The Challenges #1 December 2013

I held off on posting this at first, as I didn’t want to publicly set myself a challenge I couldn’t stick to! I have decided that I will begin each month by setting myself a challenge, which can cover any aspect of my life, and do little updates on here. It might be a good way to set myself in the routine of new habits, or just prove to myself that I can stick at something for the month.
December’s challenge is a toughie: NO spending on toiletries or cosmetics. Anyone that knows me knows I have a huge collection of these things, far more than I could ever be using in one go. My mum moans about it all the time… until she needs to borrow something, that is!
Although I don’t waste all my money on these things, and I do budget and have money to save at the end of every month, it can never hurt to save a little more. I thought that, in the months where I was finishing Christmas shopping, it might be a good idea to reduce spending on myself. And so December’s challenge was born. 16 days in and I’m finally blogging about it, because I think I’ll actually stick to it. In fact, because I’m steering clear of certain shops (the temptation!), I’m just spending less all round.
I’ve got to admit, a beauty advent calendar has helped out the challenge a little, as I’m getting little treats every morning, but it’s still not made me not want to add other things! In the lead-up to Christmas every brand seems to have such incredible offers running, and when you add in tempting launches, like the Naked 3 palette, it’s not the easiest month to have chosen.
When the month is up, I will be very happy to add a couple of bits to my collection that I have had my eye on, but it’s given me the chance to really think about what I want and when I’ll use it. Hopefully, my spending will become a bit more measured and my savings can start to build up more quickly. With both Andy and me now working full time, getting back into a place of our own is the priority into the New Year, so it’s nice to know exactly what I’m saving for.
Have you ever tried a spending ban? How did it go?
Sophie x

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Writing fiction as a way to move forwards.

Image
Last week I shared a bit about the writing course that led to me writing my short story, Aftershock. Today I thought I'd share a bit about what it was about, and the process of writing it. I had planned to write it slowly, leaving myself lots of editing time and really making use of the month or so we were given. In fact, I wrote most of it in one sitting, on a single afternoon when I most definitely should have been doing other things. The words just kept coming and I didn't want to cut them off. I based my story on something that had actually happened to me, as one of the things recommended on the course was that it could be easier to get inside a character or situation if it was something you knew and understood. I share a lot on this blog and I'm incredibly open about my journey with anxiety and depression, but one of the big things I haven't spoken about was something that happened to me in October 2016, when I was living and working in London. It h...
Read more

The Reading List #7

Image
The weekend seemed to fly by and I didn’t get around to finishing my reading list post, so here it is now. I’m still going through my period of pulling lots of books off shelves that I haven’t read yet, so the wide mixture of books continues… The Sea, John Banville I read two Banville novels at university and was more than impressed, so was excited to find this gem on my parents’ bookshelf. In ‘The Sea’, art historian Max returns to a place he holidayed as a child, following a personal loss. The novels flits between two periods of his life - the then and the now - leading to themes of childhood discoveries, maturing, and loss. The time periods almost blend into one another, yet there is something distinctly separate about them too, so it is not confusing. It reads almost like poetry, and is utterly beautiful. Any literature fans, or fans of superb writing and narrative, need to give it a go. A Small Part of Me, Noelle Harrison Christina’s mother, Greta,...
Read more

The Reading List # 5

Image
Weekends are the perfect time to catch up on reading, so here’s the latest instalment of things I’ve been reading recently. Fatherland, Robert Harris It is 1964, and Hitler is nearing his 75 th birthday, having been victorious in the Second World War. Detective March finds a naked dead man in a lake, and this begins to unravel a huge conspiracy. The premise of this book was so interesting, and it certainly delivered. There is enough fact weaved in to make the events believable, and the atmosphere and architecture of this 1960s Germany is conjured up well. The book is realistic in that there is still plenty of discontent in the country, so it was a rounded picture, and then in amongst it all was a gripping detective story. This is well worth a try. Revenge Wears Prada, Lauren Weisberger Ten years after The Devil Wears Prada ended, Andy is co-running her own successful wedding magazine. Her life has changed a lot, and is the usual rollercoaster of emotio...
Read more