nutty november – income/expenses and other updates

Dec16
by TFS on December 16, 2015 at 5:15 pm
Posted In: Budgets, TFS Updates

november updates

We’re nearly half way through December already but here is my belated November update.

As regular readers will be aware I have been doing up the bathroom which is taking up 99% of my waking hours and thoughts right now, so it’s been tough finding the time to stare at some lovely spreadsheets.

Anyway we somehow did quite well again in November despite spending out on the bathroom and with my drop in income and hit an overall 46.82% savings rate. Intrigued on how we did that?!?! Read on for the breakdown…

 

income

Our income is probably the most interesting area this month, as it was bolstered by a few extra areas. As well as our standard income which was £2015 + £1061 (+£250 for sharesave at Mrs T’s work) we also had:

  • Gifts £180 – Mrs T’s parents were kind enough to give us an early gift for baby T which we can spend on things such as a cot and some other bits. Lucky us to have such kind parents/in-laws! 🙂
  • Sold stuff – Mrs T found an old box of “jewellery” at her mum’s house and took it to one of those cash for gold shop. It was all cheap old crap as far as she was concerned so was blown away to be offered £70 for it. She snapped their hand off. Ker-chiiiiing!!!
  • “Other” £672 – Shrewd observers may have already guessed but this is gambling winnings. I crystallised the rest of my big golf win from last month, but also ploughed some of the excess into deposits for some matched betting action which has multiplied the original returns. Bonus! I still have some money in the accounts left to play with so hopefully I can string this out over a couple more months of positive returns at least before I finally decide to pack it in again. If I run out of money in the accounts or run out of matched betting offers to do, I’ll just stop again, for a while at least 😉
  • SIPP/Tax Rebates £375 – The rebate from my SIPP deposit a while back came through so that was also a nice bonus

Total income: £4416.56

I’m not going to be shy in saying that this is awesome, it’s our 5th highest income this year and yet it is after I’ve taken a 33% pay cut from my normal salary. In fact is it the lowest normal salary income month I’ve had this year by a long shot 1. Go figure!

As usual if you want the full break down just have a look at the google sheets spreadsheet here.

 

expenses

We spent a total of £2,703 this month, which included £500 worth of DIY/bathroom spending. I think that counts as a big win! If we take of the DIY stuff that is £2,203 which would have been our second lowest spending month of the year. Alas the bathroom spending did actually happen so the figure to be entered in ye olde sheet of spread is the aforementioned £2,703.

Here is some further “interesting” breakdown of our spending this month:

  • DIY £502 – As already mentioned. Bathroom stuff init.
  • Personal Care £197 – Mrs T needed some new glasses and I had to have some dental treatment which always tends to rack up. Need to lay off the sweet stuff I do!
  • Gas/Electricity £0 – We got a rebate from Ovo because our Direct Debit was too much, which they’ve now agreed to reduce our payment down to £46 a month (that includes both!) so hopefully that will see us through from now on. The mild weather is helping on the heating bills but our house is well insulated and I don’t think they realised we have solar panels so started off charging us higher, but have been very easy to knock that down unlike other energy companies I’ve dealt with in the past. Anyway rather than counting the rebate as income I’ll just knock it off our actual DD amount for this month and next, so this month we effectively paid nought!
  • Groceries £228 – Seems about fair to me. Next!
  • Going out £246 – Fairly quiet this month on this front. The calm before the storm of December no doubt!
  • Clothes £151 – Hmm. This is creeping back up isn’t it!? 🙂
  • Lifestyle £32 – This is the lowest month of the year for this category which is great as I think this is where money tends to just trickle away on small purchases without us thinking about it all too much. Helps that we’ve finally stopped playing the lottery as well!
  • Gifts and charity £163 – We have a few birthdays in November as well as gearing up for christmas. Plus we made a fair amount of donations to charity and bought some of our friends newborn baby gifts.
  • Golf £20 – Another record low for the year! I only played once this month but on the upside at least it saved us some money 🙂
  • Children £38 – Uh oh… A new category!!! 🙂 – We bought a few little bits after the excitement of finding out the sex of the baby (it’s a girl!) but from now on we’re being pragmatic and only buying the stuff we “need” – finding out exactly what we need and what is just a gimmick will be the hard part I find but we’re navigating the waters fairly well so far. Anyway the bottom line is there is definitely some more spending to come in this category over the next 18+ years I am fairly sure of that 🙂

 

savings rate

As mentioned we hit a savings rate of 46.82% this month which brings our 2015 average to 50.53%. We are agonisingly close to hitting 50% for the year but I would be very surprised to hit it given the consumer orgy that is Christmas around the corner. We are not the biggest of spenders but then again we do still get involved with most of the present giving traditions and a fair amount of drinking (me only this year) and socialising (both of us). So I’m just being realistic here. Still, it’s great to get so close, when at the start of the year I would have taken anything positive for the final part of the year due to my pay decrease.

 

net worth and investments

Nothing to report on new investments, and the market has remained pretty static this month. BORING!

Still, a steady increase in Net Worth so the figures are now:

Excluding house equity: £97,988 / +£1,660 / +1.72%

Including house equity: £168,620 / +£2,042 / + 1.23%

 

other updates

  • Anything is possible/running goals – I did the local park run twice and came in 10th and 11th. This is not a bad starter for 10. However I have not done any running at all since the bathroom remodel started! Doing manual work all day does not make you feel like going for a run at the end of it. Doing this stuff really does make you realise how easy us office bods have it and that maybe we should shut the hell up complaining 🙂 . As the bathroom work tails off over Xmas I will have another 2 weeks off so am hoping to hit it hard again before the new year starts and hit the ground running (yes, I can hear the groans) for my final 2 months of training for the half marathons.
  • Alcohol – I managed to go under 20 units/week! Whoop! Came in at 19.03 units/week in November although am already off to a high start in December (oops).

 

Erm… Right think that’s yer lot!

Until next month, peace out, have a great christmas and I hope all of your tidings are glad and so forth!

 

How was your November?

Notes:

  1. As the tax man finally figured out I wasn’t paying enough the previous two months and has corrected it ↩
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