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.

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.  

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.

Goals 2023 Update#3

I had planned on being more focused on my goals this quarter to get a number of them ticked off, but then life happened and I didn't get as far forward as I had hoped.  It is a little frustrating, but I've still managed to plod along quite well and get a number of them done.  It just means that I will need to really concentrate on them for these last three months.

Financial.

•  Four months emergency fund - I'm happy to say we're still putting money into our savings and we've already reached our 2023 goal of saving a third of our long-term goal.  In fact, it's looking like we'll be able to save half of it by the end of this year so I'm very pleased with that.
• Sinking funds - these have all been reached and we are now getting to spend these on their intended purpose.  It does feel a little weird spending them as part of you just wants to hoard what you've saved, but it also takes the worry or guilt out of spending on these things.  
• Pension and personal spending - I am still putting 12.5% of my earnings into my pension and it looks like I'll be able to carry on doing that until the end of the year.  It is a very nice feeling knowing that my pension is finally growing properly.  We've also finally managed to curb our personal spending and keep to the budgets we've put in place.  In fact, we've been underspending recently which means we should be able to put even more into our savings or, at least, not reduce what we're putting in when we need to spend on other things.
• Changing my bank account - I've decided to wait until my current contract is over before swapping over to a new bank as there isn't much longer to go and it seems it would be less complicated.
• Secondary income - I still need to work on this, but right now I'm concentrating on finding another primary income.  The biggest issue I have here is that I'm just not sure what other skills I have to help with a secondary income, I really need to try and work that out.

Learning New Skills.

• Skateboarding - we have managed to fit in some skateboarding practice, but not nearly as much as we wanted to.  We've found a good spot and I do feel that it's starting to click, but we've just been really lazy about it.
• Surfing - we've had another surf lesson and have been told that we don't need to have any further lessons just yet.  It's been suggested that we practice surfing for a bit and then book another lesson when we want to progress to the next stage.  Now all we need to do is find times when we are both off so we can hire some boards and practice.
• Sailing - this is still on the back burner for now and will be something we look into in the future, hopefully not too far away.

So, it's not going too badly really but, obviously, I could have done better if I'd put a little bit more effort into it.  I am still quite happy with what we've done so far though, mainly as it's been helping us become more financially stable.  Just the last quarter of the year to go now and the plan is to change my bank account, get another primary job (and then make a decision on the secondary income), skateboard six more times, and get a few surfing practices in before the end of the year.  Some of this needs to fit around Ed's work schedule though, but hopefully, it'll be doable. 

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.

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.

May 2023 Budget

May was a slightly unusual month in the fact that there were five weeks instead of four, at least in the way our financial weeks goes work at the moment.  This meant that we did spend a little bit more money than we would have done on other months.  It was also the first month in a while where we both got a wage and that was a nice feeling.

As I had hoped at the start of May, we've actually done pretty well this month when it comes to our spending.  Our food bills, both when it comes to groceries and eating out/ take-away, have come within budget (slightly over in groceries but the same amount under in eating out).  I know that we could save a little bit more if we reduced or stopped the eating out, but it is something that we enjoy having as a treat on the days we do actually get to spend time together so I really don't see us stopping this unless we really have to.  One thing that I have noticed has gotten quite high now is my mobile phone bill, but I've put some work into that this month, looking at different plans etc, to reduce this in the long run and that should come into affect over the next couple of months.  It's not huge amount monthly but the accumulation over the year should make a tidy amount.

We have been a little over on our personal spending.  A few of weeks on my spending does seem high, but one was some craft items that I had already put money aside for and so actually didn't come out of this month's earnings.  The others were because I had to buy a number of items for work, which of course all deteriorated at the same time so the cost couldn't be spread out, and we'd decided to stay away the first weekend in June, which was another £99 off.  When these are taken into account we both managed to underspend when it cames to just buying random things, which is a good change in our behaviour.  We just need to now be more organised when it comes to saving up for trips, etc.

One thing that has become higher than before has been the fuel.  The actual price of fuel is a lot cheaper here than in Devon, but we've had to do a lot more driving now as neither of us can get to work through walking or public transport.  My husband's shift work also means that there are quite a few weeks where the car is being driven seven days a week.  This change in expense is something we can't really do anything about so we're just going to have to accept that our budget on fuel costs will need to go up to £300.  Thankfully, our budget can take this increase so it's not something I'm going to worry about.  There's not going to be anything in the pension sections this month (or for the next few months) as this is now something that gets paid straight out of my wage by my employer.  I am going to increase the amount that comes out of my wage though to the 12.5% I had planned for this year.  In all likeliness I'll get this money back at the end of my contract and I'll just put all of that straight into my own pension.

We did manage to put money into our four months savings as well, which makes me very happy.  It's nice seeing a good chunk going in and now that all the other sinking funds have been completed we can just concentrate on that for the rest of the year.  I'm hoping that, as most of the other months are four weeks long, we should be able to put even more in over the coming months and possibly even surpass this years goal.

So not a bad month and the plan is to carry on with the improvements for the rest of the year.  There will be a couple of months which will be a bit of a blip as we do want to do some touristy things and it is important that we balance being sensible with getting to have experiences.  However, I think we are going to do pretty well when it comes to our financial goals this year and that is a good feeling to have.

January 2023 Budget

It's been a pretty good start to the year when it comes to our finances.  We've still had a couple of slip ups, but nothing big and we've been able to make up for them pretty quickly.  The most important part of this month has been starting to form the habits that we're hoping to carry on for the rest of the year to reach the financial goals we have for 2023.

Our general bills did go up a little last year and we've had to take that into account along with the addition of the car payment of £220 a month.  Due to this we've decided that we do need to start being a lot stricter with our spending elsewhere - especially when it comes to our personal spending.  With that in mind we have been good with our groceries spending, keeping that in budget for the month despite including household spending and the fact that we're no longer using cash.  I think having a few months where we could only use cash broke our habit of just constantly spending on food and now we're able to keep that going whilst using our cards.  If we ever find ourselves slipping again we can always go back to cash.

We didn't do quite so well on our takeaway and eating out budget, but we pulled back on the spending in the last couple of weeks and managed to finish the month in budget.  Also, despite the amount of driving we did this month trying to see as many English Heritage properties as we could we actually managed to stay under budget for January, so the hybrid is definitely helping us save on fuel in the way we hoped it would.  It doesn't quite make up for the monthly payment we have to make for the car, but it helps pay towards it.

Even though I'm now paying less money into my pension then I did last year, taking it down to 12.5% of my pay, it's still quite a good amount and more than I originally thought it would be.  Any money going into my pension is good, especially as I recently did a calculation of how much money I would have after I retired based on what I have so far and it really wasn't good.  

As with the takeaways we did have a couple of blips with our personal spending, which is meant to be £25 each a week, but some of that was on having to get my engagement ring fixed and we also pulled that back across the month by reducing our spending later on.  So we've managed to end the month on budget with this as well.  Having the budget has been a good check every time we think about spending some money and we really think about whether we really need or want to item before we get it.  We also discuss our spending with each other a lot more, which is good as it makes me feel more like we're working towards our financial goals together now.

Lastly is our sinking funds and savings.  We were able to put in our first £75 of the year into our Christmas sinking fund and the last payment we needed to get our car repair sinking fund back up to the £500 we wanted (something we hopefully won't need to spend any time soon but good to have just in case).  We still need to work on our other sinking funds, though the sailing lessons sinking fund is on the back burner for now, and our four months savings funds but it's a start.  I'm expecting us to get better once we get more into the swing of things.

All in all, it's been a pretty good start to the year.  We didn't get as much saved as we would have liked, but this is a five week month and I'd accidentally planned for it to be a four week month so we've actually done pretty well.  We'll see how things go with February, which is actually a four week month - I've double checked.  One of the good things we found out this month is that we're not actually that bothered about not spending money on things and we do really enjoy the free activities we did throughout January.  Hopefully this is something we can carry on for the rest of the year.