Simple doesn’t mean easy

CaroleM_3

Super speedy update:

Budget has gone to pot, my walking boots gave up the ghost at the weekend, and they have been replaced with a lovely new pair by the same brand (hi-tec). They were a total bargain - £29.99 in the millets sale. So, now I have the fun task of breaking in new walking boots 3 weeks before the 3 peaks. Oh joy! :rotfl:I decided to grab a sleeping bag at the same time – at £17.99 it was too much of a bargain to pass up – I was expecting to have to pay more than that for one of lesser quality.

I have a ridiculously busy few days/weekend, that’s currently shaping up something like this-
Tonight – Aqua aerobics
Thursday – give blood after work
Friday – lunchtime – get a birthday present for my sister in law
- Evening – make a fruit cake
Saturday – Morning – 10 mile walk
- Lunchtime – Family lunch, to celebrate my birthday and my sister in laws birthday
- Afternoon – if we finish eating early enough, going to see my bf and his son for the afternoon
Sunday - ? I have no idea – hopefully some sleep though!

But, aside from buying the birthday present, that’s not super spendy, which is great! I think to get the fruit cake made without leaving myself with a really late night on Friday (it takes ages to cool down) I will need to put my fruit into soak on Friday morning before work – must remember to leave myself a note.

CaroleM_3

Wrote this yesterday in word and didnt get a chance to log on and post it:

Sooooooo....I neglected my diary for quite a while then?!

I’ve lost the plot a bit money wise, it’s not actually going badly – it’s just messy. June was a month of huge spending anyway, it had been planned that way, but even so I went a bit over. I took £50 out of my savings for the walking boots, took a further £100 out to lend to a friend (which I will get back in August, possibly in instalments) and then on Thursday I took a final £830 out to pay for my dollars/travellers cheques for Peru. So overall my savings went down by £594.51 in June. Leaving my percentages at 98.4% to target for my house savings and 37.8% to target for ‘other stuff’ savings.

But, it’s not actually as simple as that. I’ve been thinking a bit lately and come to the conclusion that I’m going about this whole budgeting thing wrong. I budget by pulling a number out of my head about how much I would like or need to save and then forcing a monthly plan to follow that. Which never works because I aim too high, the budget becomes unworkable, and after a few months is abandoned. So, on Thursday, I reworked the budget, made it a little friendlier and scaled down the savings targets, which are now:
House deposit savings - £4700 (to be achieved by December 31st)

Other stuff savings:
Dental - £360 (to be achieved by December 31st)
3 Peaks Money - £200 (already in the account)
Rent money/deposit - £850.00 (to be achieved by 31st August)

Current account totals are:
ISA - £3725.22
Regular saver - £900
Instant access saver - £532.82


June’s clothes came in at £85.12, considerably more than April and May, and breaks down to:
£8.00 Sunglasses
£5.00 Summer jacket
£4.30 summer Skirt
£4.55 Next top
£4.99 Floral Dress
£29.99 walking boots
£2.80 Jumper (for Peru)
£2.99 Oasis jeans (for Peru)
£22.50 Swimsuit

Looking at that list I don’t regret any of the purchases – they have all either had tons of wear already or were super sensible and needed. For a high spend month, I think that’s quite a low clothes spend too.

Of the month as a whole, my social life was by far the most expensive aspect – coming in at £129.

So anyway, that’s enough talk about sensible stuff. My birthday was on Friday and I spent the whole weekend being incredibly spoilt by my amazing boyfriend, lovely family and wonderful friends, so today I’m feeling very very grateful (and happy to be wearing new shoes and carrying a new handbag). We had a picnic in the park, a trip to the pub (so many of the regulars bought me birthday drinks that I managed to get ridiculously p*ssed without once taking my purse out of my bag), and my best friend also made us an incredible dinner and a gorgeous chocolate rum cake. I got loads of lovely presents, lots of cards, considerably more facebook messages than I expected and am just generally feeling very loved at the moment.

mummytogirls

Afternoon Carole,

Happy belated Birthday for Friday x

Sounds like you had an amazing weekend and too right!!!

Keep it up!

CaroleM_3

Thanks Mummytogirls, it was fantastic!:D

CaroleM_3

I've just been on the how much can you save thread on the savers board - and its been food for thought.

One thing I've realised from reading that is that there is a good chance that I will get a bonus from work this year (prob £1000 in Sept) and that I will end up living at home for a month or 2 longer than my current budget anticipates. So I have drawn up a list of what I will do with the extra money, should I get it:
My dental target will increase to £600
My rent money/deposit target will increase to £1200
I would like to have an emergency fund of £500
My house deposit target will increase to £5000

Those are in order of priority. The rent money target is probably a little high but I will feel better knowing I have extra than worrying that I dont have enough. My secret little hope that I try not to think about to much incase I jinx it is that in when I have to move out of mum and dads possibly, just maybe, I could rent somewhere with my bf.....

Half of that is out of my control cause I have no idea if he would like the idea or even if he will be working then (he's not at the mo as he's ill) or feel comfortable with me living in the home that his son would be staying in every other weekend, or if he would just feel its too much too fast (he's halfway through a divorce so we take things very slowly commitment wise, he's very once bitten twice shy).

Anyway, half of that is in my control - I can make sure that I have the money to do that stashed away if he likes the idea. So, thats the plan, take care of my side of the money (and always have a back up plan - which at the moment is to move in with a friend).

God, I've been rambling on again - this was only surposed to be a short post with the additional targets!

d3mon4ngel

Happy belated birthday Carole :beer:

Glad you had a good day

CaroleM_3

Thanks D3mon4ngel

I did my usual and checked how much ISA interest I had earned this month (£7.81) and realised that my ISA total was £3738.20 - so I added an extra £1.80 to bring it up to £3740 - much, much nicer to look at! And it sounds really strange but doing a PAD has put me in a fantastic mood – so I’m going to keep it up. I won’t be doing it daily, there aren’t enough transactions on my account to generate odd amounts daily, but once or twice a week sounds like a really good plan.

My change pot it getting nice and heavy too, this won’t last long though – my bus pass runs out on the 8th so I will be using my change pot to pay for bus fares until I go on holiday on the 14th.

I’m pretty sure a return is now £3.60, so for those 5 days, I will spend around £18 on bus fares – which really makes me notice how good value my £36 monthly bus pass is. My place of work is in town, and my best friend and boyfriend both live in town, so in the average month there’s probably only 3 or 4 days I don’t get the bus – if all those journeys were returns at £3.60 I would spend £86.40 on bus fares in the average month:eek: