November 2015 Income/Expenses
It’s payday today which means time for this month’s 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.
What a month November 2015 has been! Certainly one I’ll remember for the rest of my life as I look back on the cold, wet and windy Saturday morning that I got engaged! Thank you to everyone who has their congratulations and well wishes. Since then things have been moving at a lightening pace. We’ve already seen several possible venues, attending wedding fairs, started costing things up and listened to about a million sales pitches trying to push everything from over-priced flowers to food we’ve never heard of. I think I’ve found a new enemy in the form of wedding fairs which are little more than a room full of sales people offering tiny samples to get your guard down.
Also of note is my new side-income of matched betting. I’ve been hitting this hard for the past month and steadily reinvesting all the profits to help build up a sizeable float and allow me to access more of the opportunities. So far I haven’t withdrawn any cash yet so the income from this is still strictly 0, however I am up over £1100 spread across the various online accounts and will probably start withdrawing some from next month.
Google Analytics tells me we’ve had 6,700 pageviews from 1,700 users. 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
I’ve purposely left out details of the engagement ring spending for obvious reasons.
On to the report:
Income
Salary: £1899.58
Pension Contributions: £506
Total: £2.405.58 (-10.1%)
Expenses
Mortgage/Bills: £718
Groceries: £121.08
Petrol (Gas): £42.82
Maintainance/DIY: £2.25
Eating out: £183.96
Healthcare: £0
Entertainment: £63.14
Other: £65.99
Total: £ 1,197.24 (+6.9%)
Ouch! That eating out expense, and that’s only my half of the month’s cost! Rather annoyingly for the finances; people keep inviting us out for engagement meals & drinks ;) Overall though not a bad month considering the number of times we’ve gone out.
A savings difference of £1,208.34 which is 50.2%!
Networth
House Equity: £34,121.56
Cash in bank: £3,005.43
ISA Investments: £6,338.30
Pension 1: £16,535.22
Pension 2: £5,051
Total Networth: £65,051.51 (-0.18%)
A decrease?! Unacceptable! Inexcusable! There shall be rioting in the streets! I jest, of course, this is entirely due to the expense of the engagement ring which has come out of a combination of shares, cash and house equity funds.
I’ve not yet decided how (or whether) to include future wedding fund savings in networth reports. Currently leaning towards having it ring-fenced in a separate account and not counting towards total networth, what do you guys think?
10 thoughts on “November 2015 Income/Expenses”
Hey Guy, personally I would call wedding fund savings: spending (deferred). But anything that isn’t spent from the budget after the wedding would become savings.
Hope you are having fun with the planning. I loved getting married but having to deal with the smarmy salespeople was an experience I won’t repeat. I started carrying a hip flask and taking a shot whenever anyone said ‘happiest day of your life’, while trying to sell something overpriced that I’d never heard of and would not have enriched my life at all. Fun times.
Hope it all goes well!
Thanks Emma, So you’d include it as a column in the Expenses section and track it that way?
Oh, the flask, why didn’t I think of that when I went through the wedding process myself? Great idea, would help to cope with the salespeople :)
Hmm, my only concern is that it would then lead to a massive dent in the Networth tracking and not accurately portray the situation.
As you include ‘cash in the bank’ as part of your networth, I’d say that money you are putting aside for your wedding could just be classed as ‘wedding fund’ – temporary savings/deferred expenses to be either used up entirely or if there’s any left over, to be put towards other savings/investments.
Great work on your matched betting – I’m enjoying following your progress on this!
Still hit over 50%!! Keep up the great work. The wedding ring and subsequent wedding will hopefully all be one time expenses so don’t fret too much about incorporating it into reports. Make it as simple as possible. Biggest thing is to just try to keep the spending under control and do not take on debt to pay for it. Over the past 2 years my wife and I got married and went to 17 others. The two things we remember most is food and dancing. The memory of food is short lived until the next wedding but the dancing/fun is remembered forever. Get a good DJ and you will be fine! Have fun with planning!
ADD
There’s not chance of us going into debt for it, we’ve both been saving for awhile anyway and I’m sure we’d have more than enough by wedding time which is looking to be 2017 anyway!
Hi Guy,
Even with the wedding ring “expense” a saving rate of over 50% is still a great achievement – you should be proud to be able to maintain it!
I am with others above – I would include it in your net worth, but I would have a separate line item for it – you know you are likely to spend most of it, and you will see a dip in your net worth after it, but as a (very hopefully!) one off activity it will be a small blip on the longer road. And please excuse my sense of humour :)
London Rob
Nice savings rate! Im determined to up it aggressively as it seems like tough times is coming.
Ever the optimist!