February 2021 Budget

This post is going up a lot later than I had originally planned as we haven't had any internet for the last few weeks.  This nicely segues into a big event that happened this month which has had quite a large financial impact on us, and that is that we finally have a flat.  We have still done pretty well this month though and, in this case, the positives of having our own space outways the negatives of delaying our financial goals.  The weather has also played a bit of havoc with my earnings again, but nowhere near as bad as January and I'm still very grateful to be earning at all during this time.

The positives for this month is that I've still been able to hold onto my £1000 sinking fund and the credit card debt has remained at zero.  We were also able to put money into the Christmas and Car Repairs sinking funds, as well as a good amount into the 6 Months Savings.  However, we did have to take out £500 from that savings to help with paying for the deposit for the flat and we haven't been able to pay this back just yet.  It is still over £1000 though so I'm happy regardless.

As I am self-employed I don't usually have to pay my taxes until the end of the financial year.  Whilst there is usually an option to pay off what you owe in the next financial year, I'd rather be able to do it straight away instead of incurring yet another debt.  For this reason, I've been putting aside 20% of all my earnings so that hopefully the amount needed will be available.  This may end up being far more than I actually need, but at least that would mean I'll have a bit of extra cash to play with.  I've put the money into a savings account so it at least earns a little income before it heads off to HMRC.

As I said earlier, we have recently started renting a flat and that has been the main, and quite large, out-going this month.  On top of the first months' rent and deposit, there was also buying contents insurance, setting up the Council Tax and TV license (for which we paid one year outright), as well as getting internet for the property.  There is, of course, all the little household things you have to buy when you move into a property (cleaning items and products, kitchen items, etc) that, whilst small individually, all add up to quite an amount.  We may also have brought a fair amount of take-away and processed food whilst getting everything sorted (and by may I mean did, we definitely did), and that increased our groceries bill much higher than it should have been.

We are also renting a parking spot outside the property for an additional £50 a month and, before this became available, I had to pay for some overnight street parking for four nights.  Other than that, all our other spending has remained the same.  We are spending a little bit more on fuel for the car than I would like, but there's not too much I can do about that right now.  It'll just have to be something for us to look at in the future.

One thing I haven't been able to do this month which has been a little disappointing is not putting money into my pension fund.  It's not the end of the world, but probably is something I should be making more of a priority and, once things have settled again, I am going to look at upping some of the payments over the next few months to make up for this lost payment in February.

So, quite an expensive month really and I am glad that we were able to put some money aside earlier, thanks to my parents letting us stay at theirs, to cover the additional costs going out.  It's also meant we've been able to get everything we needed in one go instead of making do and slowly bringing the items in over the next few months.  On that point, we have been very lucky.  I do expect some spending for the flat to roll over into March as well, but, for the most part, it should be an opportunity for us to have a real look at what our out-goings are going to look like for the rest of the year and what changes we need to make so we can reach this year's financial goals.