Moooving on up!

mooomin

Boring post to follow!

Current balance in bills account: £453.72
Bills to be debited: £367.33
Leftover: £86.39

In case I've forgotten anything, I'm leaving £400 in there and transferring out the £53.72 back to my savings account. That takes care of this months bills. All is well.

I'm going to be making, by rough internet estimates, around £220 per week. I've broken down my monthly bills like this (monthly amount first, then weekly):

Council tax - £122/£30.50
Mortgage - £210/£52.50
Power - £54/£13.50
Home insurance - £18/£4.50
Internet/phone/telly - £37/£9.25
Mobile phone x 2 - £54/£13.50
Gym - £12.99/£3.25
Savings - £20/£5
TV Licence - £12.12/£3.03
Bank account fee - £2.50/£0.63

Total - £542.61 or £135.65 per week.

That's going to leave me around £85 per week for everything else - food, clothes, vet stuff, petrol. It's tight, but absolutely doable. The tighter part is buses. There is no parking at the new place, so I have to pay £1.40 each way to get to work, £14 per week. I will get the bus in the morning, but if the weather isn't bad I'm going to try and walk home - it's only two and a half miles and will be good for me too!

My credit card is now back to a zero balance, so that's knocked on the head and I'm going to try and be good in the sales. I recently got £400 through as the rebate for my boiler scrappage from when I bought a new one, so I'm taking that out as CASH for the sales and when it's gone, it's gone. This is going to be used to replenish my work clothes for the coming year and to make a start on Christmas and birthday gifts for 2013 - as you can see there's not a lot of wiggle room in the budget for that.

From my experience of having had temps working for me in the past, if they're good they might get offered overtime - I'm hoping to be one of these as my new employer offers overtime at enhanced rates! I don't know if I have to work Christmas yet, I'm hoping not, but I'll find out on Monday.

What do you think of the above as a starting point - more importantly, what have I forgotten?!

AllanAlbert

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rising_from_the_ashes

Good starting point and should be workable in the short - medium term .... obviously longer term, you'll need to start replenishing things like the car fund / pets fund etc.

If you used the bus to work (and maybe home) and in your "free time" - would this justify a weekly / monthly pass?

Might be poss to reduce petrol costs a bit this way.

Fingers crossed for the overtime!

mooomin

rising_from_the_ashes wrote: »

Good starting point and should be workable in the short - medium term .... obviously longer term, you'll need to start replenishing things like the car fund / pets fund etc.

If you used the bus to work (and maybe home) and in your "free time" - would this justify a weekly / monthly pass?

Cat's have been told not to get ill until I get another full-time job I looked into a bus pass which is £17 a week but I wouldn't really use it enough in addition to getting to work. I go to the cinema with my friend once a week or more (cinema pass) and am close enough to walk there. I try and walk most places if possible as it helps with the weight loss.

The only other place I go during the week is to Fat Club on a Saturday but it's two buses away whereas it's 15 minutes in the car and I'm honestly just too lazy to leave the car at home compared to forty five minutes on the bus! Ideally if the weather holds I'll be spending less than a tenner a week on busfares....

The cat fund has £300 in it at the moment. The car fund about £250. The insurance will be epic, as always, but I'm prepared to pay that from my savings (grudgingly!) and save monthly for it once I'm permanent again. It was always something I paid with my annual bonus from work.

mooomin

Other things:

Filled the car up with petrol already this week and have no plans for big trips, so trying to avoiding using it unless essential. One essential trip is today to the post office as although I only live fifteen minutes away I have a LOT of parcels to post!

I have booked a wee weekend away in February to see a friend who lives in Portsmouth. I am getting to London and back for £40 return (cattle class on the way down, first on the way back!) thanks to a post on Grabbit about cheap train tickets. It's a tenner return to her on the train, again thanks to booking so far in advance, so £50 travel costs which is brilliant. I am staying in London the first night - I will look for hotel deals as much as I can over the Christmas period as I got a brilliant hotel deal on Christmas Day last year. She'll be working so I can spend the afternoon seeing some sights like the museums - have I got any London-based MSEers? On the Friday I get the train halfway to her as we're meeting other friends there, then back to Portsmouth at night and then all the way home again on the Saturday. A whirlwind trip but one I'm looking forward to.

By my reckoning, £300 will cover a good weekend away - I will have food, hotel and incidental costs to cover and don't want to scrimp when it's a treat. A new account has been set up for this and I'm going to be adding to it as and when I can. I might even go back to PADding!

psychopathbabble

I'm near enough to jump a train if I'm not working.

ETA I know of a few Valeries in town too

mooomin

psychopathbabble wrote: »

I'm near enough to jump a train if I'm not working.

ETA I know of a few Valeries in town too

Will FB you nearer the time

Siouxsie32

I'm a Londoner too (well, a Scottish Londoner ). Always meaning to spend afternoons at the museums but you know what it's like when something's on your doorstep! Plus, with all my extra money making ventures, I never seem to have free time - really should clear my diary and have a free afternoon out in the city!!

psychopathbabble

Siouxsie32 wrote: »

really should clear my diary and have a free afternoon out in the city!!

I love the V&A museum and the British History museum!

mooomin

Last time I was there I ended up at the Imperial War Museum - it was ace. There was an exhibition about rationing/food during the second world war - was like Old Style brought to life