Summary
Welcome to our March spending post! Our total spend for the month was £2,677.
Not as high as February, but another month above our ideal spending level! As we continue to settle back into UK life, we’re finding various things we want to buy to improve our quality of life. Most of these can be found in the Entertainment/misc section below!
It’s frustrating, but we really want to kit ourselves out with good quality ‘stuff’ which lasts, so we can fully enjoy our new life back in the UK. We expect our spending to settle down very soon and hopefully find a level below £2,000.
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 | £634 | See below |
| Food | £652 | See below |
| Transport | £198 | See below |
| Entertainment/misc | £1,193 | See below |
| Total | £2,677 |
We break each of these categories down in the following sections, giving detail for any large expenses.
Housing
Our March spending on housing is fairly standard, with some minor spending on DIY plus the usual bils.
| Category | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Gas & Electric | £150 | See below |
| Water | £70 | |
| Council Tax | £250 | |
| Internet | £27 | See below |
| DIY | £137 | |
| Total | £634 |
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.
In fact, we recently emailed them with a query and got a response resolving it within 3 minutes!!
Food
Our March spending on food was £652. This includes everything on our supermarket shop receipts for the month.
This is a bit higher than usual, so we’ll work on reducing it!
Transport
Our March spending on transport was quite normal, with not much to report.
| Category | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Fuel | £150 | |
| Bus | £26 | |
| Train Tickets | £22 | |
| Total | £198 |
Entertainment/Misc
Our March spending on misc items is inflated by a few additional purchases.
We spent a lot eating out because we had a weekend away. We also bought a cot (second hand) for the new baby, a new speaker and a new toothbrush. Quite a spendy month by our standards!
Mr Way’s annual tennis club membership was also due in March.
| Category | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Phone Bills | £12 | |
| Eating Out | £286 | |
| Presents | £31 | |
| Hair Cut | £16 | |
| Lamp | £15 | |
| Camping | £20 | |
| Cot | £140 | |
| Activities | £54 | |
| Clothes | £116 | |
| Wall Canvas | £51 | |
| Baskets | £30 | |
| Fire Pit Accessories | £37 | |
| Tennis Membership | £140 | |
| Speaker | £154 | |
| Toothbrush | £70 | |
| Travel Insurance | £21 | |
| Total | £1,193 |
That’s All for Now, Folks!
We’re looking to reduce our spending in pretty much every area as we settle down to life back in the UK. It will be interesting to see how low we can get our costs! We’re buying our house mortgage free, so we thankfully won’t have to worry about the astronomical interest rates.
Considering the average UK household spend is £2,700 we’re aiming to get down significantly below that level – probably more like £1,500-1,750.
See you next month!
Previous Posts
Monthly Spending – February 2024