End of the month offers

Well, not so much offers as temptations, I think.  I have noticed over the last couple of months that around this time, my internet pages are littered with advertisements for "payday weekend" offers in the shops.  It seems that the retailers realise that most of the month, people are being quite careful about s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g every penny but they hope that when the bank accounts are topped up with the wages, they might hope to part us from some of that hard-earned cash with a tempting treat or two!

We aren't falling for it here, and I doubt that you are, too, if you are the kind of person who comes to read my ramblings!

I said yesterday what a spendy month we have had, but every expense has been planned for or seen coming!  When I look back at the month, I have spent a heck of a lot of money [for me] but it has been careful spending, not treat spending and certainly not reacting to some adverts!

For example, the oil purchase was done after careful monitoring.  Monitoring of the usage of the oil in the tank, so that I knew how much we were using each month, and was able to roughly estimate when we would need more.  We don't actually Need more yet, as I would estimate that there is still about eight  months' worth of oil in the tank at summer usage rates, but we are coming towards the autumn and winter when usage will increase, and we have to also keep an eye on the cost of the oil itself.  I'd been tracking the prices, and was confident that the prices were good enough to make the purchase now. They may still drop further, but being of a cautious nature, I was satisfied that they were low enough!

There is no way that I would have just got up one day and said, "Hey, let's order some oil!" the way that the advertisers seem to expect us to say, "Hey, let's spend a grand on a new sofa!"

Planning, tracking, monitoring, saving - some of my favourite words!!  These are the words that are keeping us out of the red and firmly in the black.