A Teacher In Wales On £43,000

This week: “I’m a 33-year-old teacher living in Wales. I wrote a Money Diary 18 months ago when I had just purchased my house and had been on one or two dates with R. I now live with him and rent my house out. We live with his/our friend and our two dogs. I currently don’t pay anything towards housing or utilities with R, which I know puts me in a really lucky situation. I now drive almost an hour to work, which costs me about £250 a month in petrol. R’s utility costs haven’t gone up since I moved in (yet?). This means we are waiting to see if the bills do go up, but so far my presence doesn’t seem to be adding much to the running costs of things! We have agreed to this arrangement for now. If our friend were to move out, we would need to reassess and split things between the two of us. At the moment, his rent covers the costs of the utilities and R is mortgage free, so me living there isn’t costing him anything extra. I rent my house out through an agency, so they take a percentage of the rent in return for handling everything which works well so far! Everything is still quite new so we are seeing how it all goes. I haven’t managed to rebuild my savings since buying the house and I also had to spend several thousands of pounds on making the house legal for renting, so my current money goal is to get some savings back together. I’m very keen on money management, and enjoy looking for ways to be savvy. I’m also currently in the process of leaving teaching and moving into the charity sector.”