Simple Pound

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I’m shocked when I look at today’s date and have to realise that the last month just flew by and that I didn’t have the time to post a single thing - despite having an enormous list of things I want to post about. In any case, my time in New York is drawing to a close now and once I’m back at home more regular updates to the site should commence.

Luckily I was still diligent enough to keep tracking my expenses over the last month and thus you will get at least a proper end of the month update. My only stated goal in terms of a budget was to undercut my expenses from July. I knew that trying to set myself an actual budget would simply not work out. This is my first time in NYC and I don’t know when I’ll get the chance to come back, hence there were plenty and plenty of things I wanted to do and see (and spend) before returning to the UK.

So, have I achieved this only goal I set myself? Well… it depends . August brought many one-off expenses that are connected to finally finding a flat in London, paying the deposit and starting to buy certain items of equipment necessary when moving into my first flat.

Instead of the duvets I spent a lot of money on last month, this month’s main expense in terms of “consumer durables” was a desktop PC that set me back £450 - which in itself is only half of the actual cost. But since I’m going to be living with my boyfriend (who is also hosting this site in case you wanted to know ) I fortunately don’t have to pay all of these unavoidable expenses myself. Next month’s big thing is going to be a new TV, so I’m already preparing myself for another reduction in net worth…

The good news is I only spent about half as much money on eating out, cabs/public transport and clothes. Only 10% of last month’s sum was spent on gifts (July pretty much covered it for a while…) and only 25% on cosmetics.

Unfortunately - and a little to my surprise - I spent about £30 more on coffee, snacks and quick lunches. This happened despite me brown-bagging my lunch more often than last month, but looking through the receipts it’s pretty obvious whom I can blame for that increase: Starbucks Old habits…

I nevertheless put away 15% of my salary for savings (check out the progress page…) which was mainly because I finalised the paperwork for my Icesave savings account and had to transfer an initial minimum balance of £250.

The worst news of today’s review is the fact that I am now carrying an outstanding balance of roughly £100 on one of my credit cards. If you are a regular reader, you won’t be surprised to find that this is due to my “slight” overspend in clothes last month. While I could pay off this balance fairly easily, I also need to keep my funds as liquid as possible for my return to the UK in order to be able to make all the necessary purchases that come with a new flat.

My coin jar savings amount to $15.67 this month or £8.04 at the current exchange rate. This sum has been fairly steady compared to July, and is fairly high compared to the UK mainly due to the fact that no one ever seems to use coins to actually pay for stuff in this country…

What does the last month do to my net worth then? Well, it decreased it by 2% . And that is despite the fact that I’ve added a piece of art and some rare books towards my net worth calculations. Contrary to popular belief I haven’t done that to make up for my spending habits, but I wasn’t actually aware of their value beforehand. I got both the art and the books from my family over the years (occasions like my 18th birthday, graduation and my 21st birthday) and hence couldn’t really ask “Sooo… how much is this worth then?”. But since I will need contents insurance for all possessions held in the flat I had a legitimate reason for asking and can now pin down their actual value.

Adam has also updated me on his progress (without me asking for it and with a bit of a snide tone to make me aware of my lack of site updates!) and we can see a steady progress in his debt elimination attempt which resulted in a 10% drop. At least one of us did well this month then

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