I did think about writing two separate blogs about our February and March budgeting but then decided that I'd much rather write about other things and so they are going into one together. It is a tale of two months with one going pretty well and the other completely falling off the wagon. In our defence, we did move in March so we had other things to make decisions about and there was some overlap in the properties we were renting which meant we had to pay two rents, pay a deposit for the new property and cover things like heating etc when we'd already paid by direct debit for the old flat.
We did get some of the money back and we should be getting our old deposit soon. One of the biggest expenses was hiring a van (which with a mess up from the company we originally hired from ended up being a lot more expensive than we had originally budgeted for) and covering the fuel costs. This all meant that we had to take out most of the money we had saved into our four months emergency fund, which we decided to do over our own emergency funds, but that is what that's there for.
February was quite a good month. We stayed within our budgets for groceries, eating out/ takeaway, fuel, and personal spending. I also put a good amount into my pension as well. We had money to put into our Christmas sinking fund, but I forgot to transfer it in February so did it in March instead. We didn't put any money away into our four month savings but by the end of February I knew we were moving and so decided to leave all the money in our main account.
Then March came along. We actually didn't do too badly on the groceries spend, but the eating out/ takeaway budget went out the window a long with spending on household goods are we settled into the new place. There isn't a lot of storage space here so I had to find items that would help with that.
Fuel was another expense that went up as we travelled to and from Wales a couple of times and had to pay for fuel for the van (which was an extra £100). As the car should mostly be travelling the same distances it did down in Plymouth now we're expecting that the cost should go back down to what it was before. I also wasn't able to put more money into my pension after the first week of March as I wasn't earning any income to put that into. I am job searching at the moment so that should hopefully change in the not so distant future.
Our general spending wasn't actually too bad, though there were some major costs that we couldn't have saved up for as we didn't know about them until this point, such as the van rental and buying some new clothes for my husband for his new job. The only point where we'd both been quite naughty was our one year anniversary gifts we got each other. We had a budget, neither of us kept to it. 😂
So, what are the plans for next quarter? Obviously I need to get a job and we need to get back to keeping within our budgets again. I will be doing my tax returns next month and that should mean that we get a little bit extra coming in to put back into the savings. I have worked out that if we want to still reach our goal of a third of our four months emergency saving by the end of this year we need to put in £280 a month for the rest of the year. I'll need to see a couple of months spending, especially with out fixed monthly bills, before I can see how realistic this is going to be, but it's good to have it to aim for for now.
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