Monthly money wins, June 2019

It has been a while since I have done a post summarising my monthly money wins. Because I just had a bit of a rubbish week financially, as I explained in last week’s round up, I thought it would make me feel better to have a look at things that have gone well. Here are my money wins for June.

Income spreadsheet

I discovered a very interesting lady recently on You Tube called Emma Reseller. Because I have just started eBay reselling, I am taking inspiration and advice everywhere I can.

I discovered that she shares her spreadsheet for income and expenditure online. It totally suits me as a way to organise my finances and is working well. You can check it out her vlog about it here.

Come January, I am confident I will be able to fill in my tax return without too much pain!

Saving money in the garden

Everything in the garden can’t entirely be classed as a monthly money win. For example, when we planted some of our seeds, the ‘indelible pen’ we were using to label the trays washed off! This lead to the pumpkins and courgettes being muddled up. As a result we have loads of (GIANT) pumpkins and very few courgettes.

There are only so many pumpkins we can eat. However. I plan to sell them to the neighbours come Halloween!

On the whole, our fruit and veg growing efforts are doing well and set to save us a fair few quid. We are already eating home grown chard, salad leaves, herbs and raspberries. We have the promise of cucumbers, tomatoes, beetroots, carrots, sprouts, peppers and even the odd courgette to come (we planted more!).

We also have plenty of flowers grown from seed this year. They are expensive in the garden centre!!

Getting cash back

I continue to accumulate money in my Top Cashback and, to a lesser extent, my Quidco accounts*. Not sure why I use Quidco less – they still have some interesting offers.

Just this month I have earned money back on eBay purchases, the fridge freezer we were forced to buy, on a dress I found in the sales for a party, Moonpig cards and gift vouchers (June is a big month for birthdays in this family).

I never understand why people don’t use cashback sites when they buy stuff online. It only takes a few minutes and is free money.

(* These are both my recommend a friend codes, which means I earn a small amount if you sign up and start using them. However, my recommendation is genuine. They are great!)

Buying stock

As I am trying to get a part time eBay reselling business off the ground, I have been searching around for the cheapest places to buy good quality stock.

Car boot sales are by far the best places to pick up bargains so I am hitting as many as I can whilst the season is upon us. I love the thrill of the chase! However, I don’t particularly love getting up super early…

Holiday money saving

We began our expensive month with two trips. One to France and the other to London.

Obviously, going away means spending money. However, all the money saving we do for the rest of the year pays for our trips!

At least I know that when we do go we save money on the small stuff. Our frugal habits mean taking drinks and food out with us, self catering rather than having lots of meals out, and using sites such as Buy a Gift to get some of the deals that allow us to go away in the first place.

The small, frugal actions really do start to add up to big savings very quickly.

Slimming World meal planning

I always do a weekly meal plan as I find this saves a lot of money, prevents food waste and saves time too.

Meal planning comes into its own when you are trying to lose weight as well.

Having the ingredients to make lots of healthy, low calorie dinners, as well as allowing for a few snacks and treats that fit within the plan, make it much easier to lose weight steadily. You can check out a couple of my meal plans here and here.

Buying local

I am always mentioning my frustration at how hard it is to reduce plastic and packaging generally in the supermarket. Well, this month I rediscovered a great little farm shop. I used it years ago, but my full time job meant I was always at work when it was open.

It has improved and expanded, selling a bigger range of vegetables in no packaging, delicious looking cakes (I avoided those), their own free range eggs and meat too. The latter was in a small amount of plastic but is produced on the farm so has zero food miles.

On top of all that, the prices are amazing. Cheaper than the supermarket!

It is heartening to know that despite it being the kind of period where you see the cash speeding out of the bank account, we did have some money wins.

How has June been for you? Share your monthly money wins in the comments below!

This post contains affiliate and refer a friend links.