2014 Expenses Report – Extreme Bloodbath Edition
Hello readers! It’s January so it seems like a good time to air some dirty financial laundry and put up our expenses for the last 6 months of 2014. I only started tracking everything using Money Dashboard in May, which is why I am not putting up the full year, but hopefully by this time in June I will have a much better idea of what a full years worth of expenses are for us. A word of warning… it ain’t pretty 🙂
2014 Q3/4 Spending Overview
| June | 3114 |
| July | 4396 |
| August | 3462 |
| September | 4373 |
| October | 3175 |
| November | 2845 |
| December | 3370 |
| Total | 24735 |
As you can see we’ve spent quite a lot of money of the last 6 months! In fact this is over double the spending rate that I originally discussed would be possible to spend in a whole year when I first started up the blog. Oh dear. We had some expensive months though, with holidays in August and October, and also a house move in October! God knows what we were playing at in September and July, I guess that is when we paid for said holidays!? Let’s find out and break it down into categories…
Please note the exact figure is out by a couple of hundred pounds 1
A few quick notes on this lovely pie chart:
- The Credit Repayment category is just our mortgage payments, we don’t have any other ongoing debt
- We spend a lot of money on going out and other 🙂
However this still isn’t all that much help so let’s break it down moFI’s!!!
Breaking it down
Let’s go in order of largest to smallest spending category, with notes on each:
Household
- Supermarket & Groceries – ?! WTF!? That’s over £400 per month!? I was under the impression that our food budget was pretty tight in this area at around £200 per month. Various excuses are that this doesn’t just include food, but alcohol, toiletries, and so on, but really I’d like to get that all in down to £200 if we can. Also we had everyone round ours for Christmas which was mildy more expensive than a usual month, but not massively so. Back to the drawing board on this one for sure.
- Others – We had a big one off landline bill as needed it installed in the new house but apart from the nothing out of the ordinary here. I’m going to get Mrs TFS to look at using a bill monitor when her contract is due up sometime (mine is currently paid by work) so that should get that down as well.
Going Out
- Clearly a lot of fat to be trimmed here!
- Holiday – 2 x holidays which is the killer. We thought we’d be frugal by having a road trip to Scotland in August for 11 days but probably ended up spending around the same as if we’d gone away for a week somewhere off season. Partially because of this we thought we also “deserved” a weeks holiday to Turkey (which actually turned out to be cheaper… weird huh!). Anyway good times were had by all but it’s something to look at much closer in 2015. We’re already signed up to a holiday abroad for my Mum’s 60th and we have friends in Madrid we promised we’d go over to see, so I am absolutely determined to keep the “big breaks” to just those two, and if we do anything else keep it more local and uber-frugal!
- Dining and Drinking – You may be shocked to hear that we don’t actually eat out all that much, so unlike my friend Mr Squirrel (still waiting for the y-axis of that graph by the way 😉 ) who admits to eating out 2-3 times a week, most of this is just nights out on the piss (which amounts to the same thing spending wise). In the post just linked I estimated my drunk fund at around £2000 per year which at least is pretty accurate 2, especially considering this period covers December, the silliest of silly seasons. (Remember the £2365.28 covers the two of us for 6 months).
- Others – The other stuff seems so inconsequential it’s hardly worth thinking about. I’m a big fan of the 80:20 Pareto Principle whereby 20% of your efforts create 80% of the results, and it seems like it holds true here (20% of the categories of spending account for 80% of the budget). So by concentrating my efforts on the big ticket items I am likely to achieve greater results. Focusing on the rest would just seem like pointless fiddling!
Other
- Woah, this is one mother of a category! I’ll break it down into it’s sub categories:
- Clothes – Total £1,191.75 – As you can probably tell someone seems to have a bit of a problem with this, and I will give you a clue, it is not the male of the TFS household ;). We’ve discussed this and Mrs TFS has decided to cut down on this category this year, which is great!
- Gifts, Charity and Religion – Total £694.64 – Birthdays seems a bit high here. I am sure there aren’t that many peoples birthdays I know! Conversely I am sure we spent more than that on Christmas presents, so it probably balances out :). Must remember to tag things better next year! We could have probably given a bit more money to charity as well.
- Financial – Total £72.73 – Not much to report, it’s just the monthly charge for the Santander 123 account and two lot’s of credit reports which were necessary when we were having trouble getting our mortgage pushed through.
- Hobbies and Sports – Total £981.23 – This basically means golf, squash, and race entry fees for me, and Gym membership for MTFS. Out of that lot I would say around £700 is for the golf, so as you can see this is my own version of the “clothes” category :). (The £700 includes a 3 day trip to Portugal which is a rather ostentatious for someone supposedly saving for early FI!). I’m going to sit down and budget out my yearly golf this year and make sure I won’t go over £100 per month. Eye care (glasses/contacts) and dental care is non negotiable really and no I didn’t indulge in any Physiotherapy, that is just the category that I put my own personal care purchases under to keep them separate (Barber pole, blades, and a few other shaving sundries).
- Personal Care – Total £916.07 – This is pretty much an “all pink” category as well. Mrs TFS is going to look into personal hair care this year as she agreed the price of women’s hair dressing is getting extortionate, so I am happy with that outcome and will let you know how she gets on (maybe she’ll even write a post for me on it for the ladies out there!)
- Admin – Total £235.56 – most of this is postage for stuff we sold on eBay when decluttering and making a bit of money in the process, so can’t really argue with this! Plus hosting fees for this blog, which again I would not want to cut out 🙂
- Overall summary of Other – Plenty of fat to trim here mainly from the clothing, sports and personal care categories. We could probably cut down on gifts as well by buying more thoughtful or hand made things, rather than assuming you need to spend £25+ on each and every gift for every person.
Credit Repayment
- I noticed after checking all categories that 3 of our mortgage payments went under “Insurance” for some reason, so this category should really be £3555.14. It’s a pain but there isn’t much we can do in this category right now, and at least some of the payments are working to reduce the capital we owe.
Lifestyle
- That’s a lot of cash untagged and unaccounted for! I am guessing most went in the “Going Out – Dining and Drinking” category! Going forward we are treating Cash as untagged, and retagging it into a more suitable category, but I only thought of doing this recently, and cannot remember what we spent cash on 6 months ago, so it will have to remain there foreveeerrrrrrmwa ha hahaaaa. 3
- I should have probably removed gambling as I won some money back on those bets, but that will have appeared on the income side of things, so it roughly balances out when working out my savings percentage.
- The rest seems fairly inconsequential. Maybe mobile app seems a bit high (I think this is purely Mrs TFS’ itunes stuff).
Home and Garden
- While I realise that there is always a bit of DIY and home maintenance to do, a large number of these transactions I would view as a one off.
- We bought a new Fridge when we moved (£396.23) as had to leave the built in fridge at the old flat. We bought some new wardrobes, and 2 second hand tables (Furniture). That’s a grand already!
- Unfortunately we have a lot coming up in the next 6 months in this category as well as I am looking to invest in either replacing our boiler for a new more efficient one, or an Air Source Heat Pump. Either option should result in lower monthly bills so I think it is money well spent.
- We also plan on a bathroom refit, which I am going to attempt to do most if not all of the plumbing, tiling and so on myself, so hoping to keep the costs of this down to maybe £1,500.
- Luckily apart from that the house doesn’t need much doing, a lick of paint here and there, so ongoing yearly maintenance costs I cannot see being anywhere near this much, I would maybe budget £500 a year tops.
Insurance
- As mentioned above the “Other” is mainly 2 mortgage payments that got misplaced, so the total here should really be £382.32, which seems pretty reasonable.
Transport
- We’ve had quite an unlucky time with the TFS Mobile so far in terms of repairs needed, but I guess it’s par for the course when owning any vehicle.
- I am quite surprised we’ve spent that much on petrol in 6 months, maybe I need to re-read my post on cutting down the petrol bills! We did have a road trip to and around Scotland though, in which we drove over 1500 miles, so that was around 3 extra tanks of petrol over and above normal use.
- “Flights” was just some add-ons to our flights for the holiday to Turkey in October (seat booking?! Can’t remember!), the rest of the flights cost is all under the holidays category.
- You might be wondering how I pay to get myself to work considering I moan about commuting so much. No, I don’t bunk the train, before anyone asks! It comes automatically out of my pay each month so doesn’t show up on my expenses, however if I reach FI then this won’t be an expense category, so I am happy to leave it out of my expenses report.
Summary and plan for 2015
Let’s not sugar coat things, even with factoring in a house move, it seems like we’ve spent like drunken sailors on shore leave (hat tip to SLS for that one). The three key areas we can cut down on (barring one off costs) are clearly:
- Food/Supermarket shopping
- Holidays & Going out
- Clothes/Personal Care (Mrs TFS) and Hobbies (Golf – Me)
A lot of these things such as the holidays and nights/weekends out were things that we deliberately signed up to ourselves, without really thinking about our overall spending patterns, and what else we had already committed to doing.
This year I am going to write down all the things we have planned, estimate the cost of each, take this along with estimated business as usual expenses (using the last 6 months as template) away from expected income, and work out exactly what that would leave us with, savings wise. We can then see easily how an extra holiday or going out to an expensive place will impact our savings rate. I think having it there in black and white in front of us will really help with making sensible decisions. On another note, I have no idea why I didn’t do this already!!!! Ah the amazing, chuck-ice-cold-water-in-your-face-ing, eye-opening benefit of hindsight.
A new yearly budget for FI
It turns out that the £10,000 per year budget was a bit pie in the sky, it seems I got caught up in the theory of FI, the 4% rule and expense reduction without really actually following through. One thing which seems pretty obvious though is that many of these transactions are “one off” expenses, such as buying furniture. Of course, there is nothing stopping me from chucking out my old furniture in a few years time and buying new stuff just like a good consumer should do, but you’ll just have to take my word that I will not be doing that 😉
On the other hand, there are some glaringly obvious categories that can be attacked to get spending down, as already mentioned.
I’ll be removing the one off’s, seeing where we can realistically cut from other categories, and having a look at what might constitute a new, more realistic, yearly budget, in the next post 4. Stay tuned!
Savings Percentage
Finally, I guess you want to hear what my actual savings percentage is right!? 🙂
I’m not going to concentrate any time on our income side of the sheet because it’s overly complicated and I don’t think anyone will learn anything from looking at it and me explaining it in length, suffice to say even with some high expenses we still managed a 37.63% savings rate as calculated using my calculation here. This is not great but I’ll take it for now 5. Our goal in 2015 should be 50%, I think any higher and I am going back into la la land, but if we do go significantly above, then happy days.
How did you get on in 2014? Did you hit your savings goals? Are there any horror shows with overspending in any areas? Let us know in the comments! Thanks!
Notes:
- This is because we often paid for things and got the money back later, and at the time MoneyDashboard was going through a revamp and the “Split transaction” function was not available. It is now back again and working better than ever, but I can’t be bothered to go back and find those transactions and split them for the sake of a 0.8% difference 🙂 ↩
- Clutching at straws, anyone? 🙂 ↩
- Not really sure why but that seemed like it needed to turn into an evil laugh! 🙂 ↩
- I would have done it here but this post is way too long already, even I am thinking tl;dr ↩
- We basically got saved because my bonus gets paid in the last half of the year, otherwise it might have been a lot lower! ↩
Discussion (40) ¬
TFS,
Good work on the analysis! Looks like some banging underlying spreadsheets. Expensive year perhaps but still a good savings rate and you are looking to reduce expenses next year 🙂
I think I averaged about 50% last year but I had no surprise expenses and had paid for two holidays in advance before starting to track it. Cunning 😉
Speaking of saving rates I have written up something on calculating them and just found your article. D’Oh
Golf in an expensive hobby that’s for sure and u need some new irons…
Mr Z
Hi Mr Z,
Thanks for not completely ripping into me on the very first comment, appreciated!
The underlying spreadsheets are just in fact Money Dashboards lovely pie charts and tables, give it a go if you like the look of it (sign up through TopCashback and they’ll give you £8 by the way!) – I think take that info and put it into a couple of really basic overview spreadsheets. I might do a post on this soon.
Yes the whole paying for things at different times of the year can be confusing can’t it? For example we saved 37% in this six month period, but some of it really is already designated to doing up our bathroom next month, so is that really savings? It’s not but I think it’s fair to just say the savings rate is 37%, and then if I have a negative savings rate in February 2015 because I bought a load of baths/sinks/shower stuff for the bathroom, then so be it.
Looking at long term averages of at least 6 months is probably the best thing here, although I take the points made below by other commenters that actually tracking expenses more often is definitely beneficial, as you can nip things in the bud much more quickly!
Golf is expensive but it depends on how you go about it and what your view of expensive is. Some of my friends probably average £400 per month including equipment and member fees. Around £100 per month seems more than reasonable to me, others would probably view it as chucking money down the drain (Mrs TFS for one! Whereas I view her “clothes hobby” as the same… live and let live I say, within reason of course). I’ve only just gone over £100 per month on that which as I mentioned includes a trip abroad, so the long term average should fall under this, although I am budgeting my golf spend over 2015 much more carefully and will be saying no to anything too expensive this year. I certainly don’t need new irons* with the way I play that’s for sure 🙂
Cheers again!
*In fact I bought some £800 irons last year for £175 and sold my old ones for £125, so got them for effectively £50 out of my own pocket. I rarely buy equipment or even balls as I find as many as I lose.
Haha. No worries mate!
Done and £9.97 is mine. Hoot to topcashback.
I think a rolling average would be better for savings and expenses actually.
Actually I don’t think I spend more than 100 quid a month. But it could be done easily. My mate seems to spend about 4 times that some how. Good work on the irons. I have my dad’s old ones. Pretty sure a piece of 2 by 4 would be more forgiving
Mr Z
Man TFS,
There is no doubting that is one ugly mother. Well done for putting it out there though.
WTF on the going out front, food bill, gambling etc etc. You’ve done so well on the big hitter for most people, transport. You should be laughing all the way to FI.
There is no doubt you can do better this year, but well done for looking so closely at your finances. The savings rate was also reasonable, but not where it needs to be.
We’ve maybe been at this a little bit longer than you. We hit the 80% mark for the first time last year but we’ve still got a fair way to go.
Keep up the good work TFS
TBM
Hi The Big Monkey,
Thanks for telling it like it is whilst being kind and positive at the same time.
Food bill was honestly the one that surprised me the most, I really thought we had that nailed. Will be keeping an eye on it month to month now for sure.
I’m glad I put it out here, I can now see why people do this every month. Accountability counts for a lot, even if it is to effectively a bunch of strangers on the internet 🙂
The bad news is that I’ve started to do a budget for this year and we’ve signed up to do a lot of things already, plus a bathroom refit, new boiler installation, and so on. It’s going to be an expensive year by the looks of things although yet again some of these are one off expenses. If we hit 50% this year, it will be a really good result, put it that way.
I think stability counts for a lot. If you’ve lived somewhere for a while then the year on year costs seem to go down, once you’ve got the place up to scratch. I’m not writing off 2015 by any means but hopefully by the end of the year we’ll be all set to have a clear run to a much higher savings rate (barring any job changes as spoken about in my post here: http://thefirestarter.co.uk/alternative-plans-fi-new-definition-frugally-independent/ – these are actually pretty imminent now, more to come in a couple of weeks once I’ve ironed things out!)
Wow, so much cutting to do! So, so much! Sounds like theory needs to meet practice.
Honestly, I had been holding back in putting some of our numbers up on my blog because they seemed a little embarrassing, but I think you’ve just given me the courage to present the whole hog! Also, I’m glad someone else is as bad as me at tracking cash expenses.
Hi Norm… spot on with that comment “theory needs to meet practice”
I was never embarassed to put my numbers up here, I just never found a decent way to track them till I found Money Dashboard 6 months ago, and then I never got round to it 🙂
Now they are there for all to see, I am glad I did it. I was expecting to get crucified (and quite rightly so) but so far people have been fairly supportive about it and offering positive advice. So yea definitely put your numbers up there!
Cheers for the comment and good luck if you do post yours, I’ll keep an eye out for it.
TFS
Axis charts tomorrow 😉
Looking forward to it 🙂
Hi TFS,
I just want to say good on you for putting these figures out there. I know that it isn’t easy to open up to some of this stuff (especially over £100 on fancy dress for me!), but it’ll be the making of you.
To be frank, I think you know you can keep your spending significantly lower than this, and if you continue to spend the way you have in the last 6 months, FI will be a long way away. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but the nature of the blog, and your name, suggest you want ER. 40% according to MMM is 22 years from scratch.
The good news is you have a lot of areas where you can make savings from! Starting at the Big 20% is as good a place as any. I find that committing to a monthly post on my spending and expense habits helps me a great deal. I find the worst case scenario is having a ‘bad month’. I always turn things around after that. You could class this as a ‘bad 6 months’ (that’s for you to decide), but at least you can take steps to improve things moving forward. I would only encourage you to learn from your last 6 months and not wait another 6 months to review the entire spend. Is there any way you’re able to review it more regularly, even every quarter, or better still, monthly?
Whatever you decide, all the best with it. Good luck with your goals for 2015! I look forward to hearing about your progress either way.
Cheers
Huw
Hi Huw,
Thanks for your comment as always, your advice is worth it’s weight in gold!
22 years sounds like an age away! I didn’t include any dividend or stock market return “income” on my income side of the calcs, although these would not have increased the percentage by more than 0.5% I would have thought at this early stage. So yea, improvement is needed.
I’m also looking at other plans as mentioned above, and my original 5 year plan never included full FI anyway (it was a nest egg producing income, topped up by part time or random work here and there). So that plan is still valid, in fact I am looking to pull the plug even sooner. But the bottom line is, either way, the spending has GOT to drop, especially if I am going to see a drop in income later this year. I’ll outline what my yearly budget and what the yearly income might work out too later on this week or early next week, once I’ve had another chat with my employers…. watch this space!
I can totally see why you put your numbers up every month by the way, it will stop me from burying my head in the sand for a start, and will get me thinking about each purchase or every time someone says “Why don’t we do this/go here/spend all this money together”. Sounds a bit sad but I am going to have to become a bit of a “No man”, but I know there are many ways to have a fulfilling life without saying yes to every invite and opportunity to do something (aka spend money). Organising lower cost stuff for your mates and inviting them first is the obvious one, and I’ll be looking to do that more often this year!
Cheers again mate!
What a beast of an analysis – thanks for sharing!
Expensive hobbies (for both of you!) but you can’t be depriving yourself of things that you enjoy in life, although you just need to make sure you don’t go OTT with them! The £100 per month sounds about right, I know golfers who spend way more than that!
Your food spending really surprised me – in the early days, you were posting about cooking frugal food etc so I thought you pretty much had this one nailed. At least you can see how you can improve in this area.
Sounds like you will have an expensive year, in terms of getting things done round your house but by reducing other areas of expense, this should be manageable, enabling you to continue saving and investing.
Still a great savings rate though, despite all that spending!
Good luck in getting to 50% for 2015!
Good to know somebody is doing the dirty work of keeping the wheels of capitalism turning in the Smoke 😉
Are you double counting gas and gas and electricity?
Once thing that seems clear from you and Mr Squirrel is that city living is fast and furious 😉 There’s a lot of fat that I see in there, but each to their own. I spent too much on too much frivolity while working to lessen the pain, too, and it’s not all bad. But it should be a deliberate choice of balance point.
Ouch.
If it makes you feel any better, we managed to trim down from an average spend of around £80k a year to around £28k with almost no feeling of missing out. At least you have now had the moment of realisation…. it’s far easier to know the directions to where you are going as soon as you realise where you actually are. It’s taken us 8 years, but i’ve just handed my notice in and the keys to freedom are being delivered in June… Stick with it and you will make it.
Wow… congratulations Mr Moolah on your impending FI!
That is some badass cutting going on, although I imagine there is a lot of fat to trim from an 80k yearly spend 🙂 you still made those changes and executed the plan, which is the critical part!
Thanks for the encouraging words and all the best to you.
You have an alcohol problem bro. Either you pay too much or drink too much. You are recommended to drink max 21 units a week. That’s about 7 pints of stella a week or 364 pints a year. Even if the 2k is for both of you, that’s loads. To me you either need to cut down drastically or pre-load before you go out. Either way it’d take a 50k (4% safe withdrawal rate) stash to support your alcohol habit
Golf – why do you even bother mate? that would take a 30k stash to be sustainable. I’ve got a picture of Ian Poulter in my head. But Ian Poulter get paid to whack small balls with bick sticks into small holes. You dont, you suck at it, so you have to pay to play.
Why can’t you just buy a cheap powerrack and olympic weightset even mrmoneymustache knows, £500 and you’d be set for life. Get on that Mark Rippetoe Starting Strength or Stronglifts 5×5
He did that on the Novice Starting Strength programme. yeah novice, I said novice. N-O-V-I-C-E. He did it natty-drug free and on a shopping budget and if you read both articles he even made his own barbell to squat with when he couldn’t get to the gym.
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/01/23/halfway-to-the-goal-the-straight-line-progress-tracker/
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/03/26/goal-mostlyreached-sorta/
If he went round to your golf club they’d hand him their wallets and ruffle their own hair and beg for mercy all before he has a chance to open his mouth
A £500 powerrack combo would make you feel a hell of a lot better than a 50k drink habit and you wouldn’t feel the need to be a right “Ian Poulter”.
You could Cillit the booze and golf. Bang! and the bad habits are gone.
It’s like when Arnold met Dave (i’m stealing the sound bite only)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/8064541/Arnold-Schwarzenegger-tells-David-Cameron-Dont-be-an-economic-girlyman.html
Don’t be an ecoonomic girly man! Just do what you set out to do here http://thefirestarter.co.uk/about-me/ and here http://thefirestarter.co.uk/meet-the-firestarter/
Just do what you set out to do and don’t justify your failure just learn better habits and get on with it dude.
We’re all going to make it bro! You just have to complete the cycle of continually bettering yourself and hold yourself accountable for your own goals. Otherwise it’s just BS and I can’t stick around reading BS week after week. Man up and stop being so weak. I believe in you bro!
Lol, think that’s a kick up your backside, TFS! 🙂
A kick up the backside indeed!
Thanks Rodent. 🙂
You make very good points and I won’t attempt to defend myself as the spending is clearly indefensible (hence why I posted it in the first place).
You have raised a couple of important points which I will clarify on a full blog post I am writing now. I’ve been skirting around things for a while and need to clarify exactly how I see the original 5 year challenge playing out (spoiler… it’s not happening, I think that may have been quite obvious to you by now though?!)
But in the mean time a quick repost to the golf and alcohol points:
“Alcohol” – clearly the £2365.28 does include some food as well (I said we didn’t eat out as much as Mr Squirrel, not that we don’t eat out at all). Also things like public transport and other random expenses that happen on days/nights out are all mainly just lumped into this category. It probably works out at a maximum of £750 for the 6 months per person, which in your units of a pint of Stella works out as 150 (£5 per pint down in London/SE) which is within the boundaries of the guidelines you state. Have you also heard of shouting people a round of drinks? Sometimes this is a nice thing to do, e.g. for my parents when we are out. Seeing as they brought me up and have helped me out in my life so much, maybe this is the least I can do for them to show a bit of gratitude. I get that there are other ways of doing that but that is one that I feel they appreciate and think it’s worth me spending money doing.
Saying that, I agree that I do drink too much and have written about it here: http://thefirestarter.co.uk/much-wasting-getting-wasted/ but not everything is as black and white as you have made it out to be here.
The important thing I’m trying to get at is that money spent is money spent, not that it all went on booze, food or whatever, which I think your comment unnecessarily detracts from
Golf – I said it in the post, on the about me page you linked to, and will say it again, golf is my sport, I love it and am not going to give it up to achieve FI, or if/when I hit FI, and I think £100 per month is a reasonable spend on it, for me. You mentioned a 30K stash to support it, I am fine with that or I could also work 3-4 hours per month to support it, this doesn’t really seem like such a big deal to me.
Re: Poulter/what would happen if MMM turned up to a golf club, I don’t really care what your preconceptions of the sport are, suffice to say each to their own.
I personally think spending £500 on gym equipment is a total waste of money when I can do bodyweight exercises and chuck on my old running shoes and go for a run any time I want, but I am not one to judge.
All that said, I can guess what you are probably thinking, the above sounds like excuses and BS…
Maybe you are further along the path to FI than I am and have had time to cut out all the fat from your spending, maybe you have been extremely frugal your whole life, or maybe you are the type of person that can just turn on a sixpence and implement all of these life changes straight away, and so this blog is not relevant to you as you are far past the “beginner” level.
I am hoping that it is still relevant to a lot of people who have just found out about FI concepts, are still learning, and may even be struggling to implement things themselves (which I would imagine is actually the larger majority of people).
I sincerely hope you continue to read but if you feel like you can’t as I’m not walking the walk that I’m talking, or that it isn’t relevant to you anymore, then I can understand why.
We are not all ERE Jacobs or instantly reprogrammable robots you know 🙂
Thanks again for your comments, I can see that the overall message was clearly a positive one and I do really appreciate it.
On a final note, I agree that Poulter is a bit of a tool, albeit a very wealthy one at that 🙂
Cheers again!
TFS
the picture of mrmoneymusctache deadlifting 3 plates (140kg) didn’t embed. and to clarify Cameron’s public image is a girlyman, 1 toughmudder doesn’t make you tough. We all know Arnie was a slayer!
And Ian poulter really sucks. Google Ian Poulters trousers and see what a disgrace he is. But remember he’s paid to wear them!
Golf…. that’s a good walk ruined isn’t it 😉
my shameful (to others) expense line would, on reflection, be my cycling. I have 2 bikes & a few more accessories than i need, & bikes always need extra bits to make them better/more beautiful. However, as i use these bikes to cycle all the way to work I avoid the cost of both a train & bus/underground travel card AND a gym membership, so i reckon i can justify a least most of my cycle expenditure.
Hi LCIL!
Thanks for the light relief re: golf… 🙂
I agree that at least your big expense category is a good investment in your health, and saves you money to boot, so no shame there from my point of view.
Cheers!
Sorry for getting overly emotional. I’ve read every blog post of yours since you were first linked from Monevator. I was in awe at first as it sounded like you (and other bloggers to be fair) had a plan, were following it and had it made.
I’m wasting my own time really as you just sound like you are “normcore”. A mixture between normal and hardcore. e.g. a normal bloke (think Nick Clegg or Danny Alexander (you have to love his ginger locks) getting out of a 4×4, wearing a storm proof survival raincoat and hiking boots for a walk in the park on a sunday afternoon.) i.e. just a nice middle class lad who has a bit of common sense to save some cash.
I’m guessing your blog will go from strength to strength and i’ll pop in from time to time once you workout properly what direction you want to go in and what steps you need to take.
From now on, from me, you will get gentle encouragement!
Hi rodent!
Thanks for replying! You are a gentleman and a scholar.
As they say, talk is cheap, and I am truly sorry if I’ve misled you or anyone else for that matter. I guess my main mistake has been to leave up the links to my first few articles discussing my pie in the sky plans. I will address this in my next post and take down the signposting to articles that aren’t so relevant about what is going on with me and the blog anymore.
I’ll also make it clear what my new goals are, and taylor the content accordingly. Saying all that, I still think the ERE style life is an inspiration to me and I will no doubt keep writing about it or at least referencing it and it’s ideas.
I guess the issue is that I know what’s going on in my head and life, but unless I write about it, then no one that comes across the site does. Even though the blog is still miniscule by MMM standards, I still need to remember this. My only defence is that time is hard to find keeping a blog up to date. I would love to see some more of your ideas written down in electronic format so if you ever decide to start a blog of your own, please drop by and let us all know.
Thanks for the gentle encouragement but also for the kick up the arse as well, not only on the expenses but to get my and the blogs direction out into the open and get things more up to date!
Cheers!
p.s. I’ve never been compared to a politician or been called middle class in my life, so thanks for that as well 🙂
Hi there. I do love seeing the gory details, and I’m not going to give you a hard time about your spending! I have also recently started tracking my expenses and have amassed 6 months of data, so I was fascinated to compare our figures. Not that we have a great deal in common – we are a family of four in a not very expensive part of the UK, and I’m not really trying to be frugal, just trying to work out how much our lifestyle really costs and be more aware of the choices we are making. All the same it is interesting to compare some of the categories. Our council tax is twice yours, our home energy costs 4 times as high, our water bill 10 times as high (surely that figure of yours can’t be right). In fact pretty much all our unavoidable bills are quite a lot higher than yours (ok there are four of us and we have a large house, but still, I thought London was supposed to be expensive…) Our final figure for six months is just over £32k, but this does include over £5k for holidays, which I consciously choose to spend on – and this is for four people aways travelling in peak times. Our groceries (food and household incidentals) are about 635 per month; meals out are 205 per month. I don;t have a separate booze category but its not much more than a couple of bottles a week from the supermarket…I think the only thing we seem to spend less on is hobbies and transport (nearly £300 per month for commuting, car expenses and public transport, not including holiday travel)
We also spend significantly on insurance (house, car, travel) which doesn’t seem to appear in your spending, and professional expenses (fees and subscriptions necessary for our jobs).
One comment – should you really be including saving for planned expenditure in your savings rate? Isn’t the target savings rate about how much you are putting into long term savings which you intend to eventually replace your earned income? Everything else, in my book, is basically spending – clearly there are big ticket items like cars and household renovations/maintenance that you can’t buy out of a monthly income, but saving up for a planned purchase is ‘budgeting’ rather than ‘saving’, in my view.
Hi Nearlytoolate,
Glad it has provided some insight and perhaps even entertainment.
Thanks for going easy on me, it’s been a tougher comments section than I am used too, I won’t lie 🙂
In answer to your queries/points:
* The energy bill is actually too high. They charge us too much on the direct debit and end up paying money back at the end of 6 months or whenever it builds up too much, but they won’t drop the debit amount. So yikes on the 4 x figure, although you do have more people living in your house! We have a well insulated house, I converted all lightbulbs to energy saving, and have further efficiency measures in the pipeline, so I am hoping that this goes down further in the future.
*The water bill is paid yearly I think in March, although we had a partial bill to pay when we moved house in October, but you are right that is no where near the full year because of that. Full year is/will be about £300, so sounds about the same as yours.
*London/unavoidable bills – I would guess that this is where London doesn’t really differ too much from the rest of the country. I mean electricity is electricity wherever it is (as far as I am aware), and so on. Utilities are generally national companies and so don’t charge local rates. Property on the other hand, yea, you are gonna get screwed one way or another.
*Full disclosure, I live near London not in it. So my mortgage is at least half of what a similar property would be more central.
*Holidays – yep, sounds about what we’d spend if we had two little people in tow! As long as you are thinking about your decisions and find it value, then that’s all good with me.
*If only I could adopt your booze habits… hah! I’m trending in the right direction on that one. January has been a good month for me on this one but just got to keep it going and keep it at a reasonable amount rather than ratchet it right back up again in Feb 🙂
*I pay all our insurance yearly up front so some of that was not captured. We definitely bought house insurance when we moved so that is on there somewhere but must have been mistagged. How much do you pay for that? Ours was dirt cheap at around £130-ish I think for contents and buildings. Again travel is negligible and is included in the holidays category.
*Professional expenses – I guess I am lucky enough not to have any of these in my job, apart from commuting which I mentioned in the post. Same for Mrs TFS
*Planned expenditure – This is actually a very good point. You can either put something away each month into a budget pot, and not include it as savings, in your savings rate calculation. This would work well. Alternatively, you can just have negative savings months when the big expenses come up. This is what I’m going to go with, and it will affect my long term average badly in those months. The Net effect is obviously the same though, it’s just two ways of working out the same thing.
Cheers again for the detailed comment, it’s nice to hear about others experiences in the budgeting and spending game!
Hey man, why not take a leaf out of Weenie’s book and get one of those ‘brew beer at home’ kits? That’d save a packet. Then you could invite your mates round to drink it, instead of paying 4x the price when you’re out.
Cheers!
This is a great idea! My friend has been brewing ale and it tastes dreamy even to an uncouth lager drinker like myself. I am very tempted to have a go.
Anyway you have hit on the key point… it is not really drinking but going out while you are doing it that is the issue. We must concentrate more on having small dinner parties etc rather than out for meals or drinks in the pub etc…
Cheers!
Maybe the reason your spending seems high compared to other FI blogs is because you still have the mortgage and that seems to account for about 6k.So if you were on target to spend 42k based on your 7 months so far, that would only be 36k and would take you close to the 50% saving goal. I wouldnt be disheartened. At least you didnt buy a fancy car or go on 3 vacations! When I first started as a graduate in IT at Eagle Star in Cheltenham 25 yrs ago there was a newly wed trainee who was eating toast for dinner with her hubby to pay off the mortgage quickly. Her ‘friends’ at work took the piss relentlessly. Now I look back and wish I had saved more since I am now 48 and tired of IT both physically and mentally. Trying not to preach here but now I resent the times I was dragged out to bars and restaurants by friends (who really just want a crowd), I resent my dads status seeking with houses and cars that rubbed off on me for a long while. Hopefully you will ‘get it’ long before I did and get FI earlier.
This is a good point which I forgot to comment on, the mortgage on the new house now works out as £10,000 per year (yikes!). I think not including that, a spending target of just over £20k, maybe £22k per year is something that is realistically acheivable for us right now. The next post will iron out the details of this in fact!
Car – This is luckily something me and the Mrs agree entirely on and we’ll never own a fancy new car. We just think of it as a means of getting from A to B for the cheapest means possible.
Vacations – Well we had two last year and already have two booked in for this year, but this years are both shorter and should cost a lot less.
Not preachy at all, I can see what you mean about getting dragged out, and the status seeking thing does seem more rife in the generation above me/us in my limited experience at least.
Thanks for advice and I liked the story about toast for dinner… we sometimes have scrambled eggs on toast which isn’t far off 🙂
Are you still thinking of retiring in 5 years? In a good month I’m saving 30-40% and the calculations of when I can retire are, let’s say, distant…
I’m going through your blog now so maybe you’ve posted more about the other income streams you were looking to generate.
About charity – what I do is microfinance through Kiva and Deki (the British equivalent of Kiva). There’s some risk of default but most of the time you can relend the money again and again, so you get the most out of your charity buck. (Join my lending team if you want! That’d make my day.)
Hi Andrew!
Thanks for the comment and welcome to the site.
Unfortunately the answer is no but I perhaps have an even better (and hopefully more realistic) plan, I’ve posted a couple of updates on this very recently so maybe you missed them, the main info is here:
http://thefirestarter.co.uk/brain-dump-ii-theres-things-know-thefirestarter/
I have a Kiva account but not heard of Deki… I will check it out, thanks for the heads up! I’ll didn’t know there was such a thing as a lending team so will check that out as well.