Search

May Accomplishments So Far and Goals

 Accomplishments
1. Finish quilt project
2. Get hair, nails, eyebrows and eyelashes done
3. Put some money into savings account

Goals
1.Double savings account
2. Pay off credit card (small balance)
3. Start second quilt ( and hopefully finish it)
4. Continue to study for college course
5. Try to get up earlier in week. Change the curtains to rise with sun.

May has been an odd month so far.
The weather has been all over the place, and for me I'm particularly excited because it's my birthday at the end of the month and I am going to watch SPICE GIRLS. They are my childhood heroes.

So we've entered the may month a little financially frustrated, me and J have both been spending time doing our own thing and started some hobbies, I say "we" I really mean me. The bank holidays have left us a little cash strapped as J doesn't get paid if he takes a holiday, couple that with a savings goal and spending on the "house account" for our hobbies and we have been really strapped for cash. However, J has just come into a windfall which will allow me to bank some money normally spent on personal spends for him and we can get back to growing that nest egg.

The hobby I have taken up is QUILTING, it started from my friend wanting help making a quilt for her partner for his birthday. It was star wars themed and wasn't really a quilt but more like an appliqued set of star wars characters on a massive duvet cover. We didn't know what we were doing, I had sewn before but my friend hadn't and to be honest I reckon I led the project, even though it wasn't mine to begin with, but I really enjoyed it. I had it all planned in my head what we should do next and it took us around 14 hours. The last day, we were doing it on the DAY OF his birthday. 

IT TOOK 7 HOURS.
What an organised mess it was, I think I lost a few pins in the duvet so I'm glad they aren't using it to sleep on.

So obviously I was mesmerized, sewing has to be one of the only times that I just get tunnel vision. Whenever I want to learn a new skill I do three things.

1.Research- watch endless amount of YouTube videos to learn it
2.Gather tools
3.Chuck myself in
4. Aim to finish project

Number 4 doesn't happen UNLESS I absolutely adore the skill I have learnt, I have finished a few sewing projects before back when I was self teaching but if I don't have the fabric or the pattern I won't start, and sewing shops are few and far between now so you can't really stumble across a sewing shop unless you go looking for it.
It has taken me three weeks from getting the material to binding, all in all I think that is pretty good going for my first ever quilt.

While I've been quilting J has been on the PS. Not quite as expensive as my hobby but he wanted a new game at the same time that I wanted batting, backing fabric and coordinating thread, so we decided to treat ourselves and pay for it out of house account. Instead of out of out personal individual accounts, it was the wrong thing to do, If I had not shimmied away some money into the savings account we would have been able to do all our bills, so I had to transfer it back. I blame myself for underestimating our spending last month, and overestimating how much we could save.

I know getting your hair done might not be a massive accomplishment to most people but, I really needed to put myself first for a change, and I used my spending money to do just that. All together for Gel nails, eyebrows waxed and tinted, eyelashes tinted and hair cutting and coloring it cost £94. Which I think considering I got 4 places covered, eyes, brows, nails and hair, with 5 treatments works out at just under £19 per treatment.

So for the rest of the month, hopefully I would like to get the savings account to around the £600-750 mark, the top end of the spectrum will make me a lot happier, I'd like to pay for my credit card that has a small balance, so I can use it for spice girls with my best friend on 31st. I'll be paying my CC off with the personal spends I get every week. J will also be paying his off with his windfall, so the money we allocated to that out of the joint account will be spared up to go into savings. Indirectly he's contributed to the savings by not having a bill to the house account (Credit card) and not taking his personal spends every week. So this will make the savings account swell over the next few months for Credit card spends, and just in weeks for personal spends, as he takes £100-200 every week for petrol and spending money.

So far it's going good!




No comments

I love it when you leave comments, leave a blog post link or your twitter and I'll always message you to tell you I've replied.