Getting Off to a Rocky Start

My start to No Spend/Low Spend September, whereby I am joining Sue at Our New Life in the Country, in trying to spend as little as possible this month and use up what I have already, didn't exactly get off to a great start.

I did the weekly shop yesterday, as having returned from Norfolk, we had very little food in the freezer or fridge.  As a consequence, the shop was much larger than usual, as I stocked up the freezer with various meats, to be used throughout the coming month.  I should now just need to top up shop each week with fresh foods, if I plan my menus well enough.  I still need to get a few extra bits today, that couldn't be bought at Lidl, and then we should be pretty well stocked up for the next few weeks.

I don't seem able to fill an Approved Foods order sufficiently to send one off just yet, which is probably no bad thing, as there's still food left over in the cupboards from last month's order to be used.  I've also got a couple of large homemade crumbles in the freezer, rhubarb in the fridge, and cooking apples and homegrown potatoes in the cupboards, which should keep us going for a while.

Aside from the food situation, today I incurred some expenses relating to Little Bird starting secondary school in a couple of days.  I had to register with an online payment system for school meals and other school expenses.  It started off well enough.  I decided to load the account with enough money to cover lunches for the month, pay for her school locker and also for some extra bits of uniform she needs.  As it is going to be tight this month, I thought that paying this out in advance would prevent me spending the money on other things and adding to my overdraft later on.  It was with the latter payment that I had a problem, as I don't think the system intended you to prepay for items of uniform and when I later tried to purchase the uniform items, I was asked to pay again.  I'm now in the process of either getting the uniform items direct via the school or getting a refund.  Not a great start, but a big learning curve for me.  I'm sure it will work out very useful, when I actually understand how to use it properly.

I  also received one of my credit card statements today, so I decided to pay it off straight away and then it is taken care of.  Not a low spend start to my No Spend/Low Spend September, but at least some  essential expenditure has hopefully been taken care of from the off, leaving me with fewer expenses to worry about.