Goals 2021: Update #4

I wanted this to be the last blog of 2021 as what I've learnt from attempting to achieve it this year will help me plan for my goals in the next.  To say that my 2021 goals didn't exactly go to plan is probably a bit of an understatement, but I did still manage to achieve some of them and I've decided to see it all as a learning curve.  As this is all about finances and not achieving my goals I thought I'd disperse it with nice pictures, mainly for my benefit.

1) Keep my emergency fund

Thankfully I've managed to do this one and my emergency fund is still intact.  There's something very reassuring about knowing that you have a backup if you need it and I know that I've been very lucky to have been able to save this up and keep it during this pandemic.

2) Paying off my credit card

I did manage to pay this off at the start of the year, but then life took over and I had to buy a few things before I had originally thought I would need to, which meant not getting to save for them.  One of these was my mobile, which I had thought I had a year to prepare for.  Unfortunately, that wasn't the case and my old phone decided that functioning properly was no longer a requirement.  As the phone I wanted to get, a Fairphone,  isn't supplied through my service provider I had to buy it outright.  That added around £500 to my credit card.  Then there were my work wellies that suddenly stopped carrying out a pair of wellies primary function and had to be replaced.  I have to admit that I did also buy something that wasn't necessarily required but was on sale and that I have wanted for a long time to help with the hair side of having PCOS - an IPL hair removal system.  So whilst I did pay it off, goal achieved, I then manage to put money back onto it.

3) Save up four months worth of emergency fund

This one ended up being a bit more difficult.  Though we did manage to save around £2400 the goal was £5200, making us £2800 short.  This was quite an ambitious goal, but it probably would have been achievable if we'd been a little bit more careful with our money.

4) Put around £2000 towards my student loan

I'm not going to lie, this one didn't happen at all.  It just wasn't on the front of my mind this year and it's difficult to priorities it when I know I'll get more from saving the money than paying off this loan.  At least at the moment.

5) Be ready for Christmas 2021

Now let's get onto a good one.  The amount we wanted to put aside for the sinking fund was £700 and we achieved this before December.  This meant that we were able to buy and send all the presents we wanted to, and get it all organised pretty early on.  Obviously, this will be a yearly sinking fund and any money we didn't spend this year will go towards starting the 2022 Christmas sinking fund.  £700 was a good amount so we're going to keep this for next year.

6) Build a car repair sinking fund

This one we set as £500 based on the amount the car has cost us already.  We managed to achieve this as well but ended up having to use up £100 of it during the cars last MOT.  We'll need to add that back at the beginning of 2022, but it does mean that this sinking fund is pretty much covered now, ready for when we will probably.......definitely need it.

7) Put £200 a month into my pension

This one I got very close to achieving, managing to get 10 months out of the 12 covered.  Obviously, it would have been good to achieve the full £2400, but when it comes to pensions every little pay in counts and I'm happy that I've a least managed to put some money in.  

So, though I didn't achieve everything I had planned, I did still manage to get a few of them done and tracking our budget throughout the months has taught me a few things.  Firstly, whilst we're not frivolous with our money there are still a few things that we do spend our money on which we could probably do without.  And by probably I mean definitely.  Secondly, food and drink are where most of our money goes.  We love our food and drink, and whilst we're pretty good about how much we spend on our weekly groceries shop, it's the take-aways, treats, and snacks that we go a bit nuts on.  More recently we have been eating out or getting a takeaway around two to three times a week, and we've been getting fizzy juice, crisps, and chocolates practically every day.  All of this adds up and can lose us up to an additional £200 a week.  Definitely, something for us to think about next year.  I'm not disappointed I didn't achieve everything I had planned this year, but I will be disappointed if I don't learn from this and do better next year.

Goals 2021 Update #3

As I expected, especially with the way that August went, this quarter was definitely a bit of a flop.  It's to be expected really, what with the loss of two weeks earnings and added expenses for our holiday (which I spoke about in the August budget blog), and the additional expense of having to get the car fixed and then two of the tyres changed.  It also probably doesn't help that I just lost the will by this quarter and couldn't be bothered to worry about where the money was going anymore.  I guess we might as well get on with it - I'll keep it short.

Starting with the positives.  The plan to not accumulate any more credit card debt and to keep our own personal emergency funds has remained this quarter.  I have had to use my credit card on purchases, such as when I had the tyres replaced, but made sure that I paid off the debt straight away.

The Christmas and car repair sinking funds have unfortunately gone to the wayside these last few months, without any payments not only in August but also in July and September.  To catch up we will need to find £310 over the next two months for the Christmas fund (so that it's ready for December spending) and £230 for the next three months for the car repair.  We decided to not use the car repair sinking fund when we got the car fixed in September as we had enough to cover the repairs that month and decided to just use that instead of basically starting the fund from scratch again.

We also didn't put anything towards the four months emergency /expenses fund over these last few months.  It's unlikely that we'll be able to make up for this over the remaining year and so I think the best thing to do now is to concentrate on getting the two sinking funds completed over these last few months and move this goal over to next year.  The sinking funds are a bit more pressing right now.

Lastly, my pension.  I didn't put any payment into it in August but did manage to contribute in July and September so I am happy about that.  The last time I missed a payment I then spread it across the remaining months of the year, but I don't think I can manage that this time.  If I can carry on with the same contributions over the last quarter I will be happy.

I completely dropped the ball this quarter and lost the momentum that I had built up in the first two quarters.  I'm not that surprised really as it's not that unusual to have a blip now and then when you're building on your goals, but I do need to make plans for the last quarter to hopefully end on a high. The aim for this last quarter is to complete our two sinking funds, carry on paying into my pension on a monthly basis, and keep the credit card debt to nothing and the emergency fund at £1000.  Oh, and I need to look at life insurance, always a joy.  

I think I'll calm myself now with some beautiful scenery.

July 2021 Budget

It would be fair to say that July didn't go to plan at all when it came to spending and saving.  If I'm honest the main reason is that I just lost all motivation this month and there's not really much else I can say about it, so let's just jump right in.

Starting with a plus, we manage to build back up my partners emergency fund and still have no credit card by the end.

However, we didn't put any more money into four months funds or our car repairs and Christmas sinking funds.  Both of those are quite big ops and something we really need to do much better on over the next five months.

I did manage to put some more money into my pension though so that at least is a good thing which is marginally tempering the guilt of doing so badly this month.

And we also managed to reduce our household and takeaway spending this month as well.  If we can just carry that change over the next few months that should really help us out.  Food spending has remained high though and that is definitely something we need to work at.

Unexpectedly our flat and car parking rent came out this month which we thought wouldn't come out until August, and that is something that stopped us from being able to put money into our savings account.

There was also quite a bit of general spending happening this month.  A big part of this was me needing to replace my sports bras, and unfortunately, my size doesn't make that cheap, and partly because we're planning at least one long-distance walking trip in August and needed to buy a few things for that.

There have been some good things this month, but mostly it was a pretty down one.  I think I'm most annoyed at myself because I won't be able to earn for two weeks in August and so being good with our finances in July would have been a good idea.   However, there's no point in wallowing in it now, what's done is done, and now we just need to get on with being better for the rest of 2021.  No pressure then. 😂

To make myself feel better I'm just going to add a cute picture of a cat.

June 2021 Budget

This month didn't quite go to plan, but then there were a few things happening that did throw us off a little.  One was planned - our joint birthdays and an anniversary trip to Lundy Island - and one not planned - a funeral in the Cotswolds.  The way this month worked also meant that we ended up having two rents and other household expenses come out in one month. 

On the positive, our credit cards are still at zero, but the issue with the household expenses meant that my partner had to take some money from his emergency fund to put into our joint account to pay the rent.  We will be paying that back straight away in July in lieu of the rent, but it did make me glad that we had sorted out our emergency funds.

Even with that, we have still managed to put money into our Christmas and car sinking funds and managed to put a good amount into our four months saving fund, mainly due to one of us getting a nice tax refund.  This means that we are on track for reaching our financial goals by the end of 2021.  

And, in case you were wondering, we moved the money into the savings account before we realised that the second lot of home expenses were coming out.  As we had already decided that any money we received from things like tax returns would go directly towards our savings and pensions we decided to just leave the money where it was.

I'm very happy that I was able to put money towards my pension again this month.  This has definitely become a priority for me now for the rest of the year so, no matter the consequences, this will be paid in every month.  My future financial health depends on it.

Our spending on groceries and takeaways is definitely higher than what it was in the last couple of months, but I'm not going to worry about that this month because these expenses are mostly connected to our trips to Lundy Island and up to Cirencester.  Food is definitely where we spend most of our budget as we love food and, at the moment, it's not putting us into any debt which makes it difficult to see it as an actual problem.

Our joint personal spending has also remained the same and is still quite high and, whilst we mainly spend it on items for our crafting and other hobbies (and it also isn't putting us into debt), we could still probably reduce this.  Especially if we're wanting to complete our goal of having four months expenses put aside by the end of this year.  We've also done quite a bit of spending on birthdays this month.  This isn't really anything we would change but we do want to keep an eye on it so that we have an idea of what we want our birthday sinking fund total to be next year.

All in all, it wasn't a bad month apart from the slight miscalculation of when the rent would come out.  We do still have the slight problem of spending when it comes to food and hobbies, but it's so difficult to pull it in when we know it's not putting us into debt.  It also probably doesn't help that I have lived in a situation where I had to be very careful with my money, and now I don't have to be it's difficult for me to keep to that mindset.  I'm just not entirely sure how to break the hold, probably a little bit of research into that is needed and will be something I look into in July.

Goals 2021 Update 2

I am writing this post a little bit early so I won't quite have reached all the sub-goals I had planned for the halfway point.  There's also the little point of a trip to Lundy Island for our joint birthdays and anniversary celebrations, and that obviously would have taken a bit of a chunk out of our finances.  That being said, we're still doing pretty good and I'm feeling quite proud of where we are at the moment.  

The main goal for this year was to work towards becoming more financially fit and free, and I'm happy to say we're definitely on our way to that.  Our individual emergency funds are still there looking good and the credit cards remaining at zero.

Now that we've had a few months of paying bills we've been able to work out how much we would need to save to cover all our outgoing for four months and this would be £5200 (which we had round up to because, let's face it, it's always better to be over) and after a long discussion about it have decided that we are happy with just having four months covered rather than the six we had thought about at the start of the year.  This is one area we have definitely done well in, managing to get to the halfway point by the end of May.  This gives us seven months to make up the final £2600.  I'm not going to lie, I'm feeling very proud of us for that.

Last time I wrote about this year's goals I had had to miss a month's pension payment which meant that I needed to up my payments to £225 a month to ensure that I would catch up by the end of the year.  My sub-goal for halfway through the year was to have put away £1200 towards my pension, but by the end of June it'll only be £1100.  However, this is only £100 out after missing a months payment, so I'm not feeling too bad about it.  It is definitely now a financial priority for me for the rest of this year.  

We've managed to put money aside every month for our Christmas and car repair sinking funds as planned.  My sub-goals for five months were to have saved £325 towards the Christmas fund and £225 towards the car repairs and we've hit those targets.  There have been a few hiccups here and there, but I think we've done pretty well.  We could probably have done a lot better if we'd been a lot stricter with our spending, mostly on food we didn't really need.  However, as we are still managing to reach our financial goals for the year I'm not going to worry about it too much as we do want to still enjoy ourselves as well.

As for the skating, well let's just skim over that.  I've been concentrating on too many other things to make this goal a priority right now and this was always going to be a goal that was really more about having a little bit of fun more than anything else.  However, it's still something to aim for over the next six months.  Maybe I need to make the goal a little more concrete rather than just that I'd like to be able to stay upright on it before the year it out. 

Goals 2021 Update 1

There is something a little bit odd about only having one goal to focus on this year, but I have to admit it's also been really nice knowing that this is where I can put all my energy.  Obviously, moving into a flat had a big financial impact in February and part of March, but I still think it's been a pretty good first quarter.  

Firstly, I've managed to keep a hold of my emergency fund throughout this quarter and it is sitting happily in a savings accounts right now hopefully making a little bit of money.  There is something quite reassuring about knowing that it's there in case I really need it.

I've also managed to get rid of that credit card debt I had at the beginning of the year and, whilst I still use it when buying things online, I now don't get anything with it I don't already have the money for and can't pay back straight away.

We did have to take some money out of the six months savings account to cover the deposit etc for the flat in February, but we still have a nice little nest egg growing and are on track for reaching our goal of saving up four months worth of outgoings by the end of 2021.  I've put this goal at a guesstimate of £4000 for now, but am going to use March and April to give me a more realistic idea about what the actual amount should be.  Once we've reached that we can decide if we want to carry on saving for this or if we feel that that's an amount we are comfortable with.

The Christmas and car repairs sinking funds have both been put into every month so far and we're on track to reach these goals with no problems.

You might have seen in my last budget post that I wasn't able to put  £200 into my pension in February as we were needing to spend so money on flat related items, but I have managed it for January and March.  I hope to make up for this little dip throughout the rest of the year, but we'll see how it goes.

So, so far it's been pretty good.  Now that we have bills to pay things are going to be a little tighter than they were before and we were very lucky to have that time living with my parents to help start us off on a good footing.  However, I still think that reaching the goals I've set for 2021 is going to be possible, I'm just going to have to be a little stricter with the spending. Especially on food.  What is it with us and food?

As for skateboarding, I haven't had as much practise on it as I would like.  Admittedly the weather recently hasn't helped and being aware that if I hurt myself doing this it will have a real impact on my earning ability has also been a factor.  However, I am determined to be comfortable on one by the end of the year.  We'll just have to watch this space.

Goals for 2021

 

Last year I had a few goals and, despite the year we had, I unexpectedly managed to get quite a few of them done.  However, the one thing I did realize was that having a number of goals on the go at the same time meant that I wasn't able to really concentrate on the important ones.  Due to this year, I've decided to just go with one goal, and that is to become financially fit.  The reason I've chosen this and not something like healthy eating is because having financial stability would put me in a much better position to follow some other very long term goals I have.

I've dabbled in this over the years.  However, I never really concentrated on it properly or been able to keep it moving forward, always going back into credit card debt (a little bit, nothing major) and I always end up eating into my emergency fund for things that aren't really emergencies.  So I've decided that this year is going to be the start of a full-on run into financial stability, no matter what income I have coming in.

So, this is where I am at the moment.  I have some debt on my credit card from having to buy the car - about £750, and there is the student loan I still have, but which I am probably going to ignore a little as most British financial advisors tell you not to worry about it too much.  I do want to get it down though, once I'm a little more financially stable.  I have managed to build my emergency fund back up to £1000 again, but I don't have any sinking funds going.  I have a little money in my pension, but not nearly enough to give me a comfortable retirement.

The long term goal is to still have my emergency fund, 6 months savings to cover rent and amenities if needed, no debt (including getting rid of my student loan - though that's very far away I think), have sinking funds for Christmas presents, birthday presents, and car repairs (between £500 to £1000), and me putting a good size amount into my pension on a monthly basis.  There's also the very long term goal of saving up for a deposit to buy a home.  I figure this will probably take five years to complete, but I think a big bulk could be done in the first couple of years.

My plan for 2021 is:

1. To keep my emergency fund
2. Be rid of my credit card debt
3. Have 4 months of the 6 months savings in place
4. Have around £2000 towards my student loan 
5. Be ready for Christmas 2021 with my, not surprisingly, Christmas sinking funds
6. As well as having my car repairs fund at least halfway (I feel we're going to need it for this car).  
7. Put £200 a month into my pension

That's a lot of money that I have to find, about £9400, out of what might not be a particularly high earning pot, depending on whether or not I get the apprenticeship.  I won't be doing it alone of course, but it is still going to be a bit of a push.

On a lighter note, I do have one small additional goal.  To learn to skateboard.  I'll leave it at that for now.