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

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.