Recently I was asked to take part in a #SagaSpendingDiary challenge and sent some items to help me with this task.
So, in the kit, there’s a copy of The Wealth Chef: Recipes to Make Your Money Work Hard, So You Don’t Have To at Amazon uk (affiliate link), a budget diary, and a joint meal plan/shopping list pad. Oh, and one of those funky four colour pens 😉
The book looks pretty interesting actually, claims I’ll learn how the author went from zero to becoming a financially-free multimillionaire in just 8 years, with tips on how to become debt-free in 3 to 7 years, including mortgage, while creating wealth at the same time. I don’t think I have to say how attractive that sounds. With four kids, I’m looking in a future that just wracks up debt, particularly if any of them want to go to university. It’s a whole bunch of no fun.
Now, I already meal plan, and budget pretty hard – I don’t know many people who don’t. But I’ve got out of the habit of tracking every penny spent. I did used to do that by getting the weekly budget out in cash and splitting it into different envelopes but somehow I’ve fallen out of the habit. So I thought it would be interesting to track my spend, and I have to say, just this week has been pretty painful so far.
I’ve paid out nearly £270 in the last two days. How?? Quite easy really. Smallest has a weekly home education guitar group, and that needs paying first Monday of the month. Then Big is signed up on a lifeguarding course in a couple of weeks, and that was due for payment yesterday. I do think of that as a fairly direct investment – it will qualify her to work as a lifeguard, and that’s a pretty good job for a 16 year old (a quick scan of job related sites makes it appear that she could get £6 an hour as opposed to minimum wage for a 16 year old of £3.87). It’s still a fairly steep payment though. On top of all of that, I went grocery shopping (with my meal plan) and that came to £47.65
The budget diary has some well laid out pages for keeping track of all this stuff. I’ve a feeling it’s all going to get a lot scarier before the end of the two week challenge though. Why not subscribe to my newsletter (handy sign up box in the sidebar) so that you can get the update post on how it all went? Go on, you know you want to.
Oh, and if you’ve got any hints and tips on how to keep the spend down while managing a family with four children gratefully accepted!
Disclosure: I was sent the items above to take part in the challenge with Saga Equity release.
I would love a pack like this. I already track my spending in an old filofax. I’ve been doing it monthly for 9 years and I also see my average monthly spend for each year since July 2007. It definitely keeps you on the straight and narrow. Also making a yearly (and half and quarter yearly) average evens out those months when you have to pay for one offs like the lifeguard course.
If I have any tips it would be to record your quarterly average every three months to get a more accurate picture. It also gives you the challenge of evening things out after a particularly expensive month without playing games with the credit card to pay in installments.
Also – stretch the weekly food shop to eight or even 9 days by having a store cupboard challenge to get you through the last couple of days. Over a couple of months that could eliminate a whole week’s worth of shopping.
Good luck with this, it’s very exciting. I look forward to seeing you make your first million.
Ah thank you. My store cupboard is under used for that type of meal, although we need to do more fridge bottom feasts – can’t believe how much gets thrown out at the moment. The quarterly average sounds like an excellent tip, and oh how I would love to make a million. I’d settle for half a million – that would get the house extension, build college funds, and have us stop worrying month to month, but a million and I could finally get Tim his yacht!
Not a budgeting recommendation because I struggle with that, and I’m in awe of your £47 shopping bill – I thought we were doing well keeping ours to around the £100 mark, but then coeliac and allergies means we do have to steer away from many of the cheaper food options :-/
Anyway, I was here to recommend a book (duh) which I started yesterday which saw me stay up til gone 2am working through the exercises. It’s called Worthy by Nancy Levin and it works on the underlying issues you have around money. It’s not woo woo (so far, and I’m a good few chapters in). I’ve learned some very useful things about myself that SHOULD help me to stop doing the stupid things I do with money! Some have been incredibly enlightening, others I knew but didn’t want to accept… I think that the general consensus is, that unless you have the emotional/mental stuff grokked, you’re not going to get to that millionaire status. At this point I’m happy to give anything a try because I’m sick of doing the same stuff and getting the same stuff, as they say!
Sounds like a good recommendation. I’ve started reading the Wealth Chef, have signed up with her site and watched the first video (I *hate* that so much information is now delivered via video. I don’t want to watch people talking at me) but I’m a bit nervous that it’s going to recommend stocks and shares as the primary wealth creation mechanism, as I just don’t want to go there.
IKWYM about the videos. I signed up to the ‘thank you’ bundle for Worthy (dont!) and watched the first couple of videos and read the 10 steps ebook before starting the book proper. It was all recycled from the book, nithing new, so felt extremely pointless to me, and I a bit cross that I’d wasted my time with those. Also – the *free e book/video training worth a bazillionty dollars* crapola …. #eyeroll But yeah the book is definitely worth the money IMO.