Finding Your Finance Fit: Apprenticeships as a Smart Alternative

In collaboration with Simply Academy

If you’re starting out or thinking about a career pivot or just wanting a wage‑earning route into finance without university debt, Simply Academy’s latest insights could be right on the money. Their article “How to Find Your Finance Fit” breaks down how apprenticeships, especially in finance, can offer a powerful and practical alternative to a pricey uni degree. Read it here! Read More

Continue Reading

July Money Diary

Time for another Money Diary, it’s been a little while!

Friday
It’s payday and I wake up at 2.30am and can’t get back to sleep so it’s time to do some online banking / sorting my savings out. Pop £125 in a decorating pot, £40 away for Christmas, save into my easy access saver (basically my maternity and emergency fund!) and Lifetime ISA. I also have standing orders an InvestEngine account and to our joint account and my own Bills pot for my contacts, phone bill etc so I know what’s left in my balance in my personal current account is mine to spend. Put £75 into another pot for my nails and brows this month as my nails are falling twice in a payday which is unusual but no worries if I budget for it.

£3.74 for my grandads birthday card from Moonpig.

Luke buys pastries for us as I was feeling crap and I pop to the Coop on the way back from my nails and buy him a meal deal and some other snacks £5.42. I always is the Coop deals on my membership card and I can also use student discount there so the total came to £8.02 before I used these both! Student discount and the Coop offers come off reduced items too.

My nails were £30 as I had a bit of fun nail art this time!

We sell a food/cake mixer thing we’ve had for a couple of years and only used maybe 3-4 times on Facebook Marketplace – £35 in the joint account. But we’ve got an HD scan booked for baby after work which will be another £35 to pay out but we’re breaking even there so it’s all good! We paid £35 pre-diary when it was booked which isn’t in this diary.

Pub before scan for some nachos and an orange juice and lemonade. £17.80 but L pays.

Spend: £39.16 (Personal)

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Allie (@alliemayredmond)

Read More

Continue Reading

March Payday Money Diary

Coming at you with another post-payday money diary.

Monday – Payday £14.99

Organise my spending and saving as usual, I’m saving some money to pay into my Lifetime ISA after the next tax year starts. I re-shared my budget tracker if anyone is interested in planning their budgeting and spending! Read More

Continue Reading

Lockdown 3 Money Diary

This is a funny Money Diary split over almost a month between my paydays because, well I’ve not bought much interesting stuff I don’t think and I’ve tried to not waste too much money but, I probably didn’t manage it.

Friday

Payday! But I’ve already moved a bit of money around yesterday as I got ‘paid’ for L’s half of the bills a few days previously. I decide to boost my Lifetime ISA with a bigger chunk of money than I usually do and challenge myself to have a bit lower disposable income until I next get paid. I’ll probably receive a bit of birthday money if I need any extra to get me by and also know I won’t be going out too much so I can definitely get by on £300 for this month, it’s actually a lot of money so I want to document what I spend. MyLifetime ISA is nearly full for this tax year too so I’m really proud of myself again for this – third year running! Read More

Continue Reading

February Money Diary

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. Read More

Continue Reading