Diary of a spendy cow

beanielou

Have a fabarooni 2014

Ali-OK

Happy New Year!

Nearly there

tomtombeanie

Happy new year! A crazy night here, too - watched Gangsta Granny and ate homemade mincemeat crumble (recipe based on one from agirlcalledjack.com, great website and lovely recipes). Glad the fish fingers were a success

mooomin

Morning

Forgot that my £270 current account balance included a cheque for Christmas (£50) so I've transferred that to my savings account. I can always withdraw it again if I see anything I really like the look of.

Plans for today are:

• Batch cooking - chilli and soup
• Take the Christmas tree down
• Begin decluttering my craft stuff
• Dishes

mooomin

Morning all

Money:

Current account - £215
Savings account - £1340.46 (including Christmas £50), was £1253.91 on payday
Food account - £97.97
Purse - £30

Yesterday's plans were:

[STRIKE]Batch cooking - chilli and soup
Take the Christmas tree down[/STRIKE]
Begin decluttering my craft stuff
[STRIKE]Dishes[/STRIKE]

I didn't get the craft stuff started (always an optimistic plan tbh) but I did manage to get in at the bookcases in the living room and start sorting out books for charity shops/friends. I easily decluttered 40 books without even thinking about it Half of them have been taken/will be taken by friends and the rest will go to the charity shop at the weekend.

Adpoints are up to 54. I've done a survey or two in the last week as well, but haven't noted the value. I should probably do that

I'm back in the office today (bah!) so don't have a huge amount of plans. I'm doing the take your lunch to work challenge, so have a mug of pea and ham soup and some fruit to take with me. I'll end up buying milk/hot water for tea while I'm there, but that should come to under £2. Any change will go in my new sealed pot.

Siouxsie32

Morning moomin :wave: Just dropping in to say Hi...and Happy New Year

My experience of insurance claims are that they're a bit of a pain, but I've never had a claim rejected so I hope it all work out in the end for you.

I'm slowly getting back to normality after a busy/hectic/social festive season. It was amazing, but I feel now I could sleep for a week...and could definitely do with hopping on the scales to see what damage was done I agree with tomtombeannie, it's a mental thing. I need one more day to get organised (and eat up the leftover cheese ) and then I'm hitting the ground running (probably not literally though, yoga's more my scene!) tomorrow.

Keep up the good work. I look forward to catching up with your stories in 2014

mooomin

New year, new SOA...

Income:

Unknown! Currently I get £1759.67 but I'm going down to 28 hours as of this morth so don't know what that's going to look like. If we assume 80% of what I currently get after tax, that'll be £1407 roughly.

Outgoings:

Mortgage £273.56
Council Tax £122
Internet/phone/TV £40 (Guesstimate, awaiting confirmation of price rise)
Home insurance £19.48
Current Account fee £7.50 Cancelling once insurance claim sorted due to their complete ineptitude :mad:
TV Licence £12.12
Bus travel £40 guesstimate at present
Electricity/gas £54
Vodafone £20.95 (Mr Mooo)
Orange £31.85 (Me)
Cinema card £15.90
Gym £18.99 If I don't use it in January I'm cancelling it
Zoo membership £4.14
Savings £20

Total £680.49

Other outgoings:

Food £200 reduction of £50 from October
Car fund £100
Christmas/birthday fund £50 reduction of £50 from October

GRAND TOTAL: £1030.49

I will pay £1100 per month to the account to cover all of this, leaving me a surplus in case of unexpected bills and will add this to my savings account at the end of the month if it's unspent. This should leave me with £300 for spending for me, which will cover all clothes/haircuts/other expenditure, including savings. I'd love it if I could keep my personal spending under £150 per month and save the rest, but Rome wasn't built in a day I'll update properly when I get paid on the 18th as then I'll know exactly where I am financially...

Ali-OK

If it's Nectar Canvass surveys you've been doing, they've got their own website so you can check points on there. Not good at linky things, but this is the site https://www.nectarcanvass.ssi-partner.com/

SOA looks good. Are the holiday plans coming to fruition?

mooomin

Ali-OK wrote: »

Are the holiday plans coming to fruition?

They look like they are I went to get passport forms yesterday but the post office was shut, so I'll go along after work today.

Once the forms are in the post I can start looking to book flights and my brother will pay for them for me. I then need to think about travel insurance - I have some as part of my packaged current account but the lack of decent response with the home emergency cover has made me realise that I want to cancel the account and so standalone cover will make more sense.

Accounts are in good shape. I joined what I have previously thought of as the crazy challenge yesterday to try and keep focussed. The amount shown for food is for the month, but I'm obviously working on what's in my account until payday.

1. SFD 0/20
2. Food budget £13.72/£200
3. Brand downshift 0/5
4. Lunch to work 1/11 (projected days in the office this month)
5. Arranged outings 0/4
6. Exercise 1/15 (walk round the office grounds today)
7. Petrol budget 0/£50
8. Food bank donation 0
9. Beauty spends 0/£10

mooomin

I emptied out my piggy bank on Hogmanay. I put a handful of change totalling about £4 in to my new sealed pot and put all the 50p and £1 coins into another pot which will be for bus fares. The rest I paid in at the coin machine this morning and have now added a lovely £15.77 to my holiday fund