January in review...

Well, even though it's a couple of days before the end of the month, I have a couple things that have affected my decision to do my end-of-the-month tallies today!

First of all, it's my birthday tomorrow! (Whee!), and as such.... I won't be blogging. Well, that's a lie. I might be blogging since I have no plans for my birthday since no one here in London is aware that it's my birthday, and I'm not about to go blabbing it to everyone in the hopes that they will buy me something. Heh. Plus, I'll be at work most of the day. I might buy a cupcake or something fancy for dinner - who knows. I'll be turning the big 2-4! Whooo.

Second of all, I'll be leaving first thing Saturday for the Netherlands! I've got some friends there and I'll be spending until the 9th visiting Leiden, Amsterdam and the Netherlands. I'm really looking forward to getting out and seeing a different city. Now, I still love London, but after a while, all these old English buildings look the same! The Netherlands is a very different-looking city, and I am looking forward to that. 

In the meantime, it's been an alright month. I stuck (just barely) within my new, tighter, £700 budget. I am reasonably proud as this is the cheapest month I've had whilst in London - and I enjoyed myself, too. Now given that I spend 1 week looking for roommates and several other days working, but I had several days in London where the only money I spent was getting too and from the capital. I will definitely use this as a lesson for future months. 

So, onto the actual stats!

So, as you can see, I'm just barely £1.58 inside my budget. I'm pleased with the numbers - I never really felt 'deprived', and still managed to buy a couple things for myself this month. Now, of course, it helps that my aunt sent me £20 as a birthday gift, which helped to buy a new camera bag. *grin*. My mom also sent me $125, which I will put towards paying the plane ticket (which I will count under February) - and possibly buy me a birthday cupcake tomorrow. 

And here's a quick glance at my stats. If all goes well, I will still be able to make it to September on my current savings. I'm very very pleased with this, especially as now most of the people that are visiting me are doing so in the spring - so by mid-July, I'll be job hunting again and should have at least a month or two buffer. 

Of course... winning the lottery would always help.... heh. 

So that's January. Nothing too exciting. I spent all day today cleaning and doing laundry, since tomorrow I'll be at work and Saturday I've got to be up at the ungodly hour of 4-something to get to Heathrow by 6 a.m. Blah. But, I've never flown such a short distance before and it'll be exciting. It's also nice that my friends are comming to the Amsterdam airport to pick me up and therefore have relieved me of having to do any thinking of my own. 

I've got some more ideas kicking around the back of my head regarding blog posts so stay tuned!