Hello, and welcome to a brand new Tenner Week challenge. Grab yourself a crisp £10 note and start budgeting! There’s a main theme this time too: have fun and keep yourself entertained.

If you need a reminder of the full challenge rules, they’re all here.

In brief, your £10 personal budget is for:

• Any food & drink you might buy
• Going out
• Entertainment
• Hobbies
• Any other shopping

By the way, your £10 doesn’t cover: rent / mortgage, utility bills, prescriptions, travel to and from work, anything you need to buy for work, tickets or subscriptions you’ve already purchased, or money you need to spend on your kids / pets / partner.

There’s an optional TV Diet as well. If you want to join in with this you need to restrict your television watching to four hours or less in total for the week. It doesn’t count if you go out to see a movie, or you watch TV while you’re at the gym.

The schedule for this £10 Challenge

• Day 1 – Sunday Stocktake and healthy menu day (see below)
• Day 2 – Free books day
• Day 3 – Get creative day
• Day 4 – Community day
• Day 5 – Find free music or comedy
• Day 6 – Friday freebies, points and vouchers
• Day 7 – Picnic or packed lunch

Today’s activity

Today, make sure you have some healthy and delicious food to look forward to during the week.

Start by doing a stocktake of all the food and drink you have in the house, from the fridge to the biscuit jar and the fruit bowl. Write it down somewhere so you can cross items off as you use them up.

If there’s anything perishable, make a note to use it up quickly.

Now create your menu for the week, and try to focus on a mixture of healthy summery food and household favourites. Don’t forget to include breakfasts and snacks as part of your menu, and hold something good back for your picnic or packed lunch if you can.

Put a copy of your menu where you can see it, so you don’t forget.

What’s happening here

I’ve recently restocked the cupboards with a big Approved Food order, so there’s no chance of running out of ingredients. We also have quite a few greens in the kitchen garden such as chard and perpetual spinach, lots of rhubarb, and some fresh herbs to make things interesting, plus I made a batch of roasted vegetables on Saturday lunchtime.

My menu is mainly going to aim at getting at least five portions of fruit and vegetables per person every day, but there’s always room for a few treats as well. I have some really good leftovers to make use of too (the less waste this week the better). We’ll probably have to buy milk at some point, but apart from that hopefully it’s going to be plain sailing from a cash point of view.

My stocktake is also going to include a look around my home and my email to find free and fun things to do or to use up. It’s good to keep busy, especially if it’s interesting stuff.

I’ve decided to do the optional TV Diet this time around, and plan to stick to four hours or less of telly. There are plenty of other things to do right now anyway, and if I want to watch more then I have to go on the exercise bike to do so. Will let you know how I get on!

Are you joining in with me for Tenner Week? Don’t forget to leave me a Facebook message or tweet me with the #TennerWeek hashtag.