ZC's Aim for a little independence

PennyJar

Hi ZC,

Olio hair dye is good and there are loads of vids on YouTube on how to dye your hair yourself.

Costs about £5-6 with £1 off next purchase coupon inside. Lasts a good 6 weeks too... You could always get mobile hairdresser at a fraction of cost to apply it at home for you.

PennyJar

zcrat41

Morning.

I did try dying my hair once at home but it was a bit of a disaster - I went too dark and looked like morticia Adams. Might try again though as it is a massive saving.

Managed both free rhyme time and shopping yesterday. John Lewis was more expensive for curtains. We're thinking of doing Hilary's for the sitting room and then some Dunelm cheapies for the spare room. Parked in the cheap bit, are our sandwiches on a bench and basically had a nice cheap day!

Work today - should be combining the last of the rape. It's payday today so am going to have little look at Augusts budget and have a play with the figures tonight. Only planned spend might be 2 colourful hanging baskets I've had my eye on at our local farm shop. My garden looks really sad and I think they're down to 2 for £10.

Have a nice day everyone.

zcrat41

Good afternoon. I didn't buy the hanging baskets yesterday - realistically I'm not going to have time to maintain them so they'll just die. I've been at work all day today - plenty of time for Swagbucks whilst I wait for the combine. I get so annoyed when I spend nearly 10 mins on a survey only to find out I don't qualify. I'm sure they already have the info they need by the time they say that!


DH has been setting up the new paddling pool for the kids and it looks like they're having a whale of a time. They'll be over later for a picnic tea by the tractor.


I've just worked out I think that August is our month for getting a double payment of child benefit. Will be a help towards the cost of nursery without the 15 hours free over the summer hols.

zcrat41

Good morning!


So, for July I managed to put £267 in the mortgage payment acc. I'm actually going to put it in the Regular Saver at 6% as it's more interest. I never would have done this without this diary - I'd probably not even have saved that, I'd have frittered it! That payment alone will have saved me £267 in interest and 1 month off the mortgage. So pleased with myself!


So over the month I've been thinking that I need to have some smaller goals otherwise I'm going to get demotivated. I've decided my first aim is to get sub £60 000 with neutral savings. That's £6757.07. I already have £5369.77 in savings so my first target is to save up £1387.3. An ambitious target for me would be to do that by Christmas - £277 a month.


My budget for Aug:
Joint Acc
Groceries: £349.38
Spending money: £50.14 (pays for swimming, parking etc)
Nappies & Wipes: 20.00
Nursery fees £641.93
Eating out: 25.00
Family health: 20.00
Children: 50.00 (earmarked for a new carseat this month)
Phone line: 18.00
Cleaner: 125.00
Window cleaning 8.50
Tv licence 12.13
Travel: 5.00
Birthdays £91.27 (3 big family birthdays coming up in Oct so need to put a bit away for them)
Christmas £91.27 (seems a lot but we end up entertaining a lot of family - rules of farmhouse living, you have the big kitchen you cook the big meals!)
Haricuts £5
Holiday fund £80
Kids clothes fund 20 (I let it accumulate and then it's there when I need it)
Social £50 (building up for a weekend away in Dec for DH and I)
Household goods £10


My account
Charity 32.00
Personal spends 10.00
Non essential clothes 30.00
Birthdays 33.00 (to pay for DH's big birthday in Nov - he wants a tea set! £330 saved so far)
Weekend away fund - 120.00
Mortgage o/p 142.44


House fund
Mortgage payement 429.91
Gas safety 12
Insurance 28
Tax fund 54.00
Savings for house fund 50.57




So I've got a bit to save if I want to hit my o/p figure for this month! My weekend away is now booked and paid for - I'm off to a spa for 2 nights all by myself in November. It's a real treat to myself - we don't have a day off properly from July - Oct so it's something to look forwards to. DH gave me a voucher for Christmas last year which has gone towards it and I got a really good deal. I'm so excited!

PennyJar

Hey ZC,

Good going - every little bit helps!

These boards are really helping me stay focused too.

I bought a £1 chalk board and started counting down days to next pay day and tried keeping these as NSDs too - it's worked so far.

I've also found by drawing out a weekly cash amount I spend less even on dedicated budgeted items.

Small goals are good too - keep up the good progress.

PennyJar

MissCreative

Looks like you've got everything accounted for ZC
That spa weekend sounds amazing! I hope you have a wonderful time :T

PennyJar, that's great that cash works for you - I actually find it easier to spend cash than on card haha, so card is better for me everyone's different!

zcrat41

Well, the month got off to a bad start - we went swimming this morning (£3.20 - bargain) and I signed DS up for swimming lessons from September. I'm keen for him to learn asap and I think it's really good value - £5 a lesson but I wasn't expecting to have to pay £70 upfront for lessons starting in September! Never mind, have jiggled the food budget. We just can't out at all this month. I do have £40 of Pizza Express vouchers tucked away for an emergency meal out if I get tired!

zcrat41

Evening all.

Tesco delivery came today - spent £79.10. Not great as my budget needs to be £60 pw to hit my targets! Hoping there'll be a lot of free meals at Mums towards the end of the month when harvest really kicks in.

Am having a day at the seaside tomorrow with the kids and mum. Really looking forwards to it. I'm doing the picnic and mum will buy tea and probably ice cream so should be a cheap day. We're going to where we used to go as kids so it has some pretty special memories for us.

Not much to report other than that. Quiet day due to the rain really.

MissCreative

Hi ZC,

What does your mum grow?

Hope you have a wonderful day at the beach :j

zcrat41

We're mainly arable farmers miss C but we have some beef cattle too.

Lovely day at the beach yesterday. Spent £4.20 on ice creams and £5.00 on coffee & snack. Mum bought tea. Wish we lived by the sea - the kids had such a good time. Shattered today though as it was 5 hours driving for me. Quiet day today. Think we might just go to the park for a run around & catch up on chores after yesterday out.

Have a nice day everyone x