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.
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