Our sealed pot - meet Fillmore!

This is 'Fillmore' our campervan moneybox!  He's named after the VW campervan in the film Cars which we all love.

I first heard the idea of a sealed pot on the MoneySavingExpert site but it never appealed to me as a way of saving.  Then I started reading SavingForTravel's blog and saw her challenge about putting money away for something special and I thought again about seeing if we could incorporate it into our savings for next year.

I decided that I wanted to keep it separate to the other savings plans we had.  I wanted it to be for something we'd all enjoy and something we might not feel we could splurge on when we're on the road. After a bit of thought we decided we'd all quite like to try kayaking round the coast of Cornwall.  I love the idea of doing adventurous activities, but really they have to involve no heights as James and M are really scared of that kind of thing!

I looked into how much something like that might cost and it looks to be around £120 at least for the four of us.  I'll add some links to the bottom of this post of websites I've found, it needs a little bit more research done, but I have to say I am very excited about the idea of it all.  Spending that much money for a morning or afternoon's activity will certainly not be happening often, if at all, but what a perfect opportunity to give these activities a go.

So, Fillmore gets all our change, any money we find on the ground (roadkill!!), any money that I might have budgeted to spend and not needed to, any money I find in pockets, you get the idea.  I'll open him up in December and see how close we are to the total we need.  He's quite heavy already and I know there are some paper bits in there too, but I have resisted so far in counting it all up!

(just so I don't lose the links I shall shove 'em here!)

Sea Kayaking Cornwall
Cornish Coast Adventures
West Cornwall Adventure

April goal round-up

We're not quite at the end of the month, but today is our last pay day so number crunching day it is!

• We have 11 months, 2 weeks and 5 days until we go!

• I have cleared 9 items (9!!!!!) from the house in April with a total amount made of £70.12.  I also managed to get more stuff on ebay last week and most have bids but I'll add those in to next months totals.  So:  9/1000 and £70.12/£1000.  ;o)  Quite a way to go still!

• Overall at the beginning of April we had £673 saved up and at the end we have £1212 so we nearly doubled our money!

I'm not sure how figures will add up next month.  We've had a minor setback in that I no longer have my job at my dad's shop (long story!).  It wasn't a lot of money coming in but was enough to add up to a decent amount over a year and it's gone now so I need to think about alternative income and ramp up any online money making I can.

I am not mentioning the ticker counting my weight loss ;o)  Maybe next month I can report some good there!

10% woohoo!!!!

Today we have reached 10% of our savings goal as per our ticker on the side of the page.  Our rough target is £10,000 and today we went past £1000  in our savings account.  Those people who know will know this is no mean feat for us!  We are people who live each day as it comes and we are not savers at all.  We do have to be for the next year though.

(A thousand pounds?  It's not worth it.  I won't save it.  I'll go the royal mint and print my own money.  Humph!)   (Sorry I've got no head thousand pound sketch if you've never heard of it!  A daft kids programme that is a bit like marmite ;)

In order to start bumping up this total I need to be getting going on removing and selling some of the rubbish in this house.  It needs to be gone anyway for us to leave.  I'm hoping we may be able to store some of our precious things with my parents and also J's dad, but really I want this to be a few boxes not hoards!!   We've been talking with the kids lots about thinking carefully about purchases they might make as we'll need to either get rid of them or store them next year so no point buying huge teddies for example (not looking at anyone here dear daughter!)  It's making me think much more about what I bring into the house too.  But not bringing stuff in is just one side of it, I need to get stuff out!  I was thinking that what would be a good challenge is to sell 1000 things.  In my head this sounds great, 1000 things at say an average of £1 each (my house if full of crud!!) is another £1000.  But then I realised I'd need to sell 100 things a month for the next 10 months - arrrrghhh!  Doesn't sound quite so doable now!  Anyway, I made a start listing some things on a home ed list and hopefully will sell some things there and I stuck a grand total of 3 things on ebay.  Ugh I hate selling on ebay!!!  Needs must though :)

How are we doing?

I think we're doing quite well actually.  We're getting very close to having our first £1000 saved up (not quite there, but I can see it in the near future!) which is really quite a landmark for us as we're not really big savers at all.  I've been doing lots of number crunching of our finances and I'm pretty certain we can do a trip of some sort next year.  If I know we can save for a basic budget trip without accounting for overtime and extra income from selling stuff in the house then I know we can do it so that is a great feeling.

We've started talking about the plan with some friends, all of whom (I think) seem to think it's a good idea (phew!).  I'm sure we'll come across people who don't though.  The kids are very excited, which is a double edged sword really.  I want them to be excited, but there is always that worry I am building them up for a fall.  A is constantly asking what toys she can take with her and talking about how she'll get a camper when she's older and travel as well.

Another thing that is ramping up the excitement is that we went to a local campervan dealer at the weekend to look round some bigger vans and to see how the configuration I liked looks like in real life.  There were some ginormous vans there and all really out of our price range but we did see two that had the design we want with a double cab over the driver for M, a double in the middle for J and I, and a single at the back for A.  They are really getting too old to ask them to share and they do want their own space.  I hope we can eventually find a van like this, but I know it might be one of the areas we'll need to compromise on.  I guess it will depend on what is available at the time.

New Tickers

I've set up some new tickers on the side of the blog to track our progress.  I've taken off the one aiming to save for the campervan as i'm not sure how we'll attack that goal yet and it may be that we'll need to trade in our car eventually to get one.  At the moment, really, all money is going in one pot anyway so it shouldn't make too much difference.  Each 'day on the road' equates to £30, we'll see what we can do!

I've also set up a weight loss ticker, I am about 2 stone overweight at the moment, which I hate to admit.  I managed to get myself to just over 'normal weight range' a couple of years ago, but it has gone on steadily since then.  I'd love to get back to the top end of 'normal' by the time we go away.