£67,031.92 is a frightening number indeed....

Treadingonplaymobil · 8 August 2017 at 11:09AM

sleeping mat has had its bath and the puncture has been identified! DH is on a mission to repair it.

Hiddenidenity · 8 August 2017 at 11:53AM

Treadingonplaymobil wrote: »

sleeping mat has had its bath and the puncture has been identified! DH is on a mission to repair it.

Glad you found it

I think your spending on food isn't too bad. I mean its higher than you like but you eat well and a good variety! Is there no where else you can cut down and keep the grocery budget a bit higher?

Treadingonplaymobil · 8 August 2017 at 12:06PM

Hiddenidenity wrote: »

Glad you found it

I think your spending on food isn't too bad. I mean its higher than you like but you eat well and a good variety! Is there no where else you can cut down and keep the grocery budget a bit higher?

I wish there was, but I really can't find it. When DH's payrise is in and confirmed at the end of this month, and our expensive holiday isn't sucking savings maybe I'll post another SOA and you can all critique it again.

Kittychick · 8 August 2017 at 12:10PM

I'm another one who would suggest Costco- as a self employed person you could well get membership on those grounds. We worked out that the savings we make on cat litter cover our membership and our store does fuel as well now, always well below Asda who are usually the cheapest around.. Have to beware though and not assume everything is cheap there, the Nescafe coffee is cheaper per 100g at Tesco right now. If you can get items on offer at Costco it usually is worth it. The mega expensive Comfort is £3 .50 a bottle at Wilkinsons or £5 at Tesco at the minute or £4.68 for 2 bottles at Costco.. Just have to be restrained and be aware of prices elsewhere.. You are doing brilliantly to be do focused over such a long period :T

Treadingonplaymobil · 8 August 2017 at 4:30PM

DH has been shopping, and has irritated me enormously by doing very well with the food shop, then spending £6 on snacks to eat while shopping with the DC. Grrr. It’s becoming apparent that the weak link in the food shopping is not me. He doesn’t have any personal kitty this month (neither do I), but if he did I’d be taking some of his spending excesses out of it.

Anyway, food shopping done and here’s how it breaks down. Initial estimates in black, actual figures and comments in red.

Total estimate c.£73 (again, hard to be sure as mysupermaket isn't great at lidl/aldi baskets)
total spend £66.80

£40 on lunch and dinner (so much more than last week. Weird)
£30.50 actual spend. Not bad.

£12 on snacks/treats/puddings (including fruit, almost all sourced from the offers in Aldi)
£15 on snacks. There seems to be quite a lot. Think I’ll put some in the utility room so we don’t just pig out on it all.

£4 on breakfast
£4 spent

£5 on baking ingredients (£4 of this is butter!)
£5 spent

£5 on booze (a bottle of wine to take on the family holiday, we will get a couple of beers next week, and so on. we're not big drinkers so won't need loads)
£3 spent.

£3 on household stuff (2/3 of this is pricey ecover washing up liquid; I loathe the smell of everything else)
£3 spent

£6 on random snacks by DH (for him and the DC)
:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

DH’s overspends are currently standing at £26 for the month. I know that I could have avoided the breakfast.lunch spends while we were camping, but I am slightly cross that I need to handhold him through every single last microscopic thing, that it didn’t even occur to him that it might be good to take something.

Apart from DH's personal snack crisis, reporting here seems to be holding the shopping in check. It will be interesting to see if we can make it through without top up shops, as this is a really cheap food shop for us. I will confess all here if we do top up shops too, as I think this has previously been part of the problem.

quintwins · 8 August 2017 at 4:47PM

Oh he did well, make sure he eats before he goes next time lol.

Treadingonplaymobil · 8 August 2017 at 7:30PM

quintwins wrote: »

Oh he did well, make sure he eats before he goes next time lol.

You are clearly more charitable than me :rotfl:

Treadingonplaymobil · 8 August 2017 at 7:56PM

Today has mainly been spent catching up - with work, laundry, friends, cleaning, general life admin. I feel so much better when I'm on top of all of those little jobs that just take up headspace, and I swear I just cannot think when the house is a mess. The upstairs is still disastrous, but I'll tackle that tomorrow.

An interesting food shop - it seems so low, but I'm being more careful about planning sufficient breakfasts, snacks and lunches (I never need to top up evening meal ingredients, it's the other bits we run out of). I wonder if I'll be taken by surprise by some extortionate shop at some stage, or whether actually 99% of the problem is top up shops and DH's random spends.

Car is going in for a service on Thursday and I'm already nervous about how much it's going to cost - I would wait a month, but we have a long long drive for our family holiday, and it would be a disaster if we broke down on the way. We only have a measly £40 saved in the car expenses pot (two whole months of keeping some money in there), so even in a best case scenario we're going to be overspent. I am really not sure we're going to manage to get through this month without touching the credit cards, never mind keeping the savings account intact. I will be so upset if we have to crack into a credit card

. I really hadn't anticipated how much my good months would have to prop us up through the lean times (more lessons in how we got into debt). Now if only I could have another couple of good months to give us a chance to learn from these mistakes...

to do today
1. plan out August's work. Done.
2. a little social media for work. Not done. So out of the habit with this.
3. menu plan/my supermarket (DH will do the actual food shopping). Done.
4. get DH to test DS1's camping mat. Done, success! Now he just needs to take the crucial step of fixing it...
5. book a surfing lesson for Friday (I have a gift voucher, so it will be free). Not done.
6. actually balance budgets, including the dire cash situation and the £100 invoicing shortfall. Have a sulk. Done. And the sulk is done too.
7. unpack and tidy the house. Done, thank goodness.
8, start the laundry. Done. Lots to go though.
9. deal the with ironing mountain that I left behind last week when we went camping. Made a start, going to do some more shortly.

to do this week
1. as much work as I can squeeze in - any extra earnings will really make the difference this month!
2. trip to the camping shop for gas, possibly sleeping mat, anything else that crops up as we unpack and clean everything.
3. car service - panic about the price and wish I'd been better about saving.
4. I'm sure I'll add more to this list as I work through my bullet journal lists today.
5. Ooh, talk to DS1 about his birthday party - he seems up for taking one or two friends on a day out to a trampoline place or climbing wall, need to discuss further.

to do this month
1. Pay some extra off the MBNA card - I'd like this card gone asap. More than the £15 I managed in July would be nice.
2. Find ourselves with more than £228 in the savings account on 31st August.
3. Keep that overall spend figure down below £3,900 (baby steps!)
4. business planning and scheduling, so that I am ready to start making some immediate profit in September when DC3 starts preschool.
5. think outside the box with the food budget and keep a close eye on anywhere it might be going wrong.
6. Try not to need the child benefit money to balance August’s money, so it can go towards Septmber’s (it is paid four weekly, which is currently falling towards the back end of the month, so I have balanced the budget to work without it, and will aim to put it towards September’s income rather than August’s. We’ll see).

quintwins · 8 August 2017 at 8:10PM

I understand your car concerns, mines due a timing belt and I just can't afford it but if it snaps I'll be in a much worse position so we decided next month all our spare money has to go to it

Suffolk_lass · 8 August 2017 at 8:57PM

Re Jumbo oats - the cheapest for us are actually the 1.5k jumbo organic bags from the local health food shop. Failing that, Morrison's do Mornflake Jumbos for 92p for 500g - quite a lot cheaper than £2.30 or so for a kilo. I used to always buy the Waitrose Organic Jumbo Oats but they seem to have stopped doing these. I've even bought Tesco Organic (not jumbos) from the metro round the corner from my office and they are good quality, albeit not jumbos.

I keep a separate kitty for my stores shopping so that I buy things like laundry detergent and dishwasher tabs, and toiletries when on offer. It lets me stick to my brands by stocking up when half price or better. Worth considering when you have a few minutes. For instance my mint and teatree oil shower gloop was £2.20 a bottle but I bought 6 at 2 for £2 just before our hols

£67,031.92 is a frightening number indeed....

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