My Money Matters

A Little Bit of Background

I am starting this blog with an almost clean financial slate. The debts that I have, which I will go into more detail on later, are both very low interest and include my student loan. All this does not, however, mean that I have had a particularly clean financial past.

Looking back now on my financial history for the last five years, I can clearly see some serious mistakes that I have made. The biggest of these being;

1. My complete failure to save any money. Even while I was a student, I was fortunate enough to be employed in some reasonably high paying jobs. Added to this, my parents were kind enough to help me with some of my expenses and I also took full advantage of the student loan offered to me (£9,900 over three years). Despite all of this I came of university with no saving at all and the above mentioned student debt. Looking back on it, I spent whatever money I had as soon as it became available on whatever I felt like buying at the time. Moving on to mistake number 2 …
2. My inability to distinguish between ‘need’ and ‘want’. As I’ve already mentioned above I went through tree years of university buying whatever I felt like buying as soon as I had the money available, and sometimes when I didn’t. Not only does this now mean that I have three tone of ’stuff’ that I don’t need, but that seemed like a good idea at the time, it also meant that I was often left without money in the weeks leading up to my next loan instalment being due or when some unexpected expense occurred. Leading me on to mistake number 3 …
3. My unwillingness to make a even make a budget let alone stick to it. I hate to admit it, but until recently I had never had a budget. This was one of the main reasons for often running out of money and never having any money saved. I have more than seen the error of my ways, and a couple of weeks ago I sat down and made a provisional budget. This will need some tweaking over the next few weeks as I am in the process of house hunting in one of the most expensive cities in the world, but it is more that a step in the right direction, and I will keep you posted on my progress.
4. Accumulating significant levels of credit card debt - A few years ago a combination of numbers 2 & 3 led to me accumulating a significant amount of credit card debt. Though I have since managed to clear this debt it caused a lot of unnecessary stress and cost me financially.

Time for a little more about me, and to answer that all important question - what do you owe and what do you earn?

My Current Situation

Debts -

Currently my debts are as follows;

Income -

I am starting my first full-time job on the 1st November, and my annual salary will be £20,000. This means my monthly income will be £1,625 before tax, and around £1300 after tax. There will also be the possibility of receiving a 10% annual bonus. 

The Future

I have now mapped out a basic budget, and will be revising this over the coming weeks as my house hunt progresses. I  will be posting regular updates on my budget and will be also posting a series outlining the steps I took to create my budget, and some of the different methods that have been recommended.

I will also be taking time to look at savings and investment goals, and the best ways of achieving these. I have already made a very small start in this respect, with £500 in a Cash ISA, and £100 in a Instant Access Saving Account,  but my aim is to come up with a clear saving plan and some short and long term goals.

Finally, I will be looking at pension options. I haven’t received the contract through for my new job yet, so am still waiting to see what my company based pension options will be. Once I have this information, I will be in a position to make some more decisions.