I’ve been piddling around for ages thinking about reigning in my spending so now its time to start doing something.  For starters, I have been through my November bank statement (being my last full month of ‘standard’ expenditure) and made a note of where all the money went.  This will now be a sort of benchmark upon which I will look to improve.  Looking at the list there are two very obvious areas to tackle – my rental property and my cash spending.  I’ve already made a commitment to tackle the rental property this month but I must also keep a better track on my cash spending – at least so I know where its all going!

I think it is easy, when trying (and usually failing!) to get a grip on spending to get a bit down on yourself about it.  After all, no matter how well things are going it is always possible to do better.  Because no-one talks about money it is easy to think that most everyone has the same sort of attitude to money and is doing the same sort of things.  However, just occasionally there will be a piece in the news or I will read something that reminds me that other people have very different attitudes to money.

Mr W has been reading The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick in which there is a section about how the apps within Facebook make almost as much money as Facebook itself:-

“Transactions inside applications make even more revenue.  Justin Smith of Inside Facebook estimates there were $300 million in such transactions in 2009.  Much of this is spent to buy an upgrade to a more advanced level of a game, or to buy virtual goods, like a fancier shoe to kick your friend in Kickmania.  Playfish’s Pet Society game, where users set up houses to display their pets, releases new virtual items every Monday.  On Valentine’s Day in 2009 the company sold five million images of roses that players could give to their friends .  Each one cost about two dollars.  In Zygna’s Texas Hold ‘Em, players who want more chips than they are allocated each day pay real money to get them, even though there is no way to remove winnings from Facebook.  Numerous Facebook games have revenue exceeding £3 million a month.”

Am I the only one who thinks this is insanity – to spend money on imaginary fancy footwear with which to better virtually kick someone with!?

I read a lot of blogs, including a lot of personal finance blogs.  One of the things that I am always impressed by is the discipine shown by many bloggers when managing and keeping track of their money.  One blog that has particularly inspired me is http://www.nomorespending.net/, written by a lady called Laura.  I confess that when I first read her blog I was a little taken aback by the level of attention paid to every aspect of her budget and every last pound.  But after a while I started to see the point.  There is just no denying it - her hard work and discipline gets results.

I think one of the keys to Laura’s success is that she carefuly sets her targets and then monitors her performance against them.  So I am going to take inspiration from her (well, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery after all!) and try and do the same…

Financial

• Save money - a target of £12,000
• Sell unwanted items on ebay - a target of £1000
• Make a monthly budget (and stick to it)
• Investigate and develop a second income stream (I have an idea, more on that later)

Personal

• Organise my stuff – starting with my wardrobe
• Be tidy - stop using the spare room as a dumping ground and put my stuff away instead
• Lose weight – 1 stone
• Get my vegetable plot up and running
• Stop wilfing* at work
• Keep myself accountable by posting here at least once a week

January Mini Goals

• Save £1000 towards my total by endeavouring to have a super frugal january
• Let my rental property
• Get a Gravatar
• Get my blog header and main picture sorted out
• Set up the composting bin

*meaning to surf the internet aimlessly and derived from ‘what was i looking for?’ (i love this word, especially because it sounds a bit dirty but isn’t at all!)

C’est tout.