I really hate dealing with finances. I’m a shit saver, my brother got that habit. I taught myself the spending habit which is fun, but not useful.
In the past few years Ive had a finance planning sheet. It ultimately is my way to check that my outgoings are not more than the incomings and what the difference is.
Since the turn of this year, I’ve yet to make one and on my holiday to Japan I spent at least a day in despair feeling like I was never going to see black again. It didn’t help that since November I’ve been on a bit of a spending spree and I didn’t keep myself in check.
Last night I ended up staying up till 2am building out a finance planning spreadsheet for myself. I’ve had one for a couple of years but since the new year kind of forgot. This morning I reviewed a plan I had considered making and started putting it into action. By doing this, I know how much crap i’m in and how long it’s going to take for me to get out of it.
I feel better because I know there is a way out.
I have made small but significant mindset changes to how I’m looking at this and I thought maybe by sharing it, it might spark ideas for others.
Current Setup
I wanted to do everything without creating new accounts or moving money around. It’s probably not the cheapest way to do things but I wanted to have consistency in my life.
I have:
- 3 sources of money
- HSBC – Income & DDs.
- Monzo – Personal spending money
- Savings account with some savings
- 3 sources of debt
- Amex – the spending spree card that makes me cry
- Virgin – 0% interest, with a new kitchen spend on it.
- HSBC Loan – money I borrowed for the kitchen refurb.
The plan I made today:
- Worked out the fastest way to zero my Amex. It involves using all my savings now and 3 months of aggressive payments to get it to zero. Once its there, I can review whether I want to keep the card around.
- Took my HSBC, Amex and Virgin cards out of my wallet and hidden them somewhere in the house. I’ve heard people making ice trays around their cards, which is pretty funny and a good idea. You need to wait for the ice to melt before being able to use the card. That isn’t for me anyway. If it being out fo the wallet will do.
- Worked out how long I have the 0% interest ( 20 months ) and worked out how much I needed to pay to zero that card. Set the monthly payment to said figure.
- Deleted all my old Monzo pots I was no longer using.
- Created a Monzo pot called Emergency Fund, set the goal to be 3 months salary and also set it so round up transactions go into this pot too.
- Used my financial spreadsheet to work out if I could afford to save 3 months salary in a year, and set the schedule payment to start in 3 months when I can do this.
- By doing this, I’m making my emergency fund part of my expected outgoings I have to account for.
- I also set the scheduled payments to go out on the 1st of the month.
- Create a Monzo pot called Car Maintenance. This is because every March my car needs a full service, MOT, road tax and insurance paying out. This is the first year of me owning my own car in a long while and I forgot to save up for it. Not next year!
- Worked out how much it costs me, added a bit on top and just rounded it up so I got a figure of £1200 a year.
- Put a fun garage picture on the pot.
- Scheduled payments of £100 to go into the pot every month.
- Set a lock time so I can’t access the money till 14th February 2020. This will stop me from just dipping into the savings because I can.
- In my financial spreadsheet, I added two new rows for the Emergency Fund and the Car Maintenance and set up a standing order from my HSBC incoming account to pay the Monzo account on the first of every month. Now I just won’t see that money.
Finally – and most importantly;
I have added a bunch of calendar reminders of key days.
- when things should be zeroed
- how much I’m meant to be paying
- reminders of how many more months of 0% I have left
It’s not a pretty plan, but somehow I see the light and can see that come 2021, I can be debt free again and have some savings too!
Now the tricky part – sticking to it. 💪🤑
Money is tricky business, at least it is for me. It means no over spending for 2 years and it means working my ass off to never be here again.
I get sucked in to new dresses and earrings all the time, but I’m writing this on here to serve as a reminder, the financial stress is not worth it.
Good luck future Jenny.
You can do it! I’ve been in financial mess before as well and I’ve done similar. I ended up using a web app called ‘You Need a Budget’ that sets rules for how you use your money, found it worked really well. Ended up also using syncforynab.com as well to sync my Monzo transactions without having to copy things manually (although copying manually WILL make you mindful of the money you’re spending).
Best of luck! You’ve got this!
I read this post from Jenny Wong on how she’s turning around her finances. Then I wrote a reply, but it got a bit long, so I decided to turn it into a blog post here instead:
https://blog.louiechristie.com/2019/05/14/get-rich-slow/
Looking forward to the the WordPress event tonight.