It looks good that I ended up the month with £134 unspent however in reality I would have been overdrawn because I was helped by extra credit from a car insurance refund, a savings plan refund, a bit of mileage from both employers and scrapping our car which gave me £170 extra on top of my wage.
Looking back, it was quite a spendy month as February is the month that sees DH and DS2's birthdays within three days of one another. I did buy DH's presents from his bonus money so didn't actually shell out anything from the monthly budget. DS2 got a new phone contract at £9 per month.
We had to buy a new, smaller engined car, so I wasn't sure whether the slightly smaller engine (1.8 vs 2.2) would result in a lesser petrol spend so I kept the budget at £146 for the month. Thanks to the cold snap and snow, the kids training and football were cancelled for a few days out of the month which really made a difference to the amount of fuel used. Thanks to doing internet grocery shop, that also reduced the many, many trips I used to make to the supermarket each month also. budget was £146. Total spend was £67.72, under budget by £78.28. DH did fill up yesterday but it hasn't debited the account yet. Hopefully he will put a mileage claim in!
Supermarket spends had been a huge part of my pre-lightbulb outgoings. I had loosely budgeted over £400 a month on groceries but I put that straight down to £300 a month. Actual spend for January was £233.22 which means I came in under budget by £66.78
I was left with a good £611 for incidental spends which is loads more than I will normally have (but this included the £170 extra money as above). I finished the month not having spent £134.02 of this and this will carry forward into February's incidental spends figure.
Incidental spending...
The highest categories were Entertainment, eating out and my personal spends. This was a big surprise because pre-tracking I would have told you we never went anywhere and I never buy myself anything – clearly not!
Entertainment was high at £154.31: I owed £10 to my work's club for the remainder of my One Direction ticket (October), We went to watch Chelsea and had some very expensive drinks in a London pub, more drinks at DH's nan's wake, I bought two tickets to a play (April) and paid for DS2 to go and see a darts game which had been my birthday present to DH along with DH and DS1 (March). Originally the tickets had been £55 but then an e-mail went out with some they hadn't shifted at £35 so I could justify one for DS2. And my local footy team are having a bloody good cup run, so another £52 was spent on tickets to the next round.
My Personal Spends were £107.54 – Quite high because I bought two pairs of jeggings and two scarves, totalling £60+. The rest of it went on food and drink for myself at work (not lunches but stuff to scoff through the day), I had my fringe trimmed, I paid for one last SW club before I decided to stop going, I went out for lunch with my old work mates, I bought postage stamps for letters to my pen-pal and that is it! I aim to not buy any new clothes next month.
Eating Out was £64.16 – we went to McDonalds for breakfast before travelling down to London, and we went out for DS2's birthday. To be fair, we don't eat out often. I can't see that we will eat out at all next month.
Gifts / Charity – £40.73 This went on...3 birthday cards, a donation to Marie Curie at DH's nan's funeral, My Godson's birthday, some food for a homeless person and two bottles of wine for my neighbour to thank her for lending us her car,
House Stuff – 54.83 Needed a new house phone, an iron, some drain unblocker, curtain hooks and some costly energy saving lightbulbs.
Health – £50.50 had a trip to the dentist for a filling
Kids – £33.95 Ds2 had more spent on him than DS1. I bought him a footy scarf, some sweets, some goggles, craft stuff for a school project, and he had a haircut. Poor DS1 only got some sweets and a haircut – he's very low maintenance and has access to his own cash.
DH – £28.80 on top of his £190 pocket money I also paid for a haircut, a bottle of wine, and gave him £10 extra to stay out with his family at the wake after we'd gone home and he took it upon himself to help himself to an extra £10 when he got hold of the debit card..
Other Travel - £34.86 was petrol for next door neighbour's car and 1 lot of train fare.
Car cost us £10 for a bit of welding
Postage was £1.28 two first class stamps not pen-pal related.
This month, with my £134 to carry forward, I will only have £430 for incidental spends so I must try harder!
Savings: reduced by a whopping £416 due to paying for DH & DS1 to go to darts, having to get the roof fixed at £180, and paying for DH and I to go to the Chelsea game!
Well done for listening if you got this far.
To be honest I am shocked I spent so much because I honestly feel like I haven't bought that much "stuff"