First half of 2011 spending breakdown

Posted by louisa on Thursday 30 June 2011 in frugal, low spend 11, personal finance | 6 comments

After the one I made for my June spending at lunchtime, I’m in a graph making mood so I’ve made one to show (myself) where my money has gone in the first half of 2011.

Here’s said graph:

And here’s the details in a table:

(** Takeout food and restaurant bills; my share of all bills or the total bill if I paid for everyone.)

Inspired by Shoestring Alley, I started tracking my spending at the start of the year and decided to record everything I spent “frivolously” – ie. not core bills or to-be-eaten/prepared-at-home food, but everything else. I wanted to start doing it to make me more conscious of my spending habits – to see where the money goes and to know that if I buy something silly/completely frivolous then I still have to hold myself accountable over it. A tool to help me reduce spending & consumption across the board.

It’s really worked – I’ve spent far less money on random things than I ever have done before. I’m actually really surprised how low “books” is as back when I was working full time, I could easily spend that on books each month and I got my money’s worth out of my book buying even then. (Disclaimer: most of the work-related stuff is books too, but books I wouldn’t ever buy or read if I didn’t need them – I would NOT be reading Shakespeare if I had a choice in it! ;) )

Apparently it takes just over two months to form a new habit and I think in the last six months, I have formed a habit of being conscious of my spending and not giving into temptation/the desire to buy things. Over the last month in particular, I’ve not spent a lot (by my previous standards) of frivolous money but I’ve not in any well felt hard done by, which is good, because that could lead to binge spending. There is still room to easily cut down – on lazy/convenience food, on pretty household stuff (related to us still settling in/decorating our house), and on craft supplies – but aside from food & travel costs, I’m pretty ok with it.

Do you track your spending? Do you find it motivating or restrictive?

February – end of month review

Posted by louisa on Monday 28 February 2011 in chickens, frugal, goals, growing, less than 12 clothes challenge, making, meta | 9 comments

February seems to have flown by and has been a lot of fun — a good balance between work, household/growing/making productivity, crafting, and future planning.

Goals in 2011 progress

I’ve started making progress on some of the more long term goals – started sowing seeds which will hopefully turn into homegrown veg and again, I’ve made things with wood which will help with my “make a piece of furniture” goal. I haven’t baked each week but I’ve tried a few new recipes – including some lovely cinnamon biscotti – so at least I’m doing bits. (We’ve not been baking much bread recently because it’s still a bit too cold for yeast to rise properly.)

From my secondary list, I’ve also tried making soap, although I’m not sure it’s been a success yet (the soap in the moulds is still very soft). I also made a notebook (above) from scrap paper and a curtain sample, which wasn’t on my list but I had so much fun doing it that I think “learn different book binding techniques” should be on there now! Finally, we’ve been working to reduce our food waste (and save money/our sanity) by preparing meal plans – we’re not sticking to them 100% but they’re working well in general.

Buy less than 12 items of clothing in 2011

In my no more than 12 items of clothes in 2011 challenge, my tally is still zero — I’ve not bought anything this month either. I have though started looking at stuff rather than just shutting myself off from the possibilities – partly because I need to develop willpower rather than just avoiding temptation and partly because I feel like it’s time I had something new to wear (I’ve not bought any clothes since November – and that was only replacement jeans). It’s when I’m getting ready to go to drama – the classes I teach or rehearsals etc – because my suitable clothes are such a subset of my wardrobe — they not only have to be neat enough to wear outside the house, they can’t be too cleavage-y (which is a problem with a lot of my clothes because my body is too cleavage-y!) and they have to be suitable for wearing as a supposedly-responsible adult in front of teenagers. I have plenty of plain t-shirts to wear but a limited amount of warm clothes so I’ve been getting a bit bored – and as we’re preparing for a production at the start of April, I’ll be there a lot more regularly which will mean cycling through them more. So long story short, I might break into my quota in March.

Growing stuff & the chickens

January – end of month review

Posted by louisa on Monday 31 January 2011 in goals, less than 12 clothes challenge, meta | 13 comments

Just a quick post reviewing my progress on my various goals/spending, and about tracking other stuff that I may or may not have mentioned.

(I mentioned this on Twitter – I’d had this bunting for a while and John surprised me by putting it up in our dining room. Pretty!)

Goals in 2011 progress

I haven’t really achieved any of my goals for 2011 yet – early days, early cold days. I think we’ve baked something every week so far though and I’ve also started tracking of usage of more consumables (FYI – but possibly TMI too – it takes us 6 days to use a toilet roll), so that’s a start. I also built some things from wood for the garden, which will help me with my piece-of-furniture making goal.

Buy less than 12 items of clothing in 2011

I haven’t bought clothes this month so my tally for the year is still at zero. (More info about the challenge…)

I did look at stuff in the sales online at the start of the year but wasn’t persuaded by anything. And last week, I went into a few shops that sell clothes amongst other things (mostly charity shops) – but I put my blinkers on and went straight for the other stuff – homeware things – instead of looking at clothes. It’s quite a poor area so the vast majority of the clothes are cheap makes – I don’t mind buying some of my items from charity shops but I want to avoid poor quality clothes wherever they are sold.

Growing stuff & the chickens

Since it’s still chilly winter, not much is happening on the growing front. I sowed some winter gem lettuce near the start of the month and they’re still tiny, but getting bigger by the day. We also had some fruit trees delivered – six apples and two pears – and John’s planted those out now. I also bought two blackcurrant bushes – I feel like we’re making good progress in the perennial fruit situation now.

The chickens have enjoyed the factionally longer days and the mostly warmer weather – and the two black rocks both started laying mid-month. Lime is still moulting and Buff is still refusing to give up the goods, but we’ve had a solid five eggs a day from the other five nearly every day for the last fortnight. We’ve had 109 eggs in total for January – not bad going since it was just one or two a day at the start of the month! (Also, in late breaking news, some of the chickens are currently grounded – I let them out to play again yesterday and someone, Ginger I think, led the parade into the wooded bit of our garden – it took me about half an hour to catch them all again!)

’12 in 11′ Clothes challenge update

Posted by louisa on Monday 10 January 2011 in anti-consumerism, frugal, less than 12 clothes challenge, low spend 11 | 9 comments

So last week I announced my personal clothing challenge for 2011: buy no more than 12 items of clothing across the year.

Since then, a number of most excellent people have said they’ll join in the fun:

• Taphophile
• Lyns
• Alice (I think…)
• Deb/Urbanwide
• Aunty Rubbish
• digitigrade
• SBlove_crafts
• Jan
• UPDATE: Colleen
• UPDATE: Joris
• UPDATE: Maria
• UPDATE: Mel

A few other people have said they’re doing/will do something similar:

• Su is trying WW2-style rationing – she has an allowance of ration coupons which can be spent on different things throughout the year. The “social history of the Second World War” nut in me loves this idea!
• bookstorebabe can’t commit to the full challenge but will consciously recording all her purchases throughout the year, which I think is very useful in making consumption changes
• damigeron has said he’ll be more conscious about it, if he remembers to be ;)

It’s great to see so many people up for a bit of a challenge in 2011! I can’t wait to see how it goes!

(Apologies if I’ve missed anyone out! Do let me know and I’ll add you to the list!)