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.

Goals 2024: Update #1

Whenever I get ready to write my goal updates I always hope that there will be positives to write about, and this year did start off well but then depression snuck in in February.  And then it lingered.....and lingered.......and lingered some more.  I tried to deal with it whilst carrying on with everyday life and working towards my goals, but it was getting worse and, in the end, I decided to just stop.  So I stopped doing my budgets for a while, and I stopped trying to practice new skills, and crafting, and trying to eat healthy, and I even stopped doing as much housework.  I just let myself be.  Am I 100% better?  Not a bit.  Do I feel less overwhelmed?  A little.  At least enough to start doing some things again and to start looking at my goals for 2024.  

Financial Freedom.

• Saving another third of our four-month emergency fund - this has been one of the big positives so far this year as we're already very close to completing this goal already.  Even though we have been spending more than we should, we've still managed to keep all our bills and spending down enough that we've been able to put a good part of our monthly wages into our savings.  We might actually complete this long-term goal before the end of the year.  Which makes me want to give us both big gold stars.  
• Sinking funds - at the beginning of the year we concentrated mostly on putting money into our Christmas sinking fund and we've now got a fully funded Christmas fund.  As it looks like we'll be reaching our emergency fund goal much earlier than we had expected we'll be able to start putting money into our holiday sinking fund this year as well.  We still haven't quite decided where we're going, other than it'll be somewhere on the African continent.
• 12.5% of earnings towards my pension - I did change jobs at the beginning of March and with that job comes the company pension scheme.  I'm just waiting for my details to come through and then I can change my payment amount to fit the 12.5% that I want for this year.  The good thing about this job is that they will match pay into your pension up to 10% and I intend to make full use of this.
• Secondary income - this has gone completely on the back-burner for now, but hopefully, I'll be in the right mindset to think about it again soon.
• Changing my bank account - still to do, but again I'll come back to this at another time.

Learning New Skills.

• Skateboarding - I have given this a few tries and I do feel more comfortable than I did before.  However, I'm still nervous about hurting myself so maybe I just need to bite the bullet and buy all the protective gear.  Then I can just get on with it.  I haven't done much of this recently though as I've just been letting myself sit instead of trying to do things. 
• Surfing - I had started the process of looking into hiring surfboards for us to practice with, but that fell to the wayside when the depression came along.  But we both enjoy this so it's definitely time to get back to it again.
• Drawing - this was one of the first things to go when I started feeling low.  I don't mind though, as I had already managed to fit some practicing in and that gave me a bit of an idea as to where my skill level is.  I will bring this back, but as an 'every now and then' thing instead of a 'must do regularly' thing.
• Flute playing - I did get quite a few practices in for this and it did feel good, though I'm not sure how far I'll be able to go without having a teacher guide me along.  As with everything else, I stopped for a bit, but I will start it up again.  I'll see if I want to carry it on once the year is out, but for now, it's been enjoyable when I do play it.
• Reading - this one hasn't really gone to plan, but it'll be easy enough for me to pick it back up again.  I just need to make the decision to.
• Learning another language - funnily enough, I haven't even looked at this.  Future George decision I think.  For now, I'm just going to concentrate on getting back to where I was at the start of the year.  This can wait a little.

And that's it.  Depression has meant that it hasn't been quite the success I was hoping for, but then it hasn't been a complete disaster either.  Especially when it comes to our financials, which we have managed to do pretty well.  We are already a third of the way into the second quarter, but hopefully, I'll be able to pick things up for the next couple of months, though I'm not going to push too hard just yet.  I'm going to take it slow. After all, I have plenty of time this year to achieve what I want.  No need to try and get it all done now.

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.

Goals 2024

The goals this year are going to be pretty much the same as last year, mainly as our long-term goals haven't changed.  There are a few ones that I've added at the end, but I will put less effort into those ones.  It's not that they are not important, it's just that we are trying to concentrate on our finances first so that we have more freedom to do other things in the future.  This is what we'll be working on this year.

Financial Freedom.

• Saving another third of our four-month emergency fund - we did really well last year with saving up for this, but that was partly helped by the money I got to keep after doing my taxes as a self-employed person.  However, I'm not self-employed anymore, but hopefully just means that I can put aside that additional money straight away with each wage I get.   So that'll be £2500 into savings in 2024.
• Sinking funds - we need to save up for Christmas again and this will be one of the priorities at the start of the year.  It works out at about £73 a month to get us back to where we can have a financially stress-free Christmas, but I'm hoping we can put more in at the beginning to get us there quicker.  We also want to start saving for a holiday abroad, something a bit bigger than what we've been doing before.  It possibly won't be this year, but hopefully next.  We're still working on where we want to go and what we would like to do, but once we've worked that out can calculate how much we'll need to save and start putting money aside for that.
• 12.5% of earnings towards my pension - this is basically the same as last year and I'll need to see if I can do it all through my work or if I'll need to keep putting away additional sums as before.
• Secondary income - this is the same as last year as well.  I'm starting to form more of an idea about what I'd be comfortable doing so we'll see what happens.
• Changing my bank account - yep still haven't done this yet.  To be honest, it's not as high on my priority as it probably should be.

Learning New Skills.

• Skateboarding - this is still something that I want to learn to do and what I've learnt over the last couple of years is that I just haven't been very disciplined when it comes to sorting this out.  I plan to practice at least twice a month, usually with my husband who wants to get back into it.
• Surfing - now that we know that we don't need any more lessons just yet but just need to practice we can just hire some surfboards, which I can book in advance when I know what Ed's work hours are.  Again we just need to be more organised and disciplined so that we do this whenever we're both off.
• Drawing - this is something that I wrote about in my new hobbies blog.  It's really just for my own enjoyment and to keep my brain nice and healthy, but there is a possibility that it could play some part in getting a secondary income.  I'd like to practice at least once a week.
• Flute playing - again this was in my hobbies blog and this is also just for my own enjoyment.  In fact, there is absolutely no way I'm playing the flute in public.  This isn't high on my list of things to prioritize but I would still like to do this once a week if I can.
• Reading - another thing that's just for my own personal enjoyment.  I plan to do a little reading every night, just before bed - at least on a weekday.
• Learning another language - this is something I've put in but I haven't really made any decisions on or plans yet.  Ed has said that whatever I learn he would like to learn with me, but what language that is I'm still not sure about.  Sometimes I think it would be good to learn French as some of the countries we want to visit have it as their official language, there's also the possibility of learning Welsh seeing as we are now in Wales, but it would also be good to get back into learning British Sign Language again and that's more where I'm leaning.  There's no way I'd be able to learn multiple languages at a time, so it'll just have to be one for now.  We'll see.

So that's all of them.  There are quite a lot that I've written down, but as I said we'll prioritize the top ones to begin with and see how the year goes.  In a way, it's good for the way my brain works to have a few different ones going so that I spend my time bouncing between things the way my brain does.  I actually find it hard to concentrate otherwise.  I wasn't really that organised with my goals last year and I feel like that showed in the outcome so I want to be more organised this time around, starting by breaking the goals up into quarters again.  Having something more concrete to work toward means I'll be much more likely to accomplish them.  Let's see what we can actually do this time around.

Goals 2023 Update #4

It wasn't the most effective year this year when it came to reaching my goals and normally I do much better at these.  However, this year definitely feels like it's been one of those years in every respect, which means I'm not really too surprised by the outcome.  This is how it went.

Financial

• Four months emergency fund - on this we reached our 2023 goal and then some.  In fact, we've actually almost reached half our savings amount.  This is a pretty good achievement and I am happy about it despite knowing that we could have done better had we been stricter.
• Sinking funds - all of these were reached and we have been happily using them for their intended purposes.   This time of year has made it very clear how good it is to have your Christmas sinking fund all saved up as we've been able to spend without having to worry about how we're going to afford it all.
• Pension and personal spending - I reached my goal this year of putting 12.5% of each pay cheque into my pension scheme, which is good.  I just need to set up my pension with my new employee so that it automatically comes out of my wage without me having to do anything additional.  And that now ends the good streak moving us neatly onto our personal spending.  This definitely hasn't been great, for either of us, and it's something we'll need to work on over the next year if we want to reach our long-term goal.
• Changing my bank account - I still haven't gotten around to this, even though I know who I think I should change it to.  I am basically just being lazy about this, but there are some things I'm concerned about when it comes to moving to this bank.  I think I just need to write down a list of what they are and then research them instead of just putting it off.
• Secondary income - this has been on the back burner for now as I haven't really had the time or headspace to think about it properly.  This is something else to look at over the coming year.

Learning A New Skill

• Skateboarding - we did manage to fit some skateboarding in this year, but not as much as we had originally planned so I'm still not particularly good at this just yet.  Though at least I'm better than I was at the start.
• Surfing - we did have a lesson a little while ago and were told that we were good enough to practice on our own for a while until we felt it was time to go to the next level when we would need an additional lesson.  However, we haven't actually gotten around to that yet, partly because we find it difficult to find days off together that match and partly because on those days we're a little lazy.  Really I just need to be a little bit more organised.
• Sailing - this is still on the back burner whilst we learn other skills and save up to be able to afford the lessons.  As we do have other savings goals right now which are more of a priority it'll need to wait.

So not quite the year I was hoping for but we still haven't done too badly either and you can't have good years every year.  I also, perhaps, put a little bit too much on myself to accomplish this year anyway.  However, despite not completing everything we are still moving forward and that's a good thing.  I've also learnt some lessons which I can carry forward onto the next year.  One of the main reasons for not succeeding in the number of these goals was not properly organising my time, and that's a good lesson in itself.  Now I need to think about what I want to do next year, which will probably be along the same lines as this year but maybe with just a bit more teeth behind it.

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.

Sustainable Food Shopping

Just a quick post this time, but I've been sitting staring at the avocados I always feel bad about buying and thinking about why it is so difficult to buy things that are sustainable and ethical.  It seems so easy to just fall back into the old habits of buying things that don't really align with how we are trying to live at the moment. 

Picture taken from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46459714

After re-researching about the emissions, water usage, and general sustainability of the food we eat I felt a lot better about the food choices we're making, especially as greatly reducing your consumption of meat is still the best way of reducing your emissions.  I also felt a lot less guilty about eating avocados (their emissions and water usage isn't great, but is still no where near that produced and used by meat, especially beef) and about eating a plant based diet that has gone a little bit of travelling.  However, whilst we have been picking the best options I would like us to build on that further.

The hardest one is going to be packaging.  I do try and reduce the amount of plastic that comes into our homes, but it seems to be getting harder to find vegetables that aren't all wrapped up.  Not only does that mean bringing home more plastic than I want to, but it also makes it harder to reduce your food waste as you can't just buy only what you need.  Even when I've gone to a greengrocers some of the vegetables are still pre-bagged, but it is definitely much less than in supermarkets which has reminded me that when it comes to buying vegetables it would be better for me to go to the grocers instead.  It's something that I've gotten out of the habit of doing, but could easily pick up again.  On the plus side, and despite not being able to choice the quantity of vegetables that we buy, we are pretty good when it comes to not having a lot of food waste.

Got these from this Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/askingfortrouble

There are also specific styles of food that we like to eat and the recipes we follow don't necessarily have vegetables that are seasonal for us here in the UK.  Whilst the latest research has shown that the distance the food travels isn't the main issue when it comes to carbon emissions, now that we've worked on the other impacts our food could have I'd like to work on the distance it travels as well.  We're pretty lucky in the UK in the fact that there is quite a lot of food that is grown here now and I have a list of what food is in season throughout the year.  Before I had decided I would work out what food was available that month and then work out what we were going to eat from that, but actually I kept finding that a little bit overwhelming.  Now I'm going to do it the other way around.  Once we've decided what meals we want to eat I'm going to look at what vegetables are available then and tweak the recipes to fit that instead.  That should work out a lot better.

So, just a couple of changes that I want to make to how we eat.  Once we've made those into habits than I'll start looking at the way in which we cook our food as that has an impact too, it's just a very small percentage and therefore not the biggest thing to worry about.  Hopefully these little changes are ones that I can make relatively easily.  It should also help us save money as well.

Goals 2023 Update #2

This year definitely feels like it's going by very quickly and I am a little surprised that we've gotten half way through half it already.  It has been a bit of a mixed batch when it comes to me completing my goals for this year, but now that I'm looking at them it has actually gone better than I originally thought.

Financial

• Four months emergency fund - this fund took quite a beating at the start of the year and I really thought we were going to struggle with getting it back on track.  However, we've not only managed to catch back up, but are actually over the half way mark I had planned for us for this year.  We should still be able to keep putting in a good amount for the next four months, but I'm not sure how it will go once my current contract is over in November.  I would still like us to reach our goal this year, but to do so we'll probably have to do some real saving this coming quarter.
• Sinking funds - apart from the 'pie in the sky' sailing lessons sinking fund, we have reached our planned amounts for all our sinking funds for this year.  I have of course already spend all of my craft sinking fund.  We will hopefully be spending our surfing lessons one soon, but the rest will sit there for future use.  One hopefully never (the car repairs) and one a little closer to Christmas.
• Pensions and personal spending - I'm still putting 12.5% of my wage into my pension.  I had hoped that, now that I'm employed, this would be done through my wage but at the moment it hasn't been set up that way so I'm continuing to just pull out that amount myself.  We haven't done as well on our personal spending as we have with all our other financial goals.  We were being good for a little while, but then a whole lots of needed things came up and then not so needed but definitely wanted things.  We are financially stable at the moment so the spending isn't putting us in any financial difficulties, but it would still be good to get control on this for this last half of the year so that we can do better at reaching our financial goals and we don't know how our finances at the end of this year.
• Changing my bank account - I'm still to do this.  There isn't really any reason for me to not have done this already, it's just putting aside the time to sit down and do it.
• Secondary income - this is also something I still haven't done.  I just can't decide which way I'm going to go.  If I'm honest I'm also a little bit nervous about it, but I should really just give it a go.  Even if I fail at least I tried.

Learning New Skills

• Skateboarding - this was something that I had planned to do about two times a month, but so far I haven't even done it once this year.  The reason is completely that I'm nervous about doing it.  I think I've found somewhere to practise that is relatively flat and that doesn't have too many people using it.  It's unusual for me to let my fear stop me in this way, so even if it's just for that reason I need to just go and do it.
• Surfing - we now have the money we need to book some more surfing lessons and I've been researching where we can go to have these lessons.  All we need to do now is book them, which I will do once I've found out what my husbands next rota is.  Quite excited to be getting back to it and hopefully, after a couple more lessons, we should be able to start going surfing on our own.  I might also look at joining a women's surfing group just so I can build my confidence a little more.  
• Sailing - this is obviously on the back burner at the moment, but it's still in my mind as something we would like to do in the not so distant future.  I will need to research where we can get lessons from, etc, but for now it would be nice to just get to know the coast line near us a bit better.  That of course means sorting out some walking and beach days - what a shame.

So, a mixed bag of achievements.  We've done really well in some things and, mostly I've done, really badly on others.  There's still another six months to go though, which is still plenty of time to pull everything around.  Skateboarding is really the one I want to concentrate a bit more on, specifically because it's fear that is holding me back here.  It would also be good for my mind and body to learn something new and that I haven't done before.  So, the plan for the next quarter is just to keep doing what we're doing, but to put a little more emphasis on the skateboarding and controlling our personal spending.  That seems very do-able.  

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.