Firstly, I did my tax self-assessment this month and, as it turned out that I didn't really earn enough to pay a large amount of tax, I was actually able to put some of the money I had been putting aside for taxes each pay day towards our sinking funds instead. That has meant that we now have a fully funded Christmas fund, car fund, surf lessons fund, and my crafting fund (which I have now completely spent on products I need for the projects I have coming up for the rest of this year). We were also able to put about £1000 into our three month emergency fund. [A little side note on this, after looking at the additional costs we now have, such as paying off the car, and the rise in the cost of living we realised that our needed emergency fund has gotten quite large. We decided that we felt a lot more comfortable putting it down to three months instead of four, which works out to be about the same as our original amount. This is based on the months being five weeks long instead of the usual four to cover those longer months so that does give us a little extra leeway.]
Most of our general bills have now come out, though we won't see a council tax payment until May, and it looks like these are going to be roughly the same as to what we were paying in Plymouth. Our gas and electricity is a pay as you go so I decided to just put in a lump sum at the beginning of the month and it seems to have lasted us quite well (possibly because we were away for a week). If this turns out to be roughly right for us on a monthly basis then that means that our fuel bill has only gone up by £5 a month, which isn't too bad considering we're now in a house and gas is more expensive.
We actually managed to underspend on groceries this month, but we did overspend on take away/ eating out. However, we knew this was going to be the case as we were celebrating our one year anniversary and were planning a meal out together and also with my parents. The only thing really unexpected was that my mobile was a little high this month and I need to check why that is as I don't remember doing anything odd with it. I also need to look at a way of reducing that a little it as well and I know that there might be an app I can use for that so that's something I'll look at in May.
We've also managed to keep our fuel within budget as well. But, as expected, I haven't been able to put anything into my pension again as I haven't been earning any money. The company I will be working for, starting in May, has their own pension scheme so I'll be putting money into that and then I'll transfer that over to my current pension plan when my contract is over. Apart from the crafting items I brought using the money I had saved for taxes, we've managed to keep mostly within our spending limits on our own spending as well, which is good of us. Hopefully we continue to get better at this habit from now on.
April does feel like a month where we've been able to reset our spending habits after March and get back on track for the rest of the year. We'll see how things go when I go back to work next month, but hopefully things should get a lot easier and we'll be able to keep putting money into our savings account for the rest of the year. It looks like our days off will be a little out of sink again as well and that means there will be less opportunity for us to spend as we tend to only really do that when we're together.
