Day1
I wander into work, dying for a coffee. Realise that a latte will cost almost half my daily budget. What have I let myself in for? My husband and I have £75 a week to live on. Or so I think, until I realise that I’ve forgotten his mobile phone bill, the broadband and our buildings and contents insurance.
Tot it up again and realise that our joint budget for the entire week is £68 Panic that husband will leave me if I enforce the rules.
The first trip to Waitrose. Bread is criminally expensive, I realise. Walk winsomely past the sashimi boxes, thinking of my cheap bread and cream cheese sandwich lunch. Cottage pie for dinner because mince and potatoes were on special. Think I’ve got food sorted for a few days.
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Spend: £7.57. 27p on a coffee.
Husband: 50p
Day 2
Cream cheese sandwiches again for lunch. At least dinner should be lovely. I have some risotto rice and some mushrooms, and a scrap of parmesan. Realise I forgot that risotto needs white wine, so buy a bottle on the way home for £2. And an onion. Also bought some other stuff in the way that you do when you’re in a shop.
Plan to drink white wine with the risotto, and remember why we used to play drinking games with cheap wine all those years ago when I was a student. You can’t sip this stuff, you have to down it. We decide we’re too old to play drinking games and leave the rest of the bottle.
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Husband spends £4 on lunch! Outrageous
I spend £4.48.
Day 3
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I’d bought some ham and cheese for lunch. Wander bleary-eyed into the kitchen to make a packed lunch and discover husband has taken it into work with him. We’ll have words later!
We decide to go on a team outing to happy hour at our local pub. The Caxton is a grim place, but cheap. It’s odd counting out pennies. It’s also pretty anti-social not buying rounds. The prices in the Caxton may be cheap but they serve the vinegarish red wine in vats. Head home feeling tipsy and guilty because Colin has been working late while I’ve been swanning about at happy hour. I stop off to buy a bottle so we can have a chat over a glass before bed. Wine is my weakness.
Spend £3.68 on lunch mainly.
Plus £6 in the pub
Plus £5 bottle of wine
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Day 4
Today is Friday. The prospect of having £20 to spend all weekend is hardly filling me with delight.. Husband is working late, again. We eat egg and home made oven chips, before he heads off to work into the night, and I watch yet more telly. Can’t afford to buy a book. We live in the City of London – it has one library which is open only when I’m at work, so I’m not a member. Decide my only escape from the TV is to reread the Patrick O’Brian books (Master & Commander et al) in sequence for the third time. Being a bit of an O’Brien geek this cheers me up immensely.
Spend: 27p on a coffee at work.
Day 5
Husband is working. Again. Poor love. We’re going to a friend’s house for dinner, so I weigh up the booze versus food dilemma, and blow £16 on two bottles of wine. Make a big batch of lentil soup.
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Finish Master & Commander, the first of 21 books.
Finish Post Captain, the second.
We go round to Megan’s house, and fall on her food with embarrassing eagerness.
Spend: £16 plus £3 on lunch for Colin
Day 6
Husband is working. Feel so bad that I get to lounge around doing nothing while he has a miserable time, I tidy the flat. This happens rarely. I blag lunch off my Mum, and finish HMS Surprise during the interminable four bus journey (buses to Putney count as free in our experiment, the train does not. The tubes are down.) Decide I want to be a nineteenth century frigate captain, not a financial hack sitting in a traffic jam on a bus in Clapham.
Spend: £3
Day 7
The last day!!!! I want to celebrate with Col, but, you’ve guessed it, he’s working. At least I can blow the remaining budget on a really lovely meal, and splash out a bit in Waitrose, spending ooh £7. Make bacon and cabbage. My favourite veg – cabbage boiled in the same water as the bacon so it tastes of bacon not of veg.
I think it’s easier being a couple on a budget. A single person’s means-tested pension credit is £114 05 while a couple get £174.05. But buying food for two is much easier – and I don’t think I’ve suffered as much as my single colleagues.
I am so very glad it is over, however. It’s a relief to get back to my profligate ways.
Spend : £7