Everything I Spent In January – Honest Money Journal

It’s been a while since I last did a money journal, and I’ve never actually done one on my blog. But I know I’m always interested in seeing what people spend so I thought why not. As Luke gets paid weekly we give ourselves a weekly allocation of money. And we can do with what we like with it. This is separate from any savings we do as a couple such as our emergency fund, Christmas, etc.

If you want to be nosy and see my money journal for January and what I spent money on then just scroll down.

Items I’ve bought from saved money

We save money every week towards Christmas and every month towards birthday’s across the year. The reasoning behind this is so we have the money set aside for these events, but also if we spot great gifts as we go we can buy them. Due to the January sales and other general sales, I spent just over £250 on gifts to keep. Some came from our joint savings and some came from my personal savings.

But there are some gifts for my parents upcoming birthdays and Mother’s Day. Some bits for Luke’s birthday for March, and yes a few bits for Christmas because why not?! One place I picked up a few great-priced items from was OOOOO. I’m going to do a whole post on the app later this week, but I managed to get a few perfumes and sets for £20-25 after price drops and vouchers. And these are things that are £50-80 through other retailers.

End spend = £255.98

My own savings

Each month I put £75 into a stocks and shares ISA so that came out of my money. It doesn’t seem like much and I do want to up it soon, but it’s a good start. I also do two savings challenges within my Monzo app. I put £1 a day away into an investment pot which I also top up through additional money. In a few month’s time when I have a good starting pot, I want to buy some shares in something like the FTSE100 (or similar) and just see how they do over the long term. So this savings was £31 over the whole month.

I’m also doing the 1p challenge so for this month’s money journal I only put aside just over £5, but that’s going to gradually grow over the year to result in some good savings.

End spend = £111.27

Money journal- Things I’ve bought for the house

I do buy odd things for the house with my own money as at the end of the day it’s just easier sometimes. And Luke buys some from his money as well. Over January I spent just under £75 which included some storage boxes for the house, some little top-up foodie bits on a trip to Asda and one to Tesco, postage for some cards, and a donation. With our food spend we have a joint food account which covers our big weekly shop on Ocado, but some weeks I like to go out and get some treats like fresh bread or a sweet treat. Not because we need it, but because there’s little else bringing us joy at the moment.

End spend= £74.43

My own frivolous spending

Skincare

Now for the most ‘me’ part of this money journal, the things I bought specifically for myself. Now I’ll start with the biggest section which unsurprisingly was skincare items totalling just over £140. It’s the thing that makes me the happiest and there were plenty of new bits (and good deals in there), I hate paying full price for anything. I picked up an origins face mask and by terry lip scrub in the sales. Then I grabbed a Fenty skincare set when it was on offer in Boots, and a Huda Beauty palette from OOOOO at just £20 (full price £56!)

I finally decided to pick up some facial dermaplainers to get rid of my peach fuzz and I am obsessed. And I grabbed the Starface pimple patches when they dropped in Superdrug. The final skincare spend was an impulse buy but I’m so glad I did it and it was the Caroline Hirons Winter kit. Now I decided to get this with Clearpay so the cost is spread over 4 payments of around £48 so it felt like less of a big spend. But there are some pricey products in there I’ve wanted to get for ages and as it was my birthday this month I treated myself.

Clothing items

Now even though we’re not going out much I spent about £80 on clothing items. I picked up a new set of joggers as I’m wearing them a lot at home, along with a few more sports tops as I’m working out a lot more at home now and it means I don’t have to frantically wash clothing as I’ve not got anything to wear for the next morning.

I’d also had my dressing gown for way over a year now so I picked up a new towelling one on Amazon. It was nothing extravagant but it does exactly what I need it to do and it’s big and snuggly.

Misc spending

Most of the things I spend on sit in the skincare, clothing, or home category generally. So there was just a small amount of misc spending for me of just over £50. This included a birthday treat order from Punky Pins as I love their enamel pins, some dried palm spears for a display in our living room, a desktop riser stand for my office to keep things looking neat, and some packaging that I’ve been using for my eBay selling.

End Spend= £276.73

Concluding my January money journal

Looking back at my spending for the month I have mixed feelings. I did spend more than I would have liked in a single month, but I know over £250 of it was Christmas and Birthday presents to put aside from money I already had saved. So taking that off I am reasonably happy with my spending. I could certainly have done more investing/ saving with my personal money, but all of the things I bought were either needed or brought me joy.

Total spend in January= £607.14

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