the bank today and paid in 58 to our holiday spends account so that now stands at £603.17. Also put my £20 for this week into the holiday Thrift Club so that's at £680 now.
Running total: 1785.88

jak

I got a letter from BM today re: my savings account so that's good timing! I'm going to send off a cheque today so that my accounts are linked, then transfer the money we've saved so far into it as it's got the highest interest rate. 6.33 gross for me as I shouldn't have to pay tax this year..woohooo.
I'm going to put all the Christmas money in and the holiday spends money to maximise interest. We are going to also open a Halifax reg. saver for £25pcm initially and see how we go with that. I read on their website that you can make more than one deposit a month so if we set it up for the lowest amount then hopefully we'll be able to at least pay that much in. I hope we can pay in 500pcm in reality but it may fluctuate hence the low limit!

To have £4000 by christmas in our house deposit fund we need to save another 3943 so 788.60pcm for 5 months (with Dec. off). 470 will be mat pay leaving 318.60 to come out of dh pay. As we have about 500pcm 'spare' in dh wages at the moment we could put away more than that as we no longer have debt repayments to make. The baby needs his reg. saver also so we could put 100pcm in that also. That leaves us with £81.40 'spare' for emergencies. That will be put away in a sep. account and added to the house deposit fund if needed.

So to clarify the amounts and accounts are as follows:
Halifax baby reg. saver: £100pcm Starting Aug 1st hopefully.
Halifax reg. saver for house deposit: £500pcm Starting this month.
Birmingham Midshires e-saver 2: Holiday spends and Christmas money
Prob. at a rate of £21.58pcm Christmas money and £150pcm extra money for holiday. Comes out of budget.
Holiday Thrift club: 20pw. Comes out of budget.
Child benefit: into emergency fund: Halifax websaver: £75.20
CTC: into emergency fund: Halifax websaver: £244 (according to website- may change)

Our budget is reduced as follows:
rent: 330
CT: 95
Thrift: 80
Electricity: 30
Lottery: 4
Net: 15
Phone: 26
Credit: 20
Sky: 19
tv licence: 23.25
Christmas and gifts: 21.58
Food and groceries: 85
Baby: 30
Health and beauty: 10
Clothing: 20
Household cleaning products and toiletries: 5
Home imp: 10
Soc: 50
Spends: 80

Total spend: £953.83 Obviously this will change as the weather gets colder so more on electricity. Also our phone bill fluctuates and any excess goes into the Christmas fund. Baby stuff excess goes into savings for baby spends. This account will change into a Halifax save4it when the baby is born.

DH earns approx: £1600 so the remainder is: 646.17. His wage does fluctuate but his basic is 1440, hence the def. 500 for savings pcm.

So accoring to my calculations that leaves us with £510pcm to put somewhere. I'll have to see where I can put that...

beckseven

congratulations on the Debt freeness! Knew you would do it-well done! I was like-oh no don't stop your diary I enjoy reading it so was glad to hear you are carrying it on as a savings diary.

jak

OK so the total amount of savings can't exceed £6,000 so it'll be close if we're to meet our target. We may actually add more to the babys savings so that he's got lots in his uni fund then we can swop the payments around so we put more in the house fund after Christmas. We should get housing and council tax benefit I think plus CTC and CB so should be a hopefully solvent winter. I really worry about these things but apparently you can apply for housing 13 weeks in advance now so that should help! I think as well that because of when I finished work we should get full CTC so I might be able to get a sure start grant if that comes through in time. Anyway, time will tell.

I've just added £7.70 we saved on the phone bill to our Christmas savings, hooray! So will update my sig. in a mo. Also, got to order a new cheque book as I can't find mine anywhere. God knows where that's gone and I need it to write a check for my BM e-saver, V. annoying. I wonder if you can order one online...Off to check...

clearmydebts

Jak,

Well done. I have read your thread with interest. Am delighted you have become debt-free. Now you can really enjoy the arrival of your baby without worrying. You must be over the moon. You have inspired me!

Mrs_Money_Penny

Hi Jaks

Really pleased you have changed this into a savings diary. Well done, I am sure you have helped lots of people by them reading your diary.

jak

Thanks. That's nice to hear!

I've just been to ALDI and got loads of fruit for the fruit salad for tomorrow. Got enough fruit and veg for at leastr a week also and the total cost was £9.95 which isn't too bad. For that we got:
2 pineapples
1 melon
pack cherries (he forgot to charge us for! yay!)
pack strawberries
bag of apples
bag of carrotts
6 kiwi fruits
1 mango
bag of bananas
fruit and peanut mix
Tin of mandarines
5kg pots

I'm going to use most of the 'nice' fruit in the fruit salad and then we can have the rest of it as a when for the next week. DH will be eating at work for four days of it so that may even last us longer than that if it keeps.

We are having left over risotto cakes from the freezer and salad for our tea...hopefully they'll taste nice!

Got some socks for dh from Matalan earlier: 10 pairs for £5! Bargain! And still got just enough to get my nursing bras in the clothing budget so all good!!!

Thanks for all the kind words folks.
J
X

jak

Well I got up today and my giant list of household jobs for today had been done by DH! OMG I'm so chuffed! Cool. Now today we are going to the cinema to use our free sweets tickets and buying snacks before hand obviously! I am going to make pizza for tea with salad and potato salad. YUMYUM. Yesterday we had leftover rissotto made into cakes then fried. They were lovely- dh said to me quite seriously that he preferrred the veggie burgers from the other day more but he was quite happy to eat both. Bless him. That sounds awful but he meant he appreciated the effort I think. Either way, we had 2 meals for the price of 1 so it's all good!

Off to see if Tescos have the smoothy for the free voucher in the email this month in a bit. Ours is only small but hopefully it will. So far this month we've got (totally free) 16 Activia yogurts (Buzz vouchers) 1 pot philidephia extra light and now the smoothy! So doing really well for shopping so far! And it's all really healthy!

We are going to open our Halifax Reg. saver today I hope. There is a guy I used to see who has just started working in Halifax and I can't stand him! I'm going to ask for someone else if possible if he tries to serve us. I just think it'd find it weird having someone I know know the ons and outs of my finances. Hmmmmmm. Anyway hopefully it won't be an issue!

DH got my sisters b-day pressie the other day- clinique lipgloss from him work for v. cheap- not till next March but can go in the pressie bag.

J
X

jak

So we opened the reg. saver in my name. I've put 250 in it and set up a standing order for 250pcm. I was going to set it lower and top it up manually but the lady said I can't do that! Need to double check that I think...
Made pizza for tea and it was yummy. Also made pizza paaks for the freezer - dough, mozzerella cut up and tom topping all in a little tub (x2) so when the baby comes we can have instant food sort of!

We also got my nursing bras at last! So i'm all set now. They were £25 for 2 ouch! Also got dh 3 pairs of board shorts from the debenhams sale for £28.50- all branded which he loves! That's coming out of next months clothing budget and so is on my credit card.

We also got some christmas gifts: 4Xclip frames with borders from WHSmiths £2.49 in total, bargain! And a lovely wooden frame from debenhams for 3.60, should've been £12 and had vouchers so only paid 1.40 in actual cash! Cool!

I've also suggested we get dh brothers b-day pressie from debs sale as they all love the same kind of clothes. So we shall see...

Anyway, that's me for today, i'm knackered so off to bed...
J
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