write down everything I spend from this pay day to the next

According to Excel I have spent £27.48 since I started logging my spending this month.

As there was one day when I spent £55.88, this seems very unlikely indeed.

Needs must when the devil shits in your face.

I still need to look at the results though. However, bearing in mind how much my circumstances have changed, I’m not sure how useful they’ll be. Except maybe expose how much of a spendthrift I used to be.

At some point over the weekend I hope to take a good hard look at the results. It’s been a bit of an unusual month for me. I’ve done a lot of socialising, a lot of meals out, travelled a bit, bought more pretty dresses and shoes than normal and I’ve been off work for a fortnight now so the lunch/coffee expenditure is different from a tyical month. I’m not making excuses, it just… is. We’ll see, anyway.

I’ve got a bit slack on this over the past week, including actually losing the notes for one of the days, but I’m back on track now. In fact I even had one spend-free day last week, which is quite something for me. Two things have become clear – I need to stop smoking. What a drain on my expenses that is. The other thing is that I need to never, ever leave the house. Buses have cost me almost as much as smoking, and I haven’t even added in taxis and my train fare to Glasgow. Maybe I should invest in some comfortable shoes. The bike goal isn’t doing it for me any more, but I still have the use of my legs. Just about.

it was all going so well… i managed through the whole of last week with twenty squid!
thats not to shabby :D and that included going out, buying a few arty supplies, lunches and travel?
amazing?

but this is going to be an expensive week :S
we have two nights out, a girly night in (suprisingly expensive!) a few days about town, a birthday and a hairdressers apointment

did you hear that noise???
that was the sound of my budget being shot to hell :-/

I went into Oasis. I was drawn in. I’m not normally big on shopping but I thought I might find something shruglike to wear with my summer-coping dress. I didn’t. But I did find a beeeyoootiful bright red embroidered dress at £35 reduced from £65. It’s kind of corseted, boned and ‘50s, with a sweetheart neckline, long straight backslit skirt and spaghetti straps, and it’s proper vavavoom curvalicious film starlet-stylee. I could probably wear it without a bra cos of the boning, and the colour is lush on me. I tried it on, agonised so hard I felt all twisted in my tummy, and decided not to buy it cos I couldn’t think of an occasion in which I’d wear it.

Then tripped along to Intermezzo for a coffee… where my brother’s girlfriend Janine, upon hearing of the dress, reminded me I have two weddings to go to this summer, confiscated my sensible veg and cheap toiletries shopping to behind the bar, and enlisted the rest of the bar staff to chant at me to go back and buy the damn thing until I did. Damn her.

It’s gorgeous though. I keep looking at it. And now I’m gonna have to buy shoes and accessories to go with it. Curses.

On the plus side, I have taken lunch in every day this week. Which doesn’t really make up for it.

Smoking is expensive.

its not going so well… ive already lost count!
but i will sort that out and count up all my spendings after dinner :)
plus i had to throw caution/pennies (actually more like pounds) to the wind this morning and jump in a black cab :S
it was purley my own fault i was running so late
damn that extra cup of tea!

All I can say is ouch. But we did go to Tesco yesterday and buy enough food for like three months. And one of my purchases is designed to save me money in the long term. Kind of.