All October

It's been a great month - the All Blacks won the Rugby World Cup for the second time after 24 years of chasing the dream, I have dropped a 'jeans' size and I am still debt free! Yep, a good month all round!
When I open the newspaper in the morning the first thing I do is chuck the sports section but not in October this year. I have been pouring over all the articles I could find on the Rugby World Cup, especially anything about my team the All Blacks. A local pub on the high street has been flying the New Zealand and the All Blacks flags - so it's been great. Didn't get to see all the games because of work and the time difference which meant a lot of games been played in the early hours GMT. It's only once every four years so am so happy that we beat the French even if only by one point!
However my spending has been way out of hand, what with birthdays and lunches for my godchildren, food buying (that I don't need), clothes (more about that later) and Internet buying like iTunes etc. - have stopped me saving more. But because I don't have a credit card I am not spending more than what is in my bank account.
I could have saved £500 more this month than I have. Thinking about it makes me cross with myself but as I haven't broken my budgeted saving plan I have to accept what is spend is spent and leave my debit card at home more often in November.
On Friday I had a lunch date with a friend and while I was waiting for him to arrive, I decided to try on a pair of size 10 (UK size) jeans at Next and couldn't believe it when they fitted me perfectly. So I bought them! I did check with the lady behind the counter that they were indeed size 10. It's been more than twenty years since I have been about to wear size 10 jeans. I know I am going on - it's a girl thing I guess. Today I picked up two shirts and a sweat shirt at a local op-shop for just under £20. Expensive because they were all brand names items. You used to be able to get a shirt or most items of clothing at an op-shop for about £2.50 but not any more.

November Goals:

I have another birthday present to buy for this week and then I have my sponsor kids Christmas fund to sort out. Also have a dentist appointment to see the hygienist so that will cost me £45 and I need to get an eye test (will probably need new glasses) - it all adds up doesn't it!

Savings: £500 Freedom Fund, £300 Building Fund, £100 stocks and £100 to open another high interest (yer the interest rates are a joke) saving account.

Richie and the boys preparing for battle 2011

What was my Year End Goal?

It's September and I was trying to remember what my Year End Goal was and if I even had one. Well I found I had stated in January;

Goal 1. to clear my debt

Goal 2. save emergency fund of £5000

Goal 3. savings over and above this amount to fund house building fund.

Okay these are the only gaols I found and am a little disappointed I wasn't clearer on what I wanted to achieve for the year financially. In saying that, will I be able to achieve the goals that I have set out above?

Goal 1. Achieved this one as I have cleared my debt

Goal 2. I have not even got chose to this goal and currently my Emergency Fund is at just over £100 so needs to be topped up again

Goal 3. I have saved £1,800 so far and by the end of the year my total here will be £3,000 that will be the goal amount


I have started to save about £500 a month (okay I only paid £250 in August) into a Freedom Fund. A term I have used in the past but have now changed it's meaning to be my pension saving or if your in the USA think Roth IRA. I am putting it into an ISA which is a tax free saving vehicle, the interest rate isn't great but that is more to do with the current financial situation. I don't trust pensions and I don't like the way they are operated or how you have to buy an annuity with your pension, so I am going with an ISA instead.

I did have a ballpoint figure in my head to save $10k (NZ) towards my Building Fund, that is equivalent to about £5k but I will be short by about £2k or $4k (NZ). So that will have to go into my Goals for 2012.

As 2011 comes racing to an end, how have you done with your Goals for the Year?

Months End

I have banked my final cheque for the month and now have to sit around waiting for it to clear before I can credit any of my accounts. It will clear by Thursday but it is aways such a drag having to wait.
In the mean time I have to confess that my Emergency Fund is almost not there and will have to built up again over the next few months. My holiday to the North cost me more than I had planned as I had three days of not walking and so did a little sight seeing instead. There were lots of Roman forts to visit and I got to see Aydon Castle which my grandmother was convinced was an ancestral home. Before my visit I was pretty sure she had been wrong and since I am certain she was wrong! (Sorry Grandmere!)
Anyway back to finances - once my cheque clears I will be adding £800.00 to Freedom Fund and Building Fund. My net worth will be down on last month but still at over the £4k mark (cash). Once I am over the £5k or there abouts, the plan is to close the Flexi Loan account that I am still holding on to. May do a credit reference check to see what my status is now with the Flexi Loan still listed but not being used.Next month the only radical thing I am planning to do is going to a Glen Campbell concert (don't even go there...) and that is already been paid for. So hoping to have done well and kept to budget, time will tell.

Back From The Front

Yes I am back from the edge of the Empire - the old Roman empire that is, as Hadrian's Wall was just that. And I have to confess that I didn't complete the wall walk either. I completed three days, walking from Bowness-on-Solway to Steel Rigg and then did the final day walking from Heddon-on-the-Wall to Wallsend in Newcastle (I did that last day wearing jandels, aka flip-flops).

But for three days I had to give my feet a bit of a rest after getting blisters on the balls of my feet as well as my heels and (?) little toes too. This was very frustrating as I have spent three months breaking in my walking boots! But as someone pointed out I had been walking in mostly urban areas which for the most part were flat (most of London is very flat) and on footpaths. Then on top of that the longest I had worn them was about three hours so five hours of solid walking was going to be a bit of a shock to my feet.

But regardless of all that I had a great time I did walk about 61 miles and would like to go back and complete the part I didn't do but that is for another day.Looking back at where I had come from, with King Arthur's Turret and beyond that Walltown Farm.

Walking towards the highest point on the wall in the Northumberland National Park.

Months End

What happen to summer, we have had a horrid month weather wise here in London. What happened to global warming? Oh well.......
My saving plan for the month is completed but because my pay cheque wasn't banked until Tuesday (as Monday was a bank holiday), it will not clear until Friday so I will transfer another £250 into my Freedom Fund then.
September is going to be a half month as I have two weeks holiday but will still plan to save a minimum of £800.
So on Monday I am off up north to walk Hadrian's Wall, all 84 miles and am really looking forward to it. The weather should be terrible, wet and windy but I figure if that is my expectation all should be well and I may even get a nice day or not. After my walk I will be spending a few days with my god kids, so expect to spend a little money while with them.

August Catch Up

July has gone and the tax bill is paid for, for another six month. With the chaps from Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs dealt with I feel very free to start planning my finances for the rest of the year.
But before I can get to excited I have to reveal that I have had to purchase a new computer as my last one died on me suddenly. I had had it for just over five years so it was to be unexpected I guess but none the least I hadn't plan to have to replace it just yet. Thankfully the local Curry's store was having a laptop sale on, so I was able to replace my computer for one that was more powerful but less than I had paid for my last one. (I always think that, that so great)
So my current finance plans are;

• The computer purchase has been paid for via my Emergency Fund so I will need to start building that Fund up again.
• Keep up planned saving, which are £500 into ISA and £300 into Regular Savings.
• Set aside 28% of income for taxes and national insurance.
• Share builder account depositing £100 per month.
  

I have decide my staycation will be in early September and did all the bookings at the end of July to keep the costs down. My travel is less than £40, that's for return train tickets to the north of England. Savings of about £100 for the travel and I also booked a night in a central London hotel for £49, which is also a very good price. For my trip I am going to walk Hadrian's Wall - all 84 miles of it!

Last month like June I did spend more than I should have on online purchases but ended the month on budget, which is always the main goal. Still debt free!

A Little Here, A Little There....

Spending - oh dear I have been spending this month, and I so didn't want to go over my budget but have well and truly stuffed my goals for this month, in fact the only goal I will accomplish is my payment to my Regular Saving Account. I am treating all my regular savings as if they were debit payments, I have the amount I want to have saved by the end of the year and am paying it off each month.
So my over spend amount is £289.71 of which;

• £49.95 on food items (incl. health food supplies, coffee's etc.)
  
• £38.69 books (7 online purchases)
  
• £6.89 vitamins etc.
• £83.46 clothes (incl. hiking boots, socks, court shoes etc.)
  
• £110.72 miscellaneous (incl. concert tickets for Oct.)

To meet my tax payment amount of £1,520 I will be £47.97 short of my budget and my spending had resulted in the demise of my current account buffer balance that I had built up over time. The one good thing I can say is that I do not have any debt (other than my tax bill), so it's a nuisance but not the end of the world.
My book purchases will not last me to the end of July - I am such a bookworm at the moment, keep finding great books to read and that's after I finished all the Lee Child books and thought I would never find anything I would like as much.
Was planning to take a stay-cation in August but have found out today that I will have to go either the end of July or wait till September. As my holiday will be an outdoor affair, weather is going to be a major factor and September can be very iffy in the UK. Also if I go in July I will have to use some credit (ie. go into debt) which I am not so keen to do.

Wow can you believe it
it's been 4 years since I first started
blogging

May Review

My three goals for the month of May were as follows:

• Totally fund my Emergency Fund with £1k Done
• Set aside £500 for my rates Done
• Set aside £880 for my taxes Not completed

"Two out of three aren't bad" but it's not good either.

The good is that I have opened an e-ISA with £500 (that was meant for my taxes) and so it's not wasted just I have gotten ahead of myself in my savings goals. The remaining £380 however is mostly made up of unbudgeted spending for the month for things like my dental hygienist appointment, books, clothes, eating out as well as internet and mobile pay-as-you-go. The latter two items I really need to add to my monthly budget as they are reocurring costs. Next week I have another visit to the dentist, which is hopefully my last one for a while and I already know that it will be costing me £204. I am having an infulling and that comes in at the top banding for NHS dental chargers which is never more than £204. Thank goodness for the National Health Service (NHS) I guess?!

So at the end of May I have the following:

• £1k in an Emergency Fund
• £860 in a Regular Saving Account
• £500 in an e-ISA

My three goals for June will be as follows:

1. Set aside £1520 for taxes Done
   
2. Put £340 into my RSA Done
   
3. Keep my spending to my budgeted amount
   

Now just gotta do it.......

Beginning Investing

Investing has been my hot search topic on Google this week and I have been doing lots of reading up on Stocks and Shares ISA's, Tracker Funds, Investment Trust, Unit Trust and everything related. I have had a Share builder account with the Halifax for a few years but because of debt wasn't able to add to it. I haven't found a better share dealer so will stick with the Halifax, they only charge £1.50 commission for each purchase and I also have to pay government Stamp Duty of 0.5%.
I have a small amount of shares in a single company but am planning to switch to a FTSE All Shares Tracker and set up a monthly deposit that I can set and forget. I only have one friend who is investing and he has only invested in a single tracker and that was through a financial adviser so I don't have anyone around me with any real knowledge on the subject.
So far I not impressed with the online sites about investing - if your an absolute beginner with no family contact or history ever in the world of investing - all the information in the world about what funds to buy and what cost to avoid are pointless if you don't know how and where to buy shares, unit trusts etc. But all is not lost; Motley Fool have some great investment advise in articles and also their Discussion Board, with all the what, how and where questions that most sites just don't answer. Too many sites tell you what you should do but not how to do it.

"Yes you should invest" - great but unless you know how to go about it you are never going to invest are you!

Even now I am still not 100% sure on all the abbreviations used to name shares to understand what the share entails. I should go to the library and get one of those books out that explain the financial pages of the newspapers. They should have the break down on the abbreviations used.
Investing is for my long term goal which I should have started decades ago (well I sort of did then stopped a few times over the years) but now it the time to be very serious about it. I am only looking to put in £50 -£100 a month at this time but will increase this once I have sorted out my short and mid term goals.
Are you investing? Did you find it easy to start out?