This is a post-birthday & pre-payday money diary for February, I’m planning to do a monthly diary of 6-7 days a month because these posts seem to go down really well and I love to write them and to read them! Here’s six days out of my life, a normal working week before payday on Friday.
Monday
Get up. Shower. Coffee. Instagram post for myself for some collabs I’ve been doing, it’s an ad so it might bomb in terms of engagement, they always do but I love a good flat-lay and think it’s really cute and looks nice on the feed. I want to start breaking things up with a photo of a ‘thing’ and then a photo of me on the feed so I need to take the hit on engagement in order to get the look right. Spoken like a true social media manager unfortunately. Send off invoice for £75 for this.
Barburrito for lunch, they sent me a freebie one for my birthday as I’m on their mailing list so this only costs £1 for the guac. As if they can’t even give you some avocado for your birthday, ey?
Physio after work on my dodgy knee, I’ll be honest I’m only going because I get a certain amount of complimentary therapy free with a work health benefit but it turns out my physio is really nice and she’s actually helped my knee so much. Will try and learn what I need to do to keep my knee healthy in the time it takes me to spend the whole £200. This is £40 but if I put my claim in today, I’ll get it back by Friday. Put this on my credit card anyway as I know it’ll come back really soon and I’ll pay it off as soon as it’s back in. I get reward points on spending on my credit card so I’ll do this to get vouchers and I always pay things off so no interest accrues.
Have some said reward vouchers from my last statement so buy a stripy top with 20% off and my £6 vouchers so end up just paying £0.80!
Total spend: £1.80. Not counting my £40 as this will come back this week.
Tuesday
Start the day a £2.35 Tesco spend on almond milk, milk for ‘Tea Club’ and some baked beans for my jacket potato lunch I’ve brought from home. I’ll get £1.10 back out of the Tea Club kitty at work which I manage for this – we all club together to pop in a fiver or so every so often and we have milk, coffee, tea etc all together. Pretty cute and our company doesn’t provide it so we have to bring our own.
Lunchtime power walk to M&S to pick up my top from yesterday (click & collect) and spend £5.23 on reduced salmon, a beer for Luke with 75p off from my Sparks card, a teeny tiny cheese stick to go with my tuna, beans and jacket potato for my lunch and some reduced pancakes. Pay with another £5 voucher from my credit card so only £0.23. I am loving vouchers this week.
Watch some of The Brits and spend £55.80 on my first Onloan subscription – it’s a clothes service where you can borrow designer clothes monthly and send ’em back to get new ones. I’ve been snooping at this for a while in order to be more sustainable and then also still have the thrill of new clothes so giving it a go. I found a 20% off code, it’s usually £69 a month. But I reckon if I spend this a month and get two new things to wear I might not buy actual ‘new’ clothes as much, also means I can wear designer bits without the price tag!
Total: £57.28
Wednesday
Today was a no spend day! Normal working day and popped out at lunch quickly to grab my free Nero coffee on O2 priority and had a free Greggs sweet treat on my app from my birthday. Head to Reformer Pilates after work and smash a HIIT class, pre-paid on my membership.
Get my £75 invoice paid from that Instagram collaboration which is awesome.
Thursday
Out for lunch with my friend to a local Greek place but he paid this time and I’ll get it next time. Head home and stop at the corner shop for snacks £1.09 drink (sugar free Tango Strawberry Watermelon is life and a Chomp and mini Milkybar because I am about 5).
My Onloan parcel has arrived literally two days after ordering so I’m super impressed so far. Their packaging is reusable and I’m really loving that too. Cosy cardigan and a really nice midi dress for me to wear for the next few weeks, I tried to pick things that I could wear for both work and casual to get the most out of it. It’ll be trial and error I’m sure but it’s satisfying my need for ‘new’ clothes for sure.
Friday
Payday, transfer bits and bobs around into savings and into some pots for different bits and bobs like paying off our hotel for our upcoming trip to Palma, spending money for this, savings into an odd bits wedding pot, the dentist, etc! I’ve had these pots open for a while, they weren’t all filled from this month! I move my rounding up between different things on different weeks to make sure I’m always saving a little bit towards things.
Have Speech Therapy before work which is good sometimes, hellish some other times but it helps I’m sure it does and my therapist is so nice.
Jump on the bus, buy us some wedding insurance from the joint account £26.29 which gives us £7000 cover just in case we need to cancel etc. Head to the pub for lunch with the work girls for payday and one of my work pals birthdays, £5.60 for a little houmous and falafal flatbread and a lime & soda, really tasty.
+£40 from work health insurance reimbursement. I’ve already paid this off my credjt card so this is back into my spends accout – woohoo!
Gym after work and freezer dinner of fish finger ciabattas and wedges, delicious childish dinner. Watch a movie on NowTV and head to bed after Love Island. Buy a load of books on iBooks – £3.97 for three books from authors I know I’ve enjoyed books from before. These will be good for Palma, travel etc and just reading in bed. Done for a busy week, time for sleep.
Saturday
Head to get my eyebrows laminated, I won a competition on Instagram for a local salon and they look awesome and the lady who did them was lovely too. We head for some brunch, I pay but it’s split, £10.90 between us which goes on Acasa (our splitting app) and I owe Luke money at the moment which is cool, we always go up and down. Sausage & egg cobs and a tea each.
Petrol top up £49 from joint account which is a full tank for our little guy.
Total spends for a 5 day week and half of Saturday:
My disposable: £80.64 spent
Joint account: £75.29
Not a bad spends week, if I hadn’t have bought clothes on my subscription it would have been a very low spending week to be honest. Lots of treats and not much ‘normal’ stuff bought like groceries and dry shampoo this week. I’ve eaten out a lot which isn’t usually this much – only taken my lunch to work twice which is very unusual for me but I had two social lunches and a freebie for my birthday so it was a bit of a special week.
