Rawr_'s Saving Diary

rawr_

So it's been a while since I last posted, what can I say A LOT has happened since March!

I'm now very pleased to say that I am now 22 weeks pregnant :j and to go along with that now have hit my 4K savings target for this year. This was my target to save so that I would have enough behind me to take 6 months maternity leave which I know I can now comfortably take, with my husband taking over for 3/4 months after that (using the Shared Parental Leave programme).

So this months budgets (25 Oct - 25 Nov) can now been seen below.

Firstly my personal spend/bills.
In: £1571.16 (got a slight payrise in July)

Out
- £120 / Diesel (Although I've been spending half of this as not been going out anywhere other than work during the week!)
- £9.86 / Breakdown cover
- £27.53 Car insurance (This months is already paid)
- £31.00 / Mobile contract
- £8.99 / Netflix
- £164.71 / Car loan
- £12.25 / Car Tax
- £600 / Joint account

This leaves me with £626.98 (think I had a tiny bit left over from last month) in my account after all the direct debits and bills. I normally put £200 of this straight away into my savings, but I just used £120.09 to round up my savings account to the 4K mark this month. This leaves a nice £506.89 which I intend to use to start my Christmas shopping this month. I also had my mums birthday this weekend just gone, so needed to spend a bit on that too!

Joint account:
In: £600 (from me)
In: £675 (from Mr Rawr) As there are 5 Fridays this month
= In: £1275

Out:
- £540 / Mortgage (Covered by Mr Rawr)
- £13.08 / Mortgage (Covered by me)
- £121 / Council Tax
- £10.13 / Buildings Insurance
- £5.35 / Contents Insurance
- £16.11 / Cat Insurance
- £30 / Heating oil (Gets put into a separate account)
- £75 / Electric
- £26 / Water (I intend to do a meter check this month as I think this is a lot for two people, and we've been in the house now since February so we should have an accurate reading by now or how much we use per month!)
- £23.99 / Internet

This leaves £381.43 in the Food/other budget which will be plenty (think I had a bit left over from last month that I added). I still aim on spending £60 per week on food for us two which includes all cleaning products and cat food.

rawr_

Friday I did my usual food shop spend - this came to £61.30. I needed a few cupboard things we had run out of that are usually a bit more expensive (like Nutritional Yeast) and I anticipate I'll need to do a top up shop later on in the week just for a few bits. I've been quite bad with food spending the last few months, but Friday I went back to Aldi and then Tesco for the bits I couldn't get at Aldi (which is what I used to do). We also had my MIL and BIL stay with us for a week last week so that put our food spend up slightly as we were essentially entertaining guests for the week.

I did a few personal spends on Friday too - as I need a new cardigan and I treat myself to some new PJ's, along with some birthday presents for my mum. I also got some bits for me out of Superdrug, and drew £10 out of the cash machine as I need to pay a £5 deposit for our work Christmas meal this week. This spend came to £77.89. Which sounds a lot but as long as it's not a weekly occurrence I'm not worried!