So I have reckoned up the finances for March and was very pleased to have been able to save 45% of our income this month and that was not including the extra money I am making ! It was an easy month to save as we don't have to pay rates in March and April so that was over £200 saved straight away. The savings money all goes away into a separate account to pay for big bills later in the year such as car tax and maintenance and fees for the course I am on.
Three months into the year I thought that it would be a good idea to re-do the budget based on what we were actually spending now rather than last year's spending. It turned out that the rates have gone up by £10 a month and the petrol spending had to go up by £20 a month. However, some things like book spending, had gone down so it actually balanced out.
In April we have already spent quite a bit, so I hope the new budget will work ! MasterShoestring needed new clothes for work experience and a new pair of school shoes, he has very wide feet and an adult size now, so these were a very expensive £64 and that was with a 20% discount ! I'm going to sell the old ones on Ebay in the hope of lowering the real cost further ! He will have outgrown them by the Summer but in the meantime will be wearing then 5 days a week so they need to be hard-wearing !
Fingers crossed that with the Easter holidays this will be a low spend month on travel and petrol ! The food budget is just hanging in there at a smidgen under £170 a month. I would love to get this lower but I'm not sure how. SimpleLiving31 seems to do very well with yellow-stickered bargains but in this affluent area £3 is the reduced price for mince !
Good luck with your April budget !
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