Another month, another satisfactory budget report – could be worse, could be better!
These are all fairly self-explanatory costs but I’m going to explain some of the higher ones as.
Here is our Budget Report for April 2019
Income
Charlotte/Dean – This is the amount we both pay into the joint account each month from our wages.
Sidehustles – Any money made during the month that isn’t our usual income.
Everyday Rewards – This is a monthly bonus our bank pays if we hit certain criteria.
Sidehustles
BebeMakes – This is our Etsy shop, we split the money made from this 50/50 between my sister and I. It was another busy month and sales are seeming to stay fairly constant at the moment which is nice, hopefully can aim for the same sort of amount next month too!
Blog – I’m waiting for money to build up a bit in my blog account before I withdraw it as it has monthly running costs that need to be covered, since I’ve not been blogging much lately I’ve not been getting as much money from it but its enough to help keep it running and top up our income every few months.
Rent/Utilities
Council Tax – This has gone up around £10 a month, they’ve promised us that we’ll have local police officers in the town again so can’t really complain!
EE – This is slowly coming down, cancelled some features we no longer needed now that contracts have run out, hopefully will be lower next month and going forward.
Envelopes
I sound like a broken record but we are working on getting this all tightened up! I’m keeping hold of all receipts this month and will do some working out at the end of May and see where the problems are. I know meal planning is one big area we have to work on.
Misc – This is a problem category that could probably be covered better by Sinking Funds, I’ve just got to work out the best way to do it. For example this £180 is made up of a £15 fee to the council to remove an old freezer (probably could have come out of House Maintenance SF), £30 at the Pharmacy that was for cold and flu medicine and painkillers so should have come out of the ‘Medical’ SF and £30 at Homebase that should have come out of the ‘Garden’ SF. I’ll try to track it better this month.
Lifestyle
Train – Didn’t use the train this month, if Dean did overtime at work I went off and did the food shop and then came back to pick him up or stayed in the break room and answered emails from my phone.
Insurance & Tax
Dog Insurance – Turns out our previous insurer never cancelled our old policy (I had called up and asked them too as we weren’t renewing with them) and took 2 extra payments from us! They refunded them back to me this month so it covered the overspend on it last month. Going forward it should be around £60 a month.
Subscriptions
No change here.
Sinking Funds
Another big chunk toward the Garden SF this month. Think that I might have a play around with some of the other amounts soon as they seem a bit unbalanced now that they’re filling up a bit.
I always write shopping lists for grocery shop but end up picking up extras that are on offer, or look nice! So that often takes me over my budget. Otherwise, I’m very careful and good with my finances x
We end up doing that too! I thought I had it solved with having food shop delivered each week and it worked but then I stopped doing it that way (can’t remember why) and now I think I need a bit of a mash up system of part food delivery and part Lidl shop!
Food shopping, always go way over
The grocery budget and the misc budget is the hardest. I went to Lidl yesterday with only four things on my list. I left having spent £53! I need to reign it in.