Summary Here’s our July spending – our first month as a 3! In early July, we welcomed Baby Way to the world. Fingers crossed our spending for 3 won’t be significantly higher than it was for 2. We’re using reusable nappies, wipes etc so that should really help minimise the cost on disposable items as …
Monthly Spending – June 2020
Summary And there it is – our June spending – our final month on our own! Baby Way is now over-due and will be with us before the next monthly spending post. We’re really excited and looking forward to showing that it doesn’t have to be a crippling financial decision, as most of our peers seem to …
The Benefit of Salary Sacrifice Pensions
I recently went through an interesting exercise at work and wanted to share the findings here. Essentially, my company don’t offer salary sacrifice pension contributions and I wanted to persuade them to consider it! As you can probably tell, I'm bit of a personal finance nerd! I created a document showing the benefits of salary …
Monthly Spending – May 2020
Summary As lockdown continues, our May spending has been significantly impacted. We love seeing those zeros in the Transport category! Our total spend for the month was £1,700. This is well within our £2,000 target again. We break our main expenses down into broad categories starting with the big 3; housing, food and transport. Everything else …
Remaining Positive
Our Coronavirus Journey – Part 4 The Coronavirus outbreak will doubtless have a devastating impact on many companies and individuals. But I'm remaining positive on the longer term outlook! There are many reasons to be positive amongst the gloom. Hopefully this post can instil a bit of hope that things will be OK! Stock Market Most companies will be …
Why We’re 100% in Equities
Our investment strategy has always been 100% equities, with no allocation to bonds or other asset classes. There are several reasons we came to this conclusion, which we want to cover in this post. When we say 100% equities, this is within our actual FI funds, which are housed in our ISA and pension accounts. …
Monthly Spending – April 2020
Summary Our first full month of lockdown has had a huge impact on our April spending. Our total spend for the month was £1,559. This is well within our £2,000 target. It's actually our second lowest month since we started tracking. Beaten only by August 2019 when we were in Africa and most of our accommodation …
Frugal Food – Grow Your Own
Our Coronavirus Journey – Part 3 There has never been a better time to begin simulating The Good Life and ‘grow your own’! The current Coronavirus lockdown has given us all the opportunity to spend more time in our gardens. We're using this time to rediscover our green fingers! With many supermarkets low on lots …
Monthly Spending – March 2020
Summary What a strange month!! Our March spending is slightly different to normal to reflect the current situation we find ourselves in. As we’ve detailed in our recent posts, our lives have changed massively. We’re hoping the lockdown will help us to reduce our expenses even further, especially as our income looks more unreliable by the …
Seeing Opportunity in Adversity
Our Coronavirus Journey – Part 2 As we discussed in Our Coronavirus Journey – Part 1, we’ve been gradually adjusting to the changes in or lives since the Coronavirus outbreak started. While many of the implications are negative, we’re seeing opportunity in the adversity. It would be easy to become overwhelmed and give up in such challenging …