Positive Balance: Focused on Budgeting

PositiveBalance · 6 March 2018 at 2:35AM

Hello all. :wave:

Well, I did a good disappearing act, didn't I?

I have to admit I lost it a bit somewhere during the month and although I was compiling receipts and noting spends, I didn't sit down and do the sums until just now. I think I need to set some time aside to do that every week from now else it's not going to get any better.

I need to do a little bit more number crunching to figure out exactly where I landed but the following little things also happened:

1) I finally got a £137 refund for a botched rail journey I took last year (it has taken them MONTHS to process the refund - disgraceful! :eek:) which has been duly whipped off to savings.

2) I missed an exercise class (£6.50) last week and I won't need a prescription this month (£8.60) so I have whipped these small amounts into savings, as well as the extra council tax payment of £83.00 this month meaning that I have saved £98.10 from my regular monthly budget. :T

3) Due to returning an item bought on my CC (£29.99), a small OP to placate my OCD about random ends of numbers (£1.21) and today's monthly min, payment my CC is now down to £4744! :T

Now the CC is my current financial worry: it's on a 0% until June and I'm a bit worried that as the utilization on it is high that I might struggle to get a balance transfer to another 0% card.

I've been listening to a lot of Dave Ramsay lately and I agree with having a £1000 emergency fund which I am effectively building in a separate account, but I'm pretty sure that I'm going to have to throw it at the card before June to get the balance down as low as possible before it comes to looking for a transfer. If this is what I do (and it's 99.9% certain to be), I will rebuild the £1000 ASAP the other side of the transfer, then start attacking the debt again.

So far my emergency fund is £546.06. This includes OT, all the shuffled over payments such as the unrequired prescriptions rail refund. There is actually £686.83 in that account but I have been putting money aside for my annual house insurance bill as well plus the remainder of any present funds etc.

I don't see last month's council tax payment there, though, so I still haven't got this 100% correct.

Still, it's a big improvement on where I have been, so I'll take it, and instead of throwing the dummy in as I might have otherwise done, I'll keep refining the process.

I'll be back with more proper figures and March's budget soon.

EDIT: my gas and electricity tariff doesn't change until May. Thanks heavens!

enthusiasticsaver · 6 March 2018 at 9:08AM

At least the debt is going down and not up. With just the one debt and a small mortgage I don't think you will have an issue getting another 0%. The deals are getting shorter though. Good going on the EF.

enthusiasticsaver · 6 March 2018 at 9:09AM

It seems daft saying a £73k mortgage is small by the way but in this day and age it is.

PositiveBalance · 6 March 2018 at 7:25PM

enthusiasticsaver wrote: »

At least the debt is going down and not up. With just the one debt and a small mortgage I don't think you will have an issue getting another 0%. The deals are getting shorter though. Good going on the EF.

Gosh I hope you are right, ES, but my credit rating has taken a bit of a battering as I changed my mortgage recently and thought I closed a store card with a tiny limit on it before Christmas it is still showing as open :mad: and everywhere I have been reading says that if you use more than 60%/70% of your limit lenders look at it less favourably. I doubt I can get it down that quickly but I can try.

enthusiasticsaver wrote: »

It seems daft as taken a bit of a hammering saying a £73k mortgage is small by the way but in this day and age it is.

Indeed it is but I have one small income so it's enough for me (and only just over half of what I used to pay to rent! :eek:)

foxgloves · 6 March 2018 at 8:28PM

That is a small.mortgage in the scheme of things, but I know what you mean. When we were sorting out a new mortgage deal a few years ago, the advisor I spoke to said "Oh, but you only have a very small.mortgage". At that time we owed
£58k. I said that still needing to pay back £58k when one of us had taken redundancy in the austerity cuts & the other half of the relationship's job was not that secure actually FELT like a big debt. She just said 'Well I can assure you that's a very small mortgage". I guess it feels different when you're the person paying it back. It does to me!

savingholmes · 6 March 2018 at 10:24PM

Good luck on your journey

Quick comment - Do you really need to do the lottery?

PositiveBalance · 7 March 2018 at 12:39AM

foxgloves wrote: »

That is a small.mortgage in the scheme of things, but I know what you mean. When we were sorting out a new mortgage deal a few years ago, the advisor I spoke to said "Oh, but you only have a very small.mortgage". At that time we owed
£58k. I said that still needing to pay back £58k when one of us had taken redundancy in the austerity cuts & the other half of the relationship's job was not that secure actually FELT like a big debt. She just said 'Well I can assure you that's a very small mortgage". I guess it feels different when you're the person paying it back. It does to me!

Absolutely foxgloves! One of the things that has become horribly apparent to me through all this has been the need to have a fairly decent Rainy Day Fund for such times. I'm single: perhaps that will change, perhaps it won't, but I can't ever find myself in a position where I can't pay my mortgage either way. It literally gives me goosebumps thinking about it. It's worst nightmare territory.

As I said before I've been listening to a lot of Dave Ramsey lately and he says once you have paid off all your debt to save up an emergency fund of 3 - 6 months of expenses before doing anything else and this seems like a really good idea to me and also a good place to stop. One question I have alway had has been 'how much savings is enough? ' and that provides a pretty reasonable contingency plan.

I just need the rid of all this debt first! :rotfl:

PositiveBalance · 7 March 2018 at 12:51AM

savingholmes wrote: »

Good luck on your journey

Quick comment - Do you really need to do the lottery?

Thank you, savingholmes.

I have debated this one numerous times and the reality is this: I'm in a syndicate with basically all the nice people in my work place. Every single one of them to a man hates our job and without a shadow of a doubt if we ever won a reasonable amount they would all resign instantly. Monday morning, half the desks would be empty.

I could leave the syndicate, but there are a fair number of deeply unpleasant people where I work and if all the nice people left and I had to swim in a tank full of just those sharks, it would be suicide.

I look on it like an insurance policy: if one leaves, we can all afford leave. If not, we all have to keep the sharks at bay together! :T

enthusiasticsaver · 7 March 2018 at 9:12AM

PositiveBalance wrote: »

Thank you, savingholmes.

I have debated this one numerous times and the reality is this: I'm in a syndicate with basically all the nice people in my work place. Every single one of them to a man hates our job and without a shadow of a doubt if we ever won a reasonable amount they would all resign instantly. Monday morning, half the desks would be empty.

I could leave the syndocate, but there are a fair number of deeply unpleasant people where I work and if all the nice people left and I had to swim in a tank full of just those sharks, it would be suicide.

I look on it like an insurance policy: if one leaves, we can all afford leave. If not, we all have to keep the sharks at bay together! :T

I think the odds of winning are so small and if you add up what you have spent it would come to a considerable amount. However if you are in a work syndicate I can understand you continuing to a degree as this happened to a department in the university where I worked. 18 staff won 9 million a few years back now but although they said they would leave if they won they didn't. They had around 500k each and those who hadn't participated obviously had to live with them talking about the expensive cars, holidays etc they were going to buy. One non participant said she wished they had left. I don't think any of them hated their jobs though and a few went part time. One of them kindly bought our local guide hut for the guides so there was no rent to pay.

PositiveBalance · 7 March 2018 at 5:08PM

enthusiasticsaver wrote: »

I think the odds of winning are so small and if you add up what you have spent it would come to a considerable amount. However if you are in a work syndicate I can understand you continuing to a degree as this happened to a department in the university where I worked. 18 staff won 9 million a few years back now but although they said they would leave if they won they didn't. They had around 500k each and those who hadn't participated obviously had to live with them talking about the expensive cars, holidays etc they were going to buy. One non participant said she wished they had left. I don't think any of them hated their jobs though and a few went part time. One of them kindly bought our local guide hut for the guides so there was no rent to pay.

Yup. Although where I work I can guarantee that people would leave for sure and for a whole lot less, probably £100,000K or less - I however much they need to clear their mortgages.

I doubt they we will ever win a significant amount but one thing is guaranteed to trigger a massive win; me leaving the syndicate!

Positive Balance: Focused on Budgeting

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