Goals- My thoughts on them

Goals-My thoughts on them

I like to think goals are part of a person’s make-up, a physical or spiritual part of them. I have had many goals in my life, and have achieved some of them, replaced them with new goals, or changed my mind about certain goals and forgotten about them because they were probably dumb thoughts of a teenager (being a travelling guitar player in Britain at 15 years old?? Ok, it may happen for some people, but as I got older I changed my mind) The point is, goals are very personal. Some of my achieved goals have been:

Find the love of my life, (my fiancé) J

Buy a house with a garage, driveway, 3 bedrooms and a back garden

Buy and restore a classic car (My purple panda parade)

Go on a holiday with my best buddy (Egypt in 2009)

Make money from Youtube ($63.00 so far!)

And a few other things which are a bit personal ;) Some of my goals I have still to achieve are:

Go to Austrailia (I had originally planned to emigrate to Austrailia, or at least spend a long time there working etc, but meeting the love of my life changed that )

Marry my fiancé (wedding is booked for August 2014)

Go to Florida USA (Hoping to do this for our honeymoon)

Go to New York City USA in winter

Go to Austria and Germany

Get a new (bigger) garage

Get new house windows

Have kids

Some of my achieved and on the list goals don’t require money to do, but you will notice that the vast majority of them do.

If I was to buy/do everything I want to do starting tomorrow, I would need somewhere in the region of £25000. If I managed to save £500 every month (which I am attempting to do) without spending any, which is very difficult, I would be able to do this in about 4 and a half years. But unfortunetly life doesn’t always work like that, sometimes you have to play the long game, and bide your time. This is very difficult to do, but recently I was talking with J Money who runs budgetsaresexy.com blog, (Its amazing, check it out!) and his advice on the question of the long game was basically to break all my goals up into chunks, and celebrate at markers along the way! It doesn’t have to be an expensive celebration, just maybe bake some cakes and have a little party, or go to the cinema or something, but breaking up the goals and celebrating markers along the way definitely will help things! So I wanted to pass that info along! But how do you guys “Play the long game”?

MARCH 2013 YOURBUDGETORYOURLIFE How To Improve Your Credit Score


Welcome to the second month of my financial blog, I’ve decided to do it monthly as this fits in better to the way I budget, and to the way my wages are paid, I know some people are paid weekly, and you can still apply my blog to that, but mine are monthly, plus it means you only do 12 budgets in a year rather than 52! So that’s got to be better!J Saving time as well as money, and not getting confused with too many numbers!


This month I’m going to be talking about (among other things) improving your credit score. Your credit score is what companies look at to see if you are “an acceptable risk” (in the financial sense) or not. Here is a quick rundown of how to improve it.


1- Take out a credit card, but only use it for small amounts about once or twice a month. AND PAY IT OFF IN FULL WITHIN THE WEEK. DO NOT LET IT ACCUMULATE! Look for a credit card which does not charge interest for a certain period after purchases. RBS for example is 56 days before an interest charge is incurred. When you do this it goes on your credit score and it shows lenders that you are an acceptable risk as you pay money back when it is lent to you.






2- Have an overdraft facility on your bank account (if your bank account charges you for simply having one then change your bank account) and DONT USE IT. It goes on your credit score and shows lenders that you can be trusted with money lending facilities.






3- Shop around for a mobile phone contract, and get it as cheaply as possible for your specific needs, and then pay the amount owed without fail every month, its that simple. Even if it’s a sim only contract, it shows lenders that you can be trusted with paying a specific amount every month.






4- Use debit card instead of cash at least occasionally, this is for two reasons, 1 it shows lenders that you can be trusted to use money from your account without taking out a physical amount in cash, it shows you are savvy about your money. The second reason this is good is that if you lift £10 then the physical cash is with you, and it is easily spent, or put into a jar for months, till it gets put back into your current account. Why not skip the middle man and keep the change in your current account? It helps more than you would think!






5- Take out a small loan NO NOT WITH A PAYDAY LENDER, ARE YOU NUTS?? Its 1792% APR!! I mean with your bank or building society, again, check the small print and terms, and pay it back very very quickly indeed! Avoiding incurring any interest charges if you can.






A good credit score is ESSENTIAL for making a “large purchase” such as a house or a car (I don’t agree with taking loans out on cars, buy second-hand people! But that’s a different story for a different day, and not everyone can) because let’s face it, no one is going to lend a large sum of money to someone they can’t trust financially! Do this for a short while and soon (it is possible because I did it using these exact methods) you will have a credit score of 999 the best you can get! This opens A LOT of doors for you, mortgages are suddenly attainable, and in these economic times, that is something that is VERY desirable, both for yourself, and for the lenders! My other advice where these things are concerned are READ THE SMALL PRINT, TAKE YOUR TIME!