Monthly Roundup - March 2018

Back again with a round up of my expenditure and budget for March 2018. It's been a bit of a high expenditure month this month, although not on holidays to far flung locations, but just on stocking up on necessary items and buying items off my long standing wish list, which to me feels like progress.

As a consequence of the above, there are a few overspends budget wise, but please bear in mind that I don't work on a zero based budget, whereby every single penny coming in is accounted for, so I haven't necessarily gone into debt when I've overspent.  I don't know if I've mentioned this in the past, but in case you were wondering, I do have more income over and above the budgetary restrictions I place on myself, which is probably why I struggle to keep within the budget categories.

Anyway, here goes with the March budget report:

Food - Overspent the £400 budget here by £6.97, despite taking great care to only buy what we absolutely needed in the last shop of the month.

Household - I overspent on this £50 category by £79.50 this month.  The overspend was due in part to stocking up on lots of toiletry items, which I do from time to time, such as deodorant, witch hazel, toothpaste, cotton pads, mouthwash, shampoo, etc.  I'm pretty well stocked up on these now which will lower outgoings over the next couple of months.  In addition, I spent £22 on some anti-plaque powder for the dog's teeth, as I bought a much larger pot to qualify for using a 20% off voucher on eBay. I shouldn't now need to buy any more for at least a few months.

Misc. - I went over the £50 budget in this category by £19.47. Most of the expenditure here went on Easter/other gifts, cards, cold medications and shoe repairs.

Personal - Okay, so a big fail in this budget category this month, as I went £57.45 over the £25 budget I set myself. It was mainly due to buying various small bits and pieces at the CS and other shops, buying a new swimsuit at TK Maxx and placing an order with ASOS for some new skater shoes and a t-shirt for the spring/summer. It is scary how small purchases over the month very quickly add up to quite a lot, but the budget of £25 per month is quite a small one. (mainly due to my being on the Buy Nothing New in 2018 challenge, which obviously took a pounding this month).

LB - LB's budget of £25 was also overspent this month by £24.99, because I needed to buy her a pair of walking boots for an upcoming Duke of Edinburgh expedition.  I wanted to get them early so she could wear them in before the time. I did also pay for some school books and flash cards and some new bras for her out of this month's budget, so I'm not too worried about overspending here, as it was all stuff that she needed for school and other events.

Home - The home budget of £20 was well overspent this month by £66.75. This was mainly as a consequence of  spending £30 to buy a new quilt and pillows for LB and some paving slabs for my allotment plot which cost £26.80.  All of these things were on my wish list though, so that has been significantly reduced going forward, to the extent that there is hardly anything on it now. I probably could have waited to buy the bedding, but as I had spare money floating around this month, I thought why not?

Travel - I was spot on with the travel budget this month, spending the full £40 I usually allocate to this category.  This was mainly due to working extra days to cover leave in  the early and latter part of the month.  I will go into next month with a small credit balance on my Oyster card though, as I loaded it with more money than was strictly necessary.

All in all there were no really major unnecessary blow outs, which is good enough for me. In addition, I ended the month well in the black.  It feels good to have surplus funds at the end of the month for a change and it was great to see my expenditure drop by over £100 this month, to a level it's not been at for over four or five months. There's still a way to go to get it to a more satisfactory level, but it would be great to see it continue in a downward trajectory in the coming months.