Daily Spends – A Diary of Spending Habits

This is a test post from http://dailyspends.wordpress.com

Since my little post about the sofa last week I’ve become slightly obsessed with Cost Per Use (CPU).

So every so often I’ll be popping a cheeky little cost per use calculation in the site, just to make me happy.

This week: Shoes

Cost of shoes: £45.00
Expected Lifespan: 6 months
Expected Use: 120 (based on 120 working days during the 6 months)
Expected Milage: 720 miles (I walk 6 miles per working day)
CPU: £0.37 (£45.00/120 working days)
CPM (mile): £0.06 (£45.00/720 miles)

MyBudgetQuest has just set up what I think will become a really useful financial news resource over the coming months. He’ll be taking the best of consumer finance news, articles & blog posts and amalgamating them in to one handy personal finance hub.

These things can sometimes take a little while to get moving, so we’ll cut him a little slack until it’s up to speed. GFI! Feel free to pick up the RSS feed and stick it on your blog: http://financial.newsvine.com/_feeds/rss2/master?articles&seeds

I can’t get away from news relating to the gloomy economic outlook. Everywhere I turn I see doom and gloom, economic warnings, detailed scenarios of house price disasters! This article from the Times being a perfect example – Credit Crisis:  Experts assess how bad it is

The interesting thing about all this doom and gloom though is how us ‘everyday consumers’ are coping and whether any of the ‘city’ stuff will mean we take a hit in our pockets.

For me . . . it’s certainly lead to a bit more frugality and asking questions of my overall financial position. What happens if I’m made redundant? What happens if house prices do crash? Is it likely that I’d be pushed into negative equity? Could my family remain stable under any further financial pressures?

It’s time like these when I’d assume we’d rely on the likes of the FSA, OFT & MPC to help bring the city & consumer’s worries under control.

Will you be making any changes to your daily spending habits? If so, what will they be? Many of us are already watching our spending to keep us from going to the wall . . . can we cut our budgets any further? Are you considering taking advice on your debts and other financial issues . . . or have you got them all under control?

One of my good friend’s (trying2save) favourite cost excercises is the ‘cost per use’. Cost per use allows you to assess the impact of a ‘one off’ purchase by working out how much the item actually costs over the period you use it.

Essentially, cost per use allows you to rationalise a one off purchase such as:

• a sofa
• a pair of shoes
• a new coat
• some aftershave
• shaving foam

We’re all slightly obsessed with cost per use at the daily spending network and it’s something I’m going to spend more time on in future blog posts.

Here’s my first cost per use calculation – for the purchase of a new sofa:

Purchase Price: £545.00 (Easter Sale bargain)
Estimated Life Span: 1825 days (5 years)
Estimated Use Per Day: 20 seperate usages (sit downs of 10 minutes)
Estimated Total Uses: 36500
Estimated Cost Per Use: £0.01 per sit (£0.014)

1 pence per sit – not overly excessive

My Wife’s pregnant at the moment which is fantastic! What’s even better is that she’s craving all kinds of take away foods.

Last night it was  kebab & pizza. A Milano’s special kebab (donner, chicken & lamb) and a 9 inch Hawaiian pizza. I really enjoyed it – it was lovely.  Hang on in there . . . there’s a point to the story.

I managed to save £10.00 yesterday by going without something I could have done with, but didn’t need. The intention was to squirrel it away in my draw at work so by the time next Christmas comes around I’ll have a nice little purse to buy some special presents for my family.

Guess what happened? Yup, you guessed it! That £10.00 didn’t get squirrelled away, it got spend on that Take Away instead. My present fund is now down to £0. Time to start again!

Monday & Tuesday (3rd & 4th March) have been cheap as chips really. Had a nice days holiday on Monday and went to one  of those 2 for 1 type pubs (food was rubbish but the pub & service was nice).

Took the kids to the indoor play area – which they love – I now ache all over.

Tuesday, back at work. Brought lunch in to keep the costs down.

Mon & Tues Total Spends:
Playground – £3.75
Pub lunch – £14.75
Train Fare – £14.00
Total Spend – £32.50

I’ve just been reading this fascinating article from debt management specialist, Gregory Pennington who pointed out that according to the Office for National Statistics, the average income rose by just 92% during the 10 years following 1995 whilst the average house price rose by a whopping 204%.

Now I’m no economic expert but that makes me feel a little jittery . . . Could this be a contributing factor to the prospective economic melt down?

Particularly interesting to see the wealth & debt ratios between two different generations. Those in the older bracket certainly seem to be a lot better off by significantly benefiting from the housing boom and keeping their debts down.

Take a look, it’s an interesting one: http://www.gregorypennington.com/debt-management-features/826/wealth-debt-age-a-decade-of-change.htm

I may be jumping the gun, but I’ll assume that Leap Year isn’t as major event to you as it is to me . . . being that the 29th February is actually my birthday, I like to take some time to wollow in the glory of my special day

My birthday is a special day to me, I just like it, it’s the one day in the year that I feel comfortable making demands and spending money on myself.

So . . . what have I spent on this glorious weekend?

Friday:
Train – £14.50
Breakfast - £2.75
Lunch – FREE (a colleague bought it)
3 x coffees – £4.19
1 x Subway – £1.99
Drinks – £8.50
Takeaway – £18.50
Total – £48.44

Saturday:
New jacket – £20.00
New jeans – £18.00
Mothers Day Gift for Wife from Kids - £19.50
Hair stuff – £2.99
Total – £60.49

Sunday (Mothers Day – Parents & Nan for Dinner)
Supermarket* – £40.18
- Baguettes
- Paper
- Wine
- Biscuits
- Milk
- Gift for Nan
- Nappies
- Formula
- Other stuff (I’ve forgotten)
Total – £40.18

*Why is it that EVERY time i go to Tesco I always spend over £40.00. There are some very clever marketing peeps at that company. They know exactly how to make you spend your money!!!

Total Weekend Spend – £149.11