My money saving, money making journey

Hadalbm

Well it's been an incredibly busy, busy week at work so I've sadly not had time to keep up with my diary.
I'm still really motivated to save and make money each day but I just struggle to keep up with documenting everything. Going to simplify my system by only counting savings and what I've made when I actually have the real money in my account ..... if that makes sense? For example I was trying to document each day how much I was making on online surveys etc. I will now just count it when I actually receive a payout. For my lunch savings I'm going to allow myself a budget of £25 a week and then at the end of each week add what's left to my make or save balance. Hopefully this will be the full £25 each week as I'm still planing on taking my lunch to work each day which will come out of the grocery budget.

This week I did finish up buying lunch on 2 days which I had hoped not to do. In total I spent £9.20. Can't help thinking how much more I could have bought at the supermarket with that. We also went out for a meal last night with friends which turned into a very expensive night out. Our share of the bill (including tip) was £70 for two of us :eek: It was a really good night though with the most amazing Vietnamese food.

Final balance for week 2 budget:-
Groceries - £6.33 to be transferred to grocery savings account
Entertainment - £38.58 - £70 = -£31.42
Petrol - £30 - £20 = £10 to be transferred to car savings account
Other - £6.75 - £3.99 (Mother's Day card) = £2.76 to be transferred to presents savings
Lunch budget - £25 - £9.20 = £15.80 which will be transferred to holiday fund.

Can't believe how disappointed I felt that we had gone over budget for entertainment. Would have never have worried about it before. To make myself feel better I decided to cash in a large jar of copper coins that we've had sitting in the corner of a bedroom for years!! Amazingly it came to a total of £40.51 !! which more than offset the negative balance in the entertainment budget :T I so pleased with this. The difference of £9.09 is going into my new emergency fund

For my make or save £10 a day goal I'm going to reset my balance to £0 because of my new simplified system. If I don't then I would run the risk of counting the same things twice.

I've made or saved this week :-
£15.80 on lunches
£9.09 from cashing in copper coins
Total = £24.89
Average per day (since start of my new system) = £3.55

Today is start of week 3 of my budgeting so I'm hoping that this week I can do better than last. Still feeling really motivated.

Nice surprise in post today. Got a free box of 6 continental chocolates from an online bingo company (no idea why!) and a large free pack of skin wipes that I volunteered to product test.

Hadalbm

Just called at the supermarket to buy a couple of bottles wine and finished up with some amazing yellow stickered bargains. These included braising steak, pork steaks, a beef joint, shin of beef, pork mince, 2 packs thick Lincolnshire sausages, beef stir fry steaks and 2 packs meatballs. There's enough meat for at least 16 meals for 2 of us for a cost of £16.20. That's 50p per portion for top quality meat. Had I bought it all at full price it would have cost me £30.22 so I saved £14.02 on meat alone.
In addition I got two extremely large salmon steaks reduced from £4.78 to £2.68 saving another £2.10, 3 punnets of cherry tomatoes reduced from 99p a punnet to 55p saving a total of £1.42 and 2 punnets of nectarines reduced from £1.49 each to 75p each saving yet another £1.48. As a treat I also bought some white chocolate and raspberry cookies reduced from £1 to 50p.
Total cost was £22.49 with a total saving of £19.52.

My freezer is now absolutely stuffed full to overflowing :T

From now on I'm going to deduct the full cost from my grocery budget when I buy yellow stickered or BOGOF items as I can then physically add the saved cash into my make and save accounts.

Week 3 budget totals :-
Grocery budget = £50 - £22.49 - £19.52 (added to make or save) = £7.99
Entertainment budget = £80 - £7.60 (2 bottles wine) = £72.40
Petrol budget = £50
Other budget = £20

Make or save challenge:-
Yellow stickered items = £19.52 (this will be added to grocery savings account)
Total from last week = £24.89

Grand total saved or made = £44.41 (average £5.55 per day)

I'm also going to record the value of any freebies that I receive from my online activities. Up to date in 3 weeks I've received :-
Pack of Heinz tomato seeds - value £1.99
2 packs facial cleansing wipes - value £6
Graze box - value £3.99
Small box continental chocolates £2.99
Total value of freebies = £14.97

takingcontrolatlast

Hi,

I've been reading your thread and really impressed with your savings

I'm learning a few tricks - thank you - I shall keep my eye out for the yellow stickies :T

May i ask how you budget? - i have never really budgeted properly and have no emergency fund whatsoever! - i have been reading up on YNAB and am going to take up the free classes but i am interested in other methods as well?

thank you