January was a long month and had some unexpected expenses ! The most costly were tree surgery and a parking ticket, altogether these cost us over £400, since neither counted as emergency spending that fund was left untouched, so they had to be met out of current income. As I spent all our saving from 2017 paying for a trip to Norway in the Summer, before I knew about the additional spending, there were a lot of pennies to be squeezed ! Thankfully we managed it and finished the month with a bit under £100 to spare. We put off some expenses until February, like new printer cartridges and paper and MrShoestring and USAShoestring had very frugal birthdays !
We still managed to have fun, with a free trip to the cinema for four of us using gift vouchers from the Nielsen shopping panel and a nice birthday supper saved from the special things that came in the two Christmas hampers we received. I was much better at charging for expenses for the work we do and claimed petrol money. We also generated some cash for the gift account by selling old books and DVDs to Ziffit and musicMagpie. However, I think we are now well and truly decluttered !
MasterShoestring still needs new shoes and the food budget for the rest of us will have to shrink next month to take account of his increasing appetite for school lunches ! However, he is now so tall that he fits in men's clothing which should mean that any clothes bought this year last a bit longer than a few months !
Roll on a nice short month !
No comments:
Post a Comment