the belle lumiere

It’s that time again! Pay week, and time to budget my finances. I took some positive steps last week to get my personal finances in check (including consolidation of a few accounts/loans/credit cards) so I am waiting for those changes to appear on my online banking before I really organise my strict budget for the upcoming months. I am feeling really positive about the changes I’m making and next week (when everything has been set up properly) I will be cutting up 2 credit cards! Yay! I have done away with the idea of having seperate allowances for clothing/beauty/entertainment etc and just have the one “shopping allowance” to last me the fortnight. So the tally is now as follows…

Total Repayments Made – $1495.00
Other bills for this fortnight – $381.83
Savings: $150.00
Shopping Allowance: $87.78

Shopping tally is down already because I purchased some things online last night… I am so quick to spend! Having said that though, it was a calculated purchase, and I am still very much in the clear for money this fortnight, so I don’t feel bad about shopping. How is everyone else going with their saving??

I was reading through Saving Diva’s blog and it got me thinking. I am really not the best with money. I may have good intentions, but somehow I get easily distracted and my best laid plans tend to fall through. I was considering investing in a second property next year (all of my own) but I don’t know how much of a reality that would be. We have a mortgage, credit card bills and life in general is expensive. But I still want to test out my ability to save. So I am going to make myself accountable, and post a tally of my savings as I go. I will have a general savings tally, a repayments tally (for payments made against mortgage/credit cards etc) and funds for life, clothes and beauty. I would really love it if you guys would participate too! You can keep track on your own blogs, and we can support and motivate each other as we go. Hopefully some of you are better at this than I am!