Busy Mee's Last Leg

Busy_Mee1 · 2 June 2018 at 8:04AM

Well a totally frustrating end to a long month. I had a major financial fail and forgot about the £300 standing order into the new FD regular saver. Luckily FD rang me to warn me that I was about to go overdrawn so that I could shift some money across. This is obviously why they win customer service awards every year....they are really good. Unfortunately Scottish Power also decided to take another DD payment of £200, even though we switched away from them weeks ago. Hopefully I will get that refunded, and will give them a call next week. The upshot of all of this is that I have had to raid the emergency fund and the O&S account and we are now back down to the princely sum of £44.46 in the emergency/holiday fund.

In brighter news the savings have been preserved and we are still on track to hit £70k by the end of June. The financials are as follows:

Saved this month. £1657.75
Total savings. £68336.04
Repayment Mortgage. £67583.55
IO Mortgage. £169000.00
Mortgage Total £236583.55
Savings:Mortgage. 29%
Savings offset Mortgage: £168,247.52

Savings £68336.04/100,000. 22 months to go £31,663.96 divided by 22 = £1,439.27 per month to be saved.

The Good News

We now have enough in savings to pay off the repayment part of the mortgage.:T This is tempting as it would free up around £800 per month. We can get more in interest elsewhere but one to ponder I think.

We are on track to have saved £70k by the end of June and ahead of schedule to have saved £100k by April 2020. At this rate we will have saved £100k by December 2019.

The Bad News

We feel skint. We have raided all the emergency/holiday funds and seem to be lurching from month to month using the credit cards.

My earnings will drop by £300 per month from the end of July

The plan

We will still aim for £70k by end of June and need to save £1663.96 in June
We will track all spends through June and stick to the budget (or try and spend less)
We will try to minimise credit card spends to try and break the cycle.
Try to build up the emergency fund again.

I will review again in July to see how we have got on. I might need to be a bit less ambitious on the savings targets or have a pause to build up the emergency fund again.

Gosh sorry that has been a bit of a ramble this morning, but I have found it really helpful to write all this down as I have been feeling a bit frustrated and skint. Actually when I read that back everything looks fine and I am just stressing unnecessarily. I must remember this is all self-inflicted.....:rotfl:

gallygirl · 2 June 2018 at 9:00AM

Busy_Mee1 wrote: »

We now have enough in savings to pay off the repayment part of the mortgage.:T This is tempting as it would free up around £800 per month. We can get more in interest elsewhere but one to ponder I think.

Stay strong little one

. We'll allow you to count it as paid off :rotfl:. Make all your money work for you (or as they say on Mr Money Mustache - make all your little green soldiers work hard

).

Busy_Mee1 · 2 June 2018 at 9:15AM

Thank you oh wise one :rotfl: I will try and remain strong but the temptation to simplify my complicated saving arrangements is quite strong , particularly when I c@ck up Like I did last month

Don't worry I will get a grip again and sort myself out

Suffolk_lass · 2 June 2018 at 9:21AM

Hmm - to consider in your pondering...

You are paying, I think, 1.19% interest on your mortgage - so on your current total that is £2,815 per annum in interest, or £7.70 per day (simple division by 365 non-leap year).

If you were to reduce that mortgage by £51,583.55 to £185,000, your interest would reduce to £2,201.50 or £6.03 daily.

If you left the rest of the repayment mortgage at that £800 per month, that £16,000 would be gone in less than two years, and you would continue saving at your current rate.

Are you making more in savings interest than £1.67 a day (£50.10 in a 30 day month)? As this would be the break even point

Busy_Mee1 · 7 June 2018 at 2:40PM

A cheeky mid week post out of necessity. We were away for a long weekend at a cottage with some friends last weekend and we are going to stay at some other friends next Saturday night, so I doubt I will have time post next weekend.

We had a fantastic weekend away, the weather was glorious and we had a great time walking, drinking and eating. DD and her new boyfriend joined us and ended staying an extra night because they enjoyed it so much.

Our spending was not too horrendous, we took most of our food and drink with us and just paid for one Indian takeaway and one pub grub evening meal. Since returning I have been trying to eke out what we have in the cupboards and freezer until we go shopping again at the weekend. In fact I think we are having chilli for the 3rd night running, we had it with rice on Tuesday, jacket potato last night and I just need to decide whether to put the rest in the freezer or go with it again tonight. It is delicious so I don't mind at all but Mr Mee may moan. :rotfl:

I did go to the market yesterday to buy some salad and fruit and got a large bag full for £5.30, including raspberries 2x punnets for £1.

I am tracking our spending again and hoping to come in under our budgets.

I have however booked another couple of holidays :eek:. One "proper" travel trip for later in the year and then another for this time next year to stay with friends in their villa. Both had bargain flights and so needed to be paid for straight away. I have put them on my credit card, but think I am going to pause my savings next month to pay this off and also get my emergency savings back up again, I will have hit £70k target by end of June, and will pause savings in July to get us straight again (ready for my earnings to drop by £300 a month) and then re- commence savings again in August. We will have 20 months until retirement to save another £30k, so need to save £1500 a month.

This feels comfortable and doable, rather than continuing to lurch from month to month paying off large credit card bills. I also hope that by tracking spending and having a sensible budget we can get things onto an even keel.

Thanks for the numbers to ponder Suffolk Lass.....very thought provoking. All my saving are gaining interest of 1.19% or more ( the worst is just sat in a mortgage offset account). The best is achieving 5% so we are beating the mortgage. I think we will consider paying off the repayment part of the mortgage though when we retire to free up some extra monthly income.

Busy_Mee1 · 16 June 2018 at 2:19PM

And finally we get a weekend where we have nothing to do and nowhere to go. Well what I mean by that is we have no socialising, but obviously still have all the domestic stuff...cleaning, shopping, cooking etc :rotfl:

It is all quiet in the Mee household and I am enjoying time ALL ON MY OWN. I love my family and friends very much but I rarely get any time by myself and so I am going to enjoy the next couple of hours.

All the MSE stuff is progressing well, I received a surprise £25 switch bonus for switching energy suppliers this week. I had totally forgotten about it so it was a nice surprise. I am continuing to track spending against our new budgets and I am really pleased with how that is going.

One of the surprising positives of having a proper budget is that it has made me feel less guilty about some of our spending on eating out. I used to feel generally guilty about any eating out which would take the shine of the experience. It is quite nice to feel that we can eat out and that it is fine as long as it is within budget.

We took DD and her BF for a curry this week. It was a special deal on a Wednesday £8.95 for four courses and bring your own drinks. The food was good and we were all stuffed so couldn't manage the fourth course. We all four ate for under £40 :T

The only budget that we are currently overspending on is medical expenses as Mr Mee and I have both had dental appointments which cost £71. I need to track this category over a few months I think to see whether the £40 a month I have currently allocated is a realistic figure.

We have done quite a lot of socialising over the last few weeks and I have been trying to think creatively about what gifts to take our hosts... rather than the usual bunch of flowers. I made a homemade cake when we visited my Aunt and that went down a storm. When we visited friends last week I took a sunflower in a pot ( longer lasting than flowers and only £2.99 from our local garden centre). This was also much appreciated. The local garden centre has become my friend recently ....I bought a large dahlia in a pot this morning for FILs Father's Day gift and whilst I was there spotted a small tray of 9 plug geraniums for £1 on the clearance shelf. I will give them some TLC and get them potted up, some to keep and some for gifts.....they are a nice blush pink colour.

I also must mention that I have just discovered Farm Foods...some great discounts on buying bulk goods and they have vouchers that more or less equate to 10% off. I bought 3 x 24 cans of pop for £18 this morning or 25p a can (we all take a can to work rather than paying anything up to £1 ), and with some other bits and pieces took my spend over £25 and I had a £2.50 off voucher. You can just print vouchers off their web page.

I think that is all my news and I am now off to spend the afternoon pottering :T

beanielou · 16 June 2018 at 2:43PM

All sounding good.
Happy pottering

michelle09 · 16 June 2018 at 6:54PM

I really enjoy the few hours alone, I don't think you need to feel guilty about it.

Well done on the repayment. Making more out of the interest is financially more sensible, though I know I would just clear it because the debt makes me really quite twitchy. My piece of mind is worth far more!

The holidays sound fabulous.

Busy_Mee1 · 28 June 2018 at 7:27AM

It is pay day tomorrow and today will be a NSD so I thought I would update on June's spending.
I am disappointed to report that I haven't saved oodles of cash compared to (what I thought) was a rather shocking £1130 spend in April. In June we have spent £1050 in total, so a saving of £80. I suppose over a year this saving would add up to nearly £1000 saved but I am a bit disappointed.

So this is how the spending breaks down:

Car (Fuel and Parking). £190.72/£200
Entertainment (eating out etc). £157.41/£150
Food (bought outside). £ 19.53/£0
Groceries (includes toiletries etc). £284.38/ £250
Medical. £ 79.80/£50
Personal (Hair/beauty/clothes). £109.72/£150
Household. £208.44/£160

We are overspent in every area except entertainment, personal and fuel. I have been purposely trying to keep costs lower in these areas, we have been using our smaller car at weekends and I have bought no clothes this month.

Our grocery bill seems to have crept up, due to a combination of buying in bulk, higher food costs and eating more expensive food in the summer ( lots of soft fruits etc). It does cover three adults and we all take lunch to work.

Our medical costs are much higher than I ever realised - three dental appointments and one prescription this month.

Our big extravagance is the household costs, this is largely down to paying a gardener for weeding and mowing the lawns. That costs us £25 a week through the summer normally but this month has cost more because he is coming more often to get on top of the weeds. Once he has weeded every border he will just come once a fortnight. We honestly don't get the time to do this ourselves - we have a huge garden and work long hours and spend much of the weekend visiting our old folk. The only consolation is this is just a summer expense and we can divert the funds in winter elsewhere. This is also something we can do ourselves when we retire

This has been a really good exercise in identifying where our money goes and how much we will need in retirement. It looks as if our average spending per month is going to be c £1000.

I would be interested to know how this compares to others. We were discussing this with some retired friends and they said they were spending around £500 a month on eating out :eek:
That made me feel slightly better :rotfl:

Suffolk_lass · 29 June 2018 at 8:50AM

How interesting. I'm going to look at this later.

I do wish we still had a gardener to help with weeding. Ours is bigger than average but under half an acre but it could happily take all my time with b-wood sorrel and bindweed and brambles and nettles all competing with the intended occupants! Nobody round here wants to do weeding. Just grass and hedging/tree work.

Busy Mee's Last Leg

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