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

Shopping ... Again!!

I've been and gone and shopped again ... you knew I would didn't you!!

Just fresh stuff and some nuts that were on offer in the middle aisles, I purposefully avoided looking at any of the gardening supplies that were there ... well I might have browsed slightly but I stood firm and carried on walking past.  I don't know why a pot of Parsley made it's way into my trolley as I have some growing outside the front door in the old tin bath.

But it looks nice sat next to it's new best mate Basil in my new wooden box.  💓

(Don't worry I lined the box with a nice strong polythene bag.)

Alan treated me to a breakfast cup of coffee and a toasted teacake at Booths after my doctors appointment and before we shopped ... always go shopping on a full-ish tummy ... so while I was there I bought a pack of my favourite bread rolls and a birthday card for my soon-to-be fourteen year old grandson, where do the years go!!

That was another £4.05 spent.

I need to sit down and work out how much I've spent this month now that we are about to go over into May.  Gosh this year is going by quickly.

I have a feeling that I have just busted my budget.  😕

Sue xx

Thanks so much for all the good wishes and comments on the last post.  I have posted again to move it down the list as other peoples health issues on blogs can be deathly boring ... or maybe that's just me, I would never have been a very sympathetic or patient doctor!!  😐

Food Cupboard, Challenge 2023 ... and Tomatoes

 

I was asked the other day how the main Challenge for this year is going.  Is the food cupboard emptying nicely?  Well to be honest it's not emptying much at all, it's rejigging continually and I've not really been giving it my best effort to streamline things much.

I must do better!!

The top photo is how it looks this morning ...

... and this is how it looked earlier in January before I re-jigged the foods into more date friendly order and moved the large jars to the bottom cupboard.

I need to go back to menu planning, why do I let this slip so frequently when I really like doing it and love the ease it brings to meal times.  I really must do better. 😏

I think for next week I will make a concentrated effort to pick something from the food cupboard as the basis for each meal.  The fridge is a pretty sparse place at the moment so I can just add what is left in there to whatever meals I decide to make.  I also need to stop shopping when I really don't need anything, my Challenge money has almost run out, and at the end of this month I will work out what, if anything, I have left.

It would be nice to make it at least halfway through the year on the cash that I started out with in January.

Talking about the fridge, look what I almost lost out on thanks to my £3.50 week.  Even after I finished eating from my £3.50 shopping total I completely forgot that these tomatoes were languishing in the salad drawer.  Luckily even though they are over a month 'out of date' they are in lovely condition.

So I enjoyed two of them on toast for my breakfast this morning with a couple of slices of onion and some garlic granules.  Very tasty. 

Do you menu plan ... and more importantly do you actually manage to keep it up all the time?

Perhaps I should do Menu Plan Monday on here every week and try and keep myself on track.

Sue xx

Three Months Into the Non-Challenge Challenge

 

Well it's three months into my limited spending challenge and I thought that was a good time to do a few sums and see exactly how I'm doing?

If you remember back at the very beginning of January this year on THIS post, I set off to try and live for as long as I could on the money I had saved up from last year.  I had made the cash by selling my excess belongings on FB Marketplace and at the two table top sales we did.  It was to be used for anything that I needed or wanted.  

There were no real restrictions and the only thing I really wanted to do was to bring down the food stash.  I have quite successfully done this, well to a level where nothing jumps out at me when I open the food cupboard door now and I can easily slide out the freezer drawers without things being jammed in.

 My grand cash total was £ 592.20 ... was there any left?

Yesterday I went carefully through my diary and added all the purchases up, over the first three months of 2023 I have spent:

Food = £340.66

Haircuts - 3 x £23 = £69.00

Car MOT = £45.00

Non-Food Items = £78.20

A total of £532.86 in cash spent.

(And one £10 Booths Voucher)

Leaving me with £65.61 in cash, a new £10 Booths voucher, £21 in M&S vouchers and around £15 in Nectar points.  I think I will be using all my vouchers and points over the coming month in a bid to hang on to as much cash as I can.  Even though I have averaged £175.67 a month for the last three months, April should be a much cheaper month for me, the only family birthday is mine, so no cards or presents to buy.  My next hair appointment is not until May and obviously the car is now MOT'd.

So I have my fingers crossed that I can get at least one more month out of my little non-Challenge cash pot.  What I really need to do is to try harder not to shop, to eat more from the foods that I have already got in the cupboards. I am so easily tempted when Alan says those eight little words ... 'Do you want to come shopping with me?'

Confession time, I have to admit that £37.70 of the 'non-food item' spending was spent on books.  I clearly remember saying that I wouldn't buy any books this year ... oh well I guess most of you realised that that wouldn't happen even if I rather madly thought it would!!

Well the wine might be all gone ... but the books remain.  😄

Sue xx

Happy New Year ... Plans, Non Plans and 50p's

Usually with me now is the time that I buckle down to a New Year New Challenge, and I guess in a way it could be called that this year. 

 But there is a big difference this year, I am not challenging myself to see how little I can spend and how long I can make things last, instead I am simply monitoring how long the money that I managed to save through table-top sales and Facebook Marketplace sales, and the bits and bobs of money that I have popped into my little box and my pottery drawer will last me over the coming weeks and hopefully months.

 

There are so many people on social media doing No Spend or Low Spend years that it has become a bit same old, same old.  It seems that us long time bloggers have influenced the influencers to take up the baton and run with it ... making money for themselves in the process.  Good luck to them!

Well I am happy to be out of the limelight, living slowly and simply in my little home and using my savings from the past year to fund this brand new year for as long as they can.

I don't want to buy any clothes, shoes or books in the year ahead as I really do feel that I have enough ... but if I need to I can and I will.  I have food, toiletries and cleaning products that could easily last me a few months and although I wouldn't run my larder down to silly levels it would be nice to run it down to a level that means I don't have to catch flying jars of salad dressing as they fall out of the cupboard ... I actually missed that one and it landed with a crash and my Caesar dressing was no more.

I added up the money from my two little pots and emptied all the cash out of my handbag, and this is what it came to.  I was surprised, pleasantly surprised, I had sort of expected it to be in the three hundreds or thereabouts.

Now usually I would be seeing how much this gives me per day, per week and per month ... and yes you know me so well I did have to work it out:

£1.62 per day

£11.38 per week

and 

£49.35 per month.

Not a shabby amount at all and one that I don't doubt for a moment that I could manage on if I was just to use it for food.  I've done it in the past, I once managed for almost a full year on one pound a day, before I ran out of steam, but not money!!  Even with the rising prices that we are currently contending with here in the UK and in many countries of the world, I feel that I could just about do this, and if truth were told I am almost tempted to give it a go. 

 But I don't need to prove that I can to anyone, not even myself!

I also have a couple of coupons that I will be using to bolster out my cash, and I've just checked and I have Nectar points available too.  I'm not adding them to my cash total as hopefully I will get a couple more over the course of the year, they will just be used up as and when they arrive and should help my money last a bit longer.

I found a couple of unusual 50p's in my little stash of coins.  

I did check online as I've heard that some can be quite valuable

But mine are of no great value ...

... and I would rather pass them on in my spending and let someone else have the thrill of seeing an more unusual coin in their change.

So as it's no great challenge this year I have just put some of my cash into my handbag along with the coupons and I will spend as and when I need to, in any amount that I need to.  All I will do, is perhaps  count my money at the end of each month, monitor how it's going and write it in my diary ... just out of interest of course.  😉

Good luck to anyone that is Challenging themselves over the coming year and I wish you well with whatever you are doing.  Leave a comment if you are blogging about a Challenge and I've no doubt whatsoever that me and my readers will come over and cheer you on.

New Years Resolutions - None

New Year Goals - to read more books, lose some weight ... and have fun.

Sue xx