January 2015: A Month In Review

Well, January is over! What a month it has been with many ups and downs, but we’re through the other side. We’ve had very mixed weather, with bits of snow in the last week so it has felt a bit like we’ve been hibernating; staying in on an cold evening when we’re cosy and warm is what winter is all about. We have had some expenses in January, such as our car insurance and we’ve bought some new furniture for our bedroom, but overall I think January has been very good to us.

 

January marks the eighth month of blogging and I love it; it feels like this is almost like a journal for me to mark our process along the way. I like reading financial blogs and I’m also enjoying the process of coming up with blog posts and then writing and posting them. I have lots of ideas and posts to do so I’m sticking around for now! I love reading comments that people take time to leave and they often conjure up other thoughts to do with how people manage their money. I now have 382 followers on Twitter and I have had 22,194 views on the blog at the time of writing this post. Thank you if you follow me on Twitter and read my blog – it really does mean a lot to me!

 

Our Financial aims for January were:

– Have 20 No Spend Days (or NSDs)

– Overpay our mortgage by the interest added on only

– Put £700 into savings

 

Another month where I’ve hit my NSD target; I have managed bang on at 20 NSDs. Like I said, January has been good and staying within our budget has been a part of that. I find that January is an easier month for hitting my NSD aim and this year has been no exception to that. The interest added to the mortgage for January was £294.87 so that’s what we overpaid this month. And lastly, mainly due to reigning in our spending and hitting our NSD target, we’ve managed to put £915.47 into savings, which is absolutely fantastic. Most of our savings this year are going to go towards a “new to us” car so we’re well on the way to our target for that.

 

My Personal Aims for January were:

– bake something

– eat healthily 

– go on two walks with my husband

 

Perhaps I need to stop making personal aims, as they never seem to go as well as my financial ones! I haven’t managed to bake anything this month, that’s how rubbish I am. I don’t even have any kind of excuse as to why I haven’t baked anything, I just haven’t! My eating has been fairly healthy during January, as I’ve tried harder to eat more fruit during the day and avoid chocolate which seems to be working most of the time. And then last, we’ve been on one walk during the month which was lovely (yet cold!) but makes me wonder why we haven’t done any more. So personal aims have been a bit hit and miss for January.

 

How was your January? Have you hit your aims? I would love to hear about it!

 

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