This was a strange month for spending because we were in Africa for almost the whole month! We had already paid for the vast majority of the trip in advance. You can see the damage in previous spending posts!
Continue reading “Monthly Spending – August 2019”Do you plan to leave an inheritance? What about receiving one – do you factor this in to your financial plans?
Inheritance is a divisive subject and people have very strong opinions on what ‘should’ be done. In this post we will explore what inheritance means to us and how we plan for it.
We will split this into two parts; leaving and receiving.
Continue reading “Inheritance”There was a lot going on this month – we even got engaged!!! Excluding the engagement ring and the £500 spend on US dollars for our Africa trip this month’s underlying spending was very much in line with our monthly averages. An annual insurance premium increased our usual housing spend slightly but we were broadly in line with our expected totals.
Continue reading “Monthly Spending – July 2019”Soo…we have exciting news! We got engaged!!!!
After just less than 6 years of being together, Mr Way asked me to marry him and I said yes!
So I’ll be asking for lots of frugal wedding advice from like minded FI enthusiasts!!
Continue reading “All Change!”This month was slightly over our ‘normal’ spending of ~£2,000. We had an annual membership fee to pay, as well as a couple of big outlays for our Africa trip added to the total. See below for more detail!
We break our main expenses down into broad categories starting with the big 3; housing, food and transport. Everything else falls into the entertainment category, with any large inclusions explained in detail.
Continue reading “Monthly Spending – June 2019”Our name means a lot of different things to us.
In our quest for a simpler way of living we’re reducing lots of aspects of our lives. We wanted to create this post to give you an idea of what ‘A Way to Less’ means to us and how we are striving to improve our lives throughout this journey.
When people first think of financial independence, they often think you need MORE. More money, to be able to buy more things, to live a happier life. But throughout our journey so far, we have actually found that most of our happiness is generated through LESS.
An easy example of this is going out to restaurants. For some, this is a weekly occurrence (or more!). When something is done so often, it can quickly lose that ‘special’ feeling. It may sound obvious that going out to eat less will improve your financial position. What may not be so obvious is that it is actually likely to make you HAPPIER too.
We only eat out around once per month or two now. Because it is such a treat, we really look forward to each outing and plan it in great detail. When you apply this to various different activities, you soon end up much better off AND happier. A double win!
So without further delay, here are some examples of what our name means to us.
Continue reading “A Way to Less……. What?”This month’s spending is a little different because the balance for our Africa trip was due. As you can see, this meant we shelled out over £6,000 on this alone! We’ll go into more detail on this below.
Continue reading “Monthly Spending – May 2019”This is another one of those aspects of life where we have challenged the ‘norms’ of society. We decided to forge our own way of doing things by keeping our finances separate.
The accepted norm for couples is to merge finances, particularly when you own a house together as we do. In our opinion this would have led to unnecessary conflicts between us. We are both naturally frugal and would have resented any spending by the other which we felt wasn’t necessary!
Continue reading “Why We Keep Our Finances Separate”In March we produced our first ever monthly spending report. Here is our second!
Despite going away this month we have managed to stay very close to our March spending amount. We’re really happy with this and hope we can keep up the £2000 per month average!
Continue reading “Monthly Spending – April 2019”Continue reading “What a Difference the Sun Makes”Ode to Sunshine
S.A.D vanisher
Negativity banisher
Energy creator and motivation shaker
Reinvigorates smiles and unused miles
Of muscles that wake as you shine
The slate is wiped clean
As faces beam at rays that rain down from the
Blue, cloudless sky, bringing twinkles to eyes
As collectively spirits are raised!
Miss Way