What Should I do with my Money?

This isn’t about to be a lecture on how to make money, how to save money or what bank accounts are best places to earn the best interest with investment opportunities. This post is open to interpretation and welcomes commments or ideas on the finer details. “What should I do with my money?” is a question that we should all be asking ourselves. I haven’t mastered the whole concept, this is not the gospel, but I wanted to give you a brief overview of what I currently do with my money when I get it.

A combination of words and pictures help you read this post. I will add in the full flow chart at the bottom.

The Last Day of the Month

I’ll begin at the end… of the month. This is quite a common day for the corporate payroll to complete, for people to celebrate the strange numbers that they see in their bank account. I get paid from my day job on the last working day of each month. It’s pretty straight forward. Do work, get money. It’s a simple life.

On the last working day of the month the money that I’ve worked so hard for during the past four weeks gets paid to my Lloyds current account. I’m still with Lloyds since I first got a bank account. This makes me a little bit sad knowing the offers that are out there tempting me to switch, but there’s also the familiarity of knowing your bank account and sort code off the top of your head should you need it.

The First Day of the Month

My bank account should now be full to the brim with cold hard cash ready to be spent! Spent on the important things that is. This is where some interesting automation happens in the form of Standing Orders and Direct Debits. We’re trying to work smarter, not harder here!

The first of the month sees me moving my money around to varying locations. I chose the first to give myself a small buffer in case payroll messed up at work, and to make sure the money was there.

There is no order to importance here, as everything happens in one day but that hard earnt money gets sent to the following accounts.

6% of my basic pay gets sent to my Car Savings Account which helps soften the blow of any unexpected car payment.

16% of my standard pay gets pushed over to my General savings account. This started as as an initial fund to replace the bathroom. The bathroom is not replaced and seeing the money build up in here is pretty sweet. This is kind of an Emergency fund for the moment. This is the losing a job kind of emergency, not I need to go out on a Friday night and it’s not quite pay day kind of emergency.

5% of that standard salary is getting plumbed into mortgage over payments.

22% gets thrown at the joint account. This covers joint or home expenses, energy bills, food, broadband, anything kid related.

At this point of the post I realise that I’m pretty boring responsible when I work out that 3% of my earnings goes towards Entertainment. I’m trialling this in my Monzo account. This just includes meals out, or drinks with friends.

Direct Debits also come out of my current account on the 1st. This is mostly non joint subscriptions and services like the Gym, my mobile phone and credit card bills – particularly my fuel credit card.

I think that’s about it, until we get to the second day of the month.

The Second Day of the Month

This is another major outgoing day, but this time for the Joint account. All the Joint direct debits and standing orders come out on the 2nd. This includes all the monthly bills, childcare fees, and a standing order to the kids Junior ISA.

The remainder of the joint account is left to genrally be spent on family adventures and the supermarket shop. Aldi is the preference if you were wondering, though we’re sampling Hello Fresh at the moment which is going well! (You can get £20 off your first order if you use code HS-LY67T2KAL) I digress.

The Remainder

Most of the money left over is for flinging around the place on whatever I so wish, or further saving. Around a fifth of my salary is left over in my current account once the important stuff is done, adding on anything that’s left over from last month.

Spending is done online or in store using a Curve Card. It’s an amazing tool that I would struggle without. It allows me to only carry one card in my wallet, but still have access to all of my accounts.

I use the Oval app, that links to my Lloyds current account that “rounds up” any purchases to the nearest £1 and tucks it away. It’s a great savings method. This comes out as a direct debit weekly.

The Last Day of the Month

We get full circle back to Payday again. But just before the whole cycle starts again there’s a few manual tasks that I complete.

The Monzo WIDGO (When I didn’t go out) Pot. Monzo has little savings “pots” or piggy banks that you can separate your money as you might using the envelope method. Any remaining money left in Monzo goes into the WIDGO pot.

Any money that I see come in from running this site goes into my Revolut account. So I generally tot this up and make manual transfers to there because I can never tell how much is going to be there.

The Overview