Pension planning with Nutmeg

Before having my son I used to work for a large financial company and was fortunate to have a great company pension, the future seemed sorted. However in the last few years, my life has changed dramatically. I was made redundant whilst pregnant and now I home educate my son who has complex learning needs. I'm officially self employed and have limited hours I can work and it's all a bit of a juggle to be honest with making sure I can both earn an income and help my son with his speech and learning. At some point, sooner rather than later, I need to think about our future. It's a big deal and a worry.

Money saving January

January is a money saving month, the start of good intentions to save the pennies, make some cutbacks and de-clutter the house. So far I have been keeping track of our monthly expenditure of groceries, petrol and other household items so that I will have a baseline to challenge myself each month from here on in, hopefully to reduce the amount every time.

Image source: savings Shutterstock

We have been staying home and not going on trips so that we can work on the house, finishing jobs and tidying up. The allotment also needs a good overhaul and that costs nothing but hard graft. Hopefully that will reduce the petrol costs and we will stay local enjoying what is on our doorstep.

Pocket Money Tales

Pocket money - spent as soon as it reached by young chubby grasp.
Twinkle comic - 'Specially for little girls',  setting the magazine love off that's still with me.
Glossy pages, pretty illustrations, the smell of the paper. 30p of wholesome delight.
School started and soon my pound was spent on stickers. Glorious stickers.
Care Bear infatuation. Book filling up. Still need the sparkly Grumpy Bear. Keep buying more packets.
Sealed surprises. The start of being a collector. A great way to spend your weekly 'spends'
Friday night. Handed over. Ready to spend at the shops that weekend.
Rubber erasers, whole aisles of them. Strawberry smell, hamburgers, glitter cases. Filled up my pencil case.
Acorn Savings Account with my first building society. Coins fill. Encouraged to save. Worked for a while.
The order of 10 pences and pennies pleasing to the eye. Soon emptied. 
Hair bobbles, bows, new stud earrings.
A future career in IT started by spending pocket money in Woolies on the cheap Spectrum games.
Manic Miner, Jet Set Welly. Took forever to load. Worth every penny. Made me so happy.
Putting my money towards larger purchases. Learning that you can't always have what you want.......
.........at least straight away anyway :)


90's pocket money increase in return for keeping my room tidy. Good intentions.
Getting into trouble and only receiving half the amount. Hormones and arguments.
Receiving extra money for doing well at school. Up and down from one week to the next.
Teens brought supplementing pocket money with a paper round for more expensive tastes.
Flash trainers (hideous now)  Keeping up with the trends.
Buying my first CD from Manchester. Going there with friends on the Metrolink. Independence.
Too many sweets before the school bus arrived.
Shopping at the market. Hair accessories - hundreds of scrunchies and friendship bands. Fluoro trends.
Money spent on a love of reading. The best thing in my opinion to spend your cash on.
Magazines that were really too old for my naive eyes at the time.
Eventually getting a proper Saturday job and saying goodbye to my weekly pocket money.
All grown up.

When to start pocket money with your own child?
What would my three year old buy?
Small toys and tonnes of ice cream. 
Not quite old enough to understand about money but learning about helping out.
On reflection I was too spoilt as a child. Not many chores, no responsibilities.
This time - reward charts and rotas. Encourage him to save. 
To give more meaning to money.
Learn from the mistakes that I made. Save up, don't spend it all at once.
For the time being, I put money into an account for him. Growing all the time.
In the next few years I will pass the coins into his chubby hand
just like my chubby grasp once did.
I'm sure he will have his own ideas about how to spend it too.

For money saving, please check out  www.vouchersky.com