Welcome to Money Diaries, where we're tackling what might be the last taboo facing modern working women: money. We're asking a cross-section of women how they spend their hard-earned money during a seven-day period – and we're tracking every last penny.
This week: "I moved to Nottingham three days before Christmas (just to make things as stressful as possible) with my 7-year-old daughter, to live with my girlfriend. After struggling financially throughout my daughter's life and racking up credit card debt when I just couldn't make ends meet, I'm now in a much more comfortable position where I can start paying it back and start saving."
Industry: Nursing
Age: 31
Location: Nottingham
Salary: £23,023 wages plus £20.80 per week child benefit
Paycheque amount: Around £1,500 all in
Number of housemates: Two: girlfriend and daughter
Monthly Expenses
Housing costs: My girlfriend (GF) pays the mortgage as it's her house. When I'm in a better position and have cleared my debt, we'll buy a place together.
Loan payments: £200 to my credit card plus anything else I can put towards it at the end of the month. My student loan repayment comes out of my pay before tax, it's around £45.
Utilities: GF pays for gas and electric as she makes more than me. I pay for food and school fees.
Transportation: We take it in turns to fill the car up, my share is £50 a month. I spend about £30 on buses.
Phone bill: £10
Savings? About £120 into my pension, pre-tax. £50 into a LISA, £40 into an instant access savings account for any unforeseen bills. Once I've finished paying off my credit card I'll put that £200 into my LISA as well. I only got a pension aged 29 so I'm quite worried about saving for retirement. I squirrel away little bits into various "pots" so that when school uniform, holiday clubs, etc need paying for it's not too much of a stretch.
Other: £250 for all our food, cleaning products and household bits and pieces. £20 to charity. £54 for one-to-one swimming lessons for small girl (SG). £870 for school fees. SG was recently diagnosed as autistic and was really struggling in her last school. We made the decision to send her to a private school with much smaller class sizes as she struggles with crowds and lots of noise. It's a huge stretch financially but so far she's settling in well, so I'm happy.
Day One
6.30am: My alarm goes off and I'm up straightaway to make a cup of tea and wake up for 15 minutes until GF and SG are up. I help SG get ready, whip her up a toast brekkie to eat in the car and then GF drives me to work and SG to school.
7.45am: I have another cuppa in the office and check my emails before patients start arriving.
1pm: It's been a busy morning so I'm really ready for my lunch of chicken and lentil salad that I hastily chucked together last night. I always bring lunch with me, partly because it's cheaper and partly because we only get half an hour so if I actually went somewhere to order food I wouldn't have any time to sit and eat it.
4.30pm: A lovely patient brought a big box of biscuits in for us. I've been really craving sugar in the afternoons so I started taking Nakd bars to work as a healthier way of getting that sugar rush. I eat a cocoa orange bar and feel slightly smug that I haven't succumbed to the biccies.
4.45pm: I eat six biscuits. I decide to still feel smug because it's wholly preferable to feeling failure-y.
6.15pm: I realise when I get on the bus that I've left my headphones at home so I can't listen to a podcast. I can't read on the bus because it makes me feel sick, however I choose to ignore this longstanding truth and attempt to finish off an article I saved earlier. I instantly regret this and resign myself to staring queasily out of the window instead. I prepay my bus pass so this journey is basically free.
7pm: I get home in time for bedtime cuddles with SG, have a quick shower and make a nutritious fish finger sandwich each for GF and me. My regular yoga class (okay, I've been once but I'm planning to make it regular) has been cancelled, which is annoying but on the plus side saves me £7. I'm by far the least flexible or strong one there but I enjoyed it last week so I definitely want to go again.
8pm: I spend some time listing items on eBay. I've always bought and sold on eBay, whenever SG has the audacity to grow I tend to flog her old wardrobe to fund her new one. It means I can afford to buy the things I love while giving pre-loved clothes a new lease of life AND not contributing to landfill. Everyone's a winner! I used to put everything up for auction but after listening to a podcast by a couple who make a full-time living from eBay selling, I now put everything on with a buy it now price and forget about it. Everything sells eventually, and usually quicker than I'd have thought, so I'm sticking to this method. I've just Kondo-ed GF's wardrobe (and yes, she is eternally grateful), so I'm mainly selling her things at the moment. I've got vague plans to trawl the charity shops for amazing things to resell but realistically don't know when I'd find the time.
10pm: GF and I watch some Kimmy Schmidt on Netflix, then head to bed.
Total: £0
Day Two
6.30am: Up again. I didn't sleep well last night so I make a coffee in my travel cup to take to work with me, as well as my usual morning cuppa before everyone else wakes up. SG sleepily says she wants to go back to bed and I'm like "PREACH" as I turf her out. I feel guilty that she has to get up early so we can get me to work and her to school but there's just no other way. We eat brekkie in the car again and they drop me off. Notice it's getting lighter in the mornings and feel happy.
9.30am: I take advantage of a quiet moment at work to order a loo roll delivery, £25.20. I've been subscribed to a recycled loo roll company, they send a massive box of 48 rolls every three months or so; they're okay but I'm not keen on how every single roll is individually wrapped in paper, recycled or not. I came across a new one on Instagram which is cheaper and unwrapped, so I'm giving that a go. I find all of this fascinating, and that definitely makes me very cool and not at all boring. I've never worked out how much 12 weeks' worth of loo roll from the supermarket costs, I suspect it's cheaper but I'm generally willing to pay more for the eco-friendly choice.
2pm: Lunch is another chicken salad and a slice of GF's banging banana bread. I top up my bus pass online. £20
3.30pm: I put £2 in towards a colleague's birthday present and sign her card. We're a small team and everyone gets a really lovely gift so it doesn't start to feel overwhelming like it can in a bigger place.
6pm: GF and SG pick me up from work so I spend half an hour in traffic with my favourite people, as opposed to an hour on the bus with strangers. Plus no bus fare! Winning.
8pm: I check eBay and see that five items have sold, coming to £26.95 in total. The only problem with selling on eBay is having to resist the urge to browse for things I don't need.
Total: £47.20
Day Three
6.30am: Verrrry reluctantly tear myself from my bed and stick a pod in the coffee machine. Yep, pod. Instantly destroys all my eco credentials, doesn't it. In my defence, GF bought it before she met me but I do use it, so, yeah. We send the pods back to be refilled but I'm not sure that makes it okay. I check my bank account and see that SG's school fees have come out. Feel slightly sick. £870
12.30pm: Lunch is a slightly uninspiring cheese and ham sandwich. My go-to mindless scrolling up until recently would be Amazon and eBay but I'm really trying not to spend needlessly. Interestingly, I'm finding it easier to avoid now that I'm not constantly stressing about money. I mindlessly scroll Instagram instead.
6pm: GF and SG pick me up again. We get home to find a milk and egg delivery on the step. There's a farm nearby which does raw milk and free range eggs so we get a delivery every week. It doesn't cost much more than from the supermarket, I'm supporting a local business and I'm slightly obsessed with my microbiome, so I love that the milk is antibiotic-free and unpasteurised. £5.25
7.30pm: SG is in bed and GF is out with a friend so I have a rare evening to myself. I make excellent use of it by binge-watching How to Live Mortgage Free with Sarah Beeny. Feel half inspired, half envious of the people featured. Maybe I should live on a boat?
Total: £875.25
Day Four
7am: I'm not working today so I get a half-hour lie-in, which I really needed. Enjoy a cuppa before I wake SG up. She's benefited from the later wake-up as well and is less reluctant to get out of bed.
8.56am: The traffic is horrendous and we are spectacularly late. SG is entirely unruffled but I'm flustered and babbling at the politely disapproving receptionists I drop her off with.
9.20am: Finally home, put dressing gown on over clothes rather than put the heating on when it's only me here, because old habits die hard. Package up those eBay parcels to take to the post office later, and give all my buyers positive feedback. Plough through quite a bit of life admin and feel v productive.
12.30pm: Scrounge a quick lunch from what's left in the fridge. I'll do The Big Shop tomorrow, so we're running low on a few things but thanks to meal planning we've got enough. I only go food shopping once a week, both to cut down on that thing where you go in for a loaf of bread and come out with a full trolley of impulse buys, and to cut down on my own stress. Supermarkets aren't my fave place to be. After lunch I spend a very satisfying hour and a half sorting through some boxes in the conservatory that have been there since we moved in.
2pm: I drive to the post office to send the eBay packages. £11.37
3.40pm: Pick SG up from school. I have to hand her a snack immediately because nobody needs a hangry 7 year old. We keep a supply of Nakd bars in the car for this purpose. We stop off at Small Food Bakery on the way home for some fancy schmancy local, organic, hand-churned butter. It's too expensive for a regular purchase but every now and then I treat myself because holy organic cow, it's good. £5.50
4.15pm: Pop to the hairdressers round the corner from our house to get SG's hair trimmed. She's super cute and chatty, and keeps the hairdresser entertained the whole way through. £8.50
5pm: SG does some homework while I prepare her dinner and order our fruit and veg boxes for the next week. £25
7pm: GF is out again this evening so I spend some more quality time with Sarah Beeny. I listened to a podcast earlier with Paulette Perhach and loved her, so I end up buying her book on Amazon. I'm terrible for buying more books in a week than I can get through in a year but this is the first one all month so I'm okay with it. £11.77
Total: £62.14
Day Five
8.30am: I drop SG off at school (does it ever get easier to watch your tiny child get swallowed up in the sea of other children in the playground?).
9am: Stop off at our local vet and pick up flea and worm treatments for the cat. Reflect on my glamorous lifestyle while pinning him between my knees and putting the liquid stuff on the back of his neck. He looks at me with pure hatred in his eyes. £15.98
11am: I check my bank account (I do this most days so I can keep a handle on everything that goes out) and see that my charity donations have been paid. £10 each to two different charities.
11.30am: I go to Lidl to do the bulk of our food shopping and then to Tesco for some extra bits such as GF's oat milk. Spend £55.42 in total.
4pm: SG reminds me that it's payday, ie. her pocket money day. I'm trying to teach her financial literacy so when I give her pocket money, I help her separate it into three different money boxes: one to spend, one to save and one to donate. She is saving for something at the moment so most goes into her save box but she puts away a little towards a magazine that she buys every month and a little to her donate box. When it's full she'll donate it to WWF, as she's particularly concerned about polar bears and sea turtles at the moment. I'm hoping that by instilling good habits now she might avoid the mistakes I've made in the past with credit card debt. £3.50
8pm: It's date night! GF and I leave SG asleep and the babysitter in front of Netflix and head to a local tapas restaurant we've had our eye on for a while. The portions are massive and the food is amazing. GF pays for dinner and I pay the babysitter. £20
Total: £114.90
Day Six
7am: I have my cuppa and come around a bit, then wake up GF and SG who both put jumpers on over their pyjamas and we all pile in the car to take me to work.
1pm: I couldn't be bothered to prepare lunch last night so I pop to the café and pick up an egg sandwich and some yoghurt-covered banana chips. £6
4pm: GF and SG pick me up and tell me about their day on the way home. I hate spending a day of SG's weekend at work but at least I get to spend the afternoon with her. We read Pippi Longstocking and then SG and GF make salmon and vegetable spring rolls for dinner.
7pm: GF and I catch up on Catastrophe before bed (a typically rock 'n' roll Saturday night for us – how times have changed).
Total: £6
Day Seven
10am: After a leisurely breakfast SG and I head to Specsavers for our eye tests. She's fine but my vision has deteriorated since last time so I choose two pairs of new face furniture. Along with my eye test it costs £70.
12pm: Time for SG's swimming lesson. She's just started having one-to-one lessons after group sessions didn't work out. She's quite easily distracted and while she was having a lot of fun, she wasn't actually learning anything. She's doing loads better in the one-to-one lessons (and still has fun). Afterwards I pay for another four-week block. £54
1pm: I spend the afternoon pottering around the garden and clearing the shed. I'm getting excited about it being growing weather soon and the garden is a bit of a blank canvas for me to play with.
5pm: GF has made a roast so we eat and then read with SG, before she has an early night so she's ready for school tomorrow.
10pm: GF and I head to bed to read for a while. I'm back at work tomorrow so it's early to sleep.
Total: £124
The Breakdown
Food/Drink: £97.17
Entertainment: £31.77
Clothes/Beauty: £0
Travel: £20
Other: £1,080.55
Total: £1,229.49
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