There is much talk currently of it being the one year anniversary of when lockdown started. I had a much more impactful anniversary last week. 19th March saw the day where I have been single, independent, house owner and free woman for a whole year. And I celebrated with champagne.
Its been a challenging year for so many of us, but I can 100% say I am so unbelievably grateful that everything was finally sorted out three days before lockdown started. All credit to my solicitors, mortgage broker Trussle and mortgage company Santander for getting all the monies transferred!
And to cap that I had a really good week spending wise, I needed too after my spending the previous week.
My Spending Diary
I started the week with a couple of one off biggish purchases. £30 was spent on flowers for a friends birthday, of course bought from Waitrose flowers via TopCashback so I do have 10% cashback coming back to me! Another £30 was spent in The Range as my youngest is keen to explore his painting hobby. More canvases and paint.
Food spending is down
I resisted takeaway food this weekend and I am VERY proud of myself. In fact a strange thing has happened. As my fitness levels are improving, and I am out running and walking more my appetite for sugary and fatty food is reducing. Just £55 was spent on food (and that did include £25 on a very amazing bottle of blood orange gin, which WILL last for ages). I made use of food that I already had and even made bread! This is soda bread and was so so easy. I honestly did not know soda bread with just 4 ingredients was so simple! I used this recipe, although I would recommend less salt!
Other Spends
I had a few bills to pay including broadband and car tax. Also I very smugly cancelled my Amazon Prime membership 1 day before the March bill was due to be paid, but then realised via this exercise that I had paid for £7.99 Audible membership when I really don’t make enough use of it. I now have 3 credits to use, or 3 books to read before mid April when I will cancel it.
There was £5 spent on monthly flea treatment for Trev the cat, and £22 went into my Plum auto savings, I’m getting so close to £1000 there!
Total spending for the week was £187. Really happy with this total. I have had a good few months with spending and have squirrelled a chunk of my earnings that will be going into my pension next week. More on that in next weeks post.
Running 5km
I have been running twice a week for a few weeks now. I was super happy to have got the strength and fitness point of running the entire 5km yesterday even up the hills, and thus getting my time from first run of 36 min 45s down to 33min 57s.
Running is the best freebie exercise. You burn shed loads of calories (ignore what my watch says, slightly inaccurate!) and carry on burning them after the run has ended. And you feel so good afterwards. Maybe not during it, but the endorphins afterwards are amazing.
The Sun article – Recommending my Book
I was super happy to be featured in this article in The Sun last week. They featured the best personal finance books and shared some tips from each book.
Create Your Own Kindness Book
I have loved reading my friend Becky Goddard-Hills new book ‘Create Your Own Kindness’ over the past couple of weeks. It aimed at 8 to 12 year old children and had 50 suggestions for way to be kind to yourself and to others. There are activities to do, things to think about. I particularly loved the section about how to kind to others and how to react to others that are not being kind. You can buy the book here from Amazon.
SHOMO’s Awards show
And finally its awards season and this week sees the annual UK Money Blogger SHOMO (show me the money) awards for 2020. Its happening virtually with us meet up on Zoom on Tuesday 23rd March. I am short listed for two awards, best personal finance blog and best family finance blog. Wish me luck!!
Thank you for reading. As ever there are links in here to products where I earn a small commission fee. If you do click and purchase, a huge thank you!
