August 2015 Income/Expenses

August 2015 Income/Expenses

Last month’s report is slightly late as I’ve just returned from a fantastic trip away to visit family in France. The weather was beautiful and the wine less than £2 a bottle! we stayed in one of my parent’s gites with a private pool right outside. Amazing what you can buy in another country for a price which wouldnt even get you a studio flat here in the South East.

Poolhouse

 

On to the Income/Expenses!

I think it’s important to keep track of your income/expenses every month as it allows you to spot trends and areas for improvement. I find it really useful to track the spending changes each month, and really motivating to see the networth improvements. Sometimes it can seem like financial independence is so far away, but by watching your networth steadily increasing you’ll know you will reach that point eventually. I’ve created a new page to keep track of total networth, you can find it here.

August was a chilled out month for me. Work ticked along nicely and I was finally able to calculate my entire year’s worth of income/expenses to then do some pretty cool number modelling on. The main advantage to doing this is that it can begin to give you an idea of what sort of income you’d need in retirement and help ensure you make a stable plan to reach that level. My current target retirement age based off of last year’s expenses is a relatively young 47, although as TFS pointed out; this could well be a ‘worst case’ scenario.

Google Analytics tells me we’ve had 10,850 pageviews from 2700 users. This is the first month we’ve broken through the 10k views so a big thank you to everyone who’s been following and a hello to anyone new. I’ve also joined the cool kids and started a Twitter account to post updates and a few random thoughts. Please feel free to ‘add me’ or whatever the Twitter equivalent is. I’m @EarlyRetireGuy

On to the report:

Income

Salary: £2049.58

Pension Contributions: £506

Lottery win: £2.90

Total: £2558.48 (-2.4%)

Expenses

Mortgage/Bills: £719.68

Groceries: £199.15

Petrol (Gas):  £9.96

Maintainance/DIY: £3.96

Eating out: £61.43

Healthcare: £0

Entertainment: £127.46

Other: £155.94

Total: £1277.58 (-8.8%)

A pretty solid reduction in groceries as past of the month we were abroad and so that spending won’t show up until the credit card (Halifax Clarity, 0 foreign exchange costs) gets calculated next month. A bit of a boost in Entertainment (new harddrive) and Other for some of the holiday expenses. Overall though, a decent reduction in expenses compared to last month.

A savings difference of £1280.90 which is 50%!

 

Networth

Note* I’ve had to take these figures as they stand currently on Sept 7th.

House Equity:  £32,352.60

Cash in bank: £3,586.79

ISA Investments: £5,401.84

Pension 1: £16,062.79

Pension 2: £3,851.76

Total Networth: £61,255.78 (+1.5%)

While taking a hit on the ISA and Pensions like most other financial bloggers out there, it looks like the mortgage overpayments and increased house equity has saved the Networth day resulting in a continued increase overall.

8 thoughts on “August 2015 Income/Expenses

  1. I’m with you all the way on the spending tracking aspect. It’s like trying to plug a leak without knowing where the hole is otherwise. I identifed some gaping holes last month after we ended up spending nearly £40 on general rubbish from our local shop across the road so it’s lock-down on the snacks for now.

    Some great looking figures again this month and it’s good to see the networth remain buyont depsite the market tumble. I notice your petrol costs are crazy low, I take it you walk/bike to work? That makes me very jealous!

    1. Hello Fibrarian, it’s interesting to see how quickly small but regular expenses add up.

      I’m very fortune to have a job which provides a car and covers all business travel expenses so the only petrol I need to buy is for my little 125 motorbike that I use when heading into town occasionally. It costs less than £12 for a full tank and does 300km on that so keeps the cost very low. Plus you never need to pay for parking :D

  2. That place you stayed at looks gorgeous!

    Well done on a fabulous 50% savings rate and congrats on the lotto win! I’ve not won in a while – it must be my turn soon!

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