In 2013 I used Blogger to document a 'year in the life' of our family's financial habits and spending. This blog was called 'Into the postbox' which I purged in 2016 as part of a digital declutter session. I regret this deeply, as it was a reflection on a huge project I maintained for well over a year and really paved the way to explain habits I adopt today. The content covered a 'new years challenge' I set myself to reduce to amount of money we were spending primarily on groceries and food shopping. Sadly, with the archive gone, the only real physical evidence I have left of this now, is the spreadsheet of finances and thumbnail photograph of all the receipts - as seen below. The practical side of this however has never left me, as I still maintain this challenge and have done every year since its first pilot run.
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| 2013 - A years grocery & Misc spending receipts. |
The journey towards actively challenging spending habits is one that I am very passionate about and I will revisit this once more, this time without erasing it from history.
So let me introduce myself.
I am 40 something years old.. and I live in the UK with my husband. We have three children together. Our eldest daughter is living away studying at University, and our two younger children are in primary and secondary school. I have studied Sociology and Social Policy with the Open University, and historically volunteered with The Citizens Advice Bureau. I have always had an interest in finance since I was young enough to start counting money, and as I grew up - understanding how all encompassing money was to everyone. Not only for survival, but for the push and pull of consumerism, identity, social status and freedom.
I don't consider myself to have an overly impressive 'Moneysaving CV' so I am not going to pad this part by saying how excellent I am with personal finance.. partly because the reason I want to share my story online is to really highlight the difficulties and interesting parts of my journey with you all to experience.
My personal values and beliefs (when it comes to spending and saving money) often cause inner conflicts and double standards, and I am hoping that by writing about this, I will be able to justify the decisions that I make and reassure others that they are not alone.
I have a road map planned out for things to come and I have a ton of content to cover, and I am very excited to get started. So with this brief introduction done. Check back for my next post which is coming soon.
Love and luck,
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