I thought this might be my last money diary for a while – because I thought I’d got my act together. This is rather far from the truth. The second half of last week saw quite the spectacular increase discretionary spend for the problem areas – dating and socialising. I didn’t feel guilty for all of it though because I had a spectacular weekend. Here’s how things panned out:
Ally Pally was a spectacular venue for ice hockey
Argh! Another poor week. I should stop moaning after the fact. I consciously, willingly and decisively made some poor money choices last week that mean that I exceeded my budget in several categories as well as overall. It wasn’t all doom and gloom though so let’s look at how I spent my money last week.
I went to a Mexican restaurant that had a wide selection of hot sauces
One of the reasons I was very pleased with how my January spending review turned out was because I experimented with living January the way I wanted 2018 to go. I didn’t do an uber frugal month. I socialised (frugally), did tons of sport and ate really well. I came in at £1696.24 – excluding support, debt and £135.23 of travel that was enabled by the side-hustle income that I made of £150. In a recent post, I reviewed a couple of other options that I could pursue other than early retirement because 6 weeks into the year and I’m not sure that I can keep my discretionary spending at the level that it needs to be to retire within the timeline that I desire. As a result, here’s the budget that I’m working with this year.
Reforming spendthrift 2018 budget
In typical reforming spendthrift fashion, last diary’s awesomeness could only be followed by sub-par frugality last week. I ate out three times and bought groceries from the small, high-brow grocery store that’s conveniently located as opposed to the large one about a twenty minute walk away. Here’s where my money went:
Basketball for date night
Discovering the FI/ER (Financial Independence / Early Retirement) movement has changed my life in more ways than most people probably realise. This year I’m aiming to eat 80% of my food at home, other homes or for free, I walk or cycle or take the bus into work as much as I can, I average a taxi or less a month, have savings & a pension and pay cash upfront for everything. Yesterday, I went to a paid comedy show for the first time in two years.
This is a far cry from the years I spent racking up debt because I didn’t think anything of spending £50 on an evening dining out several times a week, paid for the gym even when I never went, forked out £70+ a month on a Sky subscription and took Ubers to work almost everyday. One of my motivations for this change in lifestyle has been because I aspire to make work optional by 2028, when I will turn 45.
Mussels for dinner – yum! Luxuriously thrifty dining is one of my favourite hobbies
I don’t know what the rest of 2018 will be like but last week was one of my favourite weeks of the year so far. It’s not so much anything to do with the fact that I successfully completed Dry January and so had my first drinks of the year but more to do with nailing a really good week where I worked hard, ate well and got to hang out with really great people while coming in under budget. Here’s what my week was like.
I survived! January felt really long. This was mostly because the pay cycle was about 6 weeks long. Why, oh why, do we get paid before Christmas? It’s the end now and I got to do the very exciting task of reviewing how this first month of the year went. I initially thought I’d be doing the Uber Frugal Month challenge but then when I started looking at 2017’s budget – more on that in my next post – I figured that I had set some unrealistic targets for last year and wanted to use January as a template for what I really want my 2018 spending to look like. Let’s see how that went
Diary of a reforming spendthrift 