april showers – income/expenses, net worth and savings rate report
Ah April, the month of showers and fools. We’ve been somewhat foolish with our money this month yet again and let it drip, drip, drip down the slimy sink of the consumer drain 🙁
Two bad months in a row is inexcusable and drastic action will be taken – and no, unfortunately this isn’t an extremely tardy and bad April fool’s gag! To put an end to the negative chat and try to wrench a small win out of the jaws of defeat, we managed to hit nearly a 40% savings rate which is still just about acceptable in my book, and as always I am sure well above the average in the UK or anywhere else for that matter. Let’s have a look at how it all went down:
april income
| Categories | April | Notes |
| Total | £3,945.28 | |
| TFS | £2,697.80 | 1 |
| Mrs TFS | £1,061.85 | 1 |
| Interest TSB 1 TFS | £6.44 | |
| Interest TSB 2 Mrs TFS | £6.23 | |
| Interest Santander | £10.12 | |
| Cashback Santander | £3.58 | |
| Cashback CCs | £1.77 | |
| Solar Panels | £95.99 | 2 |
| Gifts | £0.00 | |
| Sold stuff | £0.00 | |
| Refunds | £9.00 | |
| Other | £52.50 | 3 |
| SIPP Tax back | £0.00 |
- Mrs TFS still has £250 automatically taken out for her sharesave scheme so this is amount after that deduction, whereas now I am getting booted out in 5-6 months of mine and am in a transitionary stage of the share save scheme, mine is taken out after this income amount. Confused yet?!
- Nice to see the solar panels kicking in now that the sun is starting to shine 🙂
- Won some bets this month on The Masters golf and the Grand National… boom! That will be my short foray back into sports gambling over with for a while though.
april expenses
Total expenses: £3,044,68
To keep this post at a readable length I will summarise the main categories of spending here, but if you want to see a more detail break down just see the full spreadsheet here 1.
- Groceries £352.08– After thinking we’d reduce the grocery bill this month it has somehow actually gone up. Arggghhh! Really annoyed about this one!!! Again we’ve still got loads of food in the freezer and we’re away for about half the month so in theory the next months bill should be about £80, but we are hosting a couple of BBQ’s so it might be slightly higher than that. Either way I will be watching it like a hawk in May 🙂
- Phones £16.99 / £40.18 – I’ve actually finally transferred to a cheaper landline using Direct Save which I found on the MSE page about landlines but it will kick in for next month. One to tick of the TODO list! Mrs TFS phone bill was slightly higher than expected due to a few charity text donations which I am all for 🙂
- Clothes £221.02 – Hmmm. No comment. Emergency finance meeting has been held and Mrs TFS has decided to take drastic action and delete all clothing apps off her phone and close down online accounts etc… I told her to just start car booting if she loves the clothes so much but she thinks it is better to have a 2-3 month amnesty on buying anything. It’s going to be a challenge and you know I like a challenge, so will see how she gets on! Maybe I’ll get her to write a post about this one day 🙂
- Golf £26.90 – Actually played 3 times but one of those was paid for from last months budget and the other only cost £7.50 as got a cheap deal on it. So that was pretty good! Next month will be a lot higher as we have a lads golf day so glad this month was well under budget.
- Dining & Drinking £311.18 – Not as bad as last months £500+ figure but still pretty meaty by many peoples standards. Mrs TFS had a Hen do which was pretty expensive. Next month we have a wedding but other than that not really many other nights out so hoping this will be nearer the £200 mark which I think is more than acceptable.
- Garden – £396.68 – As I have mentioned a few times we’ve been beavering away in the garden! This comprised of lot’s of fence paint, tools (acquired through Friday Ad), and a few plants and flowers, but the bulk of the cost was £150 for some new wooden sleepers, which we are going to use to build some raised beds. It seemed like a bit of a splurge but we’ve now finished spending on the garden barring any small bits n bobs and have kept just within our budget of £500 (already spent £100 on table and chairs).
- Overall £3,044,68 – Whilst not as over the top as last month it was an expensive month! This brings up the monthly average in 2015 to £3,000.47, which is well above the £2,666 I laid out here in our yearly budget. Call me a moronic optimist but I still think that May and June, and hopefully the rest of the summer months to be a lot less expensive for us (barring any kitchen and bathroom renovations!) and we can get that back down to £2,666 or below by say the end of August. A further point worth mentioning as that seeing as from September 1st I will be on a 66% of current working time and therefore money contract than I am now (see here if you missed the news on that one) this months expenditure would have meant that we would have saved practically nowt. With the new arrangement our total post tax and train ticket income would be £3,271 2 which does not leave much wiggle room at all! Ideally I’d like to be able to save over £1,000/month once things have settled back down so we clearly need to get this average trending back down well under the £2,666.
april net worth
I’m going to break down the Net Worth properly from now on which at the risk of making these reports even longer, I think will give people a better idea of where all our money is stashed away. Don’t say I never treat you guys! 🙂
| Total Net Worth | £146,563.00 | Notes |
| Excluding House | £78,605.00 | 1 |
| Assets | April | |
| Total | £78,605.00 | |
| CoFunds ISA | £5,303.00 | |
| YouInvest ISA | £4,495.00 | |
| CSD ISA | £2,142.00 | |
| Mrs TFS Sharesave | £2,250.00 | |
| TFS Sharesave | £4,000.00 | |
| SIPP (invested) | £12,949.00 | |
| SIPP (cash) | £1,840.00 | |
| Cash Accs | ||
| TSB 1 | £499.00 | |
| TSB 2 | £1,117.00 | |
| Santander | £4,235.00 | |
| Barclaycard | -£563.00 | |
| American Express | -£277.00 | |
| Pensions | ||
| TFS | £37,615.00 | |
| Mrs TFS | £3,000.00 | 2 |
| Property | ||
| House Value | £253,000.00 | |
| House Mortgage | £185,042.00 | |
| House Equity | £67,958.00 |
- This is actually far more accurate than in previous months due to me actually sorting out all my retirement and other accounts however…
- We still haven’t received a password to gain access to Mrs TFS’s retirement accounts online at will. However we got a yearly statement and there was about £2200 in there. She has a retirement account from a previous employer which probably had about £1000 in so I will leave the estimate at £3000 for now until we get that all sorted.
april totals and savings rate
| Total 2015 | April | Notes | |
| Net Worth | 73189.8 | 73189.8 | |
| Years to FI | 17.85 | 20.40 | 1 |
| SAVING PERCENTAGE | 44.51% | 39.42% | 2 |
| Categories | Total | April | |
| Total | 9627.81 | 1981.33 | 3 |
| Income vs Spend | £5,554.89 | £900.60 | |
| Share Save 1 (Andy) | £750.00 | £250.00 | |
| Share Save 2 (Lou) | £1,000.00 | £250.00 | |
| Pension 1 (Andy) | £1,814.76 | £453.69 | |
| Pension 2 (Lou) | £508.16 | £127.04 |
1,2,3 – Are all linked together really! 17.85 Years to FI puts me at 51 which doesn’t sound too bad but I will be having a drop in income later in the year so we really need to start locking down a decent budget. We need to be pulling in more than £1,400 of our post tax income (£900 from income v spend plus the £500 from the share save schemes) IMO especially while my salary is still this high. Maybe it is time I accept defeat and try out something like YNAB!? I’ll give it a couple of months and see where we are at, again, optimistic or naive, I guess we’ll find out!
How did you get on in April!? Were you a fool or a frugal super hero showering in the glory of an 80% savings rate?!
Notes:
- Remember you are free to copy this to your own google drive and edit to put your own figures in there! Let me know if you do so and make any decent additions and I can graft them onto my own one? Or any suggested additions, again just let me know. ↩
- This is assuming I don’t make any extra income from any other business ventures, which is probably a safe assumption for at least the first 6 months of me attempting anything! ↩
Discussion (21) ¬
Nice work. A 40% savings rate is pretty good as you note and gives you plenty of scope to improve on as well.
We are having a clothing amnesty in the DD household as well. Miss DD had a good start of the year to date and then let it slip a bit. I don’t see it as a too drastic issue as long as it is not every month!
Keep up the good work.
DD – My thoughts exactly! She genuinely seems up for giving the amnesty a crack though so I say fair play to her. I think this philosophy is slowly getting through to her (less spending = less work, for both of us).
Cheers!
Exactly. The basic idea is so simple (less spending=less work) it is wonderfully motivating for everyone once you actually think about it!
The next thing we have to work on is eating out/takeaways! We are not awful, but we could certainly do better. It often goes hand-in-hand with our various little trips to different places at the weekend (which we are loathed to cut back too sharply) which makes it a little harder to cut back on. But we will try!
Good luck with this month! I hope the Bank Holiday weekend did not hit your expenses too much!
It’s easy in theory to be motivated by the simple idea but in practice it can be much harder! For example when someone invites you to do something that costs money, or you are in a shop with all the well marketed shiny displays etc. I am lucky in that I absolutely hate shopping so I avoid all that by basically just not going to shops, but the Mrs is not like me in that respect so she is always going to find that aspect of it harder.
You are right that there is a balance in there somewhere and you can’t just cut back on everything or you are just going to make yourself miserable so no point in cutting back on your trips etc.
Thanks! We actually paid for all the Euros for this weekend two months ago so while the March budget was blown to peices, we’ve actually had a great start to May… let’s hope it continues throughout the month. Good luck to you as well!
Good work TFS. The solar panel income is particularly interesting 🙂 What’s the deal here?
Time to boil the kettle and sort out my savings an NW for the month
Mr Z
Thanks Mr Z.
I was planning on doing a post soon about the solar panels, we only have 6 months of basic data so far but will keep a running total on what we have used against what is generated, I think that might be quite interesting to see how it plays out over time.
Keep an eye out for it (not literally… I know what you zombie types are like 😉 )
We usually hit somewhere between a 50-60% savings rate. I don’t really calculate it that often. I’m more concerned with socking away a certain amount every month, regardless of income.
You gotta get those food expenses down! Such a life of luxury! I’d never retire early eating out like that.
Hi Norm,
Too right! Just out of interest what do people think is normal for the eating out category? Is is literally just “zero” with a potential maybe one meal out per month?
50-60% is cracking, keep at it. Cheers!
It depends on whether you have kids or not. 2 people can easily eat out 10 times per month (ignoring alcohol, tap water is free) for £200 or less. If eating out this much then groceries should also reduce
Hi Dird,
I do agree, but the issue is I like getting pissed occasionally as well which doesn’t help the costs situation 😉
Cheers
I just can’t believe how much you spend on food… Seriously, I’m shocked. We are two adults and a ravenous little boy and our budget is £230 for groceries, but this also includes household products eg toothpaste, washing up liquid, etc.
Still, achieving a 40% rate is really excellent, and not to be sniffed at
Hi M,
Fair play and I agree we’ve been well over the top in the last two months.
We include all the household stuff as well in that but there is one thing which I don’t know if others or you do include – I don’t track alcohol in grocery shop spend very closely at all. So there is probably £50 worth of booze in there. If you don’t drink that much that could be part of the difference?
The obvious answer is to cut down on boozing but while that is one of my longer term goals, I am not going to be stopping completely any time soon so it will always comprise a part of our groceries (unless I split it out properly into the alcohol category, in which case that is just a matter of accounting)
One final point, we are averaging £255/month for the year so far so don’t take this month as an average, it is the outlier.
Cheers for the comment as usual 🙂
That’s a great and honest post there. I’m usually a lurker rather than commenter but if you’re thinking about YNAB, do it do it so it!
Mine paid for itself in less than a month. It’s lots of fun to use and didn’t feel like it’s punishing you if you screw up and over spend in a particular category.
Have you watched the YNAB intro videos about “rolling with the punches” etc?
Keep up the good work TFS and expect some daft questions about your spreadsheet soon! I’m currently in the middle of getting myself confused with that one!
Hi Kev,
Thank you for delurking! There is nothing better than a new comment from someone who hasn’t done so before. So cheers!
I will check out the vids as haven’t done so yet.
You just reminded me I updated my private spreadsheets but not the “TFS” shared one so will do that now.
Any questions let me know, cheers again!
Thanks for this update TFS and like many other readers, like many readers, I really appreciate your honesty on your warts and all expenses!
Firstly though, to have spent so much yet still achieved a 40% savings rate is tremendous – well done! Imagine once you’ve signed up to YNAB, what you’d be able to save!
He he, well it’s not that hard really.
I am really hoping in (say) a years time the budget will be much tighter and new people to this game can go back and see how it is possible for people spending higher amounts to cut down and then think “maybe I can do this too”. Now just gotta go out and actually do it!
Thanks!
Hi TFS
I’d be really interested in knowing a bit more about your solar PV set-up. It’s an investment I’m seriously considering making, particularly if I head to Malta. What set-up do you have, how much did the cost, what do you estimate it saves you per year and how much revenue do they generate?
Cheers
RIT
Hi RIT,
As mentioned above I will do a post about this soon so keep your eyes out for it.
Unfortunately I can’t say much on the cost of installation because they were already on the house when we moved in. But I will be tracking how much they are generating and revenue and pop it in a post with some analysis.
Cheers!
Hey TFS, what’s your FI goal? Would love the report to tell us if you’re in the clear to achieve your goal of retiring within 5 years, or if you’re trending red.
Hi Stockbeard!
Well it’s all a bit up in the air really as I’ve kinda changed the original plan completely and am now downshifting to part time work so I can focus on some proper side hustlin’
It’s been ~2 years since I started the blog now so that gives me about ~3 years to build up enough side hustle income to quit the day job to acheive that goal, although as you can probably guess from these statements I wouldn’t be fully FI by then (although that was never the original plan in the first place).
For more info on how my thinking/plans have changed over time read here:
http://thefirestarter.co.uk/brain-dump-ii-theres-things-know-thefirestarter/
And here: http://thefirestarter.co.uk/all-change-again-and-has-my-cover-been-blown/
Cheers!