Busy Mee's Last Leg

beanielou · 13 April 2018 at 8:22PM

Well done on the switching.
Happy shopping!

Busy_Mee1 · 21 April 2018 at 7:04AM

Gosh it is over a week since I last posted, real life has been incredibly busy over the last week.

Last weekend flew by, and was rather spendy (meals out Friday, Saturday and Sunday :eek:).
I went shopping with DD on Saturday and failed to find "the dress", so we are going for round 2 today :eek: We met up with some friends on Sunday and went to a very nice bargain curry.

I am still religiously tracking spending and it is giving me some real insight into our spending. I have fairly good control over our grocery spends, but it is becoming more apparent that we spend more on entertainment (eating out) than I thought and there are other categories of spending that I really just hadn't thought about. For example over the last couple of week we have spent quite a lot on medical expenses, £21.60 dentist, £19.60 on prescriptions and a random £6.80 in Boots.....I really hadn't clocked this sort of spending before, mainly because in my head it is non-discretionary and so I just pay for these things without thinking about it. It will all need to be baked into the budget for when we retire.

The good financial news is that my £150 switching bonus from HSBC has arrived :j and I just need to check whether Mr Mee's has too. I need to ring FD over the weekend to instigate that switch as the switching offer ends on Monday.

Work has been really busy again, but I am really enjoying it. Having a great boss has made all the difference and it has made me realise that who you work for is just as important as what you do. When I think back 12 months to when I had a useless but damaging boss, it was just a complete stressful nightmare.

In health news, I feel great...I am finally recovered from the nasty coughing virus I started with in February and I am back at the gym. I have managed to do 10,000 steps a day over the last week and am going to the gym 2/3 times a week. I have also managed to lose 3 lb of the 7lb I accidentally put on over winter :mad:

I have been trying to get out for walk every lunchtime and my walk when I was in the city for work took me past the market and I was amazed by the quality and price of the produce ( and no plastic wrapping). I am going to make an effort to try and get there regularly for my fruit and veg in the future.

I think that is all, wish me luck with the shopping today .....surely we will find "the dress" today, God help us when we actually need to buy a wedding dress. She is just a guest at this wedding :eek:

beanielou · 21 April 2018 at 10:50AM

All sounding good.

try_harder · 21 April 2018 at 3:53PM

I am so pleased to hear that you are back at the gym two or three times a week that is great news and so very good for you its lovely to hear you so bright and cheerful and the walking is great too plus the fact that you are happy at work .

You have had a brilliant year with all the bank switches truly well done

Hopefully you have had a successful day on the dress front

noblet · 21 April 2018 at 5:10PM

well done on all the switches - I found it took more energy than I had anticipated just keeping up with what was switching when, and opening endless envelopes from the bank!

Suffolk_lass · 22 April 2018 at 12:10PM

Hello Busy Mee - I've just tracked you down and read through in light of the sister comment elsewhere. Good to 'meet' you - I will follow your progress. You are much more active around the cash interest space and switching than me

Busy_Mee1 · 26 April 2018 at 7:32AM

Urgh everything so busy as the moment, I am having trouble balancing work, home, exercise, and visiting the elderly step-parent. Normally the first thing to go when I am busy is the exercise but I am desperately trying to keep this going at the moment, because it makes me feel sooo much better.

I have managed to do 10,000 steps a day for the last 10 days and I am going to the gym 2 or 3 times. I am now back up to running 3k comfortably, so I am hoping to be able to run Park Run again soon.

The long trip to the elderly step parent every other weekend is the thing that is tipping the balance but this (unfortunately) won't be for ever. However we do have more parents who are growing more elderly and don't live close to us, so supporting them is going to be a continuing feature of our lives. Another good reason to retire I think.

I know I am not alone in this, most of my friends of a similar age also have elderly parents who need support in varying degrees. We all seem to have jumped from caring for our children to caring for our parents almost immediately. A result of having children later (although I was 26 when I had my eldest, so relatively young by today's standards )and people living longer.

In financial news we have now received both £150 switching bonus from HSBC and these have been paid into my odds and sods account, which now stands at a whopping £539.77 :T This is just since 1 April but does include £425 in switching bonuses. I have now started the switch to FD, so that will be another £125 to come in May ( I got in just in time before the changed the switching reward from cash to a gift ).

I have nearly finished setting up the web of standing orders that swish through all the accounts to meet the minimum requirements and we are now paying £1750 a month into regular savers a month, all paying 5% in interest :eek: This is making things tighter than a camel's bottom in a sand storm, so I will need to see if we can maintain this.

Already I can see that the emergency fund/holiday fund is suffering. We have just had some big car bills and the credit card bill is huge for next month and we are going on holiday.

This will effectively wipe out our emergency fund to nil, nothing, nada :eek: This is the first time in forever this has happened. Luckily all our big expenses for this year are paid, so there will just need to be much belt tightening when we come back from holiday.

The grocery shopping budget is still going well, I really feel like I have this nailed now and we have good stocks of all the things we regularly use. I went to Lidl at the weekend to pick up their weekend deals, 500g jars of passata for 49p and deluxe Italian meat platters for 99p.

I used the meat platters to make a sort of meze for the lunch boxes ,home made humorous, carrot and pepper sticks, Italian meats, olives and pitta bread. Apparently DD's lunch boxes are becoming a talking point at work, with her colleagues wanting to know what she has today :rotfl: .....I guess it beats a cheese sandwich and a packet of crisps, but I hope I haven't set the bar too high :rotfl:

I also need to give another shout out for H@mebargains, their tins of tomatoes are 25p and are absolutely fine, also their red kidney beans are cheaper than Aldi too. I know it is only pence but our HB and Aldi are almost side by side and I shop in them both.

I think that is all, it is nearly time for my most favourist time of the month and the monthly round-up :rotfl: I definitely need to get out more, it is a good job I am off travelling the world soon :j

shangaijimmy · 26 April 2018 at 8:13AM

Busy busy times in the busymee household! Sounds like you're on top of it all!

beanielou · 26 April 2018 at 9:39AM

Keep plodding

Busy_Mee1 · 29 April 2018 at 7:38AM

Morning everyone and thanks to folk for popping in

We are nearly at the end of the month, in fact pay day happened early on Friday and there is not too much more financial movement to happen, so I thought I would share my experiment in tracking spends throughout the month.

And it is horrendously embarrassing.......and I may well be drummed out of MSE....but in the interests of full and open disclosure and as my gift to you to make you feel better about your own spending, I can disclose we have spent £1130 this month, on well, just stuff that just happens :eek:

I have logged all spends through the month, that has not been paid by a regular standing order or direct debit. So all groceries, dentist , clothes, hair cuts, entertainment, fuel and travel costs, basically everything......and it has been a real eye opener.

I normally cycle a lot if these costs through a couple of credit cards ( cash back and M&S) so a lot of this isn't that visible, I just pay the credit card off in full the following month and wince if it is particularly high.

There are four main areas of spending that are over £200:

Personal - includes clothing and things like hairdressers £284.24:eek:
Transport- petrol/diesel and car parking £234.26
Entertainment- largely eating out, but includes a couple of rounds of drinks £236.01 :eek:
Groceries £216.19

The other areas of spending were non discretionary things like dental check ups, prescriptions, house stuff ( boiler service and electrician )

The highest spending area was personal, and actually £100 of this total was spent on DD, this was the result of two shopping trips for "the dress" and me treating her to what I thought were bits and pieces of clothing, a top and a couple of skirts. This is a real guilty pleasure for me, I love shopping with her ( nice quality time) and I love treating her. I may need to cut back here

This also included a new pair of shoes for Mr Mee, new sandals for me, cool clothing for our holiday, one trip to the hairdressers for me (£38) and a set of new hair clippers for Mr Mee.

There is definitely room for improvement here :cool:

The other area of high discretionary spend is on entertainment, it seems that we eat out rather more than I thought ( no wonder I am struggling to lose weight). In fairness, we have had a Birthday this month and have eaten out three times as a result, twice with friends and once with the kids ( we of course picked up the bill ).

The other thing we are clearly doing is "rewarding" ourselves every time we do the gutty journey to visit the elderly step parent. It is a 2 hour drive there and a 2 hour drive back, and takes up pretty much a full day at the weekend. We often call for something to eat on the way back....fish and chips yesterday :whistle:

Transport costs are also quite high because of the extra fuel costs to do this journey, otherwise we are quite good at car sharing when we are both going in the same direction.

I am also happy with our grocery spends, but I have really focused on reducing this. I did notice however that Mr Mee is topping up the lunch he takes from home, with extra drinks and snacks at work to the tune of £37.75 over the month but tbh in the scheme of our other spending this is small potatoes (or crisps and chocolate in his case

)

So an interesting, if slightly horrifying exercise. It does give me a more realistic idea of what we spend for when we retire and actually there is plenty of scope for improvement, if we need to.

I won't continue this through May, because we are away for a couple of weeks but might do this again in June and maybe set a budget for each of these areas of spending to see if that helps.

I am going to slink away in embarrassment now :embarasse

Busy Mee's Last Leg

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