Table top sales are my downfall....

My pal asked me to go with her today (so no petrol spend lol) - very small table top sale at a village hall - only 5 stalls including a homebaking one (never buy from these as I can make my own cakes and they are usually a lot nicer!)

So spent......

50p entrance fee (including raffle ticket)
Book for dd - 50p
Goodnight Mr Tom book (for me!) - 20p
Shrek Junior monopoly - £2 (thought this was dear but it was unused)
Pride & predjudice and Tom Jones (the dvds you get in papers) - £1 for both
Interactive DVDs - The Weakest link and Horse racing - for the caravan - £2

And spent £2 on a bacon roll and 2 cups of tea....

And thats the last of my allowance gone! I have exactly 30p for a treat for me to last the rest of the month.......no wonder my money has been vanishing - this cash business is the mutts nuts. I cant overspend if I simply dont have it!

Popped into Aldi on the way back and stocked up on breakfast cereals and bits we like from there - spent just under £15

September housekeeping - £71.20

Pays to cost a recipe - syrup sponge pud

I am a bit obsessed with spreadsheets - they are great fun! sad or what!! lol

So I decided to cost a home-made recipe I found on the net somewhere (cant for the life of me remember where!)

2 oz sugar
2 oz marg
2 oz flour
1 egg
1 oz milk
1 tablespoon golden syrup

Mix the sponge mix, put in microwave bowl, pour the syrup over, cover with clingfilm and cook in the microwave for 3 mins - this made a lovely quick easy pudding for the three of us.

On todays prices at Asda on my supermarket it came to 34.13p - add a packet of instant custard for 10p (that was from Sainsburys) and the whole pud cost less that 15p per portion.

If you had bought one of those tins steamed puddings it would have cost over 3 times as much and I doubt if it would have done 2 of us never mind 3........

Cash is hard going!

Had to put on for a couple of birthday collections at work so that was another £4 gone.....dd has a school trip to Beamish - £18....

But on a brighter note I have taken lunches to work so thats saved me £10 - if I had paid for them out of my allowance I wouldnt have had anything to spend for the rest of the month. Now this is the point of my allowance - to spend on just small treats on myself - if I dont get that I tend to feel hard-done-by and splurge out on something larger!

Got flour, marg etc in my on-line shop so will have a baking/freezing weekend to help out eek our finances this month.

Cash is painful!

Got my haircut today (costs £25) I really like my hairdresser and we dont have a lot of choice living in a small town. I could drop it to a dry cut but that still costs £17. So what I am doing is growing it into a chin length bob and that will only need trimming every 8 weeks or so - you get a free fringe trim inbetween which is great.

So out of my monthly allowance I do not have a lot left!

Had a look round the charity shops and didnt buy anything - this buisiness of cash only is quite scary and working really well!

Did buy some bits for lunches that I forgot to order with my on-line shop but even then I was very aware of how much I was spending - not a bad thing at all!


September houskeeping : £56.23

Asda order done....

Total - 49.74 - this is to last 10 days. Did the Asda price promise from my last shop and got £3.97 which I can use against my next on-line shop...

September houskeeping : £49.74

How my budgeting works

Thanks for the comments Froogs - its nice to know how other people manage their money!

I think I have explained my Freedom account before but for newbies who have joined me recently (welcome!) here goes....

I am an anal spreadsheet maker - everything is down on a huge one - its a work of art! I only have 3 different accounts with my bank - joint current, joint saver and my own saver.

All my regular bills (ie direct debits for gas, electric, council tax etc, mortgage,broadband etc) get left in my current account. When I started my Freedom account I had to go through all my outgoings that had to be paid - these are:

Road tax
Car insurance
Telephone

I divided the yearly amount by 12 and put this amount away (joint saver.

Then I figured out how much to spend on:

Birthdays
Christmas

and do the same.

Then I divided the rest of my money between the additional following

Emergencys
Clothes
Hoidays
Repairs
Household
Entertainment
Car repairs

Over the years I have tweaked and tweaked the amounts - the first 5 always got funding - then I managed to fund the last 7 - at first I could only put £1 in each of them but as I paid off my debts that rose and rose.

Then at long last I managed to have a proper savings account which is a nice feeling to have a wee bit of money behind you - this is the amount that got hammered when my dd was sick.

Again, its all on-line or on paper - as I was so bad with cash I tried not to use it as I always wrote down what I paid for with my debit card.

So for 8 years this stem's has worked well but by tyring just to use cash I think I can be more aware of my spending and open another account (Seasonal pitch) to put money in to pay for our seasonal caravan pitch.

I budget £300 for housekeeping - now this does seem a lot compared to what some people are living on......so I have had a re-think and dropped it to £250 - £50 is therefore going into my seasonal account which means I only have to save another £10 a month and that's it sorted. I must admit I am finding it more and more difficult to manage on my housekeeping. We do love our grub (dh and dd are total carnivores!!) so I am going to have to get a real grip on this. We cook from scratch really well but its also the portion sizes I have to deal with.

So off to do this weeks menu ready for my Asda on-line shop....

Trying cash only

Me and t'other half were having "that discussion" about money.....since we became debt free in 2003 I have used the American idea of a Freedom account - I have certain budgets for certain things and only spend what is in that account.....

However, since my dds wee brush with cancer (which was a suprisingly expensive time) we dont seem to have been able to get out of the bit. We dont have any debt, we are living within our means but I do feel we could do better.I definitly have not been on top of our money as I used to be.

Now that we are going to have our caravan on a seasonal pitch we will need to put away money every month to pay for that.

So we have decided to trial using cash instead of plastic. I have always been really good about noting down our spending (and only ever used debit or credit cards) and then balanced our outgoings every month. Cash has a habit of vanishing from my purse...

So my first attempt at this was to take out my £50 allowance for this month. This is to buy fripperies - little treats that I like to have.....

First test - car boot sale (big yearly one)

No petrol money (dd took me)
Took flask with tea, made sarnies, dd made home-made shortbread.
Bought:

Coalport china daffodil brooch - 50p
6 melamine plates for caravan - £1.50
Books (for youngest dd) - £5.75 (a lot of books!)
Clock for caravan - £1
Kite (for me!) - £2

Then bust out and spent £4.50 on chips!

So I will be taking my lunch to work - been very lax about that too and it was costing me around £10 per week! eek!

So when this money is gone.......its gone.....no more plastic....

Have my car-share money in another purse so at least I know I will have that!