Money Saving Mojo

a_silver_lining

Sooo I’ve avoided the diary for a while as I felt flumped after deciding to go on the holiday. It’s in October and 782.73 all in. The only things I will need to pay for is transfers there, suntan lotion, flipflops (I will use a voucher to get them free) and maybe a few euro’s just in case although it is all inclusive. I considered cancelling, but I really want to go.


I have gone over budget this month separately to this. Ideally I was hoping to spend around £300 on food and extras…I have spent £110/100 shopping and still need to get pastry and gammon. £75 on the boiler repair, £64 on entertainment, £60! On the garden, £54 on gifts, £27 on eating out (which is better then my usual £80), £22 house spending, £15 on the allotment, and a few mini bits on other categories totalling: £447.17. Plus the gammon and pastry I imagine this will be just over £450.


Productive Positives since updating have been that I listed items for free or small cost online and have a load of people coming over the next two days. I have mostly kept up with eating well, although fitness could be improved. I have had hundreds of strawberries from the garden and I have frozen about 500g of these and a very large bag of allotment rhubarb for winter eating. The patio is laid it just needs pointing. I made mostly free peach marmalade and am making elderflower cordial to have fresh and also freeze for winter and will give some to my dad. All my direct debits are now set to be around payday to make budgeting easier.


I managed 11 NSD this month, which will be 14 should my plan go, well, to plan.


I have my partners Birthday tomorrow and I am making an apple pie from apple puree we have so tomorrow I am buying some puff pastry. I am going to do eggs, sweet potato chips and gammon so will buy some gammon also. I shouldn’t need to buy anything more for the month.

Looking forward to next month I would like to spend less then £450. I am planning on opening a separate savings account to move whatever is left at the end of this month. There should be around £200 as I moved money for the holiday over from my emergency fund reducing it to 1150.


Plans for next month are only a trip to London to see a show I have already bought tickets for. Sadly my friend cancelled and no one seems to want the ticket! So it will likely be wasted. I would still like to go so need to budget for trains and the tube but am planning on packing lunches and drinks to make it all cheaper.

I also want to point the patio but have the items for this. I want to make elderflower cordial and again have this. I want to focus on my allotment more and see if I can get it tidied and boost my moral there. I also want to open a savings account to move my extra money into. I will put £250 in my monthly saver this month, and pay £100 to my debt. Once the flat is finished the rest will go off my debt.



Still feel a bit meh about my finances but will try to keep positing here as I think it does help to keep me focused and will hopefully up my money saving mojo.

louby40

It's hard to keep the momentum up! I'm paying back my parents. they loaned me £6500 last year and I've been paying them back since last July. I've just increased it to £300.


keep going

a_silver_lining

Despite my previous slump in motivation and over spending this month I feel more in control now. I've realised (bar the boiler breaking) all that over spending was 100% down to me. No one made me spend my money. So I have complete control to limit the damage this month. I also have a beautiful garden to eat my home grown strawberries in. A fluffy cat to bug my in the cutest ways. A job I love. Reasonable fitness and beautiful fields to walk and pick elder flowers in next to my home.



So June = £250 off debt (2k paid off!). £250 in savings account… then 650 taken out of savings for holiday so 1150 emergency fund £782.73 spend on holiday… £487.99 spent in general (109.90 shopping, eating out only 27) £231.95 left over in my account.

This month I want to beat that. My goal is to beat my food and eating out categories but to also keep an eye on other areas I seem to be overspending in, namely my garden and entertainment.

Last month I paid for my travel to London so I only need to budget for my oyster card top up for the visit and some food there. I sold some plant pots so the fiver I have will cover the oyster card I have no other spending plans. Possibly a ticket for pride annnnnd the washing machine may be broken but I’m going to drain it and explore that tomorrow. I have to finish my elderflower cordial tomorrow, tastes yummy though

Patio is now done! Including some decorative pebbles down the side. Plan for this month is to use my left over cement to fix up a wall. Use the left over pebble somewhere to look pretty. To spray my chairs and set up the patio to be useable and pretty. To plant out the last of my seedlings on the allotment. Hopefully build a garden gate! Not sure on the rest of my DIY plans but it would be fab for the garden to be pretty finished.

a_silver_lining

Thanks Louby40 it's lovely how supportive everyone is on here. I've been reading a lot of diaries and I think I'm going through some normal start of the journey feelings, a mixture of panic and dread of not living for years, wishes to rush it along, a desire to ignore it and spend happy, and pride for dealing with things. Hopefully the pride wins!

a_silver_lining

[FONT=&quot]All ups and downs, and lefts and rights.
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[FONT=&quot]Garden:[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]I’ve bought 6 £shop big plant pots. I have three of the same in the back garden with these cheap but cheerful ‘brush’ plants. As the patio is now done I have left a bag of decorative grit so I put some in these pots to cover the soil and they look fantastic. I think quite posh and they not tie in with the patio! My 6 new pots will get the same treatment and I bought 6 lavender plants (3 for 99p on *bay from a local seller) of a reasonable size so I will put them in there. I have great plans for my front garden but limited funds so I think these will look really cheerful in the meantime, and mean that the lavenders can grow on a bit and then be planted out when bigger. :money: indeed as I was looking at lavenders at around £6 each at double the size. Compost is free out of my composter, so 6 complete pots for £7.98, bargain I think!
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[FONT=&quot]I also got 3 foxgloves (99p) which will flower next year and 3 verbena (99p) so the front garden looks like it will be purples. I will need to decide where to grow these on as I don't want to plant out too much until I know where things will live. I do have some cosmos I grew from seed.[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]I’ve been lucky in that I got sent a second batch of some fuschia berry plants so I’m going to have loads for next year so need to work out how and where to put them. I may try and grow this second batch on and sell them when they are a bit bigger. :money:maybe? [/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]Plot:[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]I’ve had a big long think and I think the allotment is too much for me. If I give it up I should be able to move the rhubarb and some of the raspberries back to mine and harvest the few bits I’ve planted. Other than that I’ve mostly killed all my seedlings waiting to be planted as they got too leggy anti moneysaving. I’ve been stressing about using it rather than wanting to visit. I’m going to try and pop along tomorrow and clear some weeds and see if it looks more manageable cut back. I’m also going to draw out a plan for how it could be used with low needs fruit and veg to see if that appeals to me! I worry that it will still be too big a task though.
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[FONT=&quot]On the plus side I have been really enjoying picking my own in my garden! I have my first lot of gooseberries and they actually taste really good. I have almost a kilo of strawberries in the freezer for winter and have been eating them every day. My tomatoes and salad are looking great and my courgette is stating to flower! I also have loads of chilled and frozen elderflower cordial from foraging. Maybe I should record how much produce grow to see if I save money!
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[FONT=&quot]Spending: [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]My spending has been better than usual and I have avoided takeaways. I’ve also made £15 selling plant pots and an old bike, which I’m taking as London spending money. I don’t have much else to sell really as I got rid of a lot before but I might see if I can sell some old Disney dvds. I’m not sure how to make more money on top of this as my job is shiftwork and so I can’t just pick up a part time job… Will have a think![/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]Debt:[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]I paid another £250 off my debt by accident as it seems that the bank didn’t change my amount to £100 as agreed! Oh well. Bad news is less spare cash for the kitchen but good news is my debt is lower![/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]Debt is currently: £7750/10k[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Savings: £1150 (will be 1400 when my monthly saver comes out)[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Excess from last month/ kitchen fund: £231.95 (I was going to add more as my debt payment was going to be lower, but aiming to spend less then £250 this month so will add £400 to this).[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]To do[/FONT][FONT=&quot] this week is mainly just to get through London pretty cheap! I would like to do my allotment plan and also start looking at studying for my course so perhaps starting module 1. I would like to start drawing again and plan to do a drawing a night from my workbook. I often invest in hobby bits and don’t use them so I want to see if I do use these books, else I can sell on![/FONT]

a_silver_lining

And mortgage is officially below 98k! I've been here for a year and a half exactly. 97,933.51 down from 101,995 - 4061.49 paid off. 1k of that was over payment and the rest were just from my monthly payments. Happy with that I'm aware that property may be impacted on by the vote but I think it has been worth it overall for me so far. Until the vote my flat had gone up a lot as upstairs sold a year after mine for 10k more then I paid! I've also had my partner paying rent so she has saved money on rent and I've saved around £200pm on rent so about 3.5k in the past year and a half. 1k went to pay off the mortgage and 2k to repay my debt. The rest has been spent on probably a load of bumpf!

a_silver_lining

Day before payday so quick update. for July

Debt still 2250 paid off of 10k. )250 paid off)
Emergency fund now 1400. (250 added)
Left over in my account now just over 500 compared to last month 231.95. (285ish added)

I was really frugal until the last week or so when I bought a fitness tracker to use bounts. Whoops! No major spends in August as I have few events. Am hoping to book a theatre ticket for September though.

a_silver_lining

Debt is now 25% paid off!

2500 of 10,000 paid in about a year and a half

Emergency fund 1650. I think I have about 500 also spare in my account towards the kitchen.