Monday 31 December 2012

End of the month financial round-up

(image from keepers.info)


This has been an expensive month, which isn't unexpected, given that it has been Christmas, but the expenses have reflected other things beyond the festive celebrations.

  • The chicken food bill was nearly doubled as I had to order enough to see them through to the middle of January.  
  • The grocery figure is quite high as we have had guests for the holidays on quite a few days and have had some different foods which we have enjoyed over the season, but which we don't have all the time.
  • My particular/special food budget has been stretched whilst I made the most of a special offer on some seed bars, which were on offer for a limited time.  
  • The household pot has been stretched by buying a four year supply of washing machine cleaner in an attempt to minimise damage to the machinery by our hard water in this area.  
  • The "other" bit of my budget has also had a dent in it, due to me finally getting round to acquiring some photo frames for some photos of the YFG at her recent gym competitions [she is now up on the wall and looking splendid, so money well spent], posting parcels to friends and relatives at Christmas, paying for the ROSSPA delivery, and having a bulb replaced in my car by Halfords.
  • We invested in the logs from my friend's son...
On a more positive note, though:
  • I used less than one third of the fuel [diesel/petrol] budget.
  • The "activities" pot was hardly dented as there were no payments to make, and piano finished early.
  • We are doing well health-wise and little has been spent on medications.
  • I have discovered that Tesco's ink is OK in the printer, and so I can buy their cartridges at £9 instead of full-price HP versions.
  • Most significantly, I have been entering our electricity meter readings every Monday for a couple of months, and when I went to the website today to enter today's reading, I was delighted to find a message from Scottish Power, saying that our DD will be reduced to £56 a month, leaving an extra £20 a month in our pockets.  Given that at the beginning of the year, we were paying £114 a month to Utility Warehouse, I am thrilled to have halved our electricity bill this year!  We don't seem to be using significantly less, but I think Scottish Power have more reasonable rates.
My 2013 household management folder is all ready for the year to begin tomorrow, and I am hoping to do as well as I have done this year, and maybe even better!  I know that there are areas of spending on which I could improve, but there are things we all do which are peculiar to us and make life worth living.  We each need to decide on our own priorities.  


6 comments:

Mrs. Mac said...

Great job overall .. especially cutting the electricity bill in half!

Bryallen said...

Great job on halving your bill! :)

How economical are chickens? I would love some one day!

menopausalrunninggirl said...

Super post- we use the big pet supermarket behind Tesco (Hostmoor Ave)- we paid £7 ish/20kg of layers pellets. Don't know if that helps with the chooks?
I am very envious of you elec bill!
Happy New Year!

Morgan said...

@Frantic - thanks for that. I haven't been there, although I have tried one in Wisbech. We are paying just about £7 a bag, by getting it delivered direct from Bearts to a lady in the village and then we pick up from her. We do a bulk order between about 5 of us twice a month. It is easier for me to do it that way as I have three bags of pellets and two of corn a month, and my little car would struggle with all of that!

DeliveringGrace said...

Happy New Year!

Thank you for the tip about Tesco printer cartridges-must try them.

Lesley said...

Well done with the electricity bill. I need to make it one of my resolutions to track ours a bit better. I hope that the back is feeling better. Happy New Year!