July 2022 Budget

It's been another month and another plague of illnesses.  I'm not going to lie, being ill this often is really beginning to wear a little thin for me.  This time I got food poisoning and ended up missing a couple of days.  Then Ed got COVID, which then led to me getting COVID (it's finally caught up with us) though thankfully his work still paid him for those days.  The joys of not being self-employed.  The heat also didn't help and there were some days that were missed or only half worked because of it as it just wasn't safe to be in that heat.  And on that note, here goes.

We've still managed to keep no credit card debt and have our own personal emergency funds fully paid up - always good to start on a positive.  I've also been able to put money into my pension every week this month and I'm very happy about that.

There's also the spending on groceries and takeaways which we've done a pretty good job at reducing this month despite being ill at the same time, especially the takeaways.  We can keep improving on this and that's the plan for the rest of the year.  If I can get the groceries down to £400 a month and the takeaways /eating out down to £200 I'll be very happy.  Fuel has been the main issue this month and you can see that the cost of it has gone right up over the last few weeks.  I've also been doing a little more driving than usual this month, but none of this can be helped and we just have to accept that this has become an increased expense.  At least we are able to do that without it having too much of an effect on the quality of our lives and for that I am grateful.

We have been able to put money towards our four months' savings.  Not as much as I had hoped to do at the beginning of July, but still better than what we managed in June so that's a start at least.  This is partly due to the fact that, due to how the budget months run, my husband's pay will actually go into next month's budget this time (along with our larger bills, thankfully), but that does mean that we will probably get two wages for him in August and be able to put more into savings then.  Everything else has pretty much been the same as the last few months.

And that's July over and done with, and over half the year already gone.  If we had been really strict with ourselves we probably could have been very close to reaching our main goals already.  However, we made a choice to allow ourselves some spending on the things we really enjoy knowing that this would mean it would take us a little bit longer to reach our goals overall and we're fine with that.  We'll see how August goes.  If the heat carries on the way it is at the moment we might be spending all the money we are able to earn on ice cream. 😂