TMWM

Welcome back to another weekly Money Wise Talks!

Thirteen days into the New Year and my motivation is still pretty high, how about yours?

This month I am doing a No Spend Month and I have been recording:

1) Days I don’t spend

2) Days I spend but within budget (e.g. food and petrol)

3) Out of budget spends, basically things out side of the budget. 

So far, I have 9 no spend days, 3 days where I’ve spent in budget and 1 day out of budget. The spend out of budget is when I bought my daughter a swimming bag for school, so not a naughty spend, but not a planned one either! At least it’s not a takeaway anyway lol!

I am also doing a No Alcohol Month in January, which I’ve made a new tracker for (as always, the trackers I use are made by me and can be downloaded here for free). Tag me in them on Instagram when you use them, I’d love to support you!

This month so far, I can confirm NO ALCOHOL HAS YET BEEN CONSUMED.

I must advise though, I’m not a huge fan of drinking on my own and thanks to covid my diary is pretty empty so these days my consumption of alcohol is much lower. I still have those days where I want to reach out for a glass of bubbly when unwinding and have had a few urges so far this month. But I’ve been very good, so far 😊

I set my goals for January in last weeks post, but a few days ago I decided to add a new one which was to build up my Emergency Fund to £3000. I did some what pluck this figure from the sky but as my car costs in 2021 were in excess of £2k, I thought £3k would give me a bigger piece of mind. It’s great that I don’t use my car for my main job anymore, as I work from home, but I do use it for my courier job (second job) so it’s really important to keep it on the road.

I already have £500 in the Emergecy Fund. I could have paid it towards my car repairs and the credit card but when the £’s kept adding up, I just put the full car repairs amount on the credit card and left the small balance in the emergency fund.

You’re probably wondering why I haven’t used the rest of my emergency fund. My current emergency fund is a Help to Save (HTS) account, so if I withdrew it, I’d lose the bonus which is 50 % of the balance at the end of the term, so it’s amazing really when compared to other saving accounts paying 0.01%. I plan to continue my regular monthly payments into the HTS account (£50 is the maximum you can pay in each month) and then put the rest in a cash ISA.

I plan to have my Emergency fund completed by March 2022. This is because instead of overpaying on debt, I am going to put all spare funds in there. Here’s my new emergency fund tracker.

AND I have been given the opportunity to make extra money at my new permanent job! As I’m now a permanent member of staff, I’m now eligible to do overtime, so I immediately signed up and completed 8 hours last Saturday at DOUBLE TIME!

I did 4 hours in the morning, had a lovely afternoon with my daughter and did 4 hours after I dropped her off at my parents. I am hoping to do overtime every Saturday as long as it’s on, because it’s such good money! I don’t even mind working 7 days for a while because I know it will get me to my goal quicker.

It’s even made me think I can bring my Debt Free Date forward from July 2023 at the rate I’m going but we’ll see!!

All this ‘work’ hasn’t allowed much time for reading but I’m not going to try and do too much. There’s no point in putting pressure on myself when I’m doing so much anyway.

I did want to do record my first YouTube channel vlog this month and it’s coming, I promise!

I started to film it last Friday but then found so many excuses to why I couldn’t use it – the light was too dark, I look so tired, I feel silly, no one will watch it anyway so I ended up deleting it! I think the ‘other’ Heidi was definitely trying to sabotage me. I think I’ll be fine once I do my first one. Like I was when I did my first reel on Instagram – that was hilarious!!

What I have Spent This Week

£15.50 Daughters swimming bag

£30.07 Petrol

£43.96 Birthday and New Home present (Birthday Sinking Fund)

£3.05 Greggs

£6.00 Funsters

£11.00 Tesco food shopping, cover in full by Tesco vouchers (not included)

Total £98.58

I knew my food costs would be low in January and that’s because we are still eating through the huge shop I did just before Christmas where I spend £250! And with my food and petrol budget being £30 each a week, the other costs like the bag, Greggs and Funsters just came out of that instead of other money. So in my mind I’m still in budget.

This week I found out loads about shopping apps, like Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and Asda. If you download their apps onto your phone and you forget you points card, they can scan your phone – I never knew this! Also, when I downloaded the Tesco app last week, I saw I had £11.00 of vouchers ready to use, which was fab because I usually have to remember to go online and print them off. It was so easy to use aswell (I’m not being paid to promote Tesco’s app, I just think it’s great!).

Let me know you think about shopping apps in the comments below, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

H