First the baby (she's 2 years old) had the Norovirus
Second, Benjie came down with some horrid flu bug which meant 3am wake up calls with him absolutely boiling and hallucinating. Not sure what was scarier though the fact he was so hot or the hallucinations he was coming out with!
So now I am getting five to sit and go over my income for January in preperation for my new year and new start.
I really must find a spreadsheet making app or something so I can display them better rather than list form
(quick snoop round the Internet and computer and I have managed it)
Now the above picture is just my basic outgoings for the household bills and does not include any of my debt repayment, no birthdays/Christmas/clothing/school trips/pets etc. The only things I am in receipt of are tax credits and child benefit. We don't receive any housing or council tax benefit, no free school dinners etc.......
I work part time - 12 hrs is currently all I can do because my partner works full time, and the hours I have means that I work around his shifts so I am home to have our two children, which then saves us on childcare.
Our other outgoings in the house look like this
So I have about £100.00 that is left over each month - which is basically our top up shop money, money that my partner may need to borrow to get himself to his next pay day, if the kids need new clothes/shoes etc and any birthday/anniversary spending etc also comes from this money.........
So I have decided to be very strict with myself this coming month.
As you can see I already have set myself a basic food budget of £100 - I'm not entirely sure if I will shop monthly or weekly with the food shop but I'm determined to stick to this budget as I really cant afford to be going over it so a fair bit of our shop will be downgraded to value items and I will start shopping about a bit more.
We do have access to a Tesco and Iceland in our town, there is a Lidls and an Aldi outside of town which would mean an extra few pennies on my bus ticket but I'm wondering if it would be worth it for the cheaper products. Failing that we buy a fair bit as store own brands as it is, with a few value things added in but I'm thinking its time to downgrade again.
The baby is currently potty training so only really has nappies now if we are going out and for bedtime which is saving us money and she is a good eater.
We don't have a bath, only an electric shower so that saves on heating water etc. We aren't on a water meter either, we pay a basic rate to the council and that is it.
So for today I am off to sit and have a look over my shopping list, see where I can cut corners and look into what the correct portions sizes are and work out what a servings costs.
Then I might make an inventory of whats in the cupboards and a meal plan between rehoming some of the kids toys from christmas to their bedrooms!
Wish me luck, its about to be a busy day!
Sammy x x x
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