The Goal

In a way it is wonderful that I now have a goal that isn’t dictated by what my body does, it’s something 100% achievable, just like my education or career. Now I can’t promise I’m not someone who gets ahead of themselves, I most certainly am. I think most of the wedding was planned way before TH was The Fiancé or even The Boyfriend, so this ‘getting ahead of myself’ and finding out all of the house prices in all of the areas is just something I do.

I know how much the house types we like costs in all areas in Aberdeenshire, and have scouted out how quickly we can get into town from them. We already know that we’d much prefer a smaller house than a larger mortgage and have figured out roughly what we can borrow. Because we rent right now as well as save we know that the first month we have to just pay a mortgage and the buildings insurance we’ll feel like millionaires. So for a little while we’ll watch the pennies and then I really can let this dream loose. Poor TH won’t know what’s hit him when I finally get to nosey around houses.

This month marks the first of savings! I got out of the overdraft earlier this month and have put the rest of the savings into the savings jar along with some other money earned from ebay. The savings jar is then going along with the bit extra saved after paying off the overdraft into the ISA, and then from June onwards all money saved can go to live in the ISA instead of paying off some ridiculous debt from years ago! For someone who is incredibly bad at saving this is super exciting.

Ive been printing off mini statements and paying things in card-which goes totally against what most people say…but hear me out- so I can see where everything goes. I can see straight away that for our family of two, and a westie, we are spending too much on groceries. When I say groceries you know you can change that for cakes and such like as in one month we’ve spend £168 on food. This is so embarrassing. I cook everything from scratch, have a freezer that never empties and a good looking pantry. It’s just that the freezer food has lived there for ages, I forget to take it out or think up something good to cook with so we head to the shops after work and pick up some meat there.

One tiny saving grace is that I actually do the big shop at Lidl and last minute buys on the way home from co-op when they’ve reduced everything by half. I sometimes go to Asda too, but only if I’ve bought a voucher from their first which saves 5%, and I recently bought a couple of duvets from Tesco as it meant I’d get the 10p off a litre of fuel (which was over £5 of a saving).

So, there I am, a way ahead of myself but working very hard towards this goal of ours. It’s super exciting and I can’t wait to ‘show off’ our own home when we finally get there.