BritishBibliophile Wants A House

A question about : BritishBibliophile Wants A House

My name is BritishBibliophile and I'm addicted to books saving to buy a house.

My finances have been up and down over the years, I was one of the lucky ones that graduated from university just as the economy tanked. Worked in a supermarket for 18 months while I paid off a Career Development Loan, managed to repay and save at the same time so I paid the loan off about halfway through the repayment schedule. Then left the supermarket to start a business, got a small business loan, but that failed too. Luckily my parents loaned me the money to pay back the business loan and I then paid them back.

Nowadays I have a not-well-paid job and live in the most expensive city in England. BUT if it was easy it would be boring and I like the occasional challenge

I have a savings plan that I've been operating for the past year and is working well for me;
- Save minimum of Ј100 (very minimum, it tends to exceed it) from my pay each month.
- Do the Tilly Tidy thing I saw on the MFW board, in my case I can't move pennies as the bank won't let me. So instead I round down my current account to the nearest 5 or 10 and shuffle the money in to the savings.
- Penny jar, 5 penny jar, and saving up 20 pence pieces too.
- Posting on Bubblews and Ciao. I have my own website (link in my profile) where my blog posts include book reviews, which I'm then adapting for Ciao along with other reviews when I have the energy. Bubblews is fairly self-explanatory, I just post whatever.
- eBook sales, I launched a Kindle eBook series (30 Women in History, Volumes 1 & 2) this year and the pennies that Amazon give me get swept straight in to savings.
- Selling other bits and pieces when I have clear outs.

So, as of the start of this diary on 1st September I have a minimum of Ј5636.78 in savings. That's a minimum as I've got extra in an every day saver, that will be going towards moving if I get a new job elsewhere, so not part of the deposit savings but could be in the future.

Right, let's hope this motivates me to keep on going!

Best answers:

• Monthly & Annual Totals
  Going to be updating this bit at the end of each month with how much I managed to save during the month, hopefully give me a better idea of what I'm doing!
  September 2014 - Ј112.98
  October 2014 - Ј169.03
  November 2014 - Ј154.56
  December 2014 - Ј32.51
  Grand Total: - Ј469.08 (This total is from when this diary started, not sure how much I saved before that XD)
  January 2015 - Ј164.93
• Your nickname is awesome And you sound awesome, too.
  Best of luck.
• Thank you blue_mango, less sure about the awesome part but I do love my username, although my Gentleman Caller is more of a bibliophile than I am XD
  I've got a week off work coming up so I need to start planning the best way to use it! Was going to take the shop to Camden Market but I won't be ready in time so it will have to wait until November.
  Going to restock the freezer with home cooked goodies, including a paprika chicken recipe I tried last weekend and really enjoyed. Food plan for next week is almost completed, just need to make the actual shopping list for it. I can also see about getting some more beef mince for the freezer as I want to do bolognese, lasagne and chili. Plus if I do lasagne then I'll have some cheddar left over to use for a cheese scone attempt
  Took my coats to the dry cleaners yesterday, not very MSE but it's the first time in 3 years that they've been cleaned and they should last me another 3 years if I'm lucky. Money hasn't been taken out of my account yet but when it does I'll be able to tidy some in to the savings.
  Need to go shopping this weekend as it's my Eldest Little Sister's birthday next week, no idea what to get her so I'm going to wander around looking in shops before giving up and going home to find something on Amazon but at least I'll be able to get the birthday card sorted.
  Finishing this week at the moment with Ј3.50 from the grocery budget BUT I need to post a birthday card to the USA tomorrow so that will use some of it.
  Also must remember to go to the library after work to get a cookery book or two so I can get some more ideas for freezable stuff.
• Dry cleaning money was taken out so tidied Ј4.19 in to the savings
• Yesterday ended up being an expensive day as I had to go birthday shopping for one of my sisters. Very difficult to buy for her as she loves One Direction, but I refuse to spend my money funding that pile of drivel. In the end I managed to find some jewellery and rounded it off with some posh chocolate from Hotel Chocolat.
  Was very tempted to buy some chocolate from there for myself as it's always lovely, but I stopped myself as it's going to be an expensive month anyway without me buying anything else.
  Managed to save a tiny bit of money by using my John Lewis Tea & Cake voucher to get a cheese scone and a pot of tea while I read my book, so no Caffe Nero visit for me
• Where about do you want to buy a house? And how many bedrooms? Just curious
• The "where" is a bit up in the air at the moment, if all goes well with Gentleman Caller then we'd be living together but our families are in 2 different counties, my parents still have children living at home and will do for at least the next 4 or 5 years, but would like to sell up, Gentleman Caller's parents want to sell up too but don't necessarily want to move too far due to circumstances.
  So basically, "somewhere in the south-east, but not bloody London" is the plan at the moment, I'm not worrying about the "where" until I'm closer to the Ј15k mark XD I'd like 3 bedrooms as I'd like a couple of children, Gentleman Caller doesn't really want children at the moment but does want somewhere to keep his multitude of books.
  So, who knows? I want to save up more and see how things go with Gentleman Caller before I start thinking about it properly, right now it's all just a big castle in the air
• Ј1.05 TT to the savings! Also got Ј5.50 left over from grocery budget from this week but this will probably go in the Christmas fund envelope.
  Off work next week so planning everything I need to cook for the freezer.
• Forgot that I moved Ј1.31 to the savings last week. Not sure what my total is as I also didn't note how much I moved at the beginning of the month XD Will sort that out this evening.
  So far for October I've moved Ј122.26 in to the savings, which has come out of my wages. Will no doubt move a fair bit more in the coming weeks as I already took cash out for the Christmas envelope, but I've got quite a few travel costs again this month, so we'll see how I fit saving around that.
  New total: Ј5767.32
  This month I really need to start photographing and eBaying my old beads. I used to make jewellery but I just don't have time, plus the market is saturated, so I might as well see if I can get a few extra pennies from destashing.
• Sounds as if it's all going well! You mentioned creating and selling eBooks through Amazon, does that bring in much at all?
  It's something that I have considered in the past yet was unsure of how much money it would yield.
  I like the idea of the rounding the money to the nearest 5/10. Lloyds TSB offers an automatic service that is similar, called Save The Change. It rounds up all purchases to the nearest pound or Ј10, depending on the purchase and moves the difference into my savings account.
• Thank you JWIOW Let me put it this way, last month I earned a grand total of...14 pence! XD
  I sell my books for 99 cents/Ј1.02 (99 pence + VAT automatically added) partly because they're quite small books and partly because I like them to be accessible to a lot of people as they're non-fiction and about women in history. Therefore I only get 35% of the money paid to me, if I pushed the price up to something like Ј3 then I think I get 60% of the money. I just haven't written a big enough book yet XD
  It's also very difficult to market books, everyone and their mother now tries self-publishing so it's difficult to get noticed. Sadly there are also so many terrible books with major spelling and grammar mistakes that it puts a lot of potential customers off buying anything self-published.
  If all you've got to lose is some spare time then give it a try. In my case I knew I had enough material for a minimum of 3 books and since then I've also scribbled down ideas for various off-shoots, so in total I think I have the potential for around 10 - 15 books. I did it because I missed doing research (my degree was very research-focused, my job sadly isn't) and I've always wanted to be published, so self-publishing gets me halfway there.
  You can certainly give it a shot, but don't expect to make a living from it XD
• Ј2.92 TT.
  Got Ј3 in Ciao, hopefully I can get enough this month to apply for a payout for next month.
  Got quite a lot of loose change to bag up, but I've applied for a Camden Market stall for a day in November to take the shop part of the website, and I'll need some change for that, so I'll have to hold off on bagging and adding popping in the savings until I find out if I've got a space.
• Ј2.28 TT, weekend was a bit on the expensive side but worth it for the lovely day out with the Gentleman Caller
• Got some more money to TT but can't actually move it. Got approval to take the shop part of my website to Camden Market Going to be going in the 2nd week of November, but that now means I have a LOT of stuff to buy between now and then. A few months ago my parents offered to loan me some money towards things, but I declined as I knew I could use my "moving savings" (i.e. not the house deposit stuff) to cover it.
  Thankfully I've had a few sales come in over the weekend, along with my Bubblews money coming in last week, so my Paypal balance can cover some bits, especially if I'm clever with my eBay purchases.
  It's a big wrench seeing my moving savings decrease, but I needed to try Camden with my shop, and this is the best time to do it as people start to think towards Christmas. Plus a lot of the costs are one-offs that, once done, won't be needed again, I just need to do more markets in 2015 to get the most use out of everything.
  Switched on my gas heater this evening to burn off more dust and dry my jeans, housemates are out this evening so I'm taking advantage to do a big lot of laundry, but my jeans desperately needed washing and I need to wear them tomorrow so they're on a clothes horse in front of the heater, and I'm in the room to make sure nothing falls over and catches fire
  Gentleman Caller is off work this week. I already miss him but he's coming round on Wednesday and offered to take me out to dinner so that'll be nice.
  I've had an opportunity to apply for a career progression thing at work but I've decided not to go for it. Instead I've found several jobs closer to my parents that I'm going to apply for instead. The career progression thing would look good on my CV, but I just can't stand the thought of still being in London in 6 months time. I really need to start taking the idea of moving back out seriously, and that means job hunting outside again.
  Homemade toad in the hole for dinner, with enough leftover for dinner tomorrow night too
• Friday will be pay day so had a little nosy at the bank account and managed to move Ј37.70 in to the savings Made a few more purchases for the Camden stall at the weekend (including a big tarpaulin to keep the rain off my head) but that's going to be it until next weekend when I'll get a few baskets for displaying my badges. Then it's a case of packing everything up and counting stock and praying people buy from me.
  Started making a meal plan for November, only my second time doing a monthly meal plan but it worked pretty well in October so hopefully it'll do the job this month too.
  New savings total is Ј5810.12 so I will definitely hit the Ј6000 mark in December, and can then focus on pushing things forward in the New Year
• Pay day today! Will do the main money shuffling tomorrow but checked my account this morning and also found that I got Ј2.10 from Amazon.co.uk and Ј0.14 from Amazon.com, that would be the sales from eBook volume 2, shuffled those in to the savings.
  Grand total of October savings - Ј169.03!
• Money moves done! Rent paid, food money taken out plus extra to go towards Christmas and both house deposit savings and potential moving savings topped up (been using the moving savings for some shop stuff recently so it's looking sadly depleted).
  Ј132.80 added to house savings.
  New total = Ј5945.16
  If I'm very careful and very smart then I might actually hit Ј6000 before the end of the month, but it's going to be another month of frequent travel (or hopefully frequent, going back to my parents home for my birthday and I've been applying for jobs so I hope I get an interview somewhere) so we'll see!
• Ј1.42 TT in to the house deposit.
  New total is Ј5946.58
  Ј53.42 to go until I hit the Ј6000 mark.
  Sold one of the t-shirts I'll be taking to Camden to a colleague but the money will be going in my Christmas envelope.
  Just got to get some energy saving lightbulbs and some fairylights and then I'm all ready for Camden, apart from packing everything up and sorting out a stock spread sheet, and worrying that it'll pour with rain and no one will want to buy anything XD
• Ј2.71 TT.
  New total - Ј5949.29
  Ј50.71 until I hit Ј6000!
  If I stick to the NSD then I might just scrape through! I've got the cash for food shopping on Friday, and then I've got some left over from this week for a little day out to Caffe Nero on Saturday (been promising myself a morning of blog work for 2 weeks now), so as long as I stick to cash rather than using my card I might make it! I get paid next Friday, so by this time next week I should know one way or the other...