Lockdown Spending Diary week 7
Woohoo I made it to my 100th Monday Money post! What an achievement! I love writing these posts every week, they take me hours but are very well read. S0 I will continue until 200/500/1000 posts! And we made it through 7 weeks of lockdown, now into week 8. Here is my lockdown spending diary week 7.
This week was good, much better than last week with much fewer regular bills. Although a few one off expenses, as there always are in life. Read on for my spending week and exciting work pieces and family life in lockdown. Lots of pictures this week.
Monday 4th May £163 including car service
The beginning of a new week that was mostly sunny! We celebrated by unboxing the new bargain pool £69.99 for a 3-meter Bestway pool from Sport & Leisure UK (affiliate link, I get a few pounds if you purchase from them, thank you) below £30 cheaper than Amazon!. We properly set up with a smooth base, and the right chemicals. This is such a great investment, hours, and hours of fun for the boys and for me. I love to float around in the donut.
The car was long overdue a service (I mean LONG overdue) so I booked it in with Adam Henderson, my neighbour. He just took it to his garage in the morning and it was back by lunchtime. I transferred him the cash as contact free bank transfer. Totally easy transaction. Although £135 lighter, which I think is great value for money. If you live local to Knebworth/Welwyn Garden City I highly recommend Adam for anything car related. If you need his number, drop me a line and I will pass it over.
Adam also told me that my car needed two new front tyres, but no rush for that as I am driving nowhere now. He will sort that out for me too and get me a good deal.
Get Nourished
I had an exciting delivery of my Get Nourished nutritional sweeties (sugar free and vegan obvs). Check out this company and what they produce, I love it. My friend works for the company and gave me a code to try out the products for a month free of charge. But if you use the code May20 you can get your first month half price. (this is an affiliate link, where I earn a few pounds, in no way affecting the price you pay)
Get Nourished provide personalised a daily nutrition product, that tastes like a large fruit pastel. I filled in a short questionnaire, asking about my age, and health and nutritional requirements. I included things like I wanted to have help sleeping, loosing weight, anti-aging etc. We all want those things!!
My review, I love them. I am feeling better in the past week, weight is falling off (also due to excessive exercise from my 500km challenge!) and I am sleeping better. My skin is glowing, part of this must be due to the nutrients.
Spending diary wise I paid for my Microsoft subscription £11.28 and my Car insurance £1.24. My car insurance has cost me £1.60 since 20th March when I switched my policy over to Pay-as-you-go insurer By Miles!! I am saving so much money here!
There was a little co-op shop for treats for the boys, donuts, drinks etc, £15.99. Total Spend of £163.
Tuesday 5th May – No Spend
A no spend day! I do not have these very often. In April I managed to have 3 no spends days, must try for a few more in May.
Tuesday is my podcast day and I also had a big writing project to finish. You can go watch my podcast here on my YouTube channel or tune in Live every Tuesday at 12 noon on my Facebook page. I talk money saving, thoughts and feeling on the week and occasionally have a guest.
My writing project was many deadlines. I had four pieces to write last week, each requiring research and time. My VE day printable post was a huge success, it had 11k views in three days, Google decided it was one of the best resource pages in the UK😊 Thank you Google.
I wrote about the importance of Life Insurance and the impact not having it can have on a family. My mum died suddenly at 58, without life insurance. Life Insurance is a product that I would never do without, particularly with children and a mortgage. This is an affiliate linked post where both you and I get a payment if you set up a life insurance product. You get either £25 or £50 cash back depending on monthly premium, and I get the same. I wanted to split the reward with you the reader and Lifesearch created this reward for me. Thank you if you speak to Lifesearch and take out a life insurance policy.
Wednesday 6th May Total of £24.50
A cycling day for the boys and me. We cycled to the top of Datchworth and took the most amazing pictures, in my Grief Encounter T-shirt that the charity kindly sent over. Its purple! I managed 20km in one day after the ride with the boys and then a birthday pressie delivery later in the day. Jack wanted a chicken and mayo sandwich to end his bike rise do we got a meal deal from the Co-op spending £9.20.
My third piece of content was written and its amazing!! It will be published on the PensionBee website either today or tomorrow so I will share a link. It is Faith and my lockdown spending diary comparison. I wrote a post comparing our spends and learnings after one month of diaries. Faith did the same. We are both brilliantly entertaining writers; the posts are very good!
Spending wise I stopped off at Tesco Express and bought some tins of gin for £10. I spent 31p on top up postage to send my Blogging Your Way to Riches book to The Vicars Wife Frugal Life. I have about 10 copies left here, if you want one, you can PayPal me using friends and family please to avoid charges at lynn@mrsmummypenny.co.uk. I will sell them for £5 each (£14.99 on Amazon, must change that!), or you can make a donation to my 500 km challenge fundraiser for Grief Encounter.
Emergency visit to the chemist too for some rash cream was £4.99. Our village Lloyds pharmacy chemist is so lovely, he is a fab alternative to the doctors.
Thursday 7th May 11 £149 Aldi!
A full day to myself with boys at their dads. So, it tends to be packed full of meetings. I started the day with a call to my mentor to talk about my strategy for 2020. Things to focus on and not focus on. He always has tons of ideas and dreams big. The sky is the limit for Andrew, and he believes in my business and its current and future success. He was my boss in 2011 in the digital team at EE. An incredible boss whose team would walk over hot coal for. We are all still great friends and meet up every few months to get drunk, share life and reminisces over many stories of Newcastle, Oxford, and London Team days. What happens in Newcastle stays in Newcastle.
I did yoga with Body Bliss Yoga Sue. I had a consult call with Sean Rogers who I recorded a podcast interview with a few weeks ago, he wanted to talk about a new business idea. And then recorded a Zoom video with Faith where we share money saving suggestion for people who might be struggling now. Again, for PensionBee and is being edited this week. Another piece of content to look forward to.
Spending wise I managed to spend a HUGE £149 in Aldi. I go every two weeks to the Welwyn branch which is a nice one. I spent just £35 this week on booze😉 Faith take note. Also, I got some nice treats for me £15 worth, some beauty bits, and a candle as I wanted to do a YouTube video showing my 10-minute beauty routine to get myself TV, photoshoot ready. And there was 2 weeks’ worth of food for the boys and me and for VE day.
Friday 8th May – VE Day £38 spent
Again, a day to myself, with more meetings. I took the day off writing as I was a bit over it by Friday! I chatted pensions and sales funnels to a prospective new client, and then spoke to Janet, who was my boss at M&S when I was 21!! She reached out after listening to the podcast interview, I did with Kat Byles. We had the best chat. Janet was another incredible boss, the best female boss I have ever had.
She looked after me, a 21 years old ambitious girl who had just lost her parents. She gave me a job with so much responsibility, I oversaw the cost/benefit analysis of the year 2k till system replacement for every M&S shop in the UK. This project doubled up as my final year dissertation. So, I was paid to work for two days a week during my final year at M&S head office. Such an opportunity, which then meant I got an amazing graduate job.
I was intending to work for M&S, but they got into financial trouble and made their 1999 graduate intake redundant, which I read in the FT, before they officially told me. By no means Janet’s fault! The consequence was a cheque for £1000, nice. And a queue of companies who wanted me and my fellow graduate scheme colleagues. They all presented to us in a posh London hotel and we got to choose who we worked for. There was Goldman Saks, MI5, John Lewis, Tesco, all the big companies, and HSBC. I chose HSBC where I could do my CIMA exams, fully funded and they offered me £25k starting salary. At the age of 22, and in 1999, this was amazing! So, Janet was partly responsible for the beginning of my glittering corporate career.
Our lives have run in parallel. Corporate success, both quitting to set up our own business, both divorced. Both into spirituality. We will absolutely meet up once lockdown is over.
Spending wise, its Mindful Chef box time, £24, which I now do every two weeks rather than every week to save some money. Faith, I have listened to your guidance. Netflix payment of £8.99 and 2 boxes of Stork to make some scones for VE day.
We celebrated VE day with bunting, flags, scones and lots of pool time, music, and cocktails. Just me on the cocktails.
Saturday 9th May
Another beautiful sunny day, 23 degrees in Hertfordshire. Spending wise we ordered a dominos pizza delivery for £24.25 and I paid for some website hosting costs, business expenses with LCN, my wonderful website hosts in Stevenage £42.
We went for a glorious long walk through Knebworth park searching for the deer, which we found. It ended up being an 8km walk, but it was the best. I am so grateful that I live 1 mile from this stunning park and house.
Sunday 10th May
A cold day, grrrr. We had our daily walk, just the 7km today, and ended it by stopping at the bakers Simmonds in the village that has just reopened. Sausage sandwich, vegan mushroom ‘sausage’ rolls and carrot cake. £12.
I wrote some of my book, contributed to an article for Tesco magazine, and wrote an angry piece about Klarna, coming soon folks!
Summary
Total spend for the week was £455. But consider this included the car service at £135 and the big Aldi shop at £149. Take these away and I ma left with £170 on other stuff, coop, takeaway, business expenses.
Overall a good week for spending. This lockdown budgeting is going well!! How about you, tell me what you are saving money on?
There are affiliate links in here, all mentioned, if you do buy, THANK YOU. You are helping to fund all the free content I write, speak and present. Much love.
