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Saving up for our 5% house deposit – Making life easy by forecasting for payments
A few years ago I mentioned that we had both started saving in a help to buy ISA. We wanted to buy a house local to us, and stop renting the house that we lived in as it was cold and damp. We were planing on putting up with it until we saved enough to buy, saving our house deposit quickly. But the year after I wrote about it, Spike started school and we didn’t want to put her through breakfast and after school club daily. So we moved to Lancaster, to be closer to work and have a better work-life balance. Clearing our debts and saving more When we…
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Buying second hand – Being environmentally friendly, money conscious and giving a helping hand
If you’ve got children you won’t be surprised with the fact that they grow out of everything in a blink of an eye. Spike is a slow grower and when she turned 5 she was still in mostly 3-4 or 4-5 year clothing. Then she shot up another 5cms and I was pilling up the clothes that didn’t fit. Thankfully I’ve found something that helps the wallet when these growth spurts happen… buying second hand clothes. Needing a whole new wardrobe after a growth spurt As I put clothes to the side that she was growing out of, the drawers started to thin out. With my furlough wages I couldn’t…
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Managing money and starting to save – top tips for forecasting your spend and stop living month by month
If you had mentioned the idea of doing a post about money on my blog just a couple of years ago, I probably would have laughed in your face. Me and T have never been overly careful with money. We lived month by month and had credit cards and store cards. A few years ago, just after we had Spike in fact, we started talking about saving for a house. But it seemed so unrealistic at the time. Managing money wasn’t even in our vocabulary! Our situation when we started saving Renting our house, paying off old debt and spending more than we made. They are all traps that get…
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Gift guide for a 5 year old – What we’re treating Spike to and what she is wishing for this year
It’s May, which in our family means lots of birthdays. There are so many that when I found out I was due with Spike in the middle of the month, I thought there was no chance she wouldn’t share a birthday. She kept us waiting though and was born right at the end of the month. The day after her cousin’s birthday! Gift buying amid lockdown This year I started her birthday shopping early as I was worried that lockdown would affect shops delivering. So she hadn’t even started asking for things. Starting with the shopping in March meant I could gather interest in toys without her even questioning…
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Jumping into action – kickstarting our house savings with a Help to Buy ISA
In January I wrote a post about the year ahead and things I wanted from it. In that post, I mentioned I had started a Help to Buy ISA and I wanted to write more about what that means for those who may not know. Essentially, the most important thing when it comes to buying out own home is money. We could save a tiny bit each month ourselves, buy a run down terrace house and spend the net ten years rebuilding it. But I would probably hate the work involved and it would cost loads. I know what state our previous rental was in, and the current one isn’t…
