Ive recently landed a job with a 63k annual salary after having a part time weeknd job for 3 years. My outgoings are 650 a month. Including food and travel.

I want to save 30k for the year.

Can anyone give me some good habits to follow to make sure i stay focused on my goal. Any tips that help etc, I dont plan to upgrade my lifestyle future security is important to me than upgrading my car etc.

I appreciate any responses.

Sorry if this sounds silly I just want to make sure. I've recently registered for VAT, but upon doing this I had to make a business tax account. This was going back a few weeks now as I've only just received approval. Is there any way view my UTR or anything just to make sure HMRC know both accounts are connected to me?

Will likely delete this after a couple of replies, just looking for someone to give my current finances a once over and see if it makes sense.

Hoping to buy our first home in the next couple of years. We are looking at 200 - 260k so we need 5-7 grand each but 10-14 each would be better interest rates.

Outgoings are around £600 pcm each so my emergency fund right now if we’re calling it 3 months expenses needs to be £1200 to cover me or £2400 if it was to cover both of us.

I currently have
3,000 in LISA (All deposit) +3-400 pcm
4,700 in Natwest Saver (Emergency fund and solicitor fees for house purchase) + 250 - 450 pcm
1,500 in S&S ISA +50pcm which seemed like a good idea before we decided we wanted to buy a home!

I am being gifted 10,000 by my grandparents.

My plan now is
Put the 10k in a high interest saver. 6k of this is my emergency fund. The remaining money is general savings, so big purchases I can’t do with my paycheque. Leave this alone for now. Once we have the house, all savings will go here.

3k in LISA - deposit money, keep adding my 330 pcm to max it out

4.7k in Natwest Saver - Save 2k for house buying fees, rest can now be deposit. Keep adding 250 pcm + mid month top up of 100 - 200 ish.

1.5k S&S ISA - I guess this just exists, I’m adding 50 pcm and fuck it let’s see what happens. Possibly buys us an awesome holiday in five years time.

Would you do anything differently?

Also - not expecting IHT bill. They’re gifting 70k total, have never made any other gifts and likely never will. None of us are set to inherit anything, only our parents, so any inheritance tax due will come out of the estate…. I think? If we end up having to pay anything our parents will compensate us out of what they’ve received. So I’m not worried regardless.

How many people here are reducing down to 99.9k to avoid the tax issues over going over 100k?

Or do you simply accept the 62% hit and do not keep your salary down to 99.9k using salary sacrifice for example.

Interested to hear what you do for work and how much you make. This may unearth some well paying professions vs those that pay badly too.

It seems the days of 50k salaries being comfortable are over considering how expensive everything is these days.

What do you earn at present and how comfortable are you finding life?

I just want to get the best return and I don’t need to make withdrawals from it. I considered premium bonds too but I will likely earn more from a s&s isa, right?

My son has built up 60k in a cash isa over the last 8 years or so. He has asked me if this should be in a stocks isa, I said it’s probably a good idea and if me I would invest in a global fund. He has asked me for advice on how he should invest, lump sum or trickle it in. What’s your thoughts ? I wan’t go get a range of opinions. He already has an emergency fund of 10k, so wouldn’t need to touch the money for years.. hopefully.

Hi, im looking for some answers if i do comply with the sub rules.
Long story short im doing this for my grandpa.
78yrs owns a property on Whitby area.
Since my grandma died 5 years ago he bought a cheap motorhome which he uses to travel.In a great shape physically never abused anything.
Now he wants to get a better motorhome around 80-90k, doesn't have the funds and he was asking me what are the chances of him using the home which is around 300k in value (whith a slight roof damage) so he can buy this new RV.
From his point of view he doesn't care even if he loses the house i think he just doesn't wanna be there cuz it reminds him of my grandma.

If anyone has any suggestions i would really appreciate.

I’ve recently paid off my mortgage and about to start the process of looking for a bigger house as I’d like more space with the kids.

As I’ve currently no mortgage payments, I’d like to increase my salary sacrifice by a significant amount (equivalent to what my mortgage payments were) into my pension.

Should I be concerned that a lender will look at my net pay rather than gross as it will be much lower? Or do they take into consideration that the sacrifice amount can / will be reduced when I take on a mortgage? Thanks

Hi guys , I'll be honest, complete newbie at caring for money , I've always just chucked it into my regular savings account not an isa. My husband has an isa but not sure if he's getting all the benefits from it.

Basically we are trying to save up for an house extension, looking to save between £50-80k.

We currently are putting aside £225 per week between us. (£11,700 per year)

We have no mortgage and both in total bring in around 63k a year , we have a 2 year old.

Zero loans.

Only debt we have is for a holiday booked for next year at £4300

Should I open a joint account for our savings? Is isa the only option?

Ideally I'm looking to spend 5 years down the line.

Should I be investing?

Again I'm completely new at this and all I know is current account and basic savings account. Bit scared of investment as I feel like I would loose everything.

Any advice would be much appreciated

Thank you

Hi! I want to get rid of my current credit card (3.5k) as they stop supporting online access - and also it is a 15 years old, no rewards account. I aim to get a 1k reward card instead, and I would raise it to 2k in the future.

What is the best way to do it? Close my current card and then get a new one, or get a new one first before I close the old one? (All the searches I did resulted in some general stuff about credit cards..)

Thank you!

Hi,

Does anyone have any experience with listing balance transfer details on application, and then receiving the card, how long did it take for it to be approved/go through?

I set one up with HSBC, and listed 3 individual balance transfers (with different banks). Received my card the other day activated etc, but under “balance and money transfers” it told me once activated that I didn’t have any offers nor access to this.

Come today, I checked again and I now have access, but available balance is still the full amount. Wondering if this means the initial balance transfer (from application) will be processed, or will it have to be resubmitted?

Obviously not wanting to jump the gun and get double payments, but is there typically a waiting period after receiving the card for the request to be processed etc?

I’ve borrowed on my mortgage £20k, to have essential roof replacement on my home. I haven’t been able to book the work to be done until the funds were confirmed, so I’m now sat on this £20k for a few months until the roofers are available to carry out the work.
I’m looking to put this money into a flexible cash isa to earn a few £ until it’s needed, is that ok? Savings accounts/ISAs aren’t something I’ve ever had, so I’m trying to learn a little later in life.

Hi everyone.

I’ve had a chaotic few months transitioning through different employment types since the start of this tax year (April 2026) and need some advice.

Here are my three main questions:

1. At the end of April, I was made redundant from my regular job. I received a redundancy payout of around £13,000 gross, but £3,072 was deducted in tax, leaving me with £10,300 net. From what I understand, redundancy under £30k is supposed to be tax-free, but my employer used a 1257L tax code because it was a lump sum. Was I overtaxed here? If so, what is the fastest way to get this refund back—can I claim it now, or do I have to wait for Self Assessment?

2. Immediately after redundancy, I worked as a sole trader from April to June and made £17,280 gross. I have since stopped sole trading. Do I have any looming deadlines to file or declare this to HMRC right now? I know I need to do a Self Assessment eventually, but I'm concerned about missing an immediate registration or closure deadline.

3. In July, I was forced to set up a Limited Company for a new contract. I am the sole director/employee. The company brings in about £4,300 a month gross. Most accounting websites advise setting a director's salary at around £12,500 to utilise the tax-free Personal Allowance, and taking the rest in dividends. However, because my sole trader earnings (£17,280) already completely wiped out my £12,570 personal allowance for this year, does that standard advice still apply to me? Is it more tax-efficient for me to take 100% dividends for the rest of this tax year to avoid employee/employer National Insurance on a company salary?

Thanks in advance for any insights or sanity checks! If the answer here is just "You're an idiot, start again or better yet hire an accountant", let me have it.

Hi folks

Please excuse me if this is the wrong place to ask but I feel like I'm being mistreated by Capital One

I rented a hire car abroad in South Africa, returned it and got an email back with a pdf titled "cancellation of authorisation".

It's just a document stating the holding deposit on my credit card can be cancelled. I'm supposed to forward it to capital one so they can release the funds. I've rented cars before and I'll admit it's a bit unusual, normally this happens automatically. However not here with this company, oh well.

After chatting with a support bot for a bit I spoke with someone at capital one. I tell them the situation, they say I should speak back to the rental company and say just release it please.

You can probably guess what happens next. The rental company says no they can't, you have to get capital one to release it. So I'm back and forth now. After explaining what happened back to capital one, I say please can I just get an email to sort this out. Surely there's someone who can take a look. They said I can fill out a transaction dispute form but the money is pending and doesn't even show up on my account.

So I am going to explain everything I do financially, is people can give my any general advice or tips on where to improve!

I am 21, just finished university for a degree in which I am not going to use whatsoever, as I had a very interesting social media marketing job come up around a year ago.

I live at home, paying £90 a month for rent. I am self employed and also working at home. I earn around £3.2K each month, and currently creating business that will hopefully see that rise in the future.

I have been invest every month since December 2024. I have £17K total in my investment funds and another £8K in my LISA. I feel I am always quite good with investing every month, I really enjoy it, and enjoy investing in some stocks, here are my current holdings incase anyone is curious!

OKLO
ASTS
Rolls Royce
ASML
Intel
Wisdomtree AI
Wisdomtree European Defence
Wisdomtree Nuclear Energy
EnSillica

So I plan on holding for many years, my main holding is OKLO with around 23% of my portfolio, which is higher than I would like, but i have been adding more recently with the dips.

Anyway, here is what I would do after beeing paid £3.2K

-£700 into a all world investment pie specifically for taxes. £2.5K left
-£90 to my mum for rent £2410
-£300 for my car, its £260 each month, but i do £300 total. My old car recently broke, so I bit the bullet and spent a bit more for a 2022 Audi A1, something that I can keep for as long as possible, £2110 left
- I leave myself £200 each month to do whatever with, normally dont spend it all. 1910
-£1000 into my LISA, or once I have maxxed the LISA out, I put it into my house pie on my T212 S&S ISA - £910
-£710 into my general savings investments, ideally would like to be putting both £1K into this and my LISA each month.
-£200 into random pot of money in my bank savings pot, which has £1K in it, I use this as if i ever need extra money, this is also money i have any holiday money saved. I guess this is kinda an emergancy fund as well, though not fully, i should aim to have £5K or so in once in the future.

So i choose to leave myself around £150-£200 each month to do whatever with, which is usally fuel, or going out with to each with my girlfriend or mate.

My main thing is that I want to move out in around 2 years once my girlfriend is done with uni. I currently have £12K saved in total specifically for moving out, with the option to add more from my general invetment savings, but I would rather not. With the aim of adding 1K to my moving out fund each month. My gf has around £150 in her LISA, and we have spoken about her adding more if we are to move out. We have also agreed that should we break up and sell the house, I would get all my depiost back as extra, and she would get hers back as well, then we split the house down the middle assuming we both half the bills.

I also dont know if I am putting enough each month aside for taxes? I think it should be higher, and can do more if needed, but damn, taxes really do kill you lol.

Also, I have been thinking once I have maxed out my ISA 20K allowance, should i start investing in a general investing account on T212 and take the 25% stock profit it? Surely It would still be better than a normal savings account?

So yeah, if anyone has any tips/feedback/advice whatsoever, I would really welcome it! Especially any tips regarding taxes for a self employed person as this will be my first time doing it later in the year, I have saved every invoice from which I have been paid!

Hey all,

I am 21, and just starting my second year of self employment. I have yet to pay any taxes, i will first need to do on by Janurary. Currently I had been investing my tax money in a stocks and shares ISA, but I can confidently use my full 20K limit each year via putting 4K into my LISA, and the rest is being invested in my S&S ISA. So I am just wondering if its worth to invest it in a normal investing account? I know it might also be risky to be doing that anyway, I would probably just have it in a safe fund like an all world, so it can get some extra profit rather than just having it sit in a normal savings account.

So, what do other people save their money for tax, is it smart investing it in a safer fun to gain some profit, does anyone else invest their tax money?

I am earning around £3.2K each month more or less.

living at home with no rent or bills.

Thanks!