Getting our budget back on track after a busy month….

The last month has been a bit of a whirlwind for us and, if I’m completely honest, our usual budget has pretty much gone out of the window. We started Summer with all the usual good intentions around meal planning, being organised and keeping an eye on what we were spending, but then life happened and quite a few of those good intentions disappeared along the way.

And actually, we’re completely OK with that. I think sometimes life is too short to worry about sticking rigidly to a budget when there are memories to be made and things you really want to do. A budget is there to help us make good choices with our money, not to stop us enjoying it, and we’ve definitely enjoyed the last few weeks.

Now that the busiest part of our Summer is out of the way it feels like a good time to get back to normal. Not because we regret what we’ve spent, but because we don’t want a month of spending differently to turn into our new normal. 😁

Our meal planning definitely didn’t go to plan

I’m usually pretty good at meal planning because it saves us money and means we don’t have to think about what we’re having for tea every single day. But a meal plan only really saves money if you actually follow it, and we haven’t been particularly good at that lately.

There have been days where I’ve had a perfectly good meal planned and then decided to go to the beach because the weather was lovely. We could have stayed home and cooked what we’d planned, but where’s the fun in that? By the time we got home, we wanted something quick and easy instead, so the meal we’d planned was abandoned for another day.

We’ve also had some ridiculously hot days where the last thing either of us wanted was whatever we’d planned for tea. Again, we changed our plans and bought something else instead. Neither of those things feels like a big expense on its own, but do it often enough and the food budget inevitably starts creeping up.

Picky bits have made a very regular appearance

Picky bits have been a frequent visitor to our meal plan over the last few weeks because they’re perfect when it’s hot and we don’t particularly want a proper meal. The problem is that picky bits are never as cheap as we think they’re going to be.

A nice salad, a few different meats, some cheese, nice bread, dips, crisps, fruit and whatever else catches our eye soon adds up. We can easily spend more on a picky tea than we would have spent making the meal that was originally on the plan, especially when we wander around the supermarket adding things because they look nice.

We’ve enjoyed every single picky tea we’ve had, so I’m not regretting those either. I just think we’ve probably had enough of them for a while and our food budget will be quite pleased to see the back of them. 😂

We’ve deliberately spent more on having fun

We’ve deliberately tried to make the most of summer after the start to the year we had, which has meant doing more fun things, having more days out and generally saying yes more often than we normally would. We even booked a last-minute extra holiday, which definitely wasn’t part of our original plans.

We knew that doing more would mean spending more and we made that choice anyway. I’m a big believer in being sensible with money, but an even bigger believer in actually enjoying it. Life is too short to always say no to something you can afford and really want to do just because it wasn’t written into the budget at the start of the month.

That’s the whole point of being intentional with money for us. Sometimes the intentional decision is to save it, sometimes it’s to spend it, and sometimes it’s to completely blow the budget because the experience is worth more to us than sticking to a number.

Now we’re ready for a reset

Bit now we’re home and ready for life to get back to normal for a while. 

We’ll have a look through the cupboards and freezer before we go shopping this week, get back into proper meal planning and hopefully start making meals that actually fit around our plans rather than choosing things that we’re likely to abandon when something better comes along.

We also want to get back into the habit of thinking before we spend rather than automatically going for the easiest option. Convenience has won a lot over the last month, and while that’s been absolutely fine for a little while, we don’t want it to become an expensive habit that carries on without us really noticing.

There’s a big difference to us between deliberately spending more because we’re having fun and wasting money simply because we haven’t planned very well. We’re completely happy with the first one. It’s the second one that we want to get back under control.

This definitely isn’t a spending ban

We’re not coming home and starting a no-spend month or setting ourselves loads of strict rules around spending but we are going back to being more intentional with our money. We’ll meal plan, use what we already have, eat at home more often and try to make sure that when we do spend extra, it’s because we’ve chosen to and it’s something that’s worth it to us.

There will still be treats, meals out and fun things because that’s what we enjoy spending our money on. The aim isn’t to spend as little as humanly possible; it’s to make sure our everyday spending doesn’t quietly creep up just because we’ve got used to saying yes to everything.

We’ve had a brilliant month, we’ve spent more than we’d planned and we’re absolutely fine with that. Now we’re ready to get back to normal, rein in the everyday spending a little bit and hopefully see significantly fewer picky bits on the meal plan for a while. 😂

I’d love you to follow me on Twitter and it would be amazing to see you over on my Facebook page and on Instagram. If you’re interested, you can find out more about me here and while I’ve got your attention, if you’re wondering why some of my posts lately are a little bit less frugal then have a read of this post. 😉

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