This month did not go to plan! I’ve mentioned in the past few budget reports that our pay-day was changing this month but in actual fact (and very much long story short) the reason this month and September were looking to be tight is because we were actually, in effect, being docked 2 weeks wages!!
It’s a long story/explanation and the new company isn’t breaking the law by doing what they’ve done but they went about it in a really sneaky way and didn’t actually explain what was happening. As it turns out, this month wasn’t too tight but September is potentially going to be really tough.
These are all fairly self-explanatory costs but I’m going to explain some of the higher ones as.
You will notice that all these numbers are in $ instead of £’s this is because I use the EveryDollar website to do my budget and it’s meant for the US and Canada, the numbers are all the same so you can just ignore the $ prefix.
Here is our Budget Report for August 2018
Income
Rollover, Charlotte/Dean, Everyday Rewards – If you want to know a bit more about these you can have a look at my first Budget Report
Side hustles – We were able to take a good chunk of pay from BangOnBlanks at the beginning of this month which was great. We had our biggest delivery to date come in last week and we have been working our bums off to get is sorted and out to customers for the past week – we won’t see the profits from the past week for a while yet but it’ll be worth it when we do.
BangonBlanks – £600
Blog – £37.50 Another low month blog income wise but same as last month, I’ve just not had the time other than a few hours at the weekends.
Transfer from EF – That’s the extra £350 I put in last month as a just in case buffer, we transferred it back into the joint account as I panicked and thought it was needed – I’ve explained a bit further down.
Transfer from Car SF – This is what we had left in the Car Sinking Fund and it went towards paying the excess on the car insurance.
Cashback – I was able to cash out £30 from Quidco this month which is always a nice surprise!
OVO Refund – This is just credit that was sitting in our OVO account that they transferred back to us.
Housing
Rent – We didn’t pay rent this month (don’t panic, my parents are the landlords so it’s all ok!) as I changed the date it gets paid I was worried we wouldn’t have enough money to cover everything else for the month. So, rent now comes out on the 1st instead of the 17th so we took a 2 weeks rent break and I will pay that to Dad in October once the pay day issue resolves itself.
OVO – Last month I said I was in the process of switching to a new supplier…I’m still in the process of switching because OVO messed it all up! Luckily their big mistakes and my consequent complaining has meant that I have a refund of the money in credit on the account, they have lowered my tariff until I can switch supplier and have back-dated the lower tariff to say sorry. I’m still not holding my breath that it’ll be an easy switch but we shall see!
EE – I might have forgotten to remove my old phone number from the plan this month so got charged more than I should AND I might have also sent picture and video message by iMessage rather than WhatsApp and got charged a lot for them…I know, I’m an idiot.
Envelopes
I had planned to get back on the ball with this category this month and it didn’t happen, they are all nice round numbers but that’s only because I used all the money in the ‘envelopes’ and then had to us my own money to supplement extra spent on top.
Misc – It’s been another month of lots of little bits like a new printer, needing to get a taxi somewhere, weed killer and suppressant fabric for the garden.
Lifestyle
Cleaner – Still got a cleaner, still no regrets!
Insurance & Tax
No changes here, still need to look into getting car tax changed to yearly.
Debt
Barclaycard – This is the standard monthly minimum payment.
Zopa – This is the standard monthly minimum payment.
Savings
These are our Sinking Funds, they stay pretty much set at the same amount every month – have a look at my first Budget Report for a bit more info.
Emergency Fund – We took the extra £350 I had paid into the EF last month out to add to the months budget when I panicked that everything was going to go very wrong after I did some math wrong. Panic was averted after some better math and a cup of tea. That £350 stayed in the main account though as an extra buffer and eventually went into the rollover.
Rollover
I said last month that we wouldn’t have a rollover catergory in August but I was wrong, we need the rollover in to September as that is our ‘6 week month’. October will be our first proper start of the month budget with our money going into the joint account on the 1st October.
Misc
Train – We were without the car for a full week when it was getting repaired so had to get the train into work. It might not seem like much but I really begrudged paying it since it’s less than a 7 minute train ride!
Car Insurance Excess – Pretty self-explanatory! The car had to go in for repair after Dean bumped it the other month. The most annoying thing is that our insurance only costs around £240 a year anyway so this excess feels pretty high. Not looking forward to seeing what it goes up to next year.
