A big welcome back to Monday Money! It has been missing for a couple of weeks whilst I took some time off for Christmas and New Year. Well I say time off, I did do some work and shared some great posts including my review of the year, which you can read here in part one and part two.
In terms of spending Christmas was an expensive one this year. We seemed to spend a small fortune on food and drinks. We were left with far too many treats after Christmas, so yes I overdid it. A learning for next year, we do not need so may Christmas treats! Now to pay it all back. The credit card bill for Christmas hits this week and I luckily have it covered with an unexpected bonus which I will share in a bit.
Tax Return
One of the jobs I did over the holidays was to complete my tax return. This is my personal tax return for salary drawn from Mrs Mummypenny for year 17/18. Have you done yours yet? I would recommend sorting it out ASAP especially if you need to apply for the government gateway codes that are sent out by post and take a few days. Its a fairly easy task, provided you have all your paperwork and income and expenses to hand. Mine is made slightly simpler as I am just including my limited company drawings. I have an accountant who does my annual company tax return.
I have been putting money aside every week to ensure that I had enough set aside for my tax bill. Turns out I had set far too much aside, so that has gone into paying for Christmas.
New Years Resolutions with Money
Do you need a financial overhaul? And do you need some guidance knowing where to look for savings? Hop on over to this post that will give you loads of ideas to save money on all sorts of bills. Also there are ways to make money as well. I have done a check over my direct debits and got rid of any that I wasn’t getting full use of, Netflix has gone (saving £8 per month) and I am thinking about getting rid of our sky basic package at £20 a month to just go with Freeview. I say thinking, but I might wait until Big Little Lies has aired!
Are you thinking about Investment?
Another consideration for the new year might be a look at your longer term finances. Are you thinking about investing some money to try to make some gains from the market rather than leaving your money sat in cash? Take a read of this article that I wrote about what risk means and how I have benefited from investment. I am a huge advocate of investing and know I have made a lot more money than had I left my savings in cash.
New Years Resolutions with Health & Fitness
I am doing really well with running and exercise so far this year. In 8 days I have done 2 * 4 mile runs and 2* 4 mile walks with the boys to the woods. I have been doing daily meditation, and I am on 6 days streak there. Plus diet wise I have cut out caffeine, am drinking shed loads of water, there has been no booze this year and no red meat. I was also hoping to cut out diary, wheat and sugar and I have cut back, but those have beaten me so far. I am on the right track to shedding the weight I have put on over the Christmas period and am feeling much better for it.
Flowers to Make you happy
I love to treat myself with flowers every few weeks and have found an amazing flower company that delivers to the door beautiful flowers that last around three weeks. They come beautifully and carefully packaged and only send you flowers in season. They also give notes on the flowers and how to arrange them! You can set the delivery schedule to how you prefer it, be that every week or every month. The flowers cost £24, BUT you can get you first bouquet for free by using this code LynnJ4684. (I also get a free bouquet as well). Here is the link to Freddies Flowers so you can claim your free bouquet!
Keeping a Spending Diary
I am finding that I am spending far too much money at the moment and something that keeps me more aware is my spending diary. At the end of every day I write in an actual notebook and reflect back on the past few days. This past week hasn’t been a great week. I am feeling like I am being dragged into emotional spending. I resisted the sales until 2nd January and bought myself a sweatshirt. The last few days of Christmas holiday were expensive with trips to the theatre for the panto and the cinema. Just for those trips alone with some food I spent £110.
I am hopeful that the act of recording and writing everything down with urge me to stop with the high spending and be more considerate.
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