sneaky september update – income & expenses report
TFS Jr getting herself into a “hole” lot of trouble.. (waamp waamp waaaa!)
Well September certainly sneaked up on me and went pretty quickly that’s for sure!
I mainly spent the month finishing off the garden project, working for maybe a couple of weeks, then celebrating our wedding anniversary (4 years!) and going on my brother in law’s stag do to Ibiza (4 days!!!!!)
So all in all it was a fun but again slightly expensive month. Let’s see the breakdown…
expenses
Remember the figures below are in the format: £Current Month (£2017 Monthly Average / £Monthly Average Target)
- Total £3775 (£3733 / £3210) – With a final budget of £38,521 for the whole year and 3 months left we’ve spent £33,593 already. This means we’d have to spend £1,642 for the final 3 months to hit budget… very much not likely.
- Mortgage £848 (£848 / £848)
- Household £895 (£705 / £599) – Groceries high yet again at £477 and paid the TV licence for the year.
- Going out/Holiday £1115 (£1063 / £750) – I’m embarrassed to say this but I’m going to anyway, I spent £640 whilst in Ibiza for 3 nights/4 days. What can I say, I’m an idiot! And that place is bloody expensive 🙂 . We also paid off our holiday for October so at least all we have to do is spending money while we’re away now, which shouldn’t be too much as we’re just going to the Cotswolds.
- Transport £101 (£164 / £172) – Slightly under target here now.
- Personal Care £64 (£85 / £90) – Slightly under budget here. I am guessing Mrs T needs a new hairdo pretty soon though?!? 😉
- Home/Garden £109 (£201 / £85) – Final few bits for the garden.
- Lifestyle £208 (£214 / £165) – Not much to say here.
- Gifts/Charity £130 (£153 / £215) – Still need to give £195 to charity before the year is out (notwithstanding any further matched betting profits!)
- Hobbies/Sport £104 (£153 / £150) – This should trend back to under budget by the time the year is out nicely.
- Admin £12 (£3 / £10)
- Financial £15 (£61 / £57) – The average is now very close to target!
- Children £139 (£81 / £70) – Wow… what happened TFS Jr!? You spendy little thing! She is finally growing out of 6-9 months clothes (at the age of 19 months! 🙂 ) so we’ve bought a few items of clothing and other bits n bobs such as books and a few toys.
income
Figures in the same format as expenses…
- Total £6172 +£395 Pension (£4614 / £3907) – Whoo hoo! Income comes to save the day once more! I love you income! 🙂
- TFS Income £2283 +£395 Pension (£2530 / £2390) – Pretty standard month for me here.
- Mrs T Income £800 (£71 / £600) – Mrs T got another tax rebate which was a little weird but we are not going to complain about it. Cheers HMRC!
- Work Shares Dividend £2920 (NA / NA) – Some great news almost out of the blue. I invested £2,500 into a work investment scheme about 2-3 years ago and they’ve just paid out a dividend which was more than we all actually put in, and our initial investment money is still pretty much guaranteed (plus some more profit) they reckon when it finally closes so I think I’m safe in counting this as pure profit. The best part is that because it’s been paid as a dividend it is all tax free as you are allowed up to £5000 dividends per year tax free! (I don’t receive any other dividends outside of a tax wrapper so I don’t have to worry about breaking the £5k barrier). I am thinking of doing a short post explaining a bit more about this so if anyone is interested let me know.
- Ratesetter £2 (£22 / £0) – A bit of a comedown from last months >£100 but ho hum. The £50 offer is still on so if you want to avail of this “free money” then click on this link here (<– obviously it’s a referral link!) or again read my post on it for more info.
- Child benefit £82 (£82 / £82)
Matched Betting / Gambling Hustles £0 (£811 / £750) – Still not enough activity to bother totting this up, but after reading about weenie’s triumph on the “no lay accas” I am now very much motivated to get back on the wagon here. How is everyone else doing with the MB? I know there are a few readers out there doing it so let me know how your finding it with the new season started! Any decent offers flying about?! Let me know! 🙂
If anyone is interested I have been using Odds Monkey matched betting software (<–affiliate link) for this, which having tried a few different ones out there, I found to be a far superior product in pretty much every way to everything else I tried. Check it out if you are new to matched betting, there are loads of great tutorials to get you going and you can try it for free. One of the best things about it is the Forum/Community aspect as you can learn loads of new and interesting ways to profit from gambling that aren’t just your standard “Do offer, lay off, get free bet, lay off, win £3.50” type of, let’s face, quite boring, time consuming and laborious matched betting methods. Some of these methods are what helped me to have a bumper Cheltenham 2017! Now, back to the update!
savings rate, net worth and all of that mumbo jumbo
Yay! A positive savings rate!
We managed to hit 42.52%, which takes our average up to 25.48% for the year. OK so this was seriously down to the one off investment dividend but it’s still income so I’ll well and truly take it. Also, still very unlikely to hit the 30% mark I think but hey you never know!
More good news on the Net worth front in that we finally sorted out Mrs T’s 2 old pensions which have been languishing in the financial netherworld, waiting to be rescued and given some SIPP transfer loving. Well we haven’t quite done the transfer bit but the first step was finding out how much there was actually in there and it came to around £6600, seeing as I was estimating £3000 in my spreadsheets that means the Net Worth has had a nice boost of £3600 as well.
So good news all round…
Excluding house equity: £153,723 / +£7,073 / +4.82%
Including house equity: £234,840 / +£7,533 / +3.31%
Liquid Freedom: £70,414 / +£3,269 / +4.87%
And the liquid freedom breaks the £70K mark for the first time. *Fanfare*
other updates
Honestly not much else to tell.
I did a 10K run the other in East Grinstead with a time of just under 44 minutes, I was pretty happy with that considering it was the weekend after the stag do.
I don’t even want to tot up my alcohol intake, again due to said stag do 🙂
Been playing a bit of squash, work is ticking along nicely, and hanging out with friends & family at weekends.
Life is good! Oh apart from I smashed my phone screen the other day, that was a bit sh!t 🙂
How was your September folks?
Discussion (15) ¬
Hi TFS,
Love the pic and joke at the top – very good 🙂 Congratulations to you both on the anniversary – I am looking for some indication of a celebration of some sort in the numbers – not just Ibiza! 😉
So… whilst you spent a lot in Ibiza… did you enjoy it?! Or was it a blur where the money went?
Sounds like a good solid month, and great news on the “forgotten” income from the work investment – always a very nice bonus!
Cheers,
FiL
Haha glad you liked it!
Actually we were fairly frugal on the celebration, we had one night away at a really nice hotel but it was one of those Groupon deals so it was about £90 and we paid for it a while ago. No presents needed! It included a two course meal and use of pool etc… so we had plenty to be getting on with. And then we spent a little bit more on a few drinks etc so about another £30-40 I think.
They even upgraded our room and gave us some free Champagne (not sure how good it was but I liked it) as Mrs T asked, as it was our anniversary and all… if you don’t ask you don’t get!
Ibiza was great fun. The other lads were a bit younger than me and on a tighter budget so I bought a few extra rounds that I never saw back. But that wouldn’t have made that much difference in the end. It was my bro in laws stag do which (hopefully!) I will never have to go on again so it was definitely money well spent and we all had a brilliant time. Some of it was a bit blurry, I will admit haha!
Cheers FiL always good to hear from you!
No lay accas have been a disaster for me. -£200 so far and that has been with £10 buy ins.. had I been doing the full £50 it would be -£1k. Saying that though my little brother has been doing them as well and is into a healthy profit so I’m going to keep chugging away regardless to try and smooth out the variance
Ouch! But you are right to keep chugging away, it will only take a few wins to get most of that back and they tend to come along like buses I find based on my normal gambling habits.
Cheers
I haven’t tried no lay accas yet but they are in my sights for next year. For now I am just concentrating on the guaranteed profits and trudging my way through the last of the sign up offers I still have left to do. Great savings rate this month, I had my all time best this month:)
Yea defo worth doing all the risk free offers before you get into them. TBF I still have some of those to do as every time I check Odds Monkey there seems to be like 5 new bookies on there!!! But still want to have a go at the accas anyway as they seem like fun.
Lots to celebrate in this post, TFS – congrats on the anniversary, the great savings rate and breaking the £70k mark in liquid freedom! And what a nice windfall re the work dividends and also the value of Mrs T’s pension pot. I did have a chuckle at the expensive stag do – in terms of cost and the alcohol intake, you do always say ‘never again’ but you’re young so it will happen again, haha!
After a great month on the no lay accas, like Guy, I’m not having such a great run right now, am down around £300 and I do £20-£30 buy ins. I even cashed an acca in early today as I just needed to bank a little profit for my sanity! Good luck with yours!
Thanks weenie,
I’m genuinely hoping that’s the last stag I have to go on for quite a while as pretty much all my close friends have tied the knot so far. Actually my cousin is getting married next year thinking about it so maybe one more, if I’m invited!
Cheers and good luck to yourself as always!
Good job on the savings, the 10k time, and hopefully it was time for a new phone anyway😀
Hi David,
Cheers!
Funnily enough I just stumbled across your blog before you commented, will be off to check it out soon! Looks good! Thanks!
Hey TFS,
Congrats on the savings rate this month, and the increase in net worth and on your 10K!
I’m like you with regards to things like stag do’s (hen do’s in my case!)… although there can be a run of these several years in a row, they only happen once (hopefully) per friend and I believe it’s important to celebrate these life events with friends, so I would never skip or skimp on them.
OR
Cheers OR!
Haha good to hear you love a decent hen do 🙂
You are right, times with friends like that are important.
Cheers!
For what it’s worth, we’re also going to go over for our annual budget target.
Such is life. We’re still making progress, and that’s kind of all that matters.
Progress, not perfection.
Cheers for the wise words DbF, you always have a knack of putting things into perspective and making me feel better. Keep up the good work 🙂