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”As we keep saying on this blog, our general approach in life is to CHALLENGE EVERYTHING!
Because of this, the topic of engagements (and more widely, marriage) is one that immediately makes me feel unwell. The whole process is drowning in so many ‘customs’ and expected behaviours . Many of these come with a large financial impact which really challenge my frugal tendencies!
Something that should be a celebration of your love for each other can easily become an incredibly stressful time. You can find yourself constantly trying to please anyone who might be offended!
That is why I wanted to write about my experience proposing to Miss Way. Hopefully this helps others in a similar situation.
I was determined to make our engagement a special occasion, while still meeting our frugal habits. By following a few simple steps, I think I managed that!
Continue reading “A Frugal Engagement”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”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”The 4% rule was created based on historical market returns data. Simply put, it showed that a typical retiree could withdraw 4% of their portfolio while keeping the initial pot intact. The withdrawn amount would increase by inflation each year.
The rule came about from work by Bengen and later, the Trinity study. Both were based on the same data.
This rule of thumb has been widely adopted in the FIRE movement as a way of calculating the required pot to fund early retirement. It is the basis of Mr Money Mustache’s famous article The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement
There have recently been a lot of articles criticising the 4% rule. I still think this rule provides a great initial estimate for anyone considering FIRE. That’s why I wanted to create an article giving the other side of the argument.
Continue reading “In Defence of the 4% Rule”This is the first time we’ve participated in one of SavingNinja‘s Thought Experiment posts so we’ll add a little explanation.
This is an idea to get bloggers to immediately respond to a question and all post their answers on their blogs. You have to write the first thing you think of and can’t pre-plan or do any major editing.
We’re joining in at Thought Experiment 5 because we only recently started our blog! If you want to see previous versions see SavingNinja’s archives.
Continue reading “Thought Experiment 5”