Lockdown Spending Diary Week 4
Welcome back to my lockdown spending diary week 4. Cant believe we have been here for 4 weeks! Not just spending, its also about savings. I share my thoughts and feelings each day, the good and bad, the stress and the happiness. I hope you enjoy it, get some tips of saving money and I encourage you to keep you own lockdown spending diary!
My ask from you this week, I broke my website on Saturday, fixed it on Sunday. So I lost around 1500 views in google data, which costs me advertising revenue, so please have a good click around my website. I will include lots of links in here of good stuff that will interest you and save you money. Thank you!!
Monday 13th April
Easter Monday was quite a labour heavy day. Dylan and I decided to tackle the overgrown back hedge/trees of our garden. Safety first I did the hedge trimming with the super heavy chainsaw thing. 20 minutes of that and my arms were shaking with exertion.
Dylan then went into clean-up mode and we found more space in our skip for the garden waste. He then proceeds to spend around 5 hours across Monday and Tuesday pulling down ivy, clearing out beds and sweeping up the astro turf. We now have a very tidy and clear garden. I even have space to plant things (things that can withstand being hit with a football?).
We spent a lot of time playing Lego, we have two huge boxes of Lego, many sets from birthday and Christmas gifts plus we were given a load by a friend. We tipped it all out onto a blanket and searched through for blocks to make a zoo, animals and every Lego person we could find. Hours of fun for all of us.
Spending wise it was a £0 spend day, hurrah! Exercise was a Joe Wicks HIIT class and a walk of Jacks choice to the nearby woods and across the biggest field to Old Knebworth.
Tuesday 14th April – Total Spend £171.82
A big exciting day, I apologied to the boys for lack of presence in the morning. I had been asked to appear on ITV lunchtime news to do a Q&A of Covid related finance questions. There was a quite a bit of prep to do information wise and nerves wise.
I have done loads of live stuff in the past, Victoria Derbyshire, Good Morning Britain, BBC News but this was big time, millions of people watching. And it was me talking about my bread and butter, personal finance. I had some time to prepare my answers and then I was live on the news straight after Dr. Alex talking to Nina Hossain.
As soon as I was done, I grabbed the boys and we headed straight out for our daily walk. My social media went slightly crazy whilst we were out, I gained lots of new followers and lots of people visited my website to read my lockdown spending diary as the post they would first see on my website! And the feedback was all good (except a couple of trolls who decided to email me) but 99% it was all good.
Spending wise we avoided the Co-op for another day, yeah! But it was an expensive day for regular bills. Firstly, there was my monthly EE mobile phone bill. It was £98 for April which I had seen the previous week, go back to last week’s post for more info but the bills go down to around £55 from May. This bill is for 4 lines, one for me, one for my smart watch (total waste of £14 a month, cant wait to finish this contract!), and two lines for my eldest boys at £10 each.
I also had life insurance hit my current account for £15.22 and my weekly Mindful Chef subscription was paid at £31, more than normal as I hadn’t amended my order in good time to chose the vegan dishes that are more like £21/22. One more charge of £27 to my Sainsburys card, a monthly payment, my card to help protect my cash flow in current covid times.
Wed 15th April – Savings of £22.92
Today was my last day this week with the boys, they were off to their dads for five days for the weekend. We continued with the building of the Lego zoo. I was key brick finder; Jack was the builder. And then we tidied away the huge pile of Lego.
I went for a long walk after dropping the boys off and listened to The Brene Brown Interview with Alicia Keys. Another brilliant interview, this is totally my favourite podcast ever.
Spending wise it was a no spend day…woohoo. Just an auto save over to chip of £22.92, I have autosaved a grand total of £75 this this lockdown started (you can still get your free £10 if you sign up using my link and code Mummypenny10). I ended the day recording a brilliant podcast interview with my wonderful friend Kat Byles. We talked all about the growth of Mrs Mummypenny, along with learnings, worries and reactions to current times. I loved it and cannot wait to share it with you!
Thursday 16th April £28.51 spent
First thing I went out for a run, I had been challenged to run 5k, donate £5 and nominate 5 others. I ran in a good time, a great start to the day. The original plan today was to get some client work, but instead I decided to write a post that came to me whilst out running. An incredibly personal post about the breakdown of my relationship, Should I Stay or Should I go.
I have had such wonderful comments and messages since sharing this post. I know it has reached people who are struggling with the same situation. This is all I ever want to do, help, inspire or people realise that they are not the only ones in a particular situation.
Money spent includes a donation to Grief Encounter charity (who look after grieving children, a charity I wish had looked after me in 1993) for my 5k run, I donated double the challenge £10.50. Plus, I decided that I needed some fudge. Yes needed. I ordered some artisan fudge from a small business in Cornwall costing a huge £18.01. It had better be good!
I spoke to my friend Kim who lives near Detroit, USA. We had a proper catch up on all things divorce, business, dogs, isolation. For two hours! I love a long chat with a good friend whom I have not spoken to for ages. And its great to get a US perspective on life currently. And what I can say is thank god we have Boris and not Trump!! I have totally decided that I am planning a trip, New York, to Detroit, to Las Vegas. Maybe 10 days, maybe two weeks. Road trip.
Friday 17th April Total Spend ouch £151
Ouch an expensive day on boring household tasks that needed to be done. I finally was able to get the locks changed, back and front door. A friend who owns Drummond Security was meant to do this 4 weeks ago, but lockdown interfered, but he was able to come over today. This was £120, but to small business and a friend who needs it now, business is hugely down, and he is had to furlough his 3 staff members. I am grateful he was able to help me, now its just him helping everyone locked out of their cars and houses.
Plus, I finally got round to speaking to Franke and ordering new parts for the annoying dripping tap. It is been dripping for 4 months! It was proper easy, you just take a picture of the tap, and they reply with the actual tap and diagram of parts! New parts were £22.99 and I am hopefully going to fix it myself using YouTube tutorials. Wish me luck!!
I did actually begin Friday talking to one of favourite Penzance money experts, (ha wonder how many there are in Penzance?!) Pete Matthew. A kindred heart who love sharing our financial wisdom with our readers, listeners and watchers. And so strange he lives around the corner from my Penzance home base, my sister’s house! It a great mutual coaching session, where he listens to my thoughts, plans, achievements, and I listen to his and we co-advise. It is a wonderful relationship. His podcast is the best money podcast out there. Way better than mine! And he has got a brilliant book – Meaningful Money (I am totally quoted on the back!).
Other spends included £8 on a bottle of rose. Medicinal requirement from the corner shop.
Saturday 18th April – Total Spend £28
It was miserable on Saturday morning, still did not stop me heading out for my daily walk. Can I just say, because I am mega proud of myself, I have consistently every day done 10k steps, often exceeding now for 31 days!! Popped to the post office to send off the competition winner gift from my Easter competition, the hummingbird necklace. I loved that the winner was from a little village near to Penzance! I also bought some stamps, as I am going to send some letters! Can you believe though, stamps are 76p each??!! I got some cool James Bond stamps.
I made a beautiful Mindful Chef dinner, homemade harissa burgers with aubergine chips. Loved it. And wrote a whole 1000 words of my book. Yes, I am 1300 words into my book! I shall drop little crumbs of clues whilst I am writing it, it is about money, but its fun, not boring! Packed with lots of stories and examples from my life.
I took another trip to the corner shop and spent £19.50 on flour (yes, I got flour!), milk, tonic water, prosecco, and new baby cards. I like that I am supporting the independent corner shop, but it is expensive. Must face the trauma of Aldi at some point. Not yet though!
Saturday night was spent chatting to my uni best friends for two hours. Zoom was very unstable, too many people were using it on Saturday night obviously.
Sunday 19th April – No Spend
And the week ends with a beautiful sunny day. I spent the first two hours writing about pensions, maternity leave, part time working and divorce. Post coming soon, it is a good one in collaboration with PensionBee.
It was then a sad day, sad for a few hours anyway. I had a challenging conversation with the ex, who is not agreeing to any of my solutions to help J. I was incredibly frustrated and cried. And cried and cried. I kept getting lovely messages from followers and friends over the weekend about my ‘Should I stay or should I go post’ and these made me cry.
I was intending to go out for a long bike ride to make myself feel better, but the chain was broken. Thanks, whichever son did that and not telling me. Instead I power walked to the woods and breathed in the beauty of the bluebells. And felt immensely better.
A no spend day, hurrah.
Total spends for the week. £402 (compared to previous week £260, and week before £414)
So, not too bad a week for spending. £141 on monthly essential bills. £143 on household expenses. £58 on groceries, get in best week ever, although it was just me for 5 of those days! I hope you are enjoying these spending diaries. I am loving writing them, extremely cathartic to think about the amazing things I have achieved during the week. As well as how much money I have spent. I am so excited to see how I compare to Faith! Our posts will be live in May over on the PensionBee website.
This post contains a few affiliate links where if you click I earn a few pennies, specifically Chip and life insurance links are affiliate links. Everything else I link to for love and support. #supportsmallbusiness
One Response
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