This week saw the end of October and the start of a new month – November! I love this time of the month – the start. A chance to reflect on the past month and make some more goals!
My October goals were:
- Track Expenses
- Get 7 hours sleep a night
- Finish reading two books
- Write 4 blog posts
- Pay £500 to the Emergency Fund
I like to stick to around 4/5 goals a month that cover a variety of things; finance, health and things I like to do. A focus on body, mind and soul … oh and finances!
My goals for November are:
- Use the Daily Spend Tracker everyday
- 18 No Spend Days
- Finish another two books
- Write 8 blog posts
I keep trying to track my expenses but it never seems to end well. I just find it a right pain to list every individual item. I see people doing it and can see the value of doing it but it’s just not for me.
I’m trying something new this month – a daily spend tracker which is going very well so far!
Basically, with the daily spend tracker I’m writing down each day what I spend. I’m not going into the detail of what I spend my money on (yet) but just the total. I am also tracking my no spend days and hope for 18 no spend days in November which will be the most I’ve done this year if I can do it 😊.
Another thing I’m not great at is having a decent amount of sleep. I find if I give myself 8 hours sleep (which is probably what I need) I don’t get as much done that I want. I guess I’m my own worse enemy but this is something again I need to focus on. I am going to try to go to bed for 10pm at least once a week first and then build up from that. This is not a goal this month but is in the back of my mind and Tuesday I went to bed at 10pm so I did it this week.
I’ve always been an avid reader and love getting lost in books. My main focus this year has been to increase my finance/passive income/investing knowledge. Since working in banking a lot has changed so I feel it’s important to keep my knowledge up to date.
This month I read a Property Investing book called ‘Building Your Dream Life’ by Bronwen Vearncombe which gave a great insight into property investing as a beginner. I enjoyed seeing the numbers from the property deals they’d done but I’m definitely not ready to use other people’s money to invest. It sounds like a great concept but I am nowhere near comfortable for that yet. I also like to read thrillers and found a great one from the library called Friend Request by Laura Marshall. It’s definitely worth a read if you like a good thriller.
My new books for November are ‘Big Money Little Effort’ by Mark Shipman and 5 Day Weekend by Nik Halik.
I’ve been smashing the blog posts out as you know and am really enjoying it. Subscribers and views are increasing so I must be doing something right! I have given myself a secret (well up until now lol) little goal of 52 posts by the end of year. This will reflect a blog a week which from next year I want to do as a minimum. This year I haven’t done as many as I wanted as I was still teaching so my head wasn’t really in it. It is now though and like I said I am loving it!
Paying £500 to the emergency fund didn’t happen with the car repairs but I will slowly start to build this up again. I already have about £1000 in my Help to Save account that although is instant access and I can use it for emergencies, I choose not to so I can be eligible for the massive 50% bonus that will be paid in a few years. If you haven’t seen these accounts offered by the UK government, you can check them out here.
What Have I Spent This Week?
£12.00 on drinks when I met up with my new work colleagues last Friday. They are all so lovely and I’m really enjoying my job. It’s a world away from my last job and that’s fine by me!
£27.01 spent on groceries this week with a few cracking yellow ticket items. £0.28 for a loaf of bread usually £1.10, £0.20 for a 6 pack of rolls usually £0.79 and £0.33 for a 4 pack of blueberry muffins usually £1.29 – BARGAIN!
£30.00 spent on petrol
£10.99 on a Macdonalds
£50 Spooktacular event planned. This money came out of sinking funds
I have been on fire with my budget and spending this week. I do wonder whether I always do so well as the start of the month though when motivation is high – anyone else?
At the end of October, I decided to have a jig around with my budget and made a few big changes after a long discussion with me, myself and I. I’ve been thinking about the side hustle turned second job I do as a courier and the fact that the reason I started doing that second job was to pay off debt. And in the last few months I haven’t being using the money for that at all, as it’s just been used for the normal expenses.
Well, I decided enough was enough.
I’m not going to lie but that job wears me out so much. I’m pretty useless after a round as it’s such a manual job. So, after much though about doing a job that wipes me out pretty much every week, I have decided to make sure I do it for the purpose intended and all the money I earn from it now will ONLY be put towards to debt as an overpayment.
It has meant that I have had to cut down on what I put into sinking funds but I feel really good about this choice I’ve made.
Along with this decision I also did a zero-based budget and included all the rest of my income and expenses which has allowed me to see exactly what I can pay to debt this month if I don’t mess up. I’ve put it out there on this blog and the world of Instagram to keep me accountable. The figure I want to pay towards debt this month is £830.20.
This is going to be made up of five payments:
£180 – This one has been paid today 😊
£25
£289.53
£282.30
£53.37
If I can keep this going, I will be debt free in no time … £15,820.54 to gooooooooo!
Finally, this week I have made a couple more goal trackers free to download, a house goal one and a savings goal one.
I love making these (must be the teacher in me lol) but would love to know what you think, please let me know in the comments below.
Have a great week
H
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TMWM 