RichardContents
Welcome to my latest monthly update. Each month I round-up a host of happenings here at “Frugality Magazine HQ”, firstly to help keep myself accountable, and secondly, I hope, as a source of inspiration for others.
July seems to have blown by in the blink of an eye, with not too much going on. My vegetable garden is virtually dead now, due to the weather we’ve been having. The damp June and early July has meant that the tomatoes and potatoes have all died of blight, while the produce in the greenhouse just hasn’t had enough warm weather to grow properly.
Normally by this point I’m harvesting peppers and tomatoes by the bucketload, but this year the baby pepper fruits are no bigger than your thumb nail. Unless we have a roastingly hot August, I’m not overly optimistic about the end result.
The upside is that my butternut squashes are romping away, and so far my first attempt at growing pumpkins is also looking quite hopeful. The plants almost seem to grow by the day, and this last weekend I found my very first baby pumpkin – around 4-5″ across. With a good few months of the growing season to go, I’m hopeful that by Halloween I should have an impressive pumpkin to carve!
Goals Update
The main purpose of these updates is to discuss my own goals for 2016, and how they’re developing (or not, as the case may be). So without further ado, what’s been happening with my goals this month?
Project 10K
The largest and most exciting goal for this year is to use a combination of frugality and increased income to save an additional £10,000 this year, to put towards a house deposit (ideally next year). I knew it was going to be a challenge that would more than stretch me – but I figured that if I want to buy my first house (which I do) then I really needed a big, exciting goal to help me save.
Last month I reported that the savings account sat at £4,200 – but what about now? Well this month I’m reasonably pleased to report that the account hit a monumental £5,000! Admittedly I’m now a month behind my goals, but it certainly is nice to see things developing.
One of the biggest things I did this year was to open a Help to Buy ISA. For those outside the UK, here’s the basic theory…
The government has instituted a concept to help people buy their first home. Due to the ridiculous prices of property in the UK the government is giving a 25% bonus on all money saved into one of these tax-free accounts.
In the first month you can invest up to £1,200 (meaning a £300 bonus). Each month thereafter you can pay in up to £200 (meaning a £50 bonus). While I’m obviously saving more than this on a monthly basis, it will help to push my savings even higher.
This month I obviously paid in the maximum opening bonus, and will continue to contribute the maximum £200 per a month from now on. The remainder of my savings will go into my standard savings account.
Right now, to be on target, my total savings balance should be £5,833, so I’m a little way behind. However I have a number of plans to help me make up the shortfall over the next few months.
Owed Money: Firstly I’m owed about £600 from friends and I am chasing them to collect this. While there’s no desperate hurry, I am keen to start the ball rolling to help make up the shortfall.
Affiliate Commissions: At present I have several hundred dollars in unpaid affiliate commissions, scattered across a range of accounts. I intend to keep growing this over the next few months, before requesting a pay-out around October.
Matched Betting: I’ve been reading a lot recently about the concept of “matched betting” as a way to make some extra cash. I have signed up for a course on it, to learn all I can, and have opened a new bank account to start investing with. In August I hope to take my first few tentative steps, and raise an extra few hundred pounds.
As you can see, there is every reason to be hopeful. There are a range of elements which *should* help me to start closing that gap, with the aim of hitting that magic £10,000 in the next 5 months.
New Blog
Earlier this year I launched a new blog to grow my income. Finally, after some months of creating content, I’m starting to see some growth. Traffic increased by around 16% in July, and I expect that to keep increasing.
My Pinterest followers are also starting to grow at a more rapid rate, and I just tipped over 500 followers on an account I only started a few months ago.
As previously mentioned, I don’t expect to make any money off this site till later on in the year. The goal right now is to establish rankings and traffic, so that when the Christmas rush starts I can then start to add in my affiliate links.
Right now, though, things are moving in the right direction, albeit slightly slower than I had hoped.
Start a New Blog
Alongside this site, I have also been working on launching a second blog – to help me spread my risk. I now have 13 blog posts written, with another 5 in the pipeline. I intend that these will be finished in the next week or two.
By the time the next goals update appears at the end of August I hope that I will have launched this brand new site, and will be working hard between now and Christmas to establish it (and increase my income as a result).
I’ll be talking more about my process for launching a new (profitable) blog in the next few months so keep your eyes peeled for my tips.
Top Posts
Each month I round up all the most popular content that I shared on my Twitter and Pinterest accounts. The intention is to highlight to you the articles that got the most engagement from my followers.
If you’re on the journey to financial freedom then I hope there is much you can learn from the following top articles shared during July:
- 10 Questions to Ask Yourself About Any Purchase
- 5 Money Saving Challenges You Can Start Today
- How I Paid Off $7,000 of Debt in One Month
- Why Being Frugal is Pointless Unless You Crush Your Mortgage
- How to Keep Yourself Busy Without Spending Money
- 14 Ways to Use Up and Preserve Fresh Raspberries
- How One Man Lives in His Truck to Turbocharge His Savings
- 6 Insanely Easy Ways To Save $100 This Week
- How Born Spenders Can Become Born-Again Savers
- How to Get Out of a Bad Financial Situation
That’s it for this month. I’ll see you at the end of August to catch up once again on how my goals are progressing, and whether I’ve managed to launch that new blog of mine 🙂
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