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.

September 2022 Budget

It definitely feels like every month this year there has been something going on that has put a little spanner in our financial works.  This time I was ill...... again...... for about a week.  It was horrible and obviously stressful as, as someone who is self-employed, I can't earn any money when ill.  Not ideal, but it's also something we don't have any control over at the moment.  Hopefully the tests I'm getting done by the doctors will come up with something that we can then fix and then I can get on with my original life where I'm not ill on a monthly basis.

Due to the whole being ill thing I've had to move some more money over from the savings to help cover some of the bills that came out at the end of September before my husband's wage went in.  Not ideal, but that is what they are there for and I was able to put some money back once his pay arrived.  Thankfully we've both been able to hold onto our personal emgency funds and so we still have some added security for all the financial changes that are happening at the moment.

Despite all this I was still able to pay off my credit card and almost paid every week of my pension, bar one.  I'm still going to classify this as a win though as I didn't actually earn anything one week to pay it.  Once things have settled I will try and make up for that but I'm not going to worry about it too much, just concentrate on paying into my pension for the rest of the year.

We did decided to move our groceries spending to a cash system to help curve the amount we were actually spending on this and I have to say that it worked a treat.  We did spend a little more on the week I was ill as we were basically buying things that I could keep down, but we made up for this on the other weeks and have actually been under budget for September.  We've also been a lot more conscientious about our take-away / eating out budget and have come under budget on this as well.  This is all very good progress and has actually been quite painless to do.

We've also been a lot more careful about the money we spend in general on things we don't necessarily need and that has also brought our overall spending down in September.  And really it couldn't have come at a better time as things are progressively getting worse in Britain when it comes to our economy.  There's even talk about the possibility of us going into yet another recession, so this change in our financial habits couldn't come at a better time.  

September might not have been the month I was hoping for, but we've still managed to make changes to our spending habits that has saved us money and will follow into the next months, bringing us just a little bit closer to reaching our financial goals even in the financial climate we're in at the moment.

September 2021 Budget

As I've already written a goals update in the last post, which is basically all about trying to get ourselves financially fit, I'm going to be very quick with this post so that I'm not just repeating myself.  I wasn't really expecting September to go particularly well financially, but actually, we did manage to do a little better than I thought and I'll take that.

Our lack of credit card debt and personal emergency funds have remained the same and I'm actually quite proud of the fact that we've managed to keep them like this throughout this entire year.  We have also managed to start reducing our food, household, and takeaway bills, and I'm hoping to keep this downward trend for the rest of the year.  We did have one expensive week for eating out, but that was when we went on a trip out with my Mum and I wouldn't want to change that.

I did also manage to put some money aside for my pension again this month as it was something that I had decided I was going to prioritise for the rest of the year.

However, we still weren't able to put any money into our sinking funds and our four months emergency fund.  While this was disappointing I knew that it would probably be the case as there were some big, unplanned expenses that came out right at the start of the month.

And they all circulated around the car, which needed over £200 worth of repairs and two of the tyres changed, and we didn't use our sinking fund to cover this.  I suppose in a way I could say that we did actually put around £400 pounds into our sinking funds in September, it's just that we had to take it back out again right away.

We also both needed to replace our walking boots, getting replacement walking poles, and my partner needed a high vis top for when he's cycling home now as it's so dark.  Perhaps the outdoor gear isn't strictly 'needed' but walking is important to both of us and we couldn't really be happy without it so it wasn't something I wanted to comprise on.

So, whilst the big expenses on the car did have an impact on what I had originally planned for this month, it could have been far worse and I'm very grateful that we have the money coming in to cover those expenses without having to put ourselves into debt.  On that front, we have been very lucky.  And now we're starting a new month and I have plans on how to start catching up on where we fell behind, such as only eating out / having a takeaway once a week, so October should be a good one.