I’ve spent a lot of today trying to get my budget and spending tracking spreadsheet in a better shape for the second half of the year. It’s no secret that I’ve been dating someone who lives on a different continent the last few months and this new romance plus the challenge of maintaining communication when we’re not together has taken precedence over everything else in my life. I decided last month (and shared the news with some of my colleagues) that I’ll be moving away from London at the end of the year. This has prompted a desire to get my finances in top shape for the move – more on that in my next post – which means I can share my June spending with any voyeurs out there.

The good

Side-hustle income: I did a few shifts at the start of the month and earnt £129.64 for my efforts. I’d love to spend a few hours doing side-hustles using my day job skills though because I could earn so much more that way. Income (no matter how little), is always good.

Transport: I only spent £86.60 on public transport compared to the £140 average from last year. My goal is to keep this category down at £50 though, since I own a bike and should use it for my commute. I also spent quite a bit of the month travelling in Spain, Sweden & the UK so it isn’t reflective of how much I cycled. I will take this as a positive though resisted the urge to take taxis when I was tempted to.

The (not so) bad…

….because it was mostly planned.

Dating & socialising: The usual suspects are high again. At £673.83, I’ve spent a lot less in my good months but I had good reason. Bae has been visiting and we’ve done a bit more eating out than I would normally budget for. Afternoon tea at Fortnum & Mason (£56) was a highlight as was Vietnamese at a restaurant in my neighbourhood that I hadn’t previously tried. The worst spending I did for sure was £59 for the worst brunch I’ve ever had – made more disappointing because I had it at a restaurant I previously ate a couple of great meals at.

Travelling: I went to Whitstable, Malmo, Madrid and Toledo in June. It was all wonderful and I hadn’t seen any of those cities other than Madrid before. I paid for most of bae’s travel and accommodation costs – excluding Malmo where we stayed at her friends’ and I didn’t pay for her flights – because I’m generous and I wanted to show her a good time after she kindly gave up two months to hang out with me. I paid for flights and accommodation mostly previously so the £506.72 that I spent on this category was for all of Whitstable, and food and drink in the other places.

The ugly

In a month that was spendy but not unexpectedly so, the only real shocker was that I needed to withdraw £316.67 before the end of June to cover some of my spending. I can’t let this happen again in the future.

Wrap-up

June wasn’t the worst ever but there’s a lot more that I can do to improve my spending. I’ve been so bad with tracking , aiming for or doing much with respect to my goals the last few months but since I am determined to make the second half of the year a lot better than the first half, I thought I’d revisit them.

• Achieve 52 hours of practise across my various sports by the end of the year (in progress) – I bought a front-end web development course that will last 10 weeks and probably eat up 20 hours of my time at least. I’ve also paid for and started my beginner Spanish classes which will take 90 minutes for 10 weeks so I can see me meeting this goal once I toss in football training by December.
• Eat home cooked (or free) meals 80% of the time (fail) – I ate out a lot in June. I haven’t tracked each meal but I ate out and had takeaway a ton. I’ve started taking this seriously again.
• Do some exercise (even if it’s only 5 minutes) at least 6 days a week (fail) – I cycle occasionally. That’s it. Once bae leaves, I intend to get serious with the commute and back on the 5 minutes a day to get myself back in shape for football season.
• Find a mentee and provide 26 hours of mentoring to them within the first 6 months of 2018 (fail) – My intern did so well that she’s now been hired as a proper employee at my job and no longer has time to be mentored. I’ll need to get a new intern or find some other way to mentor someone.
• Teach 6 courses / workshops / learning sessions (in progress) – I’ve taught two workshops now. Yay! I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do some more with that particular school but I’ve got some ideas in the works for how I’m going to meet my target.
• Save £3, 000 in Vanguard’s index funds by the start of December (in progress) – I withdrew £1,100 from this account in June so the balance is only £1,000. I changed the standing order to £400 so will meet the goal by the end of November. I will need to change the purpose of this savings (in the short term) but that’s information I’ll cover in another post.

So, June, was not fantastic but it wasn’t totally unplanned.