March Update

I received a lovely surprise yesterday afternoon. When checking my bank balance, it seems that a company I contracted for last spring has given me around £1000 tax return. Thank you Past Tense Self! It may sound odd, but I never check my tax figures until right at the end of the financial year, as I consider it a potential savings account. Although I know the money is mine already, getting a random unexpected payment the next year always cheers me up and acts as additional motivation! It's an illogical, but positive psychological boost.

So altogether my net worth is now £17,250 and earnings per day (passive interest) is £1.20. I know it still isn't anywhere near my million pound goal, but when looking at my progress plotted on a chart over the last decade it's wonderful to see the debt total plunge and completely disappear and the assets total increasing on a gradually steeper curve. Considering all the redundancies, moving around the UK to different jobs and homes, living like a hermit and sacrificing everything to get this far... I'm pretty pleased with those figures.

New Beginnings

Well... one month and one pay day down and things are going pretty well. July's rent was already paid off, so I had the majority of this month's salary to put into savings. I put £900 away in a cash ISA and opened up a high interest savings account with HSBC. The ISA limit is £3600 per financial year, so I will need a good home for the rest of my savings.

I've had to make several changes to my lifestyle in order to save as much money as possible. Firstly, I sat down and drew up a list of income and expenditure for the year and then broke that down into a monthly list. The main thing to go was clothes shopping. I can easily blow £200 in one trip if I'm having a bad day - brings a smile to my face, but a makes a huge dent in my wallet! Next to go was online shopping for DVDs and books. Another £50-£100 gone! Takeaway meals are out too. I've dusted off all the cook books laying around the house and decided to teach myself to use an oven. It's about time I learnt to cook for myself anyway! Other than that, I'm now walking to and from work instead of getting a bus or taxi, taking my own lunch instead of visiting Starbuck's every day and money previously spent on after work drinking is now going into my savings account! I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself and it doesn't even feel like hard work!

I should point out the new 'motivational feature' I've added to this blog - the 'Fortunometer'. I find it helps having something visual to measure my ongoing progress, so I've created this little bar to track how much money I have saved and how far I have to go to reach my ultimate goal. Each month I will update the Fortunometer as a new post is added.

I'm sure my motivation won't last forever and there will be times when I'm tempted to go on a spending binge, but for now life is good, the sun is shining and that million isn't looking so scary after all!

Enjoy the summer and save hard!