Anyone else very anxious about spending money?

[carrottopper]

We have saved for years and years. We have had holidays, and go out for meals etc but we do hold back on other items eg clothes we want but don't need, cars we want but don't need etc. We've paid of our mortgage and the plan for next year was to use savings to extend and improve our house. It would cost anything between £50-100k. The plan was to renovate the loft with an en suite for our bedroom as our youngest child is in a tiny box room so she would be able to have a bigger room. Then we were going to get the front of the house rendered and a porch put on. We are thinking this will be £40-50k. The third stage would be extending the kitchen and creating an open living area. This latter stage is a luxury and I'm pretty sure won't happen now but the first stage of going into the loft and rendering the front has been a plan for 4-5 years. We are both now panicking following Covid-19 that we should keep this money incase we struggle financially in the coming years due to what is happening. The money for the renovations isn't fully together. We have about £20k so need to save another £30k but I'm feeling very reluctant to spend anything. Is anyone else feeling like this? Im really annoyed with myself as we have saved for years to pay off our mortgage, and now we are not doing the next step which will improve our quality of living and we have worked hard for. Such worrying times.

I think there is probably a balance somewhere.
Depending on how old your child is you could probably leave the work another year until the future is hopefully a bit more certain and she would still get the benefit of it. Unless you are very high earners I would imagine it would take some time to save £30k anyway so i wouldn't worry about committing to anything at the moment.
You have done the hard job of paying off the mortgage so have given yourselves a level of security that many people would be desperate for.

@Casmama thanks for your reply. Yes it will probably take a couple of years but I think we were thinking of taking it out of the off set mortgage - actually we haven't paid off our mortgage as such but we have the money in the offset so we don't pay interest - so we regard that as having paid it off. So doing the loft would mean we are going into debt again.

When you programme your brain to save money, we have found it very hard to even allow ourselves to buy a new pair of jeans etc let alone extend during an inevitable recession.

I know exactly what you mean - shifting the saving mindset to the sensible spending one can be a difficult shift!
You will know best about the likely job security and income security you will have and if you aren't comfortable committing the money right now then don't do it. I think it is a sensible choice to hold off so don't give yourself a hard time about being overly cautious - its natural self preservation given the circumstances.

I wouldn’t spend anything substantial this year. Finances aren’t certain at the moment

I know how you feel, we have put moving on hold for at least a year, probably 2.

It's the smart thing to do so I'm ok with it.

And with this WFH dh might be able to do it permanently or at least more days (has always done one day from home) and that would change where we might buy.

Be bold; take a risk. You worked hard to save the money. Enjoy spending it.

I know what you mean. We are in a similar position, I'm not making any major changes til mid 2022 now.

It seems quite sensible not to spend hugely in these circumstances. Perhaps allow yourselves a small treat, like the jeans you want though.

I always feel anxious about money. I think it comes from barely scraping by for so many years when the kids were young. I find it hard to spend on anything essential. We had an extension done last year but it makes me feel anxious about the amount we spent on it and spiralling costs and things are still not properly finished. Jobs are now at risk and I wonder whether it was worth it.

I'd hang fire a bit and save save save. I think there will be more competitive quotes coming in from architects/builders as work dries up next year.