In two weeks, I’ve spent about £180. That doesn’t include any of the one off annual costs I make, or things like rent and bills. That’s just what has come out of my wallet over the period of a fortnight. It’s about what I expected to be honest – there have been some big costs (a couple of pieces of clothing, which I don’t buy very often), but a lot of it is basic stuff like food and socialising.
So how does it break down?
Well, about £50 of it was food (not including eating out), and this is actually slightly less than I expected. I’ve been cooked for a few times over the last couple of weeks, and started it off with a few things already in the fridge. A good chunk of it was on “socialising” – going to the pub, buying a bottle of wine when going round to someone’s house, purchasing gig tickets. This comes in third under food (and clothes, thanks to buying a new pair of jeans) as the largest expenditure.
What surprised me most was the food and drink in cafes section. £16 in two weeks. Now, about a quarter of that was buying lunch a few times at work after I didn’t have anything to take from home. However, that is still higher than I expected. Although, ironically, I would say that writing this book is partly to blame, as most of the times that I’ve been in a cafe over the last couple of weeks has been in order to write. I’ve found from past experience of writing and working from home for a job that I just don’t work well at home, and I’m much more productive if I’m out of the house. And bizarrely, I find busy, noisy cafes to be the best place to go. So this has a certain impact on my finances, as I tend to buy at least one, and usually two drinks during the time that I’m there. However I’m not feeling too guilty about this as I tend to favour my favourite cafe – a local cooperatively run vegan cafe – where I’m more than happy to spend my money and support.
Another interesting way to look at the my fortnights expenditure is in terms of local or independent businesses versus chains/multinationals. The breakdown is £100 to chains, £80 to local businesses. This is slightly skewed by the £40 of clothes all having come from chain stores, but all my eating out and cafe expenditure was to local businesses.
What is interesting is that whilst I made as many trips to local food shops as I did to supermarkets over the last two weeks, I spent more than twice as much at supermarkets as I did at the local shops, reflecting the fact that I tend to favour supermarkets for major shops, and use my local shops to pick up the odd item I need here and there.
It also inspired me to sit down and do an annual budget, looking at all those costs that I make once a month or year, and work them all out on a weekly basis. And that really is surprising.
Top of the list is bills. And that’s mostly due to rent, which is a fairly significant cost. So for the time being, I’m going to exclude that from the category and give it a whole category for itself.
What surprised me was that travel is top. This includes my annual car costs, petrol, train and coach, and bike maintenance. It is a little difficult to tell, as because I use my car a lot for work, I get money back from expenses. So taking this into account, travel slips into second place behind entertainment (but above food!), so I’m still pretty surprised by how much of my budget is taken up by it. And what surprised me most is the size of my annual car costs. Excluding petrol, my insurance, tax, mot, servicing and breakdown cover comes in just under £22 a week. Suddenly car sharing seems a lot more appealing. Equally surprising is that other costs come in at £15 – so that’s bike maintenance (very small cost), coach and train tickets. This is a mix of train tickets heading round the country to see friends, train tickets when I go home to see my family, and coach tickets to go to London. I tend to favour the coach when going to London due to the price, but otherwise stick with the train due to the comfort and time improvements over long distances. And while I might only go away once or twice a month, the cost of this really adds up...
What also shocked me also is that entertainment is above food. I put eating out under food rather than entertainment, but decided cafes came under entertainment (as I usually only drink there, rather than eat food). The combined cost of gigs, pub trips, cups of coffee, film processing, cinema trips and other things all added up to more than I thought.
In fact, lets break it down by percentage (after taking out work related travel for which I get expenses)...
Food – 13.2%
Bills – 4.8%
Rent – 28.7%
Toiletries and household items – 2.8%
Clothes & shoes – 3.8%
Transport – 13.7%
Holidays – 4.4%
Entertainment – 15.7%
Other – 12.2% (of which significant costs are Gym - 2.44%, Present – 1.74%, Furniture/electrical goods – 2.54%)
So now, I know where I'm currently at, I'd better get started on making some changes...
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