Daily Spends – A Diary of Spending Habits

£1.99 on lunch
£12.57 on beer
£14.99 on Indian food
£29.55 total

£38.52 running total for May

1.99 on lunch
0.60 on vending machine snack
1.59 total

7.38 Running total for May

£1.89 on coffee
£0.60 on vending machine snack
£0.60 on vending machine mints
£1.80 on lunch
£0.90 on vending machine drink
£5.79

So, it’s nearly Easter weekend and I’m getting very excited about spending some time with my family, getting out for some fresh air and generally having some fun.

As ever though, I’ll be looking at keeping costs down this weekend by making sure I’ve got plenty of cheap supplies in (probably and Aldi job I think) for a few family treats and of course . . . lashings of ice cold beer.

We’ve also mapped the weekend out and have got some budget activities lined up:

Friday > Spring clean the house
Saturday > Family walk in the park, trip to the swimming pool
Sunday > Trip to Windermere (I’m sure it will lash it down, but we’ll try it anyhow)
Monday > Relaxation at home

I’ve noticed that my lunch spending is spirraling out of control at them moment as I’m finding myself going for a quite expensive salad option on a daily basis. I reckon I’m looking at a bout £4.00 a day which racks up to a heft £20 a week.

I just wondered if anyone had any budget (and healthy) lunchtime meal tips?

This recessions seems to be taking its toll in many ways. Everywhere I look people are being made redundant, companies are going bust and people are under serious financial pressures.

I thank my lucky stars at times like this that I’ve got a stable job and a few pennies tucked away just incase . . . (not a lot mind).

With this in mind I’ve tried to be even more thrifty than usual and started to use a lot more of the social online shopping resources such as MoneySavingExpert and Paid to Shop. The forums are great and offer some reaaly useful money saving tips including details of online sales, discount codes and other money saving tips.

It’s the discount codes that I really love. They’re everywhere. I’ve seen some offering up to 20% off in some cases.

Anyway – here’s one offer I’ve happily been taking up – the 10% off everything at Zavvi.co.uk

Ohhhhh yes – it’s that time of year again. Birthday time! I love my birthday, it’s always good – even on the occasions that it has been bad, it’s still been pretty good

So I thought I’d make it my mission to keep the spending down to a minimum. I’ll leave you to be the judge of whether I did or not:

Birthday lunch: £6.44 (chips x 4)

Krispy Kreme Donuts: £4.80 (x 4)

Alcofrol (various): £24.00 (included nice wine)

Chinese: £28.60 (including my favourite salt and pepper squid)

Total birthday spends:  £63.84

Budget pizza night tonight. None of this £5.55 for a 9inch mainstreamer rubbish.

I’m talking about a nice rectangular (7inch x 12inch)  thin crust pizza, blind baked for 3 monutes and topped with tomato, olive oil, mozzarella, ham and mushroom – ohhhhh yes!

How much do you reckon this is going to cost me? £2.55 for two of them.

Just seen that Barclaycard have announced steps to help consumers:

> Cut interest rates for some customers
> Freeze interest for other customers
> New helpline for customers struggling to pay their bills