New Grad DFW

So today was even more spendy than planned.

Went on a sanity stroll and ended up in the little waitrose and got a reduced counter haul for £2.93. (I did get the free coffee and magazine though).

Hoping for LSDs/NSDs this week. Am allowing myself a coffee tomorrow or (hopefully not and) Tuesday as have 13h days at work. I should get bonus points on my costa card and will have enough for a free one for my next round of longs at the end of the month.

So hopefully this week will be mostly NSDs, with an LSD, and a spendy day the day I go out for dinner. I'm also planning to spend £5 for a day pass to the gym I'm planning to join to make sure it's not a huge mistake.

I'm planning to ban myself from all the little mini-supermarkets near me (even the reduced counters at the end of the day) until next weekend, as there literally cannot be anything else I need. I'm also considering putting sticky notes on the cupboards saying what's in each one so I don't forget, and I use things up before I buy them (except for a promo code online shop to be done at the end of this month).

Planning a frugal cottage pie (half price mince, bulked out with lentils) to do dinner tonight and lunches for the foreseeable future. Thinking of slow cooker curries for later in the week - but don't trust it when I'm going to be out of the house for 14 hours... (any advice appreciated as OH usually the slow cooker whiz but not around this week).

So... some progress made today - but feels like one step forward another step back at the moment.

Low spend day - £4.25 ( monthly £2 contribution to office tea fund, £2.25 on coffee)

Progress made - rang guarantor people and they'd had a typo with my bank details (even though I checked again and the ones I sent them were right :mad: ) - so that's £83 that should be back soon
Payment of deposit authorised today so should be back with ex housemate by end of week and my share to me shortly after.

Work ok - aside from coffee bought no snacks (I took so much food I a) didn't finish it and b) don't need dinner - unheard of!).

Realised I forgot to budget for a rather major expense - a holiday at the end of October!
We got free eurostar tickets as delay compensation, but because of OH's situation being in flux, we aren't yet 100% sure we can go so haven't booked accommodation etc yet.
Plan at present is to stay in airbnb for most if not all of the week and bring snacks and cook to cut costs - found some places for £44/night plus fees that look nice and have good reviews. Even that would be £300 for the week (between us not total). I do have some credit in airbnb account to use against that though. Attraction costs would be minimal as almost everything free for U25s so other costs would be food and transport. I imagine it'd probably be about £250-300 each all in, which was NOT in the original budget... :mad:

Another major expense is union fees which will come out by yearly DD in October and are well over £100 - I think there might have been an option to change to monthly DD so will look into that.

I am still desperately keen to be DF by November and stay in the black throughout it. My October pay will come in whilst on holiday... so I have to fund all this out of pay that's about to come in. I think if I'm (very very very) careful I might still manage it.

I think the areas I'll 'borrow' from to fund holiday are travel (probably won't visit OH at his place next month and will have to ban 'frivolous' trips on public transport (I usually cycle anyway to be honest). Also food spending - If I could get in under £100
including supplies to take on holiday that would be a result. OH has offered to buy next big shop here and if he does my food spends should be v low indeed -but feel guilty as he's paid for a lot of late).
Contents insurance - will get cheapest quote and cash back so hopefully will be less than £90 but it needs doing and I'm not waiting any longer than payday.
General/other/treat spends will have to absorb some more. As discussed above, waterproof gloves are becoming a need but will shop around a bit more and see about 2nd hand on fleabay. Other bike accessories and service will have to wait (if my bike breaks whilst I continually put this off it'll be sod's law in action!!).

By my original plan- I would end november with £200 in bank acc -now my target is to just break even - that allows £200 of extra spends for holiday and everything else will just have to be found by belt tightening.

I'm thinking:

5 NSDs a week except for hols week (this excludes rent/bills paid by DD - BUT includes groceries, travel and literally everything else)
Avoiding town/eating out as much as feasible (I do anyway but will really make a point of it - and since I am going to insist on gym for sanity and health maybe could go to gym every time I get cabin fever and get fit instead of skint!)
Putting spending money for hols on revolut card and operating a when it's gone it's gone policy.
Any further suggestions welcome!!

My £400 spending budget for October is as follows:
£[STRIKE]120[/STRIKE]100 food (for me and OH - I'll aim to be below £100 as my cupboards are currently well stocked).
£90ish contents insurance (I should have done this 2 months ago but kept putting it off because of the expense. Found a deal with cash back I plan to get as soon as payday is here)
[STRIKE]£50[/STRIKE] 20 cash/spending [STRIKE](to include treats like coffees (allowed on 13hr long days only!))[/STRIKE]only away from home coffee allowed will be free on on points on card if they ever appear!
£50 travel expenses to go into holiday fund (OH split between here and another city ~1.5h away)
This leaves [STRIKE]£90[/STRIKE] 140 for other expenses and holiday AND union fees [STRIKE](which may have to include a £55 bike service I've also been putting off but needs doing before weather gets really bad).[/STRIKE]
Under this umbrella - £36.99 one off payment to gym including joining fee (£16.99/mo dd after) - this is a concession to my health both physical and mental.

Any extra holiday money will have to come from the OD but I'm hoping not more than £150 extra including spends whilst on hols

So... how unrealistic am I being?

Today was NOT a good moneysaving day.

It was a planned spend day and spends were as follows:

£5.99 gym day pass (well worth it - was there for an hour and a half, really liked it)
£2 staples
£2.99 padlock
£25.55 birthday present for OH's sister (did get 10% off and cash back though)
£0 card for OH sister (used one from my stash and had stamps)
£5.90 coffee and cake :eek: (went to JL thinking I had a voucher, didn't realise it's not valid until October until it's too late :mad: )
£12.20 dinner out with friends

Total spent: £55.63 :eek:

In slightly better moneysaving news - did get paid back £20 from mum, and have asked to have £7.57 cash back sent by BACS.

I also got a load of supermarket vouchers - on discussion with OH we might spend a bit more this month to stock up for Christmas (effectively at 20% discount) - so I'm setting (my) budget at £100 for this month with scope for up to £50 of pre-Christmas spends. This might be madness, but I'd rather get a discount now then have to go back into the overdraft in December.

In better other news, OH has confirmed that we can go on holiday after all. Turns out I did want to go as I was practically in tears when there was a misunderstanding meaning we might not have been able to. OH absolutely on board with the idea of being frugal on holiday, keen to do airbnb and cook, bring snacks etc from here. We are going to be in 2 places so aim to be mostly in airbnb and maybe top secret hotel for night or two. Cost of getting to london to get free eurostar is :eek::eek::eek: - to the point where we are considering the sleeper (1st class sleeper for 2 might be a bit cheaper than standard fare plus cheap hotel).

So feeling good about holiday, good about gym, not so good about spends, not so good about holiday spends. Saturday is now going to be a spend day as I've arranged dinner with friends - it'll be a bit of relaxation after what promises to be a hectic day. Will get lunch provided though.

I'm starting to feel like I haven't allowed enough for these sorts of spends and as such am getting further and further off track. Other than dinner out I'm going to have to be positively angelic until payday. As for beyond payday... I'm going to try and be sensible about holiday and extremely restrained otherwise.

Thanks enthusiasticsaver - I agree ideally I wouldn't be paying for a holiday and it'd all go to the overdraft but decided to go for it for a couple of reasons.

1. Eurostar tix were free as compensation for a delay last year - we waited as long as possible and booked them on the last day we could - for use within 6 months only. The ones we booked would have cost about £300 had we paid for a standard non-flexible fare. Decided this was an opportunity too good to pass up.
2. Due to both my and OH's work situations, getting time off together is almost impossible and this may be the only opportunity we get for a week off together for a long time (indeed, except when I was studying abroad and he came to visit we have *never* been on a week's holiday in 5.5 years!)
3. OD is interest and fee free as new grad - if I were paying for it I would absolutely be clearing it ASAP. I know it won't stay like this forever though and want to be in the black and saving for the future in the new year.

So I do feel like a massive hypocrite in spending money on 'wants' not 'needs' in my present situation, but that is how I have justified it to myself. As I previously discussed, this previously up in the air want has to be financed by cutting back on essentially all other wants in the near future.