May 2024 Budget

There isn't really a huge amount to say about this month as, as with most of the other months, our bills have basically remained consistent and we have now gotten into a routine of spending specific amounts on each category as we've tried to save.  We have had one big win this month.

And that win is to finally finish completely paying into our four months' emergency savings.  This now means that we are now covered if any big changes happen in the future and we can be a little bit more relaxed about it.  It does make me feel more secure and gives us a bit more flexibility when it comes to the decisions we make in the future.  We also had a little bit of money left over to then put some into our holiday sinking fund.  If we keep doing as well as we are now then we should be able to book our holiday by the end of the year.  It's a really big thing for us to look forward to and a reward for all our hard work.

We did spend a little bit more than we should have on our eating-out budget by about £20.  However, we underspent on our groceries by £70 so I'm not too worried about it as, overall, we actually made a saving on our spending on food.  Our fuel bill has gone up a little bit as well as we took a trip to the coast to do some surfing.  But that is an extra expense we're happy to accommodate as we enjoy it.

We've also both been good and underspent on our personal spending.  Not spending on things and really asking if we really want or need something just seems to have become a good habit for both of us now, and that's probably a big reason why we've been able to put so much into our savings this year.  We have spent a little bit more on days out, but one of the spends is to do with us booking stuff for our holiday we'll be taking soon in Pembrokeshire (a break my husband in particular really deserves right now).  There is also the surfboard hire, but that's coming out of the sinking fund we still have for surfing.  We have about five more times we can rent boards using this sinking fund, but it is only £20 a go for both of us so I think that's an expense we can accommodate.

It's still taking a little while for me to organise my pension payment through my wage at my new job, but when I finally get it finalised it will mean that we will have less coming in from my wage.  This will probably be around £200, which does mean there will be less going into our sinking funds.  However, this is less of an issue seeing as we have now completed our big long-term goal when it comes to our finances.  In fact, it's coincided with our saving success pretty well.

All in all, it's been a pretty good month and the habitats we have formed over the last year have definitely helped us get to the point where we can put money towards our security and have experiences that really mean something to us.  From now on we can actually be a little bit more relaxed about what we spend our money on, and get a few more experiences under our belt.  However, I never want to go back to the spending I did before.  It wasn't helpful, nor did it make me happy, and now not doing it means I can have experiences that are more meaningful and that I've always wanted to have.

February 2024 Budget

February has been a mixed bag when it comes to the success of our budgeting.  We did spend over what we had budgeted for, some of which couldn't be helped but some definitely could have been, but we also somehow managed to put a good amount towards our savings.  Could we have done better, obviously yes, did we still do really well...also yes.

As always, our spending on our general bills has pretty much remained the same, which is actually lucky as it means none of them have been put up just yet.  We did, however, spend more on our gas bill and that's because this month has been a little bit colder than the last so our heating has had to work harder.  I'm expecting March to be pretty similar, but then after that, we should be able to get our gas bill back down again.

I did buy a few more things for our house than I normally do (in fact normally I spend absolutely nothing) but that's because we've decided to stay here a little bit longer than we had originally planned so I want to fix some things that had been annoying me a little bit.  It's not really that important, but it does make living here more enjoyable for me at least.  We also quite a bit on food again this month.  Whilst it's been nowhere near as bad as the spending we did last year we are sneaking back into old bad habits.  It's not anything we can't pull back on and March will be the month we do that on.  Food spending is always going to be our weak point so we really do need to keep an eye on it.

We've been spending more on fuel as well and a big part of that was due to the fact that my work was in a different location to Ed's so when he came to pick me up at the end of the day we were putting extra miles on the car.  Now that my new job is in a similar location to his that should bring the cost back down again, although we are doing a trip to Swindon next month so I do expect that it won't drop completely in March.

That's also where the cost for the day out has come from as we've booked an Airbnb for the one night we're in Swindon and there'll probably be some extra spending on things like food when we're there as well so that's something we should really be putting money aside for - something to think about when the craving for a takeaway comes along.  Our own personal spending hasn't really been great this month either.  Firstly we needed to restock the oils that we use to make my face moisturiser and Ed's beard oil.  It was over £70 but it should last us for the year at least.  I then got water damage on my phone and needed to get a new phone screen.  Thankfully as I have a Fairphone I was able to just buy that online and then change the screen myself, but it did still cost about £85.  However, even with those two large spends our personal spending in total didn't end up going over our budget by too much and, as we underspent last month, I'm not too worried about it.

The biggest plus for this month is how much we were able to put into our savings and sinking funds.  We did sell some things in January and that money went straight into our savings, but we were also able to put quite a bit from our wages into savings as well and I decided that we would just complete our sinking fund for Christmas so that our main focus for the rest of the year can be on our four months savings.  That has been a really big positive for us and a good incentive to keep us working towards our financial goals for this year.  

So, some ups and downs, but overall I feel like February has mostly been positive.  There are definitely places where we can improve and, if we want to keep doing as well as this, we need to improve as our income will be dropping a little bit from March.  However, I think we can do it and that means we could actually reach our savings goals a lot earlier than we have planned.  Now that would be very satisfying.

December 2023 Budget

I'm going to be honest here, I completely winged it when it came to our finances this month.  There were a few other things going on, as well as the whole getting ready for Christmas, so I had kind of expected that this month wouldn't go particularly well.  That being said, having the Christmas sinking fund was a really good thing and meant that we at least didn't have to stress about that.  It's definitely something I'll continue to do in the future.

Despite all that we actually didn't do too badly this month.  Specifically on the food spending, which is where we usually have a problem.  Our spending on takeaways and eating out stayed right within our budget this month and we only ended up spending about £50 above our planned budget for groceries, including the big spend on Christmas food.

Our mobile phone bills have gone back to the normal price now as well, now that we've taken the roaming off them again.  I've also been keeping up with using the app to reduce my phone bill even further.  It's not a lot but it all helps and I get a weird feeling of accomplishment despite the small amount.  I did have a little moment when I was sorting out our breakdown cover and accidentally booked two covers, but thankfully I contacted the company and they sorted it out for me straight away which was very nice of them.  Always good to see money coming back into your account.  I was also able to do it all by email so I didn't even have to interact with a human.  Nice!

We also spent a little less on fuel this month, though I'm not entirely sure how we managed to do that.  I believe it was partly because we had a week where Ed was off work and my drive to work is a lot shorter than his, so I actually didn't need to fill up during that time at all.  I also got my first wage from my new job this month, but as the amount they have taken for my pension is less than I have planned I did need to make an additional payment this month as well.  I do need to look into increasing this automatic withdrawal for my next wage.  However, first I do need to find out how much I can actually increase it to as some have a limit on this.  This might mean that I'll need to continue making an additional payment to my own pension account as before.

Our personal spending has been really good this week, probably because we've been too busy spending on other people, so I'm very happy with that and hopefully, this will be something we can continue to do in the future.  Probably the biggest win is that we managed to put more money into our four-month savings, which got us to our new savings goal for this year and over the halfway point to our long-term goal.  Whoop whoop!

So, despite not really concentrating on our budgeting this month we have somehow managed to do pretty well on it.  I have to admit that some of it will be because we've been way too busy to be able to spend on unnecessary things, but hopefully, we'll be able to continue this next year so that we can get to our goals a lot sooner than we had originally planned.  

November 2023 Budget

There have been a few things going on recently and I've had a lot on my mind, so I've been pretty distracted and really haven't been concentrating at all on budgeting and looking after our finances.  So, as expected the spending this month hasn't been great, not helped by the fact that my pay was much less this month due to there being a gap between my old job ending and my new one beginning.

All the usual bills are pretty much the same as before, though our electricity was a little bit more this month, partly due to it being darker for longer now and partly because I've been at home a lot more which naturally means using more electricity no matter how careful I try to be.  Our phone bills were also a little higher this month as we had added roaming to our phones when we went to Brittany, but that will only be for this month.

We have managed to reduce our spending on food this month but it's still much higher than I had originally budgeted for.  Some of it has been us spending on things we really didn't need to spend on, but I have noticed that the cost of food has gone up a bit which means our original budget might actually be a little bit unrealistic.  I'll need to think about increasing this for next year.

We spent more on travel this month as well as I headed down south to help with some family stuff.  For this, I took the bus down (which without a doubt is the cheapest way of travelling far in the UK still) and then my husband came down when he had his days off work.  We also had to spend quite a bit on the car this month with its MOT being due and needing to sort out the advisories that came from that including changing a tyre, renewing our insurance which has gone up quite a bit for everyone now, and renewing our breakdown cover.  I haven't used the money from our car repair sinking fund for these as I want to see if we can get away with leaving that for now.  However, if we need to I'll move the money over.  

This month I also put across my last pension payment from my old job.  I will need to look at moving what pension payment they made into their own scheme into my own account, but hopefully it's just come back to me in my last pay.  I will need to see my wage slip to be sure and I haven't had that yet.

There has also been quite a lot of gift buying this month as there have been a few people's birthdays and we've started buying for Christmas.  I know it's early but I do need to send some of the gifts and I also find Christmas a bit stressful so I like getting it all sorted early so I can just enjoy the run-up.  I am really glad we worked on our Christmas sinking fund during the year as it's made this whole time a lot easier and we don't have to worry so much about money.  We did back peddle a little bit on our personal spending this month and both of us overspent quite a bit.  Specifically me as I spent about £80 in IKEA.  We went to get some things we needed but of course, ended up getting additional things we suddenly realised we needed once we were there.

So not great really.  We weren't able to put any money into our savings this month, which means we only have December to try and reach our new savings goal, but I'm not going to worry too much about that as it was being a little ambitious.  I had a feeling that November wouldn't be great based on how the rest of the year has gone.  However, that could just have been a self-perpetuating idea and it definitely hasn't helped that I haven't made budgeting a priority this year at all.  I'll be back to work in December so it'll be good to start having more money coming in again, but should also reduce what we spend a little bit on electricity and food.  It'll just be Christmas spending now and I can't think of anything extra we'll need to get for ourselves.  I guess we'll see how that goes.

September 2023 Budget

Despite my hope at the end of last month, September has basically been the same as August, with us still going completely mad when it comes to food.  It doesn't help that there have been a few things going on this month and I haven't been particularly well so haven't had the energy I needed to really concentrate on our spending.  We've also been trying some new recipes just to add a bit more interest to our eating and they always contain expensive ingredients (why do they do that), but if we like them I'll be adapting them for future use.

All our other spending and bills have pretty much been the same as always, with me still being able to keep my mobile bill down to about a third of what it was at the start of the year.  We have spent about a quarter more on our fuel as we've been needing to do a bit more travelling due to family, but that should reduce again over the next couple of months.

We have started to do a little bit of Christmas spending as I work out what type of crafting I want to do for our Christmas cards this year.  I'm actually starting a lot later than I normally do when it comes to making these, but I should still have enough time before they have to be sent out.   We have also managed to keep our personal spending down again.  In fact, we have underspent again this month which is really, really good and a good habit to have developed.

We've also managed to put some more money into our four-month savings.  Not as much as I would have liked and had originally planned for us to do, but as we have already managed to reach our goal for this year anything we put in now is a bonus that helps us reach our long-term goal a lot sooner. 

As seems to be a running trend with us, food spending is where we have a problem.  We did try to do the cash spending again to curb it, but it didn't really work this time.  Partly because we kept forgetting the purse which contained the money and ended up also spending on the card, but also because we just enjoy our food.  This is something we still need to work on for the rest of the year to try and break this habit, especially as we don't know what my earnings are going to be after October.  We are going away in October, but the plan is to really work on our spending in the three weeks that we are home to help build up some good habits and to allow us to put more money into our savings.

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.

July 2023 Budget

This was a mixed month when it came to reaching our budget goals for July.  There were some things that went really well and others that really did not.  There were a couple of days where I wasn't expecting our finances to be great and these were when we decided to have a date day and when we spent some time with some friends who had come up to Wales.  Both were a little but spendy, but obviously worth it.

Most of our monthly bills were pretty much the same as always, but we did manage to save quite a bit of money this month on our gas and electricity.  It probably helped that, despite it being a very wet month, it has been relatively warm, but I did also fix our thermostat and that seemed to really help with the gas.  My mobile bill is also a lot lower this month after I made all those changes last month and it should be lower still next month as well.

Another positive is that we've been able to greatly reduce our personal spending this month.  After last month we manage to make an effort to be more mindful when buying things.  There are a couple of things that look like a big spend, but one me booking our surfing lessons and we'd already built up a sinking fund to cover that, and the other was an expected spend on an electronic that I didn't have time to save for but which I knew we could afford.  I've also still been able to put money into my pension again, so that I'm still keeping up with that goal for 2023.

On the not so good, fuel has been high again this month but unfortunately there's nothing we can do about that as we can't reduce the amount we drive as it's needed for work.  However, the biggest issue has been our spending on food, both groceries and eating out/ take-away.  In fact, our spending has been pretty excessive this month.  To be honest I'm not even that sure why, but I think we were just not really paying attention to what we were buying and going mostly going for convenience.  This is, of course, not entirely budget friendly or good for our health, so this is going to be something I'll focus on more in the coming month and that should hopefully help us put more money into our savings.

To end on another plus, we have been able to put a good chunk into our savings again.  Obviously this would have been much higher had we been more careful with our spending on food, but it does mean that we are now much closer to reaching our four month savings goal for this year.  If we do manage to reach it before the end of the year I think we're just going to keep going so that we can reach our final long term goal much quicker.  This would make this year a very productive year for us if we do.

So, a mixed bag really, but actually I would say that it was mostly positive and I'm very happy with that.  We just have to work on our spending on food - something that we actually struggle with regularly as we love our food.  However, if I'm stricter with myself and we keep to our menu planning and not eat out as much as we have been in July I think we should actually be able to do that just fine.  Guess we'll have to wait and see what August brings.

June 2023 Budget

Yes well, June didn't exactly go as it should have this year.  We did do a little more travel this month, including going down to see family in Devon, which did play a part but mostly we have just been a ittle bit too lax when it comes to our spending this month.

Most of our general bills have remained the same but we did over spend by quite a bit more than we had budgets for on our groceries and take-aways.  We did go away on the first weekend of June so that I could go and see the wool museum in Dre-fach Felindre and also spent quite a bit of money on restocking our food cupboards when we were in Plymouth with products we use a lot in our cooking but which we are struggling to find here.  However, the rest was just on us not paying attention on what we were getting and buying little snacks here and there which do all add up.  I did manage to reduce my mobile phone bill though, by about half.  It's not exactly a huge saving, but it all counts and over time it'll add up to a nice little amount.

As we were expecting the fuel has gone up quite a bit, especially with the trip to Devon, but there's nothing we can do about that.  It's just something we'll need to keep an eye on and might mean that we need to reduce spending elsewhere in the future if we need to.  I did also put some money into my own personal pension as well as I noticed from my last two wages that my work hasn't taken any money out for my pension.  This is probably because I'm only a temporary staff member, so I'll keep an eye on that in the future and keep adding to it if I need to.  

One of the good things about being with Nationwide is that we do get money back from them on a regular basis and this month has been a very good month for that.  This has been particularly helpful this month as June is always a big month when it comes to spending on birthdays.

And now for the really bad bit which was our own personal spending.  We did spend a lot more than we should have, a whole lot more.  Some of it was on things that we needed, like I needed to buy more sports bras and there were a few things that we needed for the house which I decided to just get in one go as I knew we could afford it.  We also spent money on some cricket tickets that will take place later this year but which we wanted to get now.  However, even with that we have spent way more that we should have and it's something we need to keep an eye on again so that we can put more money into our savings to reach our financial goals quickly.

Talking about savings, and ending on something positive at least, we were able to put more money into our four months savings.  This has taken us over the half way mark I had planned for us to be at by this time.  It's really good news and we might actually be able to reach our goals for the year early.  However, even if we do that I think I'd like us to keep saving as much as we can so that we can reach this big goal sooner.

So that's one really good thing we managed to do, but we do really need to control our spending as had we been good this month we have been able to put another £300 into savings.  It does make a big difference.  The problem is we can afford the spending at the moment which means that there is less of an incentive to not spend, not helped by the fact that it is quite enjoyable.  However, to reach our long term goals and be able to spend money on things we'll enjoy long term we need to curb this.  I need to find away to make these goals more prominent in our minds so that when the urge comes we can be reminded on what we'll be missing out on in the long run.