Soymylk Can I assume you are a native English speaker by your writing & that your family is in the UK? What kind of work do you do in Korea? I am hoping to make the move there myself this year.

Formal Dribble Hi there, yes you're right on both counts! I'm working in Korea as an English teacher. Great to see someone else on here planning to make the move to Korea! It's a great country. What are you planning on doing here? If you have any questions about living in Korea feel free to ask away :) 

Soymylk Wow. I'm searching/interviewing for a late February/March start as an English teacher in the Seoul area. Your numbers gave me chills, tbh...I live pretty frugally, and I knew that teachers in Korea can make bank, but seeing your goals listed out shows me even more strongly how much I could be making/saving each month.

Good luck with saving for your apartment key money, it's a huge step if you want to stay there for longer than a year or two and you're clearly already well on your way!

Formal Dribble That's great! Seoul is a great city, I'm also here. Good luck with finding a job that suits you! And to be honest I'm not really even a particularly frugal person and I'm still saving a good amount, so if you live frugally you're going to do great with saving out here! And thanks - I definitely should already be in my own place out here by now, but unfortunately I discovered YNAB too late haha. Oh well, better late than never as they say!

lindsay_g but realistic goals are achievable!

Navy Blue Unicorn Good point. Well I will stick at £11300, 7000 of real long term saving plus 4300 being saved to spend. Maybe I’ll add a stretch as I go along...

Alley_Cat that was me last year!  Good for you!  It feels great!

Laura Coursen cool!!!!!!!  I see you over on FB a lot, thanks for all the support you've given!!  You're awesome!

Navy Blue Unicorn Thank you so much!! I can't believe it took me this long to join the forum, but someone posted the savings challenge in the facebook group, and this is the first year we have a big savings goal to track!

Laura Coursen yay!

Navy Blue Unicorn Oh, I'm number 41!

Cyan Android yes!

Sura Rafiki the way I work that is by having separate budget lines or categories for each thing I'm saving for. Then, when I need to spend it, it's there, but I have the record of the savings to put in the spread sheet. Maybe that will help you?

Sura Rafiki , I follow the same process  HappyDance does. I count what I saved in a category (for me, regardless of whether it is a main or sub category, as long as it is a category I've decided is a "savings" category) regardless of whether I had to spend it that same month or year. For example, this last year I saved a substantial amount for medical expenses that I had in 2018 - saved it and spent it in the same year. Still counted as savings by me just as I count my budgeting toward rainy day funds (car insurance premiums, Xmas, future car repairs, etc) as savings. And I don't really distinguish between long-term vs short-term savings because it all accomplishes the same goal for me - avoiding future debt.

Ultimately, it is your budget and your savings challenge, so you get to decide. Best of luck on reaching your goals!

Laimelde No new savings for me in Feb - which is by design. All spare cash is going towards paying off some dental work that was done in November last year. They put me on a payment plan which is due to finish in April, but I've managed to get together enough cash to cover the last two payments at once, woohoo! It'll be Savings City from March onwards!

Laimelde Savings at last! Added $680 this month. I won't always be able to do that much, but March had a bit extra coming in, so hopefully getting a bit ahead will help in the quieter months.

Laimelde Achieved my goal of $650 this month with $653.10, which was a stretch goal and I'm pretty pleased to have reached it! Last month I had an extra pay from a one-off job; this month only my normal job but with slightly higher pay than usual. Crossing my fingers for another one-off job in May to keep the momentum up!

Laimelde May update: I did get the additional one-off job I was hoping for, which helped me push my savings up a bit to $767.84 this month, putting me less than $100 behind the spreadsheet's "on track" number. 
June won't be as pretty: I've got some big ticket purchases planned, and no extra funds coming in. Goal is to get at least $400 into savings.

Laimelde You're hanging in there and not giving up and that is a win all on its own. Best of luck to you!

bevocat Thanks! The goal I set was a little bit on the ambitious side, so I'm pretty pleased with how it's going. 

Laimelde June has gone better than expected, with total savings of $468.72! I had a bit of a rough month - my diet and food budget went out the window, and I went 2.5 weeks without updating YNAB, which is an unusually long time for me. And therefore I had no idea where I was up to and assumed I was going to be WAMing like mad to make everything fit... and yeah, okay, some WAMming was required. But it wasn't nearly as bad as I feared, and I managed to save more than I thought I would!

Back on track now for July. It's tax time here in Australia, and I'm hopeful of a refund this year. I've been saving up extra funds just in case I get a tax bill like last year, but all my research suggests that I'm on track for a refund, which would be a double win - I could re-allocate my tax bill funds to other categories, and budget the refund too! In which case I plan take full advantage of the opportunity to catch up to my savings goals!

Laimelde I've had a super amazing July. There were a couple of unexpected expenses, but they were pretty small and more than made up for by the fact that I didn't just get a tax refund, I got a significantly better tax refund than I was expecting! Which means I saved more than double the usual amount: $1469.92!

Last month I was looking at my progress and wondering if my goal was achievable. Now I'm 80% complete, and wondering if I should extend it!

But otoh, the second half of the year are the lean months - no side hustles in sight, fewer opportunities for extras at work. So I'll wait, I think, and check again at the end of August. 

Laimelde So I've had a rough couple of months emotionally, which is why I missed last month's update. On the plus side, my finances are steady and even looking better than expected? Which is a relief - one less thing to worry about. 

Managed $119 in August and $457 in Sept, meaning I'm only $260 from goal. Plus all my sinking funds are on track, 2 our of 4 wish farm items are funded and the other 2 are very close to being funded, and I'm just amazed that everything's chugging along so nicely, despite other parts of my life being something of a mess right now.

I'll definitely reach my goal by the end of this month, and then I'll be increasing my investing and starting to save towards some longer-term goals instead!

Icecream mochi That is an amazing goal! I hope you're doing well on your progress! I absolutely love your forum picture and wanted to let you know I was rooting for you! :)