Ok, so I have spent the day planning my financial future.

I now think I have an adequate food shopping list drawn up and have decided to go for every two weeks rather than every week or monthly as once I return to work I'll be paid every month and my benefits - ie child benefit and tax credits are paid monthly.

I will have to get back into the habit of not having the mid week income there that my maternity benefit currently brings.

I do remember us being a routine though of benefits one week, my wage the next and owens wage the week after so we shouldn't be too bad if it still works out that way ~ must look into that though!

I will be planning, into my weekly shopping list, store cupboard items and might arrange to have say £10 aside a week in case I see deals that are worth having on cleaning items, special offers etc.

Ideally to help the food shop I would like to buy a new fridge freezer but we have resigned ourselves to keeping this smaller one for the time being until we have been rehoused into a house instead of our flat as we simply do not have the space.

Our fridge freezer currently lives in our living room behind the kitchen door as our councils planning is useless and we cant actually fit it in our kitchen.

I have also decided to put the envelope system back into place with putting envelopes aside come pay day for bills that need paying and filling them with the amount that is required.

Also I know its slightly premature but I would like to have savings aside for birthdays and next Christmas so will be taking them into account and saving where I can.

Myself and Ow have a credit union account which is in my name which we will be used for our joint savings but I would like a spare account to use for savings such as birthdays, Christmas etc and have decided that a food stamp card is probably going to beneficial with christmas shopping next year and that way its one less expense I will have to worry about come December 2011.

Plus if need be I can use them also to buy some of the smaller gifts ie CD's, DVDs etc that are in our branch.

Another savings card which I have recently discovered is with Gamestation in which you can go in, purchase a gift card and top it up monthly with money whether its £5 or £50 is completely up to you and it just accumulates the more you add.

I think between Myself, Owen, Our two boys and his two nephews, it will be a worthy investment as someone will always want a game and between the 6 of us we have collectively the Xbox 360, the PS3, the kinect, the wii, DS's each and PSPs so we pretty much have every console covered too!

So I think that will cover me ~ savings, saving card, food card, and bill money.

I think that about covers it.

x