Mid-month check-in

Hiya everyone! It's been a couple days now since I've posted and seing as it's mid-(late) January, I thought I'd do a mini-post regarding my finances.

I'm finding my £700-a-month budget a lot more reasonable than I imagined. I don't think I'll have any problems sticking to it this month.

Here's where I am standing so far:
I've still got £20 left in my food-fund, which I will probably use up tomorrow. If I do my shopping right, that will last me no problem until the end of the month. I still have several chicken breasts and I think a couple thighs in the freezer, not including tons of bags of rice and such.

The £18.90 in Bills where I went over was a bit of a complicated situation. When the old tennants moved out, they never returned their keys. So I had keys cut for them, and then rather than pay the landlady £412 this month for rent, I paid her £412 minus the £17.90 it cost for the keys. That's why the rent category still has £20 left in it while I'm £20 in the hole for bills.

I also haven't spend any money on transportation yet this month. I actually bought a fully topped up (£90) Oyster Card on Ebay last month (for a cool £65) and have been using that card since then. It's only got about £10 on it, so I will probably have to top it up again soon. I also want to buy a 16-25 Railcard soon, which will cost me £24. I figure I will definitely get my moneys worth in the next year, plus I can get the discount from my Railcard loaded onto my Oystercard, which will save me approximately 1/3 off my off-peak daily capping. Woo hoo!

I also got the hours-owed thing from work sorted out, so I will be expecting another £75 ish on my next paycheque! Yay!

I have also sorted out another section of my budget:

Because I have several groups visiting in both May and July, I had upped my estimated budget to £1500 for those two months. This is to accomodate any travelling, accomodation while away, extra food, etc. I don't know yet if I will spend that much, but, it's nice to budget for it. So, I have added another level to my stats box. This shows me how many months I have left (including spending the extra £1500 for May and July). This is nice, because I know that even if I go crazy over those two months that I'll still make it to mid-September before running out of cash.

This is, of course, assuming I can stick to my £700 a month budget. If I up it to £800 a month, then those numbers dwindle down, leaving me with 10 months (without bonus) or 8.5 with. If I were to stick to my original budget of £1000 a month, that leaves me with just 8 months (without bonus) or 6.75 months (with bonus), which would leave me a bit stranded.

It's nice to keep these things in perspective. There are so many free things I can enjoy in the city, that I shouldn't feel the need to spend money to enjoy myself. The only time I really do spend the cash is on travel, which nowadays (with TFL upping the prices), costs me over £5 to get in and out of London for the day. Ouch.

In the meantime, I'm still working off and on for my work. They have a week in February where I'd be picking up 4 shifts - which is nice. Other than that I may not work again seriously until late July or August - depending. I'd like to continue working with them, and I hope they will want me.

Here's to a good start to 2009!