Here is a round up of the small and the large achievements in my financial journey this month. I am trying to save money where I can, as well as to make extra. So here are this month’s money wins.
No Spend January
I have found my no spend January surprisingly easy. I didn’t feel the need to buy anything! It helps to have a goal, and I am motivated to put any extra money into my savings. I am desperate for a holiday to France this year, plus I need to start a car fund. My old girl may not last that much longer!
I have been putting off one expense though, and that is a new car tyre. Now that January is over, I will be getting that sorted straight away. Other than that, I don’t plan to go crazy and spend all the money I managed to save on my no spend month.
Did I have any no spend fails? Just one. I took some bags of items to donate to the charity shop and spotted a really thick Jack Wills hoody for a fiver. This is something I really wanted as I only have one hoody to my name, so I caved and bought it. I am glad I did as this morning I woke up to snow – I need lots of layers to keep warm. We also had a cup of tea at the hospital, as I said in one of my week Five Frugal Things posts. Not bad for an entire month though!
Zero Waste Shop
This is only one of my money wins in a roundabout sort of way, but it should save money. I am over the moon that Colchester now has a zero waste bulk shop. A proper one with big casks of cleaning products so that I can refill my own bottles, alternatives to plastic items such as a loofah scourer and a range of shampoo bars. They also have loose food items such as potatoes, pasta, pulses, cereals, rice and herbs and spices.
An Ethical Life hopes to expand quickly and offer more products soon so I will be supporting them and I hope others do too. Refilling should save me money on the Ecover products I currently buy. I make a lot of my own eco-friendly cleaners too, but handily this shop also allows refills of white vinegar, a key ingredient. Annoyingly, Asda has started selling their white vinegar in plastic instead of glass bottles so I will take my old glass bottles and refill them.
Selling my old stuff
I thought January would be a quiet month as far as selling on eBay went and it was. However, I made the time to list all of the things I had lying around and sold some of them more or less straight away. I made £108 from my old stuff. Not a fortune, but better than a poke in the eye!
Making a bit extra from the blog
I am a long way from making my blog my full time job (though I would LOVE that!) but I do manage the odd bit of affiliate income and some sponsored posts. This month I have made £450, which is a great start to the year. This has gone into the car fund. I intend to keep this up every month and try to improve on it as much as I can in my spare time. It is hard to make my side hustles pay working full time hours and running a house . I would love to work fewer hours as an employee and be partly self employed. Maybe this year will bring more opportunities to do this.
What have your money wins been this January? Let me know in the comments below.
I hope the new year brings you better health! I actually had a big spend January – but for a good reason. I have been living abroad for many years, and I finally got up-to-date on all my voluntary National Insurance contributions. I will make that money back many times over when I retire and can draw a full pension!
Wow! Well done!
Alas I spent money hand over fist in January. February is shaping up to be my serious no spend month. I’m stocked up on food, I have meal plans and am ready to get serious!
May main task for January – which I need to get a wiggle on to complete – is to get any initial PPI claims underway – I know I paid it on some of my earlier financial transactions so I have relevant pages and guidance open and I plan to do that tonight.
I am really excited about the zero waste shop but can’t find the address, then I can visit after the snow.
Hi Chris. They are in Eld Lane, near Boots and above Just Essentials. Open 10-5 I believe
Also should have said they are called an Ethical Life and you can find them on Instagram and Facebook
Thanks for that I’ll pop in next time I go to my daughter
My household and grocery budget has been as low as I can remember ever spending-and I feel like I have a lot of food stocks heading into February. We did have two weekends away though, which accounts for a lot of the savings, and we ate out a couple times, but still, I’ve had travel months, eating out months, and a mammoth food bill, so this is my big win.
My spending was over due to a birthday meal for my partner. Maybe I need to budget for these celebrations as it’s not as if I don’t know they are coming around.
I have spent about half of what I normally would on groceries in January and I should be able to do even better in February now that I’m a bit more confident about being able to find alternatives to running out to the grocery store.
I have also kept my transit costs to $45 by staying home and combining errands strategically (we have a 2hr window where we can get off and on transit options to shop, g to appointments etc. so I plan trips carefully).
As far as discretionary spending its concerned I bought myself one cup of coffee and one cheap pub lunch and that is it.
Wow, that’s good going!
It’s great to see that so many people are getting on a bandwagon that we can all approve of – that is reducing our impact on the planet! I’m interested to see what you are able to make with your affiliate links. In trying to ‘up’ your income, would you put some readers off if the blog was overrun with adverts? I suppose the links are more subtle as you can choose to click on a word or two or just completely ignore it. As you can tell, I don’t know much about how it all works!
Hope your neck is continuing to improve. Vicki
I try to be a bit careful. Some bloggers stuff every post with links or make most of them sponsored. I hate that! I only endorse things I would actually use myself
I don’t know whether this would suit you, Jane, or if it would even be possible, but when my granddaughter was born I was desperate to be able to help out with looking after her, and in turn reduce childcare costs for her parent. I negotiated with my employer to reduce my hours from 37.5 (5 days) to 35.5 but worked over 4 days. The difference in monetary terms too big, and I got a day to look after my granddaughter. This would give you a day to concentrate on getting your self employment off the ground. Maybe it’s worth looking into.
Sadly they won’t allow that. Currently exploring voluntary redundancy though. Then I could look at a different job
I meant say “the difference is monetary terms WASN’T too big”. Sorry, it can’t have made much sense. It’s a shame they won’t consider it. I told my boss that he’d have as much work out of me and a happier member of staff!
I wish I had a zero waste shop like that near where I live! I think it would be really interesting to see how much you can save by using this kind of shop. Do you think you can write a post about it? I think it would be useful. Also, is there a list of zero waste shops like that on Internet?
Yes there is a list of you google it as I found one. Not sure it’s comprehensive though: https://pebblemag.com/magazine/doing/plastic-free-shopping-13-of-the-uks-best-zero-waste-stores
Thanks Jane, this is very useful!