Monday
- Bus fare £1.50
- Return ticket to Milton Keynes £23.50
Tuesday
- Savings (life fund AKA new bike fund) £100
- Loan pay off £173.33
Wednesday
+£418.24 – side hustle income (Used for wedding travel and life funds)
- Dinner with the person of interest (items I wouldn’t have bought otherwise) £5.99
- Groceries £22.44
- Uber to get my stuff from storage £9
- PAYG transport £2.80
- Savings (wedding travel & emergency fund) £422.78
- Bank fees £34.33
- Birthday present for my brother £20
Thursday
- PAYG transport £10.70
- Football subs £140 (£40 will be refunded by team)
Friday
- PAYG transport £5.80
- Groceries for hosting dinner with friends £3.13
Saturday
- PAYG transport £4.80
- Taxi to person of interest’s £6
Sunday
- PAYG transport £6.30
- Dinner at Chicken shop £11
PS: All the values in bold are handled by my bills / side hustle budgets which I’m not tracking in these posts.
Summary
Living expenses | Budgeted | Actual | Leftover |
Transport | £19.00 | £31.90 | £(12.90) |
Food | £25.00 | £22.24 | £2.76 |
Gifts | £- | £- | £- |
Social | £10.00 | £14.13 | £(4.13) |
Dating | £19.00 | £5.99 | £13.01 |
Travel | £27.00 | £23.50 | £3.50 |
Misc | £15.00 | £15.00 | £- |
Savings | £- | £- | £- |
£115.00 | £112.76 | £2.24 |
What did I do well?: I don’t think I had a best purchase this week. I started my emergency fund (triggered by receiving a bill of £686 from an ex employer that overpaid me and now wants their money back). In the past I’ve had nothing to draw on except friends and/or family when anything unexpected came up. Now I have over £500 in savings.
What could I do better? My transport budget was based on my getting the bus to work. Unfortunately I didn’t have the time to – it takes an hour and a half to get in on the bus unless I get in for 8 possibly. I also had to go to suburban Kent to get keys off my cousin because for 4 days next week I’ll stay at hers to look after her son whiles she’s away. I need to set more realistic expectations on this line item in my budget based on how likely I really am going to be to leave at 7/half 7 instead of 8.15.
Wash up: I didn’t spend a dime on plastic bags and I signed up to both Tesco’s club card and the Nectar card for Sainsbury’s shopping. I diverted my Lisbon side hustle money towards paying off a loan for which I was offered 40% off, as well as started life and emergency funds. I stayed within the lower £115 budget that I set myself to make up for going over last week so, all in all, this was a rather good week.
August summary
Overall August was an OK month. Nearly 40% of my total income was spent on debt. Unfortunately about 8% of my income – lumped into the life (transport, food, travel & personal care) – was the motivation for this blog. I had £232 or so that I couldn’t account for in any way and which I would have preferred to spend on debt. Hopefully the September numbers will look better.