When thinking about getting a dog there are more financial factors to come into play than you might think. Having taken the (somewhat mad) decision to bring a puppy into our home nine months ago, I have been amazed at the ways my money seems to fritter away on his behalf. When I was thinking …

It’s a sad fact that the recession is causing the number of pets abandoned to shelters in the UK to significantly rise. As more people face unemployment, under employment, and struggle to meet their bills, unfortunately pets increasingly bear the brunt of hard times, either by being dropped off at …

This month I am undergoing a self-imposed shopping ban. This means, while I am still allowed to spend money on going out, food and regular household expenditure, I am not buying clothes, shoes, cosmetics or… well, anything really until the 24th of the month, when it will be exactly one month since I stopped shopping.

I …

Menu planning is one of the simplest and cost-effective ways to manage your grocery budget and ensure your family eats a tasty and balanced diet. It helps to minimise food wastage, save time on trips to the supermarket, and lets you avoid takeaway guilt when you haven’t found the time or energy to organise dinner.

Getting back to basics with …

On Saturday I completed Tenner Week – successfully! My spending for the week came in at a grand total of £9.16, which was two coffees in the park while walking the dog, and the rest was spent in the supermarket getting ingredients for a cake that I was baking.

I’m totally chuffed that I managed to win this challenge, I …

I have now been following my new ‘get organised’ schedule for two weeks. When I began this process I gave my default stress level as a seven out of ten – quite high, I think you would agree; and it would regularly top out to around seventy out of ten when I was particularly busy. Well, after getting …

This morning I had the pleasure of forking out £140 for our carpet to be cleaned.* I don’t live in a rambling five bedroom house, mind, I live in a two bedroom garden flat that has carpet in the living room only. So, I paid £140 to have one room’s worth of carpet cleaned. Sting!

Unfortunately, it was unavoidable. The living …

This week I am taking part in Tenner Week, of Penny Golightly fame. The rules of Tenner Week are deceptively simple: just survive on £10 for seven days. Is it possible? I’m not entirely sure I’ve ever survived on that little since I arrived in London flat broke many years ago, and getting by meant living off …

So after I had my lists of things to do, and could see what was and was not a priority for my life and career, it was time to juggle it all into a schedule.

Doing this was a lot like the time I wrote my very first budget. As with money in minus money out in a financial budget; …

It turns out that writing the list of things I need to achieve on a daily, weekly and monthly basis was more complex than it originally seemed. First I had to think carefully about what I spend my time doing now on a daily basis in painful honesty. That included things I am embarrassed to admit, like …