Giving up Money for Lent

pippo

Sounds good to me too!!!

A whole £10 for me!!:T
Only a few weeks ago I would have thought that was nothing:rotfl:
Had another NSD today and also 'collected' coffe beans from the jars at work so I can now send off for a pressie FOR ME!!!

Or maybe not 'cos I tend to use any freebies for good cause donations eg a raffle prize for our local NSPCC.

pippo

Hi Cafcfan,
As you know we love your daughter,
But to answer your question, I may be deemed to have cheated a little but bought the eggs I needed from our grocery money.

Also we were lucky enough to manage a trip away last week so sort of combined the pressie for DGDs and easter all in one. Just had a conversation with DH about Easter and as our family live away have decided that a card will do.

The Easter Egg?present has really made me think about want, need & necessity.
I think that as a gran something is essential, but need to limit it seriously.

brassiclint

sorry for being slow, but can someone (i.e. CAFCGirl !!) clear up one thing for me? Is the weekly allowance of £10 over and above what we have budgeting for at the beginning of the month? i.e nights out, birthday gift? Or would I have to save my weekly £10 and carry over to be able to go out/buy gift etc?

I too am an emotional shopper. If i feel fed up or bored I shop or eat. If i've had a bad day I actually think I'm entitled to eat/shop .. i think i deserve it as I'm feeling down. But then if I'm in a particularly good mood I still think that I deserve it!!! Go figure!

ShirleyPark_2

I make my Easter Eggs so the only thing I need to get is some chocolate to use. I'm going to use my gifts/birthdays budget to get that.

The weekly budget is £10 (or that is what has been suggested) which is to include everything that you don't already have budgetted. So if in your monthly / weekly budget you already have an amount for gifts/birthdays then you can use the existing budget to get a birthday present for someone.

Not sure where nights out would stand, I wouldn't consider them essential but it would be very easy to blow the entire week's £10 on one night out. I guess the cheats way to do it would be to include a small amount for nights out in your monthly budget.

I did my budget based on Martin's budget calculator thing on this site, and then removed the categories for things like clothes / shoes etc already have enough of those. On payday I put what's left of the budgetted amount for gifts, days out/holiday and the house into savings accounts, along with a monthly amount for christmas and my car. Any money I've made from selling things, or getting things on BOGOF etc goes into my days out/holiday account, and then the rest of what's left in my account gets split between my house savings account and my rainy day account, as well still need to do a lot of work on the house.

That probably sounds really complicated, but I have a spreadsheet that I use to track everything so I know how much to transfer at the end of each month, plus I have 6 savings accounts one for each budget.

Given I have practically everything budgetted for, I don't really have an excuse for spending more than £10 a week !! All the bills, groceries, toiletries and cleaning stuff comes out of our joint account which has just about enough money transferred into it each month to last the month.

welshcakes

The Banks have really got into the spirit of Lent.

They are giving up customers money and kindly sending it back to them. This is because they are giving up polluting the planet by not driving to the courts to defend claims. They are giving up cutting down trees by not bothering to answer court instructions and they will soon be giving up the ghost. Not the Holy Ghost obviously, I understand banks have been issued with asbos and aren't allowed within 10 million feet of the Pearly Gates.

pippo

Wow Shirl you really are super organised so very well done:j
I'm a bit nervous of this planning and budgeting 'cos if I were to take it to the extreme then every possible spend would be budgeted for.

I have no wish to be negative about about anyone else's plans, but for me if I were to factor in all the possibles then everything would become necessary!!

I know that for me holidays border on the essential& I need to calculate this in my yearly budget,but i won't factor in easter presents or wedding gift or the pressies I may choose to bring back from holiday. In my head I need to reconsideer whole budget around the is it a want or a need mantra! If it ios a want then Martin & I should say no.
:money: :money:

ShirleyPark_2

pippo wrote: »

Wow Shirl you really are super organised so very well done:j
I'm a bit nervous of this planning and budgeting 'cos if I were to take it to the extreme then every possible spend would be budgeted for.

I have no wish to be negative about about anyone else's plans, but for me if I were to factor in all the possibles then everything would become necessary!!

I'm a control freak, hence why everything is organised. It would be very easy to factor in everything that you wanted, infact Martin's budget spreadsheet does hence why I removed all the columns for things that I didn't consider essential.

TurnaroundSue

Hi - Yep £10 per week sounds good to me, although I am going to NOT try to spend it and see how much I have left at the end of each month. I do have a night out arranged for end of March (smokers' night out before the ban on 2 April :rotfl: :rotfl: ) bu this will be budgetted for in my next month's pay. No other nights out planned, so if I get asked to go out, I will just have to politely say 'no thanks!'.

......oh no, just remembered having guests on a weekend in April so will have to budget for that :eek: - maybe can use the old excuse as can't get a babysitter and have a good night in instead

brassiclint

ok so from the sound of it, i can budget for my friends birthday night out (it's been planned for months, it's her 30th and she's one of my best friends so no getting out of it) but if there's any "spontaneous" nights out this either has to come out of weekly £10 or, in the words of the Grange Hill Kids "Just Say No". In fact, at the beginning of the year, I emailed all my friends to say that unless it's a big birthday (i.e 30th), Hen Night or Wedding then please don't invite me out as I simply can't afford it this year ... and gradually, very gradually the invites have stopped! So in theory, there really won't be any spontaneous nights out.

cacffan - we're not doing easter eggs ... this is purely because I've found out how many points on weight watchers they are!! some of them are two days allowance!! instead me and the BF are going to go to a fantastic shop called Hotel Chocolate and buy each other smaller, but lovlier, chocolate gifts.

ShirleyPark - how do you make easter eggs?

halloweenqueen_2

Trying very hard not to spend any money!! Have only been shopping for groceries and have done overtime at work, have some ebay sales to list, not sure whether to leave them until over the easter break or not.