Lockdown Spending Diary Week 8
I am making a concerted effort to spend less money this week. May has started off expensive and I feel like I need to calm down a bit. Let us see how that went! Here is my lockdown spending diary week 8. Its a good one!
Monday 11th May – Total Spend £98 including a £25 refund.
Disaster has struck we have run out of printer paper. I do not know about you, but I have printed out trees upon trees of homework, it just goes on and on! We have gone through a 500-sheet ream. We popped out to Sainsburys in Welwyn for a bit of excitement and somewhere different (we normally shop at Aldi) and no queues to get in.
I can never walk around a shop and just get the one thing we went in for. We also bought some kitchen bits. A whisk, a masher, and some scissors. I did need them all! Total spend £15.75. I promise I avoided the stationery aisle.
Should we be wearing masks in supermarkets? I am not sure, as I just keep reading conflicting information as to whether they work.
Whilst in Welwyn we ran to the fountain that was blue this week and made a wish. I took some pictures of the beautiful flowers, thousands of roses just about to bloom, or some early ones peaking through. It was glorious.
Monday ended up being quite a spendy day. We stopped at Bakers for sausage rolls, pasties and gingerbread men and decaf coffee (from an actual shop!!), £12.29 spent. I am now 3 weeks caffeine free and feel so much better for it, anxiety wise.
I also invested in some more Get Nourished vitamin sweeties whilst there is a May half price offer. And spent £19.99. I have been having a daily Get Nourished supplement now for 2 weeks and feel they have made a huge difference to my health, skin, hair, nails, concentration, and people keep telling me on Instagram that I look young (and I don’t filter my pictures!). Sign up here and use this code to save 50% off your May order.
A few bills went through.
Namely a small payment to my Sainsburys 0% purchases card. I have been using that for a few purchases to conserve cash, but I think I am just going to repay the balance on 31st May on my pay day and just be rid of the balance. I have built up a nice chunk of emergency money that can be used to pay it off, so I do not need it sat there as a debt.
Credit cards can be used in a positive way. If you need to maybe buy a new washing machine why not get a 0% purchases credit card and use that to pay off the total cost of the washing machine rather than paying for it all upfront. I have done this with a car as well. Paid £5 towards a car using a 0% purchases card. If you can repay the debt in the agreed interest free period, you are good to go.
I am not recommending Chip anymore
I have decided to stop recommending Chip as an auto-save app. As with all products or services I talk about I test them out an put my money where my mouth is. I have been a Chip customer for two years. But it all fell apart recently. I had built up a balance of £1300 in my Chip account. Its not a good idea to leave big chunks of money in there, mainly because they pay 0% and are not FCSC protected. I transferred the money out and my money went missing.
Turns out two of my bank accounts were linked, they take from my sole account but put withdrawals into my joint account (that is now shut). The first withdrawal of £1000 just disappeared until I noticed and went to their help chat on the app. I requested that they changed my bank account details and eventually they found my money, after 10 days!!
Second withdrawal of £300, yet again my money was lost, they had not changed my bank account details. I requested again. 8 days later my money was credited.
Not good enough Chip. To top it all they gave me £25 to say sorry and when I transferred it out, yes, it went missing. They STILL had not changed my bank account details. The account is now in the process of being shut. Not good enough from the customer service team. I will endeavour to find a better auto-save tool who has good customer service.
Other bills paid included EE and Life Insurance. My EE bill was just £13.38, nice, especially compared to £92 in April, Im not sure why it was so low, I shall investigate! And my Life Insurance was £15.22, the 2nd of my 3 policies.
Tuesday 12th May £33 spent
A good day today. My tap part purchase from April was refunded, £19.99 credit back. Turns out I need more than a new part, I need a whole new tap, bugger. And a new tap from Franke, a great middle of the road brand is round £200. I am trying to negotiate a discount on this one!
One of my invoices was paid and I donated £53, 10% to Grief Encounter. My pledge for May whilst I am doing my #500km challenge is to donate 10% of all my income to Grief Encounter. I am doing well. I have so far raised £168 (through kind donations and my 10% donations) and have biked, run, or walked 252 km by the 17th May. My target is £1500, if you are impressed with my challenge and can afford to donate, please do. The link is here.
One of our lessons today with baking live with my friend Miranda on her YouTube channel. We baked cookies, with kit Kat pieces, and they were amazing. We will deffo make again, and I learn how to make cookies properly, as in not just chucking everything in the bowl together. Here is the link to the video so that you can make it yourself.
Wednesday 13th May £15 spent
It is the last day today with the boys, then I get a five-day break to myself. I adore the time with my boys, and equally adore the time by myself. Divorce has meant that I have half of my week to myself, my whole self. I have half the week to write, have my meetings, read, exercise, cook, listen to podcasts, binge watch Netflix. I love it.
We went out for a drive for a bit of excitement. We drove to Welwyn to our favourite bakers, Katies pantry for a sausage roll, spending £5.75.
Homework today was a triumph. We made a monkey habitat in the old office on the sofa bed using my beanie babies and plants. Its impressive.
After boys had gone, I went for a VERY long walk to Knebworth park, my new favourite walk, and got so close to the deer family, with their babies. I like to walk whilst listening to Brene, a good episode this week interviewing the Duplass brothers. I want my boys to grow up loving each other as much as the Duplass brothers. Mums of boys this is so worth listening to.
Thursday 14th May Total Spend £75 spent
My first full day to myself and I booked in 6 meetings. Not sensible Lynn. I powered through. One meeting was yoga, okay not so much of a meeting. More of a destress from meetings. It was beautiful.
Another meeting was a zoom quiz which was such fun. With my buddies from UK Money Bloggers and just 7 of us showed up, it was better with less people. And another meeting was a coaching session with another blogger who needed some guidance and help.
A good day, tiring, but good. Spending wise I popped to Co-op and spent £10.30 on top up snack food and invested £64.98 into a sparkly new microphone for crystal clear audio quality for my weekly podcasts and a big Instagram Live I am doing with Fidelity on Thursday 21st May at 12 noon!
After discussion with fellow podcasters I bought the snowball ice and bought a pop screen as an add on. I am happy with it; the audio quality is amazing. Bring it on way better audio quality on my YouTube videos and Audio.
Friday 15th May Total Spend £109
I loved Friday. I started the day with a long bike ride of 16km via the Vanstone garden centre that had just reopened on Wed 13th May. It was heaven! I have never visited this place before that is just a few miles from where I live. There are millions of flowers, trees, beautiful things, animals, and a gift shop! I am redesigning my garden and decided today was the day to get the bits I needed. I enlisted the help of a plant loving customer assistant and got what I needed. 3 Rose of Sharon hardy shrubs, that can withstand footballs hitting them, plus compost and a beautiful Buddha.
I went back 2 hours later to collect my plants and wondered around the gift shop. I got a chutney & cheese hamper for £7 reduced from £35. A wind chime. A purple bowl for Trev. A digging fork. A birthday pressie for Bec and some mould spray. WHAT A SHOP.
I spent £98 there, plus signed up to the loyalty scheme that gives me 5% back in vouchers.
There was also a beautiful huge swinging chairbed for the garden, at £500. I laid on it and loved it. But walked away. I am still yet to buy it. I have been advised to wait a week. Each day that passes I want it a little bit less and less.
According to the new lockdown rules we are now allowed to see one friend. Friday afternoon I did socially distanced cocktails with Fran. We had such fun, drank far too many cocktails but it was amazing. We ran out of booze at one point and popped to the corner shop for more spending £12.
I ended the night very late chatting a friend on the phone for a few hours. Friday was the best day of lockdown.
Saturday 16th May Total spent £68
Hangover day, yes! All I could manage was to sit on the sofa binge-watching White lines on Netflix. OMG its amazing. If you are a child/young adult of the 90s who loved rave, Ibiza then this is for you. Its brilliant.
I order a TFI Friday Deliveroo burger, (we both get £10 for free is you sign up using my refer a friend link) chicken strips and coke which cost an extortionate £27.68, but it was worth every penny. I forced myself out for a long, but very slow walk of 7km. Then watch more of White lines.
Yet again I forgot to adjust my Mindful chef delivery, so they chose for me, and it cost £32. I normally choose vegan and its more like £25. Ah well, I love a surprise. And my Netflix renewed at £8.99.
Sunday 17th May
A no spend day! I packed in lots of Mrs Mummypenny work and wrote a beautiful post for mental health awareness week on grief and loss. I discuss the stages of grief which are ever present whether you lose a person forever as in death or if you divorce. Personally, I found divorce harder than death, partly because the death of my mum impacted me hugely when the divorce impacted me and my children hugely.
A went on a long bike ride and laid in the sunshine listening to my new Audible download Matt Haig – How to Stop Time. I adore it, I listened to around 4 hours of it over the course of Sunday.
I also published my PensionBee Q&A with Faith Archer on YouTube. PensionBee edited it for us and sponsored it. Its so good and funny, we are both camera naturals. I know I look crazy in the screen grab!! Watch for tips on every single bill and essential spend and how to save money, particularly in current Covid-19 times when money might be tight.
Summary Total Spend of £395
I think this makes it my best week of lockdown spending wise. Even when it included £100 at the garden centre. There was just £61 on groceries, £46 on monthly bills, £45 on eating out and take away, £78 on household stuff (mainly plants and my buddha), £53 went to charity and £65 on business expenses.
I am happy with how last week went, and my spending. It so nice to reflect and feel happy. I hugely recommend that you do the same!
This post contains affiliate links and links to posts that I have been paid to write, namely Pensionbee video.
One Response
I enjoyed reading this Lynne, thanks for sharing! Made me think a little more about how much I’ve been spending, we are not in full lockdown in Cambodia but I spent a lot less in April than I had in Feb or March.