Cheery's country living adventure

Thank you both xx There will be such a lot of sad people out there when she goes. I just wish she'd had a less tough life herself.

When the community garden woman died though it was utterly lovely to see so many people at her funeral, so many different ages. She'd had such an influence too on all of us, in a very different way.

It makes you think about the sort of person you are yourself and what people will think of you when you're gone �� Might start being a bit nicer!! ��

Anyway, best stop being so maudlin & shift a tail feather as Greying would say. Having sat around feeling ill yesterday I am attempting work again today - my last office trip of the year (I'm working tomorrow, but at home). Not a difficult day though - just meeting up with a couple of people who are fretting about things.

Going to have breakfast with a friend first though! Most jolly

And I might take a big enough bag to carry everything home to work at home in January - don't need to go into the office much at all after Christmas and I don't want to HAVE to go because I've forgotten to bring something vital home!

Not much MSE to report in the meantime. Did YNAB yesterday & have started populating January's budget :eek: have put aside £30 for savings :j must transfer beforr I spend it...

Will be at home MUCH more in the first two thirds of next year so hoping diesel budget will reduce significabtly from its current average of £167 a month :eek: Can't see why we'd need to go to the city more than twice a week, if that, whereas we're currently going 5 times (sometimes six if we have to take separate cars)

Need to get hold of the food bill too (although I always say that...)

Perhaps another attempt at Uber Frugal January is in order now we're settled in the new house??

Step 1 - establish your goals

1. Why are you participating in this challenge?
Because we moved house last year and things have been rather spendy while we adapt to our new budget. We're not putting any of our regular income into savings, which I don't like. We've drifted into a few unhelpful habits and I want to get us back on track.

2. What do you hope to achieve?
I want a good overhaul of our finances now we've had 10 months of living here. I want to see where we can cut back and where we might need to increase the amount we budget to cover what we need (rather than raiding other spending categories each month). I want to put aside a regular monthly amount towards our savings, and it would be nice to put some towards the mortgage too. I'd like to figure out how much savings we'd be comfortable with before we start putting a bigger monthly amount towards paying off the mortgage.

3. What are your longer term life goals?
Pay off the mortgage early (it's got 24 years and 2 months left to run so it's not going to be any time soon!)

4. Where do you want to be in 10 years?
I want at least half of the mortgage paid off, which will mean we'll be on track to pay it off 5 years early. I plan to have had 2 promotions by then which will make things significantly easier :rotfl:

5. What about your current lifestyle might prevent those goals from coming to fruition and what can you do about it?
Hmm... I do a fair bit of frittering of money... not loads, but lots of little things. We've not been particularly efficient about travel, or electricity consumption etc. I'm sure there's plenty more we could do...

UFM Step 3 - Categorise your expenses

There may be some repetition in here... bear with me...

Fixed mandatory expenses - things we can't easily change
Mortgage - £890
Council tax - £166
Gas - £84 (we're on an LPG contract and this is fixed til June)
Water - £13.48 (we have a septic tank so no mains drainage)
Life insurance - £7.63
Union fees - £23.96
TOTAL = £1185.07


]Relatively fixed - not up for grabs this time round
Electricity - £75 (they've just put this up because we were using more than we were paying for - we'll attempt to reduce but I'm not switching now)
House phone and internet - £37 (out in the sticks so limited options, very happy with this service for now)
Local organisation membership - £3.65 (this is the local wildlife trust, not cancelling membership now)
TOTAL = £115.65


Discretionary expenses - things that are up for grabs
Basically everything else - mobiles, my spending, joint fun spending, diesel, food, insurance (when it crops up, but a few things are due in Jan)

So based on last month's spending, that's £1513 we potentially have to play with :eek: Clearly we can't stop spending ALL of that (no food, no diesel etc) but we could make a substantial dent...