Diary of a busy cow!

mooomin

Hello!

I'm a long-time member of MSE and have been debt-free now for a number of years. At my worst, my debt was nearly £10,000, but through hard work, being disciplined and buying less nonsense, I managed to clear all the debt.

When I first joined, I worked in financial services (with a lot of other people who were terrible with money!) but since then I've been made redundant and now work in a different sector. I make less money than I used to in my last role (almost 10k less in real terms) but the work-life balance is a lot better and I really enjoy what I'm doing - most of the time :rotfl:

On to the title of the diary - a busy cow! This year I'm working full-time, studying with the OU part-time and have a lot of things going on, including three confirmed trips, two of which are abroad (!)

I think that I need a DFW diary again to help me maintain my focus on my spending. I have an awful habit of frittering money away and need to get saving in order to be able to have fun on the various trips

I use the You Need A Budget app to manage my money and find it really good, especially being able to track spending/budgeting in real time. My priorities shift monthly, so the flexibility it gives me over spreadsheets is great.

The next post will be things to save for and a budget to give an idea about what I'm spending on monthly...:eek:

mooomin

Planned shenanigans this year:

• Trip to Prague with Mama and Papa Mooo. We have paid for the flights and just have the hotel to cover which is around €520 between the three of us. Myself and Mama Mooo are paying money to an account every month and just about have this covered, so just spends to save.
• Trip to Dublin for a friend's wedding. Flights and hotel paid for, will just need some spending money and possibly a new dress. The wedding is two weeks after I get back from Prague :eek:
• Trip to London to see the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child play :j:j Tickets are bought and paid for, just travel and a hotel to pay for. My best friend and I pay £15 a month each into a joint account to cover things like theatre shows or nights out when we see something fun but can't afford it, so this fund should pay for at least half of what we need. We also want to go on the Harry Potter studio tour while we're in London, so that'll be another expense to find.

I need to do some work on my budget for this/next month. I get paid on Friday, which is ten days earlier than normal :mad: I'll budget it as normal and won't touch it, but it's temptation I'd rather not have!

EssexHebridean

Woo - you're back...and...am I really the first to post?! Go me!

Great plans ahead there - and excellent plan to pay a set amount monthly against fun stuff too, myself and MrEH do precisely the same!

I'm also with you on a diary being a helpful way of keeping frittering under control - hence returning to mine, also!

beanielou

Happy shiny new diary

mooomin

Thanks for the welcome ladies I do find that a wee MSE diary is helpful, and I need to be focused on spending with the long January stretching ahead of me!

I get paid tomorrow and will be using £150 from my January wage for final Christmas bits and pieces (My £100 Christmas budget isn't needed once it's January, so I'll spend it now, haha!) and £50 for a birthday night out. Having a birthday on a Tuesday is no fun so I'm out tomorrow instead.

Apart from that, I'm ignoring my wages until the 1st, so here's what's left for December (apart from direct debits):

Spending money: £0 :eek: I can move money around in my budget if I need to spend though.
Food (not groceries): £19.68 for lunches out with friends etc.
Groceries: £142.74 I've managed to be frugal this month - my budget for the whole month was £200. This weekend will be the Big Festive Shop though.
Fuel: £26.99
Presents (not Christmas): £7.32

tomtombeanie

Welcome back! I've often wondered how you've been getting on

The days of "a payment a day" thread seem very far away. Good to see that your budgeteering passion is still going strong! Xttb

mooomin

Well, after saying that the food budget was under control, an unplanned £20 went wandering off yesterday :rotfl: Remaining amount is now £119.50 for the month.

Some last-minute buys this morning have the Christmas budget down to £65.62 with only a couple of people to buy for, so that'll be fine for the big day. I have a day to day slush fund in case of budget overspends which is sitting at £270ish, so I can pull from that if I need to.

Payday has landed with no impact at all. I won't be touching most of it until January anyway. I've allocated my £50 to going out tonight, but plan to spend less than that. It'll probably have to do me for dinner as well so I'll need to drink slowly, haha!

Plan for tomorrow is:

• Get up early
• Write a shopping list
• Get to Lidl
• Get remaining bits in Morrisons
• Find stocking fillers for Mr Mooo and something for the remaining people on the list
• Wrap some presents
• Organise the freezer
• Batch cook some sauces for quick dinners in the new year

If I manage half of it I'll be impressed with myself!

rising_from_the_ashes

Ahhhhhh lovely to see you Moo ... I'm also returning to the mse fold after a year of ridiculous overspending (I've not even kept track tbh!:o:eek:) (I've done exactly the same as last time when I should be here as I know I'm overspending, instead I've been buring my head & hiding!)

Need to get back into all the good habits that seem to have managed to disappear over the past few months!

Must think about a new diary too!

Trips sound great - Praque is on my 'must do' list so will look forward to hearing all about it

*subscribes*

lilmissmup

Glad you are back

mooomin

mooomin wrote: »

Plan for tomorrow is:

• Get up early
• Write a shopping list
• Get to Lidl
• Get remaining bits in Morrisons
• Find stocking fillers for Mr Mooo and something for the remaining people on the list
• Wrap some presents
• Organise the freezer
• Batch cook some sauces for quick dinners in the new year

If I manage half of it I'll be impressed with myself!

I managed precisely none of it :o Turns out that I have a terrible lack of ability to say no when people buy me drinks and that I'm too old for those sort of shenanigans :rotfl::rotfl:

I'm going to get at least some of that done today. Honest.

I also need to add tidy the spare room and change the bedclothes because we have friends visiting today. I'm so behind!!

mooomin

Revised list!

• [STRIKE]Get up early[/STRIKE] Mr Mooo helped with this by snoring from 5.06am :mad:
• [STRIKE]Write a shopping list[/STRIKE]
• [STRIKE]Go to Lidl (kicking myself I didn't get the £10 off £50 voucher that was apparently in the paper yesterday!)[/STRIKE] Didn't spend £50 anyway :A
• Wrap some presents
• [STRIKE]Tidy the spare room[/STRIKE]
• [STRIKE]Change the bedding in the spare room[/STRIKE]
• Hoover the house
• Clean the bathroom
• [STRIKE]Make something quick and easy for dinner that makes space in the freezer [/STRIKE]

[STRIKE]If I have time, I'm also going to go to the Co-op and check out the £10 frozen deal they have. We don't have anyone over for Christmas dinner, so it'll be good for the two of us. We're cat-sitting over Christmas too, so have two trips to make to the other side of the city on the day itself. Anything with reliable cooking times will be very useful I'll need to find someone to take the parsnips from the deal though, I hate parsnips :rotfl:[/STRIKE] They had run out of the items in the deal and I didn't think it was worth getting the bits they had left individually. We'll end up having cheese on toast at this rate!