Time to lay out my spending for the holidays.
Gifts still to buy: £10 on my Mum's pressie
Everyone else is sorted
Travel: Petrol should be covered by my Sainsburys vouchers. I am expecting to spend about £80 on petrol for the trips to collect S, plus about £20 on a tank fillup afterwards.
Food: All the shopping is done/ordered for the actual meals at home. I'm budgeting £30 for the meals we'll need to eat on the road, including drinks. I could try to economise here and bring sandwiches or whatever, but that's offset by the need to keep energy levels and body temp high on what is a very tiring drive. (The drive down on the evening of the 23rd will be the worst in this regard: I won't be able to keep drinking coffee, because as soon as I get there I'll have to go to bed so as to be up at 5am the next morning. So I'll have to keep myself awake with nuts and chocolate.)
Accommodation: Travelodge cost £19.
Entertainment: This largely depends on the weather. If the weather is fine, then we will likely go for several walks, which obviously costs nothing. If rainy, we may go to the cinema on the Saturday. I'm going to budget £30 for entertainment costs. We will probably spend most of the days watching DVDs, walking, or playing games at home, anyway.
So that's a total budget of £89 for the whole week - well, actually for the rest of the year. I shan't be doing anything for new year, so I don't need to budget for that.
I do have another minor spend due, which is to pick up a few more Xmas decorations, since the existing ones are rather tired. Gonna nip to B&Q on my way home for that, as they have some really nice ones at fair prices. I promised S that I would wait to put up the tree until he comes on Xmas Eve, but I do want to put a few things up... otherwise it doesn't seem very festive :)
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A good start with the Amazon sales this month: I'm 8 books/DVDs down and £26 up. I've also found a solution for my comics sales: I've installed ZenCart, which is a free shopping cart software, to my web server, and registered a domain name. I've started putting my catalogue online, and then the plan is to drive traffic there through a variety of advertising strategies, primarily free. Later today I'll be making an investment in some software resources which will enable me to push my creating pay up a notch. This latter is especially timely as I have a new colleague starting tomorrow, enabling me to actually go home on time every day, hurray!
I am currently debating how much to pay off my loan this next month. We get paid next Monday (22nd Dec) but then it's a long stretch until January's pay - 5.5 weeks. The thing is, I want to make the payment on the 22nd Jan (payday) - I won't be able to get to the bank until the 29th, otherwise. I've got the bit between my teeth now and I want to start making payments asap!
Gifts still to buy: £10 on my Mum's pressie
Everyone else is sorted
Travel: Petrol should be covered by my Sainsburys vouchers. I am expecting to spend about £80 on petrol for the trips to collect S, plus about £20 on a tank fillup afterwards.
Food: All the shopping is done/ordered for the actual meals at home. I'm budgeting £30 for the meals we'll need to eat on the road, including drinks. I could try to economise here and bring sandwiches or whatever, but that's offset by the need to keep energy levels and body temp high on what is a very tiring drive. (The drive down on the evening of the 23rd will be the worst in this regard: I won't be able to keep drinking coffee, because as soon as I get there I'll have to go to bed so as to be up at 5am the next morning. So I'll have to keep myself awake with nuts and chocolate.)
Accommodation: Travelodge cost £19.
Entertainment: This largely depends on the weather. If the weather is fine, then we will likely go for several walks, which obviously costs nothing. If rainy, we may go to the cinema on the Saturday. I'm going to budget £30 for entertainment costs. We will probably spend most of the days watching DVDs, walking, or playing games at home, anyway.
So that's a total budget of £89 for the whole week - well, actually for the rest of the year. I shan't be doing anything for new year, so I don't need to budget for that.
I do have another minor spend due, which is to pick up a few more Xmas decorations, since the existing ones are rather tired. Gonna nip to B&Q on my way home for that, as they have some really nice ones at fair prices. I promised S that I would wait to put up the tree until he comes on Xmas Eve, but I do want to put a few things up... otherwise it doesn't seem very festive :)
*
A good start with the Amazon sales this month: I'm 8 books/DVDs down and £26 up. I've also found a solution for my comics sales: I've installed ZenCart, which is a free shopping cart software, to my web server, and registered a domain name. I've started putting my catalogue online, and then the plan is to drive traffic there through a variety of advertising strategies, primarily free. Later today I'll be making an investment in some software resources which will enable me to push my creating pay up a notch. This latter is especially timely as I have a new colleague starting tomorrow, enabling me to actually go home on time every day, hurray!
I am currently debating how much to pay off my loan this next month. We get paid next Monday (22nd Dec) but then it's a long stretch until January's pay - 5.5 weeks. The thing is, I want to make the payment on the 22nd Jan (payday) - I won't be able to get to the bank until the 29th, otherwise. I've got the bit between my teeth now and I want to start making payments asap!
Image credit: sxc.hu
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