Keeping a record of our spending (good or bad!), s a habit –  for daily recording I use an app on my phone, and every week (usually on a Sunday when I write this post), I transfer the figures to an excel spreadsheet. It only takes a few minutes, but knowing where all our money goes (or hopefully stays!) is the key to managing our budget.

Spending this week:

• £90.42 Grocery for the holidays

click for source

• £8.00 Lottery syndicate at work
• £25.00 Work shoes for my son
• £9.00 Window Cleaner
• £79.87 Blog cost
• £2.15 Coffee
• £24.75 Home
• £11.01 Gift
• £1,144.00 Trip deposit
• £126.75 Hotel and Parking

Money in this week:

• £35.00 Refund (Clothing return)
• £78.72 Blog income
• £19.45 Lottery syndicate work
• £4.00 Cash back

As you can see lots of spending this week. We booked a trip to New York in April and the airport parking/hotel for the night before – early flight out of Heathrow on a Tuesday and didn’t want to risk the traffic. Both expenses were booked through a cash back site (3.5% & 10%), so we’ll be getting a bit of the money back (£76.31), in a few weeks.

A little money back in this week:

• Annual payout (winnings) from my work lottery syndicate  as you can see for a £2 weekly cost it’s not a good return on my investment! I put most of the money in my sealed pot.
• Refund on a jumper that I bought a few weeks ago – I didn’t like it as much when I got it home
• Cash back was for the garden storage I bought back in the summer.
• A little blog income which covered the cost of my site move

No spend days this week – 3