Monday Money #178 – 2022 Refresh

I’m doing things differently this year. I am still going to put out a post every Monday but without ALL the detail of my spending diary. It was getting boring!! I will endeavour to personally keep my spending diary, for my own budgeting purposes and understanding of my emotional spending. I highly recommend you do the same too.

What I will share with you every Monday are the BIG things that I have done that have saved money. Or that were fun from the previous week. A life diary with money saving added in as bonus, not unlike my book!

My book is a life memoir where I share all aspects of my life, good and not so good and how they relate to areas of personal finance that we all need to harness. From money memories to budgeting to debt. Family money saving, food money savings, money making through to wonderful areas of financial freedom such as savings, investing and pensions.

Thousands of people have bought it, want to be in on the money saving secrets too?

The first week of the month

Is the week where most of my bills hit, the biggest being the mortgage. A bill that I struggle sometimes to comprehend. I can afford it. But it is a lot of money and it does worry me sometimes to think about how much I owe on my mortgage. But then I remember that I won’t live in this house forever, I have a huge amount of equity and one day I’ll be able to go mortgage free. When I move to my cottage by the sea when the boys have flown the nest.

Re-Mortgaging

My mortgage fixed term ends in April and Santander emailed me about arranging a new deal for then. It was super easy to log into my account and assess the options for my re-mortgage. Staying with same mortgage company means no financial checks and my new mortgage deal was offered in a couple of minutes. DO ENSURE that you check when your fixed deal is due to end. If you let it slip onto the standard variable rate it will cost you mucho in extra interest (the standard variable interest rate is 3.5% vrs the 1.8% that I agreed in my new 3 year fixed term mortgage).

My new mortgage will cost £1266 a month rather than current £1236. This extra £30 comes from my interest rate for the three year deal being slightly higher than what I pay now, and Bank of England interest rates have just gone up.

It might be advisable for you to re-mortgage with another bank and save even more money. This will mean all the financial checks and your affordability are assessed, but as long as you have the mortgage multiples (around 4 times your salary) and a decent credit rating you might be able to save a good chunk of money. Check out Trussle who helped me hugely back in 2020 when I needed to re-mortgage and borrow a lot of extra money. They were amazing and I recommend them to everyone who needs to re-mortgage using a very decent independent broker. There is no fee for their service too. And one final thing this is my refer a friend link where we both get £150 of Amazon vouchers if your mortgage application is successful. Win-Win.

Go Through ALL your direct debits and cancel what you don’t need

I do this EVERY three months, and I did it again last week. Amazon Prime had sneaked back in. How? I do not know. Cancelled and £8 a month saved.

Can you Save on Your Regular Bills?

Are any of your regular bills up for renewal and can you save by switching? Maybe your mobile phone contract is up, or your broadband, or your car insurance or home insurance. Do a comparison to check to see if you can save money by switching to a different company, and do this switch via Top Cashback to get a cash back bonus AS WELL as cheaper monthly bills!

Regular Savings – Pay Yourself First

I fully believe that the basics of personal finance are really simple. If you can grasp these concepts you will feel so much more in control of your money. One of these concepts is to pay yourself first. In the first week of every month I transfer £100 into my stocks and shares ISA. I also transfer money into auto-savings accounts, Sprive for mortgage overpayment and Plum for auto-savings.

These savings are done as soon as I pay myself at the end of each month. Despite being self employed I do try to keep consistency with my salary and pay myself the same amount at the end of each month. I then pay myself first at the beginning of the new month and most of my bills then leave my account as well.

New Year, New Financial Goal

Hopefully if you are here on Mrs Mummypenny you have positive financial goals for 2022. I wrote this article to share some simple financial tips to make you hundred/thousands of pounds of savings or extra income in a year.

I spoke to Timi AKA Mr Money Jar last week about new year goals over on his Instagram channel. We did a live chat that was incredible! We spent time discussing new year goals for finances, working out of debt and working towards financial freedom. We talked about wider goals around living for each day, happiness and doing what we love. Another hugely inspirational chat.

Thank you for reading and I hope you like the new format with less of the diary, more of the core personal finance and life tips.

PS. I broke 30 mins on my 5km road running time, 29:53. New PB, loving it! Healthy wealth, body and mind is where its at.