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 insist!
Our total spend for the month was £1,928. We’re pretty happy to come in under our £2,000 target again despite a few big expenses this month.
Continue reading “Monthly Spending – June 2020”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 sacrifice to both employer and employees. I even added some Sankey Diagrams to demonstrate the difference it would make!
The information below shows what I submitted to my employer. Hopefully it will help explain the different pension contributions as well as giving you inspiration to request similar changes from your own employer!
Continue reading “The Benefit of Salary Sacrifice Pensions”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 falls into the entertainment category, with any large inclusions explained in detail.
Continue reading “Monthly Spending – May 2020”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!
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. Our emergency funds are in 100% cash and cover roughly 6 months of living costs. For more info on how our FI funds look at the moment see our 1 Year of Blogging post.
Our 100% equities allocation consists of index tracker funds with a global spread. This reduces the risk of being over-exposed to any particular country.
Continue reading “Why We’re 100% in Equities”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 and food was pre-paid!!
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 – April 2020”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 day!
Continue reading “Monthly Spending – March 2020”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 circumstances. But there will always be new avenues to explore in unprecedented times.
Continue reading “Seeing Opportunity in Adversity”In this article we want to give you an update on how the Coronavirus outbreak and the subsequent Government restrictions have affected all aspects of our lives. This is Part 1 of what we expect to be a series exploring our Coronavirus journey!
Continue reading “Our Coronavirus Journey – Part 1”Somehow, a whole year has passed since we started blogging on A Way to Less! We’ve learnt a lot in the last 12 months and our circumstances have changed quite significantly!
Despite everything that has changed, we continue to make progress towards our FIRE numbers and keep making small improvements to our overall lifestyle.
Continue reading “A Way to Less – One Year Blogging”