Saturday 16 July 2011

Spending Update

So, yesterday was payday - how did I do?

Due to an admin oversight at work I have been underpaid for some time, last payday was my first at the correct rate so I immediately transferred the extra (£130) over to my savings to start me off at what I have been living on.

I stuck to buying one Pret hot chocolate a week (although I didn't say no if someone else offered to buy one!!), my one lunch out and my one takeaway.  On weeks where I was going out for dinner I ditched the takeaway altogether.

The meal planning worked brilliantly (thanks Jo at http://simplybeingmum.com) up until this week! I didn't make the effort last weekend to plan properly. I went to visit my Auntie straight from work on Weds and didn't want to take my empty lunch box so told myself it was OK to get lunch out! I won dinner out on Thursday night and used the same lunch box excuse! Friday I went to dinner at my Mums and as it was payday decided it was OK to treat myself to lunch again. Bit of a failure there but the rest of the month I was really good. The food shopping is also being supplemented by my allotment now which is producing lettuce, radishes, broad beans, marrows, beetroot and rhubarb, and the tomato plants on my balcony are also now producing fruit. The onions, shallots and garlic will also be ready soon. I have been including all this in my meal plans as it would be such a dreadful shame to let all the hard work in producing it go to waste!

I haven't bought ANYTHING from eBay, nada, nothing, zilch - and that is a BIG thing for me so I'm chuffed with myself. I have however been listing and selling things and the money I've made is going into a separate pot!

Of the events that were coming up that I was thinking about I booked two of the three, sacrificing a slightly cheaper one for a more expensive one rather than doing all three.

Now I'm not quite sure what I expected on the money side of this experiment but at the end of the month although the bank account was bare it wasn't overdrawn! Normally my standing order that goes into my savings goes through but then I end up transferring most of it back! This month the extra went through as did the normal monthly one and it stayed there!! I clear my wallet out every night of everything except £1 coins and notes. I have one terramundi for £2 coins, one for 50ps, a unicorn money box that a good friend of mine painted for me that gets the 20ps and an oversize whiskey bottle that gets the 10ps, 2ps and 1ps (my Mum gets the 5ps!). This month I still cleared out but put everything in a cup to count at the end of the month to see how much was there. The grand total £26.03. I also had £30 left in my wallet.

So a total of £216.03 has gone into savings (not including eBay sales) and I might put the £30 from my wallet in there too - that's nearly £250!! Go me!!

I'm going to do even better this month! The eBay, hot chocolate, lunch out and takeaway policy will stay the same. I am out for dinner tonight and away tomorrow and Monday so that will involve some spending but I'm not going to go mad. I don't think there are any events on the horizon at the moment to book for and I have another payday before I go on holiday.

So the challenge - can I bank more than £250 at the end of this month - come back and find out!!!

4 comments:

  1. Well done you, lots of big changes in your life looking back over the last couple of months you should be very proud, I am. X

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  2. Sounds good Claire! You're certainly attacking lots of areas of money - selling your stuff, not buying, growing your own, not eating out much etc. Good luck!

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  3. what a great challenge! the hardest thing for us is to have money left over at the end of the month... we need to start putting it away FIRST!

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  4. It becomes addictive Claire! I am spending less and less and wasting less and less - it's certainly become a life habit! Keep going! It actually is fun, the harder it gets to reduce the more creative you have to be...

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