So, what are people going to try and achieve for next year?
Leave my round-up pot alone all year. This is a standard for me now, got £250 in there now. I am tempted to let it round up into my investing pot, but I do like to keep it as my backup rainy day fund.
A month? A year? I haven’t added mine up as I don’t use Monzo but I must be close.
I don’t have a set goal currently. Continue with my fixed savers (I pay into 5 regular savers currently) but otherwise spend on myself a bit. Life has become crap these past few years so a holiday or two, etc.
My grandmother would always ask “what use is all that saved money as you can’t take it with you to the grave” and I try to keep that in mind over the years (within reason).
I’m just going to carry on doing what I’m doing. My net worth (excluding car and house) has increased by £7000 over the last 12 months, which isn’t too bad considering that I’ve taken early retirement and I’m still a few years off receiving the state pension.
The dark blue line is what I have as “additional spend”. Things such as trips abroad, etc. The shaded area is pay check and the light blue is ‘non essential’ such as groceries, eating out etc. This has led to a few realisations
I’m living within my means, so I want to keep doing that
I need to categorise ‘additional spend’ better. I have it all listed but it’s too lumped up so splitting it will help me see where that’s going
Aim to increase the savings each month by at least £50 per month over what I do now
Overall my main aim is to continue to build my investment pot and focus on budgeting a little better.
EDIT: This made me look at the numbers and I realised I’d double counted a few things, so actually had spent less. Thanks @Revels for the prompt to do some due diligence by posting this thread!
To be honest I don’t really organise my finances at all, which for a forum member is probably unusual. I just spend what I like and it has always fitted into my income.
Maybe 2024 I should actually take a look at what I spend on
Build my personal savings and investments. Earlier this year I created a tracker in Excel to monitor this and it’s proved useful.
Probably spend a bit less on frivolous small purchases. For instance, I’ve reverted into bad habits like buying coffee on the way to work. Need to go back to carrying homemade filter coffee instead.
Keep growing my roundups pot. I’m a bit OCD and manually move pence when a direct debit goes out as well as the automated roundups on purchases. Built over £2k in it over the years it’s been running.
Maybe setup a few more of the small high interest linked savings accounts you get with various banks. I have a NatWest one paying £6k and keen to expand that eventually, at least one more should be feasible without hitting the tax free interest allowance.
I’ve not too long ago had a very significant salary increase so getting myself a financial advisor was probably the best thing I’ve done this year.
Looking towards next year, we’ve put together plans to stop me falling off the childcare support cliff (this tax year anyway) and plans for building my pension pot and my savings and investments in a tax-efficient manner, which as someone who grew up in a council house with lots of support from the benefits system feels like ‘problems’ I never thought I’d ever have…
Giving more to charity is on my list for next year too.
Yeah that’s exactly why I have an advisor - they literally immediately proved their worth by telling me I was due tax relief on some past pension contributions that were paid net rather than salary sacrifice.
I’m aware of a few people who hit the personal allowance taper and assumed HMRC would take care of everything since they were PAYE, but ended up getting hit with hefty bills at the end of the tax year, so yeah I’m keen to avoid stuff like that!
Paying off short term debt in the next few months and then start to grow my savings again. All my savings are now in bricks, so need to get back an emergency fund first followed by saving for renovations. It’s gonna be a long journey
Does anyone have any spreadsheet templates they use that might be useful for everyone? Feel like some folk here have power app’d their finances to a degree I couldn’t ever master!
