Well well well, it’s been a hot minute since we did a money journal on this blog…and quite a lot has changed over the last few years! ‘The Boyfriend’ is now ‘The Husband‘, we bought our own house, moved out of that little flat AND we’ve got a tiny human on the way early next year! What a ride.
I was chatting away on Instagram the other day asking what sort of content you’d like to see and loads of you suggested bringing the money diaries back. So here we are and I’m excited! I love personal posts like these…and I’m also a nosey parker who loves to see what other people are buying!
Life looks quite different these days. I think the pandemic years really helped me slow down and not feel as much pressure to always be doing or buying things. I relish slow weekends and time at home as well as our little adventures here and there. I don’t spend as much on clothes these days (apart from a few maternity bits or baby onesies I spot and fall in love with!) and of course we’re not drinking at the moment either so that saves a bit on the old shopping bill!
Here’s a regular week in my world complete with some little candid phone snaps of the things I chose to spend my hard earned cash on. Let’s delve in shall we…
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MONEY JOURNAL: A Slow Week, November 2022
MONDAY:
Chris was away with work for the first half of this week so I pottered to Tesco to grab myself some supplies. I did a mini food shop for a few easy lunches, dinners and some fresh fruit that came to a grand total of £31. If you like having a nosey in people’s trolleys, I filmed it too: Take a look at my Tesco food shop haul video here!
My friend is also pregnant right now (so exciting!) and was looking for some little blue new born hats for her hospital bag. I spotted these for £5 and popped them in my basket for her because I couldn’t resist!
Daily Total: £36
TUESDAY:
I had a random craving today for protein bars of all things (these are my all time fave, especially the salted caramel!). I suppose it could be worse. Baby seems to be loving chocolate right now so at least these have some nutritional value! I pottered down to B&M at about 7pm to find some and picked up a selection for £8.65 – they really are quite expensive aren’t they?!
I also bought a book on Amazon for another friend as a little treat (£4.50) so she could join in on our monthly book club on Discord. If you’d like to join us we’re always accepting new members – it’s such a lovely place to be and this month’s book is a real page turner!!! Take a look at our little discord community here (we also have a film & tv club AND a virtual parent club too which is super supportive and kind).
Daily Total: £13.15
WEDNESDAY:
WOOHOO! A NO SPEND DAY!
We’re trying to save a bit of money at the moment where we can to help pay for all that new baby stuff, so I’m trying to incorporate a few no spend days into my weeks.
Daily Total: £0
THURSDAY:
Another no spend day…we’re on a roll!
Daily Total: £0
FRIDAY:
Chris came home today so we took a potter into town and had a little lunch date. He bought lunch and I bought tea & scones for pudding (£15.40). They were delicious! The big question is though…cream or jam first?
Daily Total: £15.40
SATURDAY:
I’ve whizzed through our book club book (it’s a bloody good one!) so I treated myself to a new read on Amazon (£4.50). I tend to go through phases of reading but when I’m in the zone there’s no stopping me! I’m loving this new one too and I’m already 3/4 of the way through.
We also stopped off at Tesco for some weekend food shopping and treats (£45.82 – so £22.91 each). We bought 2 dinners, some nice weekend breakfasts, snacks and a few household bits like fabric softener etc.
We split our household bills 50/50 and this includes food shops, but we don’t tend to formally keep track of the latter. Sometimes I pick up the shopping, sometimes Chris does and it all just evens out in the end. I tend to mentally split any food bills in half to give a better idea of how much it costs per person because groceries have definitely gone up over the last few years. It feels like a minimum of £40 whenever I set foot in a supermarket these days!
Daily Total: £27.41
SUNDAY:
And we finish on another NO SPEND DAY! Today we enjoyed our cooked breakfast at home, took a lovely long dog walk, played some games together (we’re currently obsessed with this!) and binged the Handmaid’s Tale with popcorn and puppy cuddles! What a perfect Sunday.
Daily Total: £0
So that brings my weekly total to…
WEEKLY TOTAL: £91.96
That’s not too bad actually! Especially since £54 of the weekly total was on grocery food shops. If you take food shopping out of the equation and keep that in the ‘household bills pile’ then technically I only spent around £38 on personal spending.
Plus £10 of that personal spending was presents for other people so really I spent less than thirty quid! That’s pretty good going. A sensible week really in the money journal world.
What do you think, should we do more money journal weeks?
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