No our car running costs we pay jointly and DH also gave me €2k towards my car. Overall he is the better saver than me. I’m trying to catch up on that. All our bills and running costs go through our joint account and we put a lump sum every month into a revolut vault for once off bills. It’s just hard when they all come at once.
we would have the money to redo the boiler etc but it’s doing multiple things at once that would be costly so it’s prioritising what gets done first based on a needs basis rather than a want basis. I want an electric shower in our main bathroom but we would need a new boiler in the near future so we have to keep the funds for that available. Like this year so far we have to replace the roof on the shed €4k after insurance contribution. We will need a new stove in the next year or so and when that happens I want to replace the mantle and surround too so that means saving consistently. So we do have savings for many of these things but all coming together would wipe us out. We estimate that every year we have about €10k of things that need to be done. Last year was the garden. This year the roof and we haven’t decided what else as we are waiting to see if something breaks before we commit funds to a project that isn’t urgently needed.
The renovation won’t happen for many years and that’s where my main savings goal is going. I want to have 10k saved by the end of the year and I’m planning to put any pay increases etc directly into that fund. Just saving for the maintenance jobs wouldn’t cut it.
I’m not in the UK so we don’t have ISAs etc and our short term savings options are very poor interest rate wise.