Tenner Week Aug 2014: Lessons learned

Well, the last Tenner Week turned out to be very interesting indeed, and we’ve had some great people playing along with their own £10 budgets. What did we get out of it this time around?

My total spend ended up being £7.67, so that was well within the budget. The only things I spent money on were a few groceries for a dinner party and a takeaway coffee. The food and drink stockpile held up well, and there was a generous harvest from the kitchen garden so it was fine.

I went right up to the limit with the TV diet though, because I slobbed out on the sofa during Very Lazy Sunday. It does go to show that it’s definitely best to stay completely away from the telly for the first part of the week, which I managed on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. Three of those evenings were social events, and the other two were spent working on personal projects and the TV wasn’t missed at all.

The usual window shopping that I do for work was okay, and fortunately I didn’t come across any deals that I regret not buying. However, I do sort of regret not going out for my usual Friday treat of coffee and cake – it’s when I start to wind down for the weekend, and it’s also when I’m often at my most inspired – instead I stayed in the office and felt quite unproductive and restless. Maybe I should make my Friday coffee compulsory from now on, because you never know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

The ‘look and feel good’ theme was a bit unusual, and I haven’t done a week of that before for a Tenner Week. I did eat healthily and also got the recommended amount of exercise, but was a bit shocked by the state of my hamstrings during the stretching exercises on Saturday. Ouch, stiff as a board! That’s definitely something to do more work on as I improve my general fitness over the next few weeks. It was previously very good so hopefully it will come back sooner rather than later.

One of my favourite bits of Tenner Week is the bonus points activities, and this time around I was very lucky to bag a freebie tube of MAC Prep + Prime makeup base and a free Cineworld cinema ticket, which worked out very nicely. On the ‘make some extra cash’ side of things I was prompted into doing some eBaying which I’ve been putting off, so hopefully I’ll have a few quid in my PayPal account when those auctions end too.

How did you get on if you were joining in? If you’re new to this, will you be trying your budgeting skills out during the next Tenner Week? There will be a new one coming up soonish, probably October time.