Confessions of a Personal Finance Blogger – July Update

Confessions of a Personal Finance Blogger – July Update

You will recall I wrote back in April about my debt confession. I came clean about a problem that many people in the UK have but maybe not a personal finance blogger? Well I am an exception to the rule. We have a chunk of money that we owe to credit card companies. April saw us return from my 40^th birthday celebration to Las Vegas a couple of thousand more into debt so that was the time to add it all up and see how bad it was.

July & August have the potential to cost a lot

Now it’s July and potentially the most expensive time of the year for us as a family. The summer holidays are here and the Football season has started back up again. Potentially expensive times. We have six weeks of no childcare and three children to keep amused. Plus, we have football training twice a week and pre-season games most weekends at places like West Brom, Tottenham, Colchester and Ipswich. Petrol, entertainment and food costs will go up, last week alone we did 370 miles to football training or a game, costing £50!

The past three months have seen us make some significant changes to our budget that have resulted in a big chunk of the money being paid off, focusing on the £2,000 that was interest chargeable. The £15,500 is now £13,400.

The focus has been on saving money in big chunks and making extra money where possible.

The most significant changes have been to the following, maybe you can look at these things to save yourself some cash or make some money.

Food Shopping

We swopped from Tesco to Aldi 18 months ago and have saved so much money since. What I do now is to go do a big shop once every three weeks, I buy enough food in that shop to cover all meals. The only top up shop stuff required will be fruit and veg. This means that we can get away with spending around £50 per week on groceries.

We do get the occasional treat of a takeaway but we normally go for fish and chips (Rowes in Stevenage is amazing) it tastes good, can be healthy and is fab value for money.

Cancelling Sky

I have changed our sky contract to be just our fibre broadband, landline and basic TV package. This is now costing is £50 per month rather than £90 per month as we used to have sports and movies on top.

No spend month

We made May a no spend month, it was a quiet social month so we were able to keep the costs right down. We managed to spend £700 less in May than we would normally spend in a month, that saving went straight onto the credit cards.

Still planned for the future

We have 2 big things planned to restructure our finances. First, we are selling our five-year-old S-Max as we own it. Hopefully for around £8 – £9,000. We are then going to lease a more efficient and smaller car, something Japanese and hybrid.

We also have our house on the market and are relocating from expensive Knebworth to lesser expensive Godmanchester. We can buy a bigger house, detached with a bigger garden for £100k less than what our current house is worth. This will half our mortgage and will save us a ton of petrol as we will live much closer to Cambridge for football. Moving to a new house will free up the significant chunk of equity we have in our house that we currently cannot touch due to being self-employed. And will make us £1000 per month better off as the credit card debt can be absorbed into the mortgage so no monthly payments there either.

Once we know where we are living and when, hubby will be starting up his own business. Until then he is working for a mate bringing in his half of the monthly bills. Cycling to work every day to save some extra money.

Feelings about Frugality

Living frugally and being strict about spending money is tough. And when you do go to spend a chunk of money there are strange feelings that go with it. There is the guilt over spending a significant chunk of money on things. There is anger at anything being wasted, I was very silly upset last week about some chicken breasts that I had bought from butchers for £8 that when I defrosted had gone off.




We have been used to having nice holidays every year since adult life began so we are going on holiday this summer. We were just going to have a cheap trip to Cornwall for which I have paid a small refundable deposit. I have now cancelled this holiday as we instead got an amazing deal because of my blog on a Mark Warner holiday to Corsica. It includes everything from food to sports activities to childcare, so we have taken advantage of that deal and have been away for a week.

Jack was doing some meditation earlier. Or thanking God that he didn’t fall in the water whilst we went kayaking. I’m currently loving childfree time for 3 hours.😂😂 . . . . . . . #mwmoments #beachtime #corsica #meditation #bluesea #mediterean #collectingstones #sandeverywhere #markwarner #grateful #givingback #westham #littlehammer #westhamunited #jackism #lovethesea #waterrules #beachtime #themed

A post shared by Lynn James (@mrsmummypennyuk) on Jul 23, 2017 at 7:24am PDT

I have figured out cancelling Cornwall will save us around £1500, when you add in all the petrol to get there and the food we would buy, eating out and activities for the boys. Also, hubby will be able to work that week, otherwise it was going to be a week’s lost earnings. We are pretty much back to evens there with an amazing luxury holiday that the boys adored.

Living on a budget is hard and it required significant change. I never wanted to up route our life and relocate, but sometimes when you really look at the pros and cons of moving it’s better to move. And to be living in a house with a mortgage of £500 per month rather than £1000 per month? And making a clear saving of £1000 per month, well that sounds good to me.

Enjoy your summer holidays whether you be working or at home with the family. And try to do lot of fun and free things with the kids. Have a read of my guide top 10 free things to do with your family in the summer holidays.