And with a Final Flourish ... I've Bust Through the Budget

So my non-challenge Challenge of living off the money that I made through selling things last year came to an end yesterday, with a final 75p being spent on top of a £10 Booths voucher.  Adding that to the money spent during April it sent me over the budget.

It was a good job I looked in my bag yesterday as the voucher would have run out last night, so we made a quick pit stop on our way out and bought just enough to make good use of it.  

The half dozen eggs and Vimto were Alan's choices ... it seemed only fair to buy him something with the voucher as he does help me collect the money on the Booths card by having a copy of mine in his wallet and using it every time he shops there ... and the larger pack of eggs and pastry case were my choice.  We are going to Mum's to watch the Coronation next weekend and I thought being able to rustle up a quiche for us all to share, alongside the little sandwiches and scones that I plan to make would be a good idea.

 A final Challenge spend of 75p in cash and a £10 Booths voucher.

I'll not list all the expenditures as to be honest it's all gone a bit to pot and my challenge diary money reckoning page is a scribbly mess.  I realised yesterday that I had included some items for the foodbank in my spending, that had been bought on the same receipt as my shopping in March and I had completely missed off a small spend in January of £5.85.  

I went down a worm hole of trying to make corrections and then thought, 'what the heck ... does it really matter'.  So as far as I can work out by the last day of April I had spent my full challenge pot of £592.20 plus an extra £12.57.  So, basically I have bought everything that I needed and occasionally just fancied in thee first four months of the year for an approximate total of £604.77.

Which averages out to just over £151 a month, or £35.57 per week for the first 17 weeks of this year, and I'm happy with that.  Especially as it also includes non-food items such as haircuts, books and an MOT.

Although the Challenge as such is over, I have enjoyed keeping tabs on myself so much that I will be continuing to log what I spend in the challenge diary and see how I react to the rules being even more relaxed, even if the rules were only shadowy guidelines in my head to start with.  

Maybe I'll spend the next four months just logging the money that I spend on food, now that would be interesting to me while I continue to work through the Food Cupboard food stash.  

In fact I have just re-photographed the food that I have here at home and I am intending to almost re-start the Food Cupboard Challenge ... only this time I will not be moving food from place to place as gaps appear.  Doing that has meant that some places look just as full as when I started back in January.

Do you want me to continue to mention my spending on here or are you all totally fed up with facts figures and photos of my shopping?  I'll leave it up to you.  😀

Sue xx