Doing it on my own: bobobski's house deposit diary

bobobski · 2 January 2017 at 12:05PM

Spending my Christmas break reading further around the forums is becoming a yearly tradition for me, and this year it's brought me to this forum (I usually stick to the essential money section). I'm in a very up-y down-y part of my life and thought keeping a quasi-public diary would help keep me accountable.

So, to start with my current savings... (I update my signature at the end of the month so sorry for any confusion!):

First Direct regular saver: £3,600 (matures in February) (final £300 due to go in soon)
Flexclusive regular saver: £3,450 (matures in February)
TSB monthly saver: £1,250 (matures later in January)
FlexDirect: £200
TSB current account: £140.44
Halifax help to buy ISA: £3,000

Making my current deposit fund £11,640.44. To clarify, I had expected a chunky bonus in July, hence leaving room in the two high interest current accounts, but it never materialised, so sadly I wasted the FlexDirect...

Looking back through my YNAB, at the end of December 2015 I had £3,266.33 saved, and that was basically from opening the First Direct regular saver that February. This relatively massive jump in savings is largely attributable to the Save 12k challenge, for which I am extremely grateful.

Separately, I am building an emergency fund, which current stands at £517.48. To have a fund of 6 months' expenditure - comfortably - would be about £12k but my plan is to have this fund at a minimum of £5k when I start my house purchase and continue to build it during the purchase process, which I'm aware can take months.

As for my goals: I want to buy a house. I have done the maths with my maths-y friend and we have concluded that it doesn't make sense for me to go for a "starter" home on the basis that I should be able to afford my "dream" house within the next 5 years. I'm going to keep this under review because our maths was based on a number of assumptions about my ability to save and house price rises, so time may prove us wrong, but for now I'm sticking with Plan A. To clarify: the dream house is simply a house in the least bad cheap area in my town. Nothing big or fancy, not town centre, not even a particularly nice part of town really, but there are three cheap little regions and this is the least dodgy.

What this translates into: £60,000 deposit + £15,000 "ancillaries" fund (SDLT, legal fees, surveys, furniture etc). Then we have to assume certain pay rises by my target mid-2021 to get a big enough mortgage... Oh it's all so difficult. It basically comes down to me trying to save as much as possible in a relatively short period of time, completely on my own! No inheritance, no gifts, nada. All the money I have now I earned myself.

Aaaanyhow, I mentioned that this is a turbulent time for me. The company I work for has gone bust and is about to be wound up. Thankfully my team has found somewhere to go and this new place is keeping our salaries at their current level, but since they are a step-down from my current employer I don't envisage as good pay rises going forwards. So, having spent the last year doing all of my sums over and over again, that's all now in the bin and we need to wait and see what will happen. For example, this could well alter the assumptions that we made regarding "starter" homes!

I have also been quite naughty over the last few weeks, largely around eating out and drinking... lots to mask the pain of everything happening at work. I've been so good financially all year but I kind of blew it in December - leaving me with no budgeted money for the weekly shop! Sadly I am into unbudgeted credit card spending now, as I really do not want to dip into my savings (and indeed I want to continue to save, even if it's less), and I do pay my card off in full every month. In practice all this means is that my savings for the first couple of months of 2017 will be less than hoped.

So, I think that gives you a good picture of where I am. Wish me luck in pulling my socks up and continuing to save through 2017 no matter what life throws at me!

Update end of [STRIKE]March[/STRIKE] April:

First Direct regular saver: [STRIKE]£600[/STRIKE] £900
Flexclusive regular saver: [STRIKE]£1,000[/STRIKE] £1,500
TSB monthly saver: £0
FlexDirect: £1
Nationwide loyalty saver: £1.02
TSB current account: [STRIKE]£1,086.68[/STRIKE] £1,500
Halifax help to buy ISA: [STRIKE]£3,887.53[/STRIKE] £4,087.53
[STRIKE]NEW[/STRIKE] BOS Vantage: £5,5000
[STRIKE]NEW[/STRIKE] Tesco account 1 (used for emergency fund but now capturing overspill): [STRIKE]£2,250.92[/STRIKE] £2,128.76 (gone down as making room for emergency funds)
[STRIKE]NEW[/STRIKE] Tesco account 2 (used for annual expenses but now capturing overspill): [STRIKE]£253.68[/STRIKE] £339.71

Making my current deposit fund [STRIKE]£14,079.81[/STRIKE] £15,458.02 with £300 set aside for my First Direct regular saver in a couple of weeks. The emergency fund (including money I have allocated for next month) now stands at [STRIKE]£863.76[/STRIKE] £981.24

savingwannabe · 2 January 2017 at 1:08PM

Blimey how switched on are you? Welcome, you can keep us on our toes. Good luck with your diary. How the heck do you have so many current accounts I only have two and one I cant switch. You sound like you really know what you are doing.

I bet you don't waste your money on fleabay. Do you ever waste money?

bobobski · 2 January 2017 at 1:39PM

savingwannabe wrote: »

Blimey how switched on are you? Welcome, you can keep us on our toes. Good luck with your diary. How the heck do you have so many current accounts I only have two and one I cant switch. You sound like you really know what you are doing.

I bet you don't waste your money on fleabay. Do you ever waste money?

Aww thank you SW. I spend a lot of time on the savings/investments and bank accounts/budgeting forums, and have listened to a lot of what Martin has said about where to put your savings. The accounts average 5% interest, although that will soon drop - boo!

I haven't listed other accounts there, such as my First Direct current account which I have open for the regular saver. A few months ago I opened a "disposable" Natwest account purely to switch it to Halifax for the £100 incentive and £5 monthly reward (also about to drop, boo!). So that might be something you could do if you wanted to switch without closing one of your existing accounts?

Sadly I do waste a lot of money. On a regular basis, I smoke about 10 a day and I also drink pretty much every day. I am sorting out the drink as - this being the beginning of the year - I started a diet yesterday and sadly alcohol is probably the main reason for my weight. The cigarettes will come down naturally as I drink less. I also go out for meals pretty much every week, but generally stick to the local pub to keep it cheap. One of my targets for 2017 is to stick to my budget as I'm very good at "moving money around" when I've overspent!

But aside from the above, I am incredibly stingy. I just managed to get my fibre optic broadband down to £25 per month including line rental with a free month, with no set up fees or anything, which I'm happy about. I generally make lunch at home and take it to work with me. I have Netflix so I don't pay the licence fee. I rarely buy clothes, and when I do it's generally in a supermarket. My gas and electricity together come to £35 per month. Apart from my two vices, I have really taken the MSE lifestyle to heart! People at work make fun of me for it but a few of them recently asked me for financial advice - ha!

As for ebay, no I don't really use it. I sell the odd thing on there once a year or so but since I don't buy much of any value I have nothing worth selling! Although I do need to music magpie a bunch of books sitting on my shelf gathering dust...

savingwannabe · 2 January 2017 at 2:23PM

You are really smart. We need you to kick us all up the bum so we start being more money savvy and just smarter. Right I am on a diet. Steve and Andy send some Chocolate Orange and some Thorntons over with Susan last night as I was too ill to visit them for new year.

I have had 3 segments and that is it. I am eating healthily as from now. I am going to get inspired. I need to lose half a stone. I will walk every day and maybe use the cross trainer when it gets warm enough to go into garage (I call it the cross dresser) I have had it for 2 months and not used it.

I look at the bank accounts thread too. I am going to do some transfer malarkies too as soon as new ones are announced and will ask you for advice. Badger09 is on that board and really nice, they have helped me.

Right better go, got to get some work done for tomorrow the most long winded lesson ever for my night class. I don't want to do it as it is sooooo boring. But needs must and all that. Turrah have a good day.

bobobski · 3 January 2017 at 12:07PM

Cross dresser - I love it! I have a rowing machine at home which I use to hang laundry sometimes - if I switched to a cross trainer the name would be perfect! Happy to offer advice on bank accounts although there are others who know far more than me - Badger09 as you say and I also find colsten particularly knowledgeable and also hilarious. And good for you looking after yourself, especially while you're recovering from illness!

So yesterday was a good day: I went for a walk with a friend and a dog I'm looking after for a few weeks, and watching my friend balancing the dog's muddy paws on the little towel I brought for the car on his lap on the drive home was quite fun. Usually I only go to the supermarket once a week but somehow my weekly shop on Saturday was lacking so I had to spend £16-odd on top-up stuff yesterday. Blame the diet which evidently I wasn't prepared for!

I go back to work tomorrow so am having a final lazy day today. The tree will be coming down and I am determined to sort out this music magpie malarky. I batch-cooked risotto yesterday to use up a tray of chicken I'd taken out of the freezer, but stupidly made 8 portions - can you freeze cooked risotto?? Ah the pains of living alone... Anyway, I don't anticipate any spending today except maybe a loaf of bread (Tesco was out of this yesterday!) but that's only if I can drag my butt out of the house. I could make it but I find it harder to track home-baked bread when on a diet. My tummy is feeling dodgy today - perhaps revolting against the diet - so I might just stay in all day and move as little as possible!

I'm getting a little nervous about going back to work tomorrow. The deal with the company taking over my team couldn't be finalised before Christmas, and I haven't heard a peep about what's happening for 10 days, so in theory it's possible that the deal is off and I'll be jobless in a couple of weeks. Good thing The Fresh Prince is on Netflix to distract me!

Have a lovely day all.

bobobski · 8 January 2017 at 8:55AM

So, quite an eventful few days over here. I haven't been great with money but I haven't been terrible either.

Stuff at work is as crazy as ever. No one knows who's calling the shots as we head towards whatever winding up method they choose but we hope it's the bank because the company has done some pretty terrible things to some employees. We think we're not going to be paid at all going forwards (including for last week) but I'm very lucky as someone has offered to pay me if my company doesn't. Only a handful of us are in that position. There is panic amongst the general employee population so I'm glad not to be in the thick of it. It's funny though how many people are coming out of the woodwork to say they've been through something similar - people are emailing me at work and contacting me on social media to share their horror stories, which weirdly is making me feel better as you can see that people came out the other end and have jobs now.

I was very good on my diet for most of the week, but I went to a BYOB event on Friday night and got a little carried away... I've never drunk vodka before (certainly not in these quantities) and I didn't drink much at all during the week (i.e. 2 glasses of wine - on different days) so I felt pretty horrible yesterday. Very much hid on the sofa under the blanket wishing the hangover away. So I got pizza. I know it goes against the diet and the money thing, but it was the only thing my body wanted! Anyway, today is weigh in day and despite the pizza I'm 4lbs down on last week. That doesn't help the money thing though. The other naughty thing was a spontaneous trip to a restaurant for lunch with some of the guys from work during the week, that I really ought to have said no to as I had homemade lunch with me, but I wanted to catch up with them after the holidays and it was "only" a tenner. Still though, I need to improve this kind of thing.

A piece of sort-of good news though. I spoke to the company that's taking my team over about my concerns regarding salaries. The vibes were positive, i.e. that they pay based on merit and not based on your level, so that indicates good things for me (I'm paid an above-market salary for this reason and I was worried they'd reduce it). However, we didn't get into actual numbers, so although I think their intentions are good, I'm still concerned I will not get the pay rises I need going forwards for the house.

There's some other stuff going on too which is so secret I can't even say here under my pseudonym, and I don't expect any actual news on that until at least the second half of the year, but I'll post on that later once it's done.

Plan for today: weekly shop to buy healthy food and not spend too much as I'm spending next month's salary. I also need to swing by the post office collection place as some gig tickets came during the week when I wasn't at home. I wish I could be more excited for the gig as it's a band I've wanted to see for over 10 years but right now I'm worrying about the cost of the train ticket and how we're going to get home afterwards

If I can get my butt in gear I'll go for a walk later too as yesterday I only got as far as the little supermarket round the corner for milk for my tea!

savingwannabe · 8 January 2017 at 12:33PM

It sounds like a time of uncertainty but you are being very positive and doing all you can. Enjoy the gig. Music is amazing. I look upon music as providing joy through your life.

savingwannabe · 10 January 2017 at 4:50PM

Hello boboski I have asked for advice in a PM re banking. Don't worry if you cant answer but I hope you can.

savingwannabe · 10 January 2017 at 6:53PM

You are a total legend. Huge thanks. Boboski is dead clever. Yay.

bobobski · 14 January 2017 at 7:15AM

No worries SW, it's taken a couple of years of receiving loads of advice on here but I'm glad I can now offer little bits back here and there

So, as expected this week was crazy. My company, as suspected, refused to pay us, even for work done. If I didn't have something lined up with my group I would have just walked out, like many people did. But our deal went through, yay! So I officially now work for a company that ISN'T insolvent - woooo! _party_ There's a lot still to be sorted out but so far things are looking good, and particularly good for me (I won't say too much, but I am financially better off following this involuntary move - weird - by about £200 per month).

Now the bad side - the diet went out the window! Bubbly on completion day followed by pub, then pub again the next day, and more bubbly the day after... And a lunch with a friend. I've spent about £30 total celebrating which isn't too bad, and another tenner on a really nice steak lunch, but I may have undone a lot of my hard work on the diet. Oh well, you can only pick up and start again, and it's not every day you celebrate not losing your job... I'm planning on a long walk today, which is what I always plan when I wake up feeling fat, but I'm not very good at the execution when it's cold!

Anyway, money-wise (since this is a deposit-saving diary), I am now secure. In a couple of weeks I'll be even better off, and sometime after that I may also receive a windfall but that is much more tenuous. Before this all happened I had signed up for the £12k challenge at £12k, and I didn't want to reassess that target until this was all done and dusted. But actually, now, that might be even more achievable than before! Only time will tell...

Hope you all have a great weekend

savingwannabe · 14 January 2017 at 8:45AM

Hooray. Good financial news for the future.:beer: Hey I bet even the supermodels don't eat lettuce all the time. It's called being a human. :rotfl: Here's to a great 2017 :j

Doing it on my own: bobobski's house deposit diary

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