Sunday 16 October 2011

Spending Update - Sept/Oct

Well it's payday again and time for the monthly update. I have to admit I've still failed to keep track of what I'm spending money on but maybe one month I'll manage it!!

I did well this month overall due to an error in my accounts spreadsheet.  Yes I am a bit nerdy and track my spending on a spreadsheet. I have all my monthly bills set on one worksheet so when I get paid I copy and paste them all over and I can see what I have left to live on for the month. As the month progresses and I take out cash or make a debit card purchase this gets added to the sheet therefore keeping it up to date and letting me know what I've got left.  Normally twice a month I print out a bank statement from my online banking and reconcile it against the spreadsheet to make sure I haven't missed anything and that we both think I have the same amount of money!!

Well last weekend my spreadsheet was telling me I had a grand total of 35p in the bank and a week left of the month. Oops thinks I. Oh well, better check it against the bank statement in case it's worse!!  As I'm going through the statement I discover my error...I had transferred some money out of my PayPal account and into my bank account. My mistake was to put that amount as a debit in my spreadsheet rather than a credit...move the amount over to the right side and all of a sudden I've got money again...whoop whoop!!!

This 'extra' money enabled me to get a couple of things I'd been putting off and still have some money left at the end of the month!!!

So at the end of the month...
£200 transfer
£1.00 in my wallet
£35.99 change
£39.15 in the bank account

Grand total - £276.14 - the highest amount so far.

I'm thinking if I made it to almost the end of the month with the error maybe I could up my monthly transfer a bit and get away with it???

I also intend to try harder on the meal planning and food shopping to keep the costs down.

(Oh and I sold another load of stuff on eBay too!!)

No comments:

Post a Comment