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.

Walking: Beacons Way Stage 5 - Storey Arms to Glyntawe

I've already written about the section of the Cambrian Way that I did a little while ago which also starts at the Storey Arms and ends in Glyntawe, but takes quite a different route to get there.  In that post I wrote about how I wanted to try the Beacons Way next to see the difference and, a couple of weeks later, I did.

The Cambrian Way is definitely the more direct route, but with the terrain being a little more difficult and the route a little less obvious I was expecting them to actually take around the same time despite the additional miles on the Beacons Way.  As before I actually started my walk at Pont ar Daf car park and walked up to Storey Arms before heading up the side of Fan Fawr and following the route on my OS Map.  As before I won't go into a description of the route as this is easily available online and is marked really well on the OS maps.  

As before, and with a number of my walks, I really lucked out on the weather meaning that, whilst I did need to repeatedly apply suncream, I did get really good views all day long.  This route was a lot easier to navigate through and most of the time it was pretty obvious which path I was meant to be on, even without too many sign posts, but there were still a couple of times where I needed to quickly check the app on my phone to ensure that I had actually taken the right turning.

The ease of the route meant that this walk was a lot kinder on the legs then the Cambrian Way, but the section on the Roman road was a little unpleasant on the feet and made being able to put them up during my lunch a must to ensure that the last section was actually enjoyable.  On the plus though, the Roman road does take you past another standing stone, Maen Madoc, which is believed to have been erected during the late Roman Period (though there is some thought that it may have been originally been erected in the Bronze Age) possibly as a burial stone given the Latin inscription on the side.

One of the best things about this walk was that, even though this is a relatively popular route, I was able to do it on a week day so that I mostly had it to myself.  In fact, I only really past three people giving me the time away that I needed and usually hope for when I'm walking in the mountains.

This time I decided to not go all the way the Glyntawe as I had already walked that section and cut off onto the path that runs south, parallel with the A4067, to end my walk at the Ancient Briton for a pint (always a good way to end a walk I feel) and to meet up with a friend.  This is a really nice walk and I would recommend it, especially to someone who is wanting to spend a day out in the mountains, but isn't 100% confident with their navigational abilities.  The wildlife on this route did seem to be a little less, but there's still a good amount of history to look at, spanning about 2000 years of Welsh history.  Even with low cloud cover you would still have plenty to see.  And now it's time for me to start organising my next walking trip.

Crafting 2023 Update #2

I can't believe that that's half the year gone already and it definitely feels like I haven't managed to do as much crafting this year as I did last.  However, I am still enjoying it and to me that's the main thing.

Completion and Use Up Projects

Managed to cross off another two projects on this list -  the matching tie for my husband using the fabric I had used to make my dress and what was left over from my wedding outfit, and the knitted strappy top.  The top was made using a pattern from Kutovakika called the Lola top and I used the left over wool from the Guarnsey jumper I had made for my husband.

Socks, Mittens, and Cowl

These were a gift for a friend and I wanted to make her matching socks and mittens.  However, I ended up having plenty of wool left over so I also added a cowl to the mix.  It was a little bit of a challenge to make these as I didn't have any measurements to work from so I just had to go with the vague idea that her hands and feet are longer than mine.  I did enjoy making them though, and they helped keep me calm during our move to Wales.

The Maggie and Coddy Jumpers

I now have the yarn for both of these jumpers, which I brought with some of the money I had put aside after doing my tax returns, and I've started the Coddy jumper which is for my husband.  This jumper is made using a cotton yarn and it's been quite interesting learning to knit with this type of yarn as I hadn't done that before.  It definitely slips through your fingers a lot easier.  I did have to unpick some of it though as something wasn't quite right with the pattern section and I could see the black yarn through the white sections.  Once I've completed this one I'll move onto mine, where we're back to good old wool yarn.

The Jabberwocky Embroidery

This one is also completed and didn't actually take me that long to do, just a few nights.  It's not really my style, but I did enjoy doing embroidery again and it's reminded me that it's something I would like to get back to in the future.  It was a pretty good kit as well, with everything you would need to complete your project.  Right now it's sitting with the other sewing that I have completed but haven't gotten around to framing yet.

More Socks

I've had a request for some socks from a friend, so I've added this on as a little side craft that I do whilst I knit the jumper for Ed.  It's another one where I don't really have the measurements so I've having to wing it a little bit.  However, it's a relatively simple knit which means I can give my mind a little break from the more complex pattern knitting I'm doing at the moment.  I'm using my go to Voolenvine favourite socks pattern and the yarn is Regia 4 ply in Leaf.

I guess I've still managed to get quite a few things completed this year, despite it feeling like a slow year.  I don't think I'm going to get all the projects I had planned for 2023 completed, but I'm hoping to finish at least another three before the year it out.  It does all depend on what else is going on though, so we'll see.  Let's still aim for three.

Goals 2023 Update #2

This year definitely feels like it's going by very quickly and I am a little surprised that we've gotten half way through half it already.  It has been a bit of a mixed batch when it comes to me completing my goals for this year, but now that I'm looking at them it has actually gone better than I originally thought.

Financial

• Four months emergency fund - this fund took quite a beating at the start of the year and I really thought we were going to struggle with getting it back on track.  However, we've not only managed to catch back up, but are actually over the half way mark I had planned for us for this year.  We should still be able to keep putting in a good amount for the next four months, but I'm not sure how it will go once my current contract is over in November.  I would still like us to reach our goal this year, but to do so we'll probably have to do some real saving this coming quarter.
• Sinking funds - apart from the 'pie in the sky' sailing lessons sinking fund, we have reached our planned amounts for all our sinking funds for this year.  I have of course already spend all of my craft sinking fund.  We will hopefully be spending our surfing lessons one soon, but the rest will sit there for future use.  One hopefully never (the car repairs) and one a little closer to Christmas.
• Pensions and personal spending - I'm still putting 12.5% of my wage into my pension.  I had hoped that, now that I'm employed, this would be done through my wage but at the moment it hasn't been set up that way so I'm continuing to just pull out that amount myself.  We haven't done as well on our personal spending as we have with all our other financial goals.  We were being good for a little while, but then a whole lots of needed things came up and then not so needed but definitely wanted things.  We are financially stable at the moment so the spending isn't putting us in any financial difficulties, but it would still be good to get control on this for this last half of the year so that we can do better at reaching our financial goals and we don't know how our finances at the end of this year.
• Changing my bank account - I'm still to do this.  There isn't really any reason for me to not have done this already, it's just putting aside the time to sit down and do it.
• Secondary income - this is also something I still haven't done.  I just can't decide which way I'm going to go.  If I'm honest I'm also a little bit nervous about it, but I should really just give it a go.  Even if I fail at least I tried.

Learning New Skills

• Skateboarding - this was something that I had planned to do about two times a month, but so far I haven't even done it once this year.  The reason is completely that I'm nervous about doing it.  I think I've found somewhere to practise that is relatively flat and that doesn't have too many people using it.  It's unusual for me to let my fear stop me in this way, so even if it's just for that reason I need to just go and do it.
• Surfing - we now have the money we need to book some more surfing lessons and I've been researching where we can go to have these lessons.  All we need to do now is book them, which I will do once I've found out what my husbands next rota is.  Quite excited to be getting back to it and hopefully, after a couple more lessons, we should be able to start going surfing on our own.  I might also look at joining a women's surfing group just so I can build my confidence a little more.  
• Sailing - this is obviously on the back burner at the moment, but it's still in my mind as something we would like to do in the not so distant future.  I will need to research where we can get lessons from, etc, but for now it would be nice to just get to know the coast line near us a bit better.  That of course means sorting out some walking and beach days - what a shame.

So, a mixed bag of achievements.  We've done really well in some things and, mostly I've done, really badly on others.  There's still another six months to go though, which is still plenty of time to pull everything around.  Skateboarding is really the one I want to concentrate a bit more on, specifically because it's fear that is holding me back here.  It would also be good for my mind and body to learn something new and that I haven't done before.  So, the plan for the next quarter is just to keep doing what we're doing, but to put a little more emphasis on the skateboarding and controlling our personal spending.  That seems very do-able.  

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.

Walking: Cambrian Way Stage 7 - Storey Arms to Glyntawe

I was looking for some long walks that I could do to really stretch my legs and build up my mountain walking skills again.  One of the criteria I had was that it would need to start at a location my husband could drop me off at when going to his work.  Thankfully this wasn't a critical I needed to follow for the end poin as I'm very lucky in that he was happy to do a detour on his way home to collect me.  The two that fitted best were stage 7 of the Cambrian Way and stage 5 of the Beacons Way.  The Cambrian Way looked like it would require me to do a lot more navigational work so I decided to go for that first.

The directions for this walk can be found pretty easily online and in books so I won't go into that here, and I didn't quite follow it exactly as I started at the Pont ar Daf car park instead of Storey Arms and carried on walking a little longer once I'd reached Glyntawe so end up at Penycae further south.  So all in all I walked about 25km /15.5miles that day.

It did say in the directions for this walk that there were times where the route would either be faint or non-existent and there were a few times where I found myself just staring at my compass trying to work out what feature in the landscape I could use to navigate to.  For me though, this is the type of walking I really enjoy as it feels a little more like an adventure and you're a lot less likely to come across another person.  You also have to use your brain more and it was a good way to test my rusty navigational skills.  That being said, I was glad that it was a bright after a few days of dry weather as navigating some of these areas on a misty day when your feet are disappearing into wet, boggy vegetation wouldn't have been anywhere near as enjoyable.

There was a little bit of history to find on this walk, with a Roman Road to cross and a Bronze Age standing stone, Maen Elia, to look at.  Maen Elia was particularly striking against the surrouding landscape and a good reminder of just how long people have actually been using this mountainous area that we see as being wild.  There wasn't as much nature as I had hoped to come across which isn't too surprising as this is still quite a managed landscape, but I still got to listen to skylarks as I wandered a long and see a few red kites here and there.  One even flew right over the top of me.  Mostly I just enjoyed the quiet and the lack of people interaction I had despite me doing this walk on a Sunday.

I didn't find the end section of this walk quite as enjoyable as the start as you're just walking along an old tram line with not much change in the landscape to see.  Though it was still interesting to see just how far into the Beacons mining actually got and how the evidence of it isn't as obvious as you would think it would be seeing as it didn't end all that long ago  The village of Penwyllt was apparently once a thriving area due to mining, but you wouldn't think it when you walk past it now.  From here you walk through some actual fields, directly through the middle of someone's farm (which definitely felt a little weird), and a long some road before reaching the end point on the A4067.  It was here that I turned south and followed the footpath that runs parallel with the road to finish my walk with a pint in Penycae.  However, there is a much closer pub to the finish if you want to follow suit.

All in all I would say that this was a pretty good walk, though not necessarily one I would recommend if you don't have any navigational skills just yet.  It's obviously not a particularly popular walk and that means does you get to spend some time on your own.  There's are some interesting features in the landscape to look at and break up the walk a little.  The fact that I had beautiful weather on the day definitely helped, and that I didn't have a large backpack on my back.  This walk gave me a really good idea about the area and I enjoyed myself, though my feet maybe not so much.  Next - the Beacons Way, at least part of it.

What my Wardrobe Looks Like Now

It's been a little while since I wrote about how my wardrobe is coming along and it's definitely changed a little over the last few years.  I have to admit that I have strayed a little from how I had originally planned the make up of my wardrobe to be at the start of 2021.  However, I do think this is probably a little normal as I'm making a number of my clothes now and there are a number of styles and techniques I've been wanting to try.

The most obvious difference is probably that it's a little larger than it use to be or how I had originally planned it to be.  This is party because I have been enjoying having clothes that actually fit me in the items I've made myself, which has meant that I've made more than I really needed to.  However, I have also become a little bit more relaxed when it comes allowing myself to buy new or second-hand clothing and I have been especially bad at this when it comes to t-shirts.  I do think I needed a little more clothing than I had originally thought as I do sweat more than I thought, which means I do need more clothes I can rota before washing them.  However, I definitely didn't need as many as I had brought.

The new makeup of my wardrobe is 40% (16 items) were brought new (though many of them are actually pretty old now), 35% (14 items) are home made, and 25% (10 items) are second hand.  For the new items that I'd brought recently I have tried to make sure that they were either ethical or helped support a charity or organisation in some way, but sometimes I just needed to buy a specific item and couldn't follow this idea.  I will have these items for a long time though, but I really shouldn't need to buy anything new for a while now.

There are still a few more items that I plan on making in the near future, which include a couple of tops, a pair of trousers, and a jumper, but after that I don't really see my wardrobe growing much more on the homemade front.  I have definitely moved away from my original plan of just making a few items so that I had only what was practical, but I think I want to stear myself back to this idea now.  There are a few items that I think I could declutter and I will be going through everything to see if there' something I no longer want or really use, but mostly I think I'm just going to stop buying in new items and just keep using the those I have already until they get too old to keep wearing.  And then I'll just not replace them.

Even though my wardrobe is bigger than I had previously wanted it I love that so much of it is now handmade by me, and that they are the items that I wear the most.  It's also good to have things that are more my style and which actually fit my body shape.  It's still not quite the cohesive wardrobe that would probably be quite useful to have, but that's because my style is so varied.  However, I have been trying to use fabrics and yarns from a specific colour range to help tie things together and this is probably something that I'll continue to work on in the future.