Spring is springing (it’s Denmark so it seems to happen pretty late). The weather has been beautiful, the evenings getting longer, and there’s a delicious smell in the air. Budget-wise March has two close family birthdays, mothering Sunday, Easter, and school holidays. I did calculate how much I had spent half way through the month, then once again had a massive splurge in the last week. I thought about it and realised it’s because I get paid on the 23rd of the month but budget per calendar month. For some reason I can’t cope with the thought of managing the month differently so for now I am going to try and be aware of my final-week-free-for-all and see if that works.
| Item | Monthly Budget | Spend March | % of monthly budget |
| Childcare costs | £ 1,100.00 | £ 1,000.62 | 91 |
| Car (insurance, tax, petrol) | £ 125.00 | 0 | |
| Charity | £ 66.67 | £ 28.38 | 43 |
| Eating out | £ 120.00 | £ 90.16 | 75 |
| Entertainment – subscription | £ 50.00 | £ 118.15 | 236 |
| Entertainment | £ 100.00 | £ 50.80 | 51 |
| Kids – extra curricular | £ 250.00 | 0 | |
| Family | £ 50.00 | 0 | |
| Groceries | £ 400.00 | £ 714.38 | 179 |
| Holidays | £ 300.00 | £ 329.89 | |
| Insurance | £ 200.00 | £ 169.35 | 85 |
| Personal care | £ 30.00 | £ 248.94 | 830 |
| Shopping – general | £ 25.00 | £ 14.89 | 60 |
| Shopping – gifts incl birthdays | £ 58.33 | £ 251.85 | 432 |
| Shopping – clothes | £ 29.17 | 0 | |
| Rent and Bills | £ 1,500.00 | £ 1,771.00 | 118 |
| Transport | £ 41.67 | £ 159.18 | 382 |
| Utilities | £ 200.00 | £ 186.15 | 93 |
| TOTALS | £ 4,645.83 | £ 5,133.74 | 111 |
So how did it go? Better than February, worse than January. I spent £5,133, or 11% over budget. It could have been better, but could have been worse.
- I absolutely beasted my grocery budget AGAIN which is infuriating. I managed to spend 180% of the monthly budget which is ridiculous. I realised I have one particular trap which is the fancy supermarket delivery service (only one place does this in Denmark and it’s way more expensive than my usual Lidl) – that added £200 with no real added value.
- I spent a lot on personal care which I had hardly budgeted for. Thanks to working from home, both my son and I have developed back and neck issues and have to go to physiotherapy. He, lucky chap, gets to go to an osteopath: I get a scary Norwegian man who shouts at me whilst I do horrendous exercises. So I spent a lot more than planned but I do get back 80% from our health insurance company which means that the £250 I spent should actually be in budget when I get refunded.
- My entertainment subscription budget doubled but it included an annual £50 subscription for the Guardian newspaper. Technically I don’t get anything from this other than a sense of supporting Proper News since it’s free to read anyway – maybe I’m prepared to pay before it hides behind a paywall. Anyway, I could stop this cost but I am prepared to keep it for now, at least in solidarity.
| Monthly saving plan | March | % of plan | |
| Mortgage (UK house) | £ 500 | £ 500 | 100 |
| Mortgage Overpayment | £ 500 | £ 500 | 100 |
| Emergency Fund | £ 100 | £ 100 | 100 |
| ISA | £ 1,250 | £ 500 | 40 |
| Kids savings | £ 248 | £ 248 | 100 |
| SIPP | £ 300 | £ 300 | 100 |
| £ 2,898.00 | £ 2,348.00 | 87 |
And what happened with the savings? I reduced my budget on this because I was saving for the house costs – the deposit is all there but the costs like the lawyer, removal men and so on don’t come cheap and I need to be ready. So an additional £2,000 went to that making a total savings of £4,348.
Overall I spent 54% and saved 45% which I am very happy with, even though some of the spending lines took a bit of a kicking.
How has your March been? I’d love to hear from you!
