The Reckoning

I have reckoned up the accounts for September and discovered that we overspent by £492.79. This is better than August, when we overspent by £781.53 but not so bad at all when you realise that it was all due to budgeted expenses which only come round once a year and have already been saved up for !

We are trying to live on £1500 a month and that includes a lot of fixed expenses, such as the community charge on the house. If I disregard the annual expenses we actually spent far less than the £1500 a month and so far this year have spent an average of £1444 a month. Some months, such as February when there are no annual expenses due, we spend far less than that, closer to £900 a month.

I spent quite a bit less on food this month, only £120, which is the lowest it has been all year. On the other hand, doing the big grocery shop for October yesterday I was horrified to see that butter is close to £1.50 per half pound and that is for the unbranded stuff. In the end I decided not to do a whole month's shop at once, as the meat where I was was too expensive. Instead, I bought what was on special offer and used a coupon to bring the price down even further. I've got quite a few coupons for 10% off this month so will save them up and use them when I'm close to the supermarket anyway.

I also checked that we are still in credit for the gas and electricity and we have yet to switch on the central heating, just using the wood burner sometimes.

We also went to a jumble sale this weekend, they are getting so rare. We paid the entry but in the end came away without buying anything. The prices were too high and the quality too low. I've started to wonder about visiting a car boot sale instead, but in this part of the world the prices do tend to be high.

I think I already mentioned that I'd been thinking of making October Stoptober month and trying to stop all spending on 'wants'. Well, the over-priced jumble sale and the expensive butter have definitely made me think we should go ahead with it. So starting tomorrow I'll be reporting our progress on 'stopping spending' every Monday on the blog. Anyone else got plans for October ?