February 2015 Income/Expenses
It’s month end today which means time for this month’s Income/Expenses!
February is the month where all our big annual expenses come in as its the anniversary of us purchasing the house. I also registered my motorbike in February so annual expenses relating to that come in this month too. Fortunately the bike passed it’s first MOT, the mechanic commented on how high the mile counter was for such a small/cheap bike.. he couldn’t quite believe I’d used a £700 motorbike for the daily commute for almost 3 years! Low carb diet is continuing and total weight loss is now just over 14.5lb. First batch of homebrew is ready and shall be tested at the weekend no doubt.
Google analytics tells me we’ve had 2,300 pageviews from 584 users. A decrease from last month due to the shorter month and less frequent postings as I was pretty ill for a couple of weeks mid-Feb. That’s all cleared up now so onward into March!
On to the report:
Income
Salary: £1995.31
Pension Contributions: £506
Online surveys: £6
Ebay sales: £64.13
Total: £2571.44 (+0.43%)
Expenses
Mortgage/Bills: £718.01
Groceries: £245.61
Petrol (Gas): £8.55
Maintainance/DIY: £81.48
Eating out: £60.37
Healthcare: £0
Entertainment: £36.83
Other: £207.21
Total: £1358.06 (-6.8%)
Salary slightly down as HMRC desperately try to sort out my tax situation and start reclaiming the actual amount I owe them. I made some good money selling some old junk on Ebay which has helped boost the overall income amount. Expenses are down this month despite the large ‘Other’ expenditure which entirely related to motorbike costs for insurance, service, tax and MOT. This time next year I’ll have a serious think about whether to keep the bike or get rid of it now I have a car. I do tend to use the motorbike whenever I need to pop into town, saving on petrol and parking costs. Just need to work out whether this saving is greater than £200 a year. Grocery spending down again which is awesome. I’ve had a few people ask, so to clarify: that grocery spending includes all food, drink, alcohol and basic household items for 2 people. My partner instead pays for the petrol whenever we drive anywhere together.
A savings difference of £1213.38 which is 47%.
Networth
House Equity: £28,075.56
Cash in bank: £3,262.77
ISA Investments: £4,590.39
Pension: £18,085.27
Total Networth: £54,013.99 (+3.2%)
Another solid month with decent networth improvement. Fingers crossed next month will see us smashing the 50% savings rate barrier.
13 thoughts on “February 2015 Income/Expenses”
47% … thats awesome! keep up the great work. I don’t think my wife and I will even come close to that amount since we took a trip to Austin, TX last weekend but it was fun and was just what we needed. Keep that savings rate high and you’ll be sitting pretty in teh years to come!
Thats ADD, I’m still hoping to finally cross that 50% mark sometime soon. I know 47 is pretty good but there’s something mentally rewarding about knowing you save more then you spend!
That’s great savings rate! It’s good to see that your expenses has dropped by 6.8%, that shows that you’re definitely moving in the right direction.
Hi Tawcan,
Thanks. This month we had a big focus on lowering grocery spending and eating out way through the freezer stock food. Hopefully we can continue it in March.
Sounds like a great month for you – well done!
What homebrew did you go for in the end? I have a bitter conditioning at the moment, should be ready in a few weeks’ time.
Thanks Weenie!
Went for a basic bitter to start with. I think it may have gotten too cold though as it’s coming out pretty flat. Will probably just mix it with lemonade and have 80 pints of shandy instead!
If it’s still a little flat, maybe some more time is required? My last brew took 3 months to condition/carbonate properly but turned out to be an excellent beer in the end. As you say, the cold is making the current one slow in carbonating but I’m going to wait a few more weeks before I have my first taster (bottled just a month ago now.)
Still, shandy sounds good! :-)
Hi just found your blog keep up the good work. I am a lot older than you but we have a similar outlook. My husband and I have been retired for fifteen years he is 73 and I am 65, we were not able to retire any earlier but since we have retired we have been round the world, round Australia and of course Europe. We do not have a big pension but it is enough, at the moment we are spending three months in Tenerife, away from the Scottish winter.
We met a group last week and they were surprised how cheaply we could rent an apartment for three months. This group are going on a trip that is costing double what we paid for three months rent.
Life is what you make it or as my gran said a God helps those who help themselves.
Hello Moira,
Thank you for the words of support. All that time travelling sounds amazing and something I hope we can do as well. 15 years retired at 65 is pretty awesome! I think We’re looking at about the same sort of timescales.
Hey man, just wondering about your grocery budget. We are a couple with an 18 month old boy (he’s ravenous like a teenager!) and we spend about £230 per month including toiletries, household cleaning products, and all groceries. That’s including an organic meat and veg delivery which we have every week.
Let me know if you want some tips on how to cut the grocery budget further
Cheers
Hello M!
I think the grocery spend has been overly high for awhile now. We eat pretty much everything from fresh so I think a lot of the spend relates to drinks (booze and soft drinks). My first batch of homebrew was ready last week and so that should have an impact on the March booze spend.
Great job reducing your monthly expenses by 6.8%. You are definitely heading in the right direction. It will be interesting following along to see how your efforts made to continually decrease your expenses and increasing your savings rate has on your net-worth increase throughout 2015.
Thanks for sharing and congratulations on increasing your net worth by 3.4%.
The Money Spot
Thank you Money Spot!