Summary
Welcome to our December spending post! Our total spend for the month was £2,454.
Finally, we made it! Sometimes it felt like 2020 would never end, but here we are. For more of a review of the year, see Mr Way’s 2020 Personal Review and our Financial Review too. We’ll also be posting a summary of our total spending throughout 2020 in the coming days.
Our total this month is slightly over our £2,000 target, but that’s down to Christmas and our car insurance renewing. We also paid a deposit for some wedding food. See below for more detail!
We break our main expenses down into broad categories starting with the big 3; housing, food and transport. Everything else falls into the entertainment category, with any large inclusions explained in detail.
| Category | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Housing | £941 | See below |
| Food | £427 | See below |
| Transport | £450 | See below |
| Entertainment/misc | £636 | See below |
| Total | £2,454 |
We break each of these categories down in the following sections, giving detail for any large expenses.
Housing
The housing category consists of our mortgage payment, overpayments, bills, insurance, DIY costs etc.
Our December spending was fairly standard in the housing category.
| Category | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Mortgage | £415 | |
| Overpayment | £335 | |
| Bills | £66 | Gas, electricity & water. |
| Council Tax | £105 | |
| Internet | £20 | |
| Total | £941 |
We continue to be very happy with our energy supplier, Octopus Energy. Our energy is from 100% renewable sources too which is a great bonus. If you are interested, click through this link and you will get £50 and so will we! It can be hard to find a decent energy company but we really do recommend Octopus.
Food
Our December spending on food was £427. As explained previously, this includes everything on our supermarket shop receipts for the month.
This is slightly higher than normal due to Christmas splurges!
Transport
Our December spending on transport is a bit higher than usual. We had to pay the annual insurance renewal. Ouch!
| Category | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Fuel | £34 | |
| Car Insurance | £416 | |
| Total | £450 |
Entertainment/Misc
We spent quite a lot this month on eating out and the final few Christmas presents! We also paid a deposit for wedding food – see the wedding section below for more on that.
| Category | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Phone Bills | £14 | |
| TV License | £13 | |
| Lottery | £8 | |
| Eating Out | £117 | |
| Shelves | £12 | For Mr Way's WFH desk! |
| Presents | £98 | |
| Football Stream | £8 | |
| Wedding Food | £246 | See below |
| Baby Class | £64 | See below |
| Finger Puppets | £9 | See below |
| Cheeky Wipes | £15 | See below |
| Weaning Bibs | £32 | See below |
| Total | £636 |
Running Totals
There are a few big things going on in our lives at the minute. We wanted to add this section to the end of our Monthly Spending posts to keep track of our total spending on both the wedding and Baby Way.
To be honest this is as much for our own interest/records as it is for our readers!
While these aren’t all spending items from this month, we think it’s useful to keep ‘running totals’ for these longer term categories.
Wedding
We made some good progress this month on the wedding. We booked some catering – see below for some info on that. Miss Way has also been exploring wedding dresses. She thinks she’s almost there so look out for some spending next month!
| Category | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 'Save the Date' Cards | £26 | |
| Postage | £22 | |
| Registrar | £100 | Deposit paid. £525 more due before wedding. |
| Photographer | £238 | Deposit paid. More due before wedding depending on package. |
| Band | £100 | Deposit paid. £700 more due before wedding. |
| Wedding Cards | £10 | |
| Wedding Food | £246 | See below |
| Total | £742 |
Wedding Food
Progress! We booked our evening catering – Mexican! We paid the deposit, with the total balance coming to £1,229.
Baby Costs
This month has seen another few small additions to the baby costs table. These are explained below, but overall we’re keeping spending very low. We have £21.05 per week rolling in in child benefit, so that offsets a lot of the cost!
All of our baby-related spending will appear in Entertainment/Misc for now, but we’ll also track it separately here. We’re convinced we can spend significantly less than our peers so it’ll be interesting to see how we get on!
| Category | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Pregnancy Vitamin Tablets | £8 | |
| Antenatal Class | £80 | |
| Cot | £80 | |
| Nappies | £100 | Second hand reusable nappies |
| Pram | £0 | Free!! |
| Baby Book | £9 | |
| Baby Scan Photo | £5 | |
| Baby Bath | £5 | |
| Yoga | £21 | |
| Reusable Post-partum Pads | £25 | |
| Baby Bed Sheets | £30 | |
| Second Hand Baby Sleeping Bags | £20 | |
| Yoga/Birthing Ball | £13 | |
| Second Hand Baby Clothes | £18 | |
| Breastfeeding Cream | £8 | |
| Breastfeeding Bras | £3 | |
| Perineal Ice Packs | £19 | |
| Baby/Mum Vitamins | £53 | |
| Baby Thank You Cards | £26 | |
| Boots | £6 | |
| Baby Related Tablets | £41 | |
| Music Classes | £12 | |
| Birth Certificates | £22 | |
| Baby Carrier | £11 | |
| Baby Clothes | £7 | |
| Baby Book | £11 | |
| Music Classes | £24 | |
| Breastfeeding Cream | £9 | |
| Wean in 15 Book | £7 | |
| Baby Cups | £14 | |
| Sing & Sign Music Class | £80 | |
| Baby Class | £64 | See below |
| Finger Puppets | £9 | See below |
| Cheeky Wipes | £15 | See below |
| Weaning Bibs | £32 | See below |
| Total | £887 |
Baby Class
Miss Way booked another class to attend with Baby Way. It’s the next in the series and ran by a local company.
Finger Puppets
Another Facebook Marketplace purchase. He loves finger puppets! Unfortunately they stank of smoke so we had to wash them a lot of times!
Cheeky Wipes
We’ve been using Cheeky Wipes since birth for nappy changes. This has saved us a huge amount of disposable wipes which is great for the wallet as well as the environment. This time, we’ve purchased a different type of Cheeky Wipes for cleaning up after meal times. We’ve just started the messy process of weaning so they will be used very heavily!
If you like the look of any of their products, follow this link for 15% off your first order!
Weaning Bibs
These bibs seem pretty cool and should save us a load of cleaning up. It’s amazing how much mess a baby can make with a small amount of food!
That’s All for Now, Folks!
See you in 2021! We’ll also be posting a summary of all of our 2020 spending in the coming days.
Previous Posts
Monthly Spending – November 2020