I did a poll on Instagram last month and asked people if they’d like to see the real life breakdown of our budget (I’d stopped doing them for a while because I wasn’t sure if people really wanted to see it) and it turns out you’re all just as nosey as me as it was a resounding ‘YES show us where your money goes each month’
Last month did not go to plan, I messed up the budget and we overspent by a lot which then meant there was less money to go towards savings/sinking funds. It was just a case of me taking my eye off the ball and not checking in to see how we were getting on and I’m determined not to let it happen again because we have got goals to meet and houses to buy!
These are all fairly self-explanatory costs but I’m going to explain some of the higher ones as.
Here is our Budget Report for October 2019
Income
Charlotte/Dean – This is the amount we both pay into the joint account each month from our wages.
Sidehustles – Any money made during the month that isn’t our usual income.
Everyday Rewards – This is a monthly bonus our bank pays if we hit certain criteria.
Sidehustles
Blog – My earnings from the blog are slowly increasing which is great. This number is my profit that I transfer as wage to our account as I have to take off at least 20% from everything I make and transfer it into a sinking fund to cover tax/NI/accountants bill. I like to keep a buffer in my business account to cover my expenses and running costs. I don’t have a set income from blogging every month but whatever I make is all helping to top up our income and pay towards our sinking funds.
eBay – I don’t do much selling on eBay but my Mum is a bit of an eBay Reseller (she loves looking through charity shops for a bargain that she can flip!) so every few months I’ll give her some bits to list. She takes a % of the profits to cover her time listing items and then send me over my ‘cut’ of the profits.
Housing
Bulb – I recently lowered our DD to Bulb £100 a month as we’ve built up quite a lot of credit with them. I’d actually like to look at getting some of this credit refunded as I’d be much happier having it in our bank rather than theirs! Once we get through winter I’m going to look at what our usage has been throughout the whole year and average it out to see what I think the DD debit should be set at from now on (the energy companies do do this themselves but I always find that they over estimate by quite a bit sometimes so I’d rather go by my own numbers)
Envelopes
Groceries – I’m aware that this is a pretty high food budget considering we are just a two adult household but since we have been trying out the Keto diet I’ve found that food shopping has become more expensive. The benefits I’ve found from eating Keto out weight the costs for me so I’m happy to run with a higher food budget, I am going to be working on proper meal planning this month to try and keep it as low as possible though. This number also includes our household groceries which I’m going to split out into another category going forward as I want to keep track of that a bit better too.
Petrol – This doesn’t tend to vary much from month to month
Misc – This is the category where we had a lot of overspending! The majority of this from buying stuff we need to re-do the downstairs bathroom (we ripped it out 10 months as a bit of an impromptu house project as we had a skip we needed to fill and instantly regretted it as we’re not exactly sure when my Dad will be able to fit in the time to start work on it) We picked up the tiles and flooring last month and some parts we need for the new toilet. This also includes a big order of light bulbs that I needed to buy as I have been lazy and not replaced any bulbs when they’ve gone since last winter. It wasn’t too big of a deal because the house has been quite light and airy through Spring and Summer but now that the evenings are drawing in we kinda needed some light in the house, it was actually getting ridiculous, so I spent around £70 on LED light bulbs and we can see again!
Dogs
Luna and Me – This is the dog food we have delivered for the girls once every 3-4 weeks. I used to buy a different brand from Pets At Home but they were having supply issues and its cost was higher and the quality was less. I looked into a few different subscription based dog foods and this fitted exactly what we wanted and the price is really reasonable. I’m loving subscription based services as its helping me ‘automate’ our lives and money better, I’ll do a post about it soon!
Dog Groomer – We like to get the girls bathed and groomed once a month (some times we miss a month as I forget to schedule it in).
Lifestyle
Cleaner – Another luxury that I budget for every month. I know I don’t have to justify my spending but I don’t mind discussing it because personal finance is just that, personal, and we all have reasons for doing what we do. Dean and I agreed that it’s easier for us to have a cleaner come in once a week as it means I don’t have to spend time doing it (I do more of the cleaning and Dean does more of the cooking in our household) and the time it saves can be spent working on Side Hustles!
Insurance & Tax
Dog Insurance – Our dog insurance is higher than most peoples as we have Luna insured for breeding and whelping. It’s a necessary cost when breeding dogs and it means that once puppies are born they are all insured under that policy too.
Savings
I think I might be changing up our sinking funds a bit next month and adding in a few more. We are currently saving up money to cover our mortgage costs (we don’t need a deposit but we do need to cover things like stamp duty and solicitors fees) so that takes up a big chunk of money at the moment. I’d like to add in a few more to give us a bit of a head start on some bits for next year I think.
Subscriptions
These are all the little bits in the budget that would be the first things to go if we needed to really tighten our belts.
National Lottery – This is one of Deans requests to have in the budget, he’s of the mindset that if you don’t play the lottery then how could you ever win the lottery… I’m more with Dave on this one
Little Havens – Is a charity contribution and part of our ‘Giving’, we aren’t Christian but are happy to give to charities.
Spotify Family – I pay for Spotify family so that both Dean and I can have it on our phones (he was paying for an Apple Music subscription before but it wasn’t very good and when I had a look into Spotify family we realised it worked out cheaper to have just one family subscription) I’ve also added my sister to the plan and my neice as you can have up to 6 people share the same account for the set price of £14.99
Netflix/Amazon Prime – We don’t have a TV License so don’t watch terrestrial TV. We watch a mixture of Netflix/Amazon Prime and Now TV.
HP Instant Ink – Technically this is a business expense but it just come out of the joint account (I can probably get this moved over to my business account)
