Monthly Expenditure Round Up - January 2021

Finally, we got to the end of January or payday at least and the first month of my Low Spend Challenge in 2021. It felt like a really long month, which it always does after the festive season, but I was very happy to get through it and to start a clean slate for February.

January, wasn't actually particularly low spend, mainly because of LB's 18th birthday. I don't really have a budget for gifts, as I consider that they are just essentials that need to be bought.  I am, however, tracking what I do spend in this category this year, with a view to reducing it, if I think this is necessary.

Included in the spending in this category this month was the £22 that I spent at Whistlefish, on a bulk order of greetings cards.  When they actually arrived, they were very nice quality cards and also were all made from recycled paper, which I didn't expect. As a couple of the cards I'd ordered were out of stock, they replaced them with different ones and also sent me two extra cards too, which I was very happy about. They came just in time to send one off to my sister, as it was her birthday this month. We don't do gifts though, except for the special birthdays with a 0 on the end.

Heading into a new year and a new challenge, I changed my budget around this year, increasing expenditure in some categories, i.e. My Personal budget and the Home and Garden budget and as a consequence, these two categories and the Misc category, all came in well under budget this month. For myself, I only bought a Zumba class from Udemy and a new watch from eBay, as mine packed up last week. It only cost £4.99 though, so no big deal. I know I could probably have got a new battery put in, but it is tricky to find somewhere that does this in lockdown and it would probably be more expensive anyway. I can keep it as a spare and do it when/if life ever gets back to normal.

The Household category ended up being well over budget this month, mainly due to a bulk order of household products that we use regularly from Natural Collection, plus I also ordered some make up from My Pure. I don't place these kind of orders very often, so I don't anticipate it being anywhere near as high next month.

Food was slightly over, which is to be expected during lockdown, when we're all eating all our meals at home. To be honest, I think we did quite well on this score considering, mainly because I've stopped doing super big supermarket shops/overstocking and just do more medium sized or top up shops now, when we've run out of specific things. 

As I said, it wasn't really a low spend month, but I am hoping that February will be much better, as I will have got more into the habit of not spending money on stupid stuff.

Having said all of the above, I still did manage to put some money into savings, for probably the first time in nearly a year. I stopped saving after we went into lockdown the first time and never really got back into the habit. This month, however, I managed to put aside over one hundred pounds into my savings and a similar amount into LB's university fund, which is better than nothing. 

In conclusion, not an altogether successful Low Spend Month, but I knew I'd find it difficult to begin with. I'm optimistic that I can do better in February. At least there are no birthday gifts to buy in the coming month and I don't have any plans to spend money on anything in particular, although I may buy a few small things for the house, but all within the budget allocated. To be honest, as the month end approached, I tried to think of something that I needed to buy in February,  that I would soon be able to, but couldn't think of anything, which was encouraging. I'm sure something will come to mind at some point.

Just one final note with regard to finances. Due to ridiculously low interest rates on one of my savings accounts (i.e. 0.01%), I decided to close it and transfer some of the money to some Premium bonds this month. It was so easy to do online. I've had a few bonds in the past, but never won a penny on them. However, this time around I've invested quite a bit more. I know the chances of winning the big prizes are very low, especially if you've got less than £50K in bonds, but I thought I'd try anyway. After all, you've got to be in it to win it, as they say. Anyway, I've arranged for any winnings to be ploughed back into bonds, to increase chances of winning in the future. It's quite exciting. If I won the odd £25 I'd be happy and it would be more than I'm currently getting in interest. I'll let you know if I do manage to win anything. Has anyone else had any luck with Premium Bonds?

I hope you had a good month financially, especially if you're trying to save money.