April 2021 Budget

I was hoping that as a big chunk of our expenses for April came out in March, that we would have a good month this month for savings.  Unfortunately, that didn't actually turned out to be the case.  Entirely our fault as we've been a little bit spendy this month.  Admittedly some of it has been on things we're going to use for activities that will cost us nothing in the future, but it still feels bad seeing them laid out in our budget and we can't put it all down to that.

Starting with what went well this month.  I still have my emergency fund sitting in my savings and haven't built any more credit card debt, with the balance staying at zero.

We've also put aside the £65 and £45 for the Christmas and Car Repair sinking funds we had planned for this year.

I was also able to put aside the £225 for my pension, which I was a little worried I wouldn't be able to do this month.

Unfortunately, we didn't put any money into our six-month savings fund, probably because we spent a little bit too much on snacks and buying ourselves goodies of the other kind.  Admittedly our savings do look a little worse than they actually are as our rent came out of the money we keep in the joint account to ensure we never get overdrawn and which I include as part of our six-month savings funds.  However, there definitely should be more in there had we been a little bit better behaved.

Despite me saying last month that we needed to do better on the spending when it came to groceries and, if I am honest, household items, we've actually spent more this month.  One of the biggest problems is the fact that, now that everything needs to be brought by card instead of cash, it's not that easy to see exactly how much of the money is going and all too easy to just keep spending on the  snacks.

The same is also true when it comes to additional spending, especially on take away food and maybe, just maybe some eat-in food now that we can do that again.

If we pulled back on the spending on groceries, household, and personal items then we could easily money aside into our savings, possibly around £400 a month.  We just need to think of a way of keeping an eye on our spending that we can both see and make use of, and isn't as fiddly as pulling up an excel sheet every time.  Possibly an app in the future, but maybe just pen and paper for now.