August 2023 Budget

This month has been a bit of an interesting month financially as not only did we have a few things going on, but it was also a five weeks month which means there's a bit of an overlap with some of the bills.  So, how did it go?

Our standard bills have basically remained the same as always, though as our gas usage was pretty low this month which should hopefully mean that we won't need to put much, if any, money towards it in September.  I've also been able to reduce my mobile bill a bit more as well, using the We Are 8 app, so I'm now paying around £20 per month less than I was before - which actually works out at about £1000 a year so I'd say it was a little work well spent.

We also managed to do well on our eating out/ takeaway budget, keeping within the limits of what we'd given ourselves.  This is quite a satisfying outcome for us as it's one of the areas I wanted us to focus on this month.  I have to admit it has been particularly helped by the fact that we haven't had too many days off together this month, but we have also been a little more mindful of what we're spending and Ed has helped by doing the cooking on the days I really haven't had the will to, which is when we would have normally just gotten takeaway.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for our grocery spending, which has been over budget again and I know exactly who the culprit is - snacking.  Our weekly shops fit into the budget just fine, but it's the spending on additional food that we do on an almost daily basis that is taking us over budget.  So I need to decide whether I just bite the bullet and buy the snacking things with our general grocery shop, greatly bringing down the price as we'd be buying in bulk but with the possibility I'd eat most of it in one go, or we remove snacking almost completely.  The second option is obviously the more preferable and has the additional benefit of being good for our health, but is probably a bit unrealistic.  Fuel was also been a little higher this month as we took a trip to Devon to see family, but only by about £30 so it's not really anything to worry about.

On another positive, I did manage to put more money into my pension again this month (always good), and we managed to do well with our personal spending again.  There were two spends we haven't been able to prepare for.  One was me needing to get some antivirus software for my new laptop and the other was Ed needing to buy some more shoes as his others gave up the ghost.  I have noticed that I've become more mindful again when it comes to buying things and I've even written a list of the things I know I want to get in the future with how much I think the items will be.  I'll be spacing out buying these over the next few months and depending on what I've already spent that month.  We have done a bit of spending on the holiday we'll be taking in October, mostly on accommodation, but we like to get these things all booked in advanced so we don't need to worry about it when the time comes and it spreads the cost.  

We have also managed to put some more money into our savings account.  It's not as much as I was hoping, but still a good amount and, seeing as our spending hasn't been too bad this month, I'm not sure we could have actually been able to put anymore in.  We've already passed our goal this year of saving a third of the total amount any way, so anything extra that goes in is a bonus that goes a long way to helping us reach our overall goal sooner.

So it hasn't been too bad a month really.  We succeeded in most of the things we had planned to do we just need to work on our food spending a little bit more.  I am wondering if we need to go back to cash spending on the groceries again to help us curb this as that definitely worked well the last time we tried it.  If we do that over September it will hopefully reset us back into spending less and help get this little section back under budget, which means more into savings.  As when we get paid has now changed I'm thinking about changing how our weeks run so that instead of running Saturday to Friday we are now going to the usual Monday to Sunday, which for some reason feels a lot easier to work with - though I don't really know why.  This does mean that the first week in September will be nine days long instead of seven.  It also means that I'll be doing the budgets on a Sunday now instead of a Friday, which makes my end of the work week a little more relaxing.

August 2022 Budget

I have to admit that I didn't really want to write this blog as we haven't done particularly  well this month at all.  We were already starting this month on the back foot we hadn't been able to build back up the baseline of our joint account to £1000 which covers our regular bills.  I also lost one weeks pay as we went on holiday this month.  Thankfully my husband still got paid for the days he took off, but it still made a noticeable difference not having that one payment.

The other thing was that, even though we knew that this month was going to be tight,  we still spent way more money than we should have done.  Ironically this wasn't actually during our holiday, as we had expected, but mostly on items that will allow us to do more free activities in the future.  Theoretically this is good, but maybe not for this month.

As I knew that the money would be low during our holiday I didn't pay one weeks pension or pay off some purchases I had made with my credit card.  Then there was the week I was off and not earning to I wasn't able to pay these again on that week.  I will need to find a way of catching back up on these two items and if I could do that by the end of September that would be very useful.

That being said, we haven't done too badly on the groceries and eating out spending which I was expecting to be much higher as we were on holiday.  Obviously the fuel was quite a bit more this month from all the driving we did when we were away.  We have still had to move money over from our savings again to help pay our standard bills, but this is a habit we really need to break.  However, by the end of the month we were able to bring the balance of our joint account back to where we want it and put just over £200 back into our savings.  Have to take the wins where we can.

Despite all this I don't regret us going on the holiday as we needed the break and we got to go to a place that I love and have a family connection to, but which Ed has never been to.  We also got to get in a great walk as well, but more on that in a future post.

However, it's now time to get serious again about our financial situation now.  We've known for a while now that it is pretty unlikely that we'll reach our savings goal by the end of this year and, if I'm being honest, that did dishearten me a little bit and put me into a 'why bother' mentality.  I did try and fight it, but sometimes you have to sit with those emotions for a bit to actually get through them.  Now the time for wallowing is over.  We may not reach our savings goal, but we can get closer to it and that's still a good thing to hold onto.  I also now made a visual representation of our savings that I can look at on a daily basis and that should also help.  So, bring on September and whatever that month has to throw at us.

August 2021 Budget

So this month went as badly as I thought it was going to.  In fact, it probably went a little bit worse.  We had gone into August knowing it was going to be a financially tight month as there was going to be two weeks in which I wasn't earning anything and where my partner wasn't going to be earning the full amount he normally does.  We did expect to have one week where we weren't going to be spending much at all as we would be walking and camping, but unfortunately, due to some knee issues, that didn't really happen (that'll be coming up in another post).

Let's just get into it and start with the positives.  Our individual emergency funds have stayed at £1000 and we still haven't accrued any credit card (or any other) debt. Yay!  And now let's step into the bad.

Savings - haha.  This month was mainly about getting the balance in our current account back to where it needs to be to cover all the bills that will be coming out at the start of September.  We have managed to do that, but it has meant that we haven't been able to put any money into our sinking funds or into our four-month savings funds.  To make up for this and to reach the 2021 goals we need to now put away about £500 a month until the end of the year. 

I also wasn't able to put any money aside for my pension.  I would say that I had to priorities paying bills, and that is partially true, but I did also spend quite a bit of money on other things I didn't necessarily need this month and which could have gone towards pension payments and savings.

One of those things was eating out and takeaways.  The knee problems not only meant that we couldn't do the coast to coast walk but also meant that we weren't able to do any other walking or swimming that we had planned.  These trips would have helped get us out of the flat and away from possible spending.  I also find that when I sit around doing nothing much I get incredibly lazy and that laziness also includes not doing sensible, healthy, money-saving things like cooking my own food.  So, we got a lot of takeaways and snacks and ate out quite a bit.  Some of that is because we went out for my brother's birthday, but not nearly enough to really justify the amount.

We also had a lot more time to stare in shop windows and at things online, which is never good.  Some of it was on wedding things and things we needed to do the week-long walking that never happened.  But really those are just justifications and a fair amount of the spending could have waited until next month or, in fact, the next few months, to get.

I am actually writing this post a little bit early as there are still a few days of August still to go, but now that we're back at work hopefully the spending should be a lot less.  We've had two bad financial months now and we can only really blame ourselves.  So, goals for the next few months are to cut back greatly on our non-essential spending and to reduce our takeaway /eating out spending to just once a week (and this includes all the snacks we get here and there which will be the most difficult thing).  We pretty much have everything we need now and there are only a few items on our to-buy list - a pair of walking boats each and some elastic for a project I have going at the moment.   And as if looking at my budget isn't enough of a reminder that we need to do better I've actually put on a little bit of weight from all the eating out we've been doing.  I think my body is trying to tell me something. 😂