It’s time for another money diary and pre-payday / post-Christmas is bound to be a weird one!
Saturday
A little new year’s resolution is to see as many people as I can basically all the damn time, especially in January because it can be a bit grim, can’t it? Popped to meet two of my friends and one of their super cute toddlers, free parking and then £4.30 breakfast and juice in Wetherspoon’s is a steal for scrambled eggs, toast, beans, veggie sausage and orange juice.
Pop into some of the charity shops locally as it’s a fairly posh area so there’s always some little gems! Gram a £3.99 super cute cardigan from Oxfam and I’m a bit obsessed with the colour. Would legit be about £35 in Topshop or Zara and it’s nailing the retro knitwear trend that’s all over Instagram rn.
Head to Aldi on the way home for a little top up shop that ends up costing £39, oops. This comes out of our ‘shared’ prepaid card that we just top up every month so isn’t from my disposable income that I count in my money diaries. This is mainly just lunches and breakfast stuff as we have a load of dinner stuff already in and are out twice this week.
Lol £137.47 flights to Palma happened because we’ve been wanting to book a trip for early this year soon. This comes out of savings – I save lump sums on payday for trips, wedding fund etc so this is all good! We don’t need to pay off our hotel until next month so I’ll factor this into next payday.
£5.56 for my half of the travel insurance plus we got about £3 cashback in Quidco which we’ll wait until it reaches about £10 or so and withdraw for a Tesco voucher for our weekly shop.
Sunday
The only money we’ve spent today is £15 each for a Chinese buffet with my aunties, grandad and two of my cousins which was cute to see them.
Monday
Back to work and pick up £45 Zara sale order from last week but paid last week so doesn’t count this week. Also going to return £15.99 leather trousers from this order though so only £29 actually spent last week!
Small invoice of £60 paid for a couple of hours freelance scheduling and content creation which is a nice Brucey Bonus.
Gym after work but we paid a lump sum for just over a year at our local leisure centres so we won’t have to pay for this monthly for 14 months. Gym and classes included. Cross trainer plus the end of Love Island from the previous night equals an easy half hour.
Tuesday
Grab a £1.49 regular white coffee and get a free bacon roll with the McDonalds app – all about these deals that they’re running in January. This is the first one I’ve got but they’re on for another week or so so there could be a wrap for lunch on the horizon…
Post our wedding Save the Dates that we needed to send out and already had some stamps in my purse so this is already paid for. We’re paying for little bits like this and our invites as we go along as we have a lump sum to pay off for our venue/food saved up and this makes it more manageable.
Grab some fake tan from Superdrug which is super cheap anyway and on buy one bet one half price, honestly such a hidden gem in my opinion! £6.48 for a dry oil and a lotion. ASOS have 25% off student discount and I still have access to codes for this so grab some sunglasses I’ve had my eye on for a while for £9.
Reformer Pilates after work, aka my favourite exercise to do – already paid for with a pass I bought when they had an offer on so this is dreamy, no spend!
Wednesday
Pay our wedding photographer’s deposit of £60 (£30 for my half) first thing.
At work we do a beauty swap which was awesome. We all brought in unused or hardly used products that we just hadn’t got on with like shampoos, cleansers etc and swapped products for things we’d actually need. I took in some hair products, some tan that was too light for me and a couple of other skincare bits and came home with an OSKIA mask I love, some shampoo and some Lancome micellar water so I was really pleased with my little free haul. Everything we didn’t swap went to a local women’s shelter and we had so many things for them it was amazing.
Head to Red’s True BBQ for 51% off food with some of our couple besties, £12.29 for my share of burger, fries, pint and some mac n cheese! After this we go to the cinema to watch 1917 which was amazing! Tickets were bought last week with two meerkat movies codes and two tickets from a work perk discounted tickets site which meant it was around £5 each.
Thursday
No spend today, work as usual and head home to chill after work instead of going to the gym, this week has been pretty manic. Did our food shop on my lunch break on the Ocado app as they’d sent some vouchers to use which I always take advantage of as it’s useful to have shopping delivered when we’re both so busy. £15 off when you spend £60 so ended up being around £45, again out of our shared food shopping pot but this is for next week, delivered on Saturday so the money won’t come out until then.
Friday
No spend again today until the evening, only £4.25 for a drink at a work colleagues (actually amazing and so much fun) retirement party. Had a soft drink and a drink bought for me which is lovely and the food was provided at the party. Also got a lift from another lovely colleague who lives close to me!
A bit of a weird week, quite busy! Total spend £229.83 which is A LOT but includes £130-odd that was from savings for our trip. I usually budget myself around £400 a month for disposable income which is roughly £100 a week so I’m pretty much on track here for my standard spends. I’ve eaten out a couple of times and socialised three times which is pretty great for a week.
