Welcome to my budgeting world! Have you ever rescued a furry friend? Were you sensible and pre-planned your budget, deciding in advance how much you could afford to spend on said fluff ball for his or her upkeep or did you just fall in love & to hell with the money? Yep, the second one for me too. He needed a home, a loving caring home that we could give him. As the saying goes, "You buy with your emotions & justify with reasoning" or something like that. Rescue Costs Getting Apollo from Greece to the UK cost us around £800 including his required Veterinary treatments & EU Passport ..read more

Anxious, furious, sweaty, frustrated, irritable, achy elbowed insomniac - Hi, I'm Lucy nice to meet you! My colleague & friend Tracey is a Meno Money Coach which as you might imagine, combines the challenging combination of navigating the menopausal season of life with navigating financial goals. We collaborated live on Instagram which is a grab-a-cuppa-stick-it-on-your-iPad-whilst-you're-cooking-dinner kind of listen. What did we talk about? For those of you, like me who just need to get to the information without reading a long-winded intro... What tips have we got to help an overwhelm ..read more

My favourite film isn't ALL about that beach house... At 49 ¾ I had an epiphany, otherwise known as a Fuck It moment. A fallout with a neighbour instigated what was to become the biggest transformation in my life. My boyfriend of over 9 years and I decided after I had been in tears for half an hour, that we were going to move to our holiday home in France & semi-retire. Bosh. Job done. The life that we had known independently of each other as well as these years together was about to shift in ways we couldn't have imagined. Sourced image from Architectural Digest - see more on Nancy's Ins ..read more

While the season is filled with joy and festivities, it can also bring stress, especially when it comes to budgeting for your family Christmas. But don't fret! With a little focused effort, you can plan a memorable celebration without spending every last penny. In fact, I'm going to show you how to create & get your family's Christmas budget & a have plan in place in just one hour. Raise your hand if you often say, "Sod it, let's just have it" and worry about it in January ... Yep that used to be me. I want a Christmas that is as fun & loving, as it is peaceful & beautiful. I ..read more

Even if that is totally alien to you & you don't know where to start. Life has been shifting in huge ways for me this year has it for you? Running your own business, it's jolly hard to switch off, ok it's bloody impossible! After more than 30 years in retail, frantic from mid-October to the 30th of December, I want to finally feel like a grown-up graceful woman who has her life together. Elegant, with a beautiful home that smells divine, the perfect manicure, outfit, all to-do lists with big fat ✔ on them, tablescapes (I hissed that) & an air of "I closed my laptop on the 15th darling ..read more

Having worked 30 years in retail, Christmas was always about planning in advance from a business perspective and very much for my home as working up to the last minute - and invariably back again on Boxing Day meant I had to get my act together or else have a meltdown on Christmas Eve!! Financially, this had to be planned too otherwise one month's salary just wasn't going to cut it. Here are my top 5 tips to budget and plan for Christmas that I have learned over the years, to help ease the stress. Feel free to comment & add your own at the bottom, I'd love you to share your wisdom too! Ti ..read more

Procrastinating, the sudden desire to clean out your cutlery drawer instead of opening up your banking app to start your fresh new budget... When sorting out your cupboards is preferable to sorting out your money you know it's been too long. If it feels chaotic, stressful & you don't know how to untangle it so that you can create a plan that works, it's time to sit down & figure out your spending vs what you're earning. You need a plan for your money because you're sick of wasting so much, it's time to stop. You've got lifestyle plans & none of them will come to fruition if you don ..read more

Before the madness of Christmas ... Slow Living sounds absurd, have you seen my to-do list? It sounds like nothing much gets done so your house becomes a mess, you can't be arsed to dress properly & you become a sloth! I'm all for Seasonal Life Shifts and I love watching nature do her thing with predictable wonder. "Oh wow it's getting dark at 7.30pm now" "Brr it's getting chilly I think we're done with summer" Brits love to talk about the weather but not always so much about the magic it creates in our countryside. No I'm not going all Alan Titchmarsh on you, although I do love his soothi ..read more

Unless you learned money management at school or your parents taught you, like me, I suspect you learned the hard way! Learning to budget and plan my money came from my life experiences juggling my first home, bills & bi-weekly pay. (Me about 1995 in my first management position, Gap in Canterbury Kent, UK. I LOVED that job) Nearly everyone I speak to has a problem or 3 with money. Not enough of it usually tops the list, but it's also the skill of managing & balancing what's coming in with what's going out that is often causing confusion. With multiple income streams now the norm, sim ..read more

And what even is it anyway? When setting up a home budget it's really easy to write down your income, list your expenses & see what's left over. That's the simplest albeit not so efficient way of doing one. One reason I've created so many templates & ebooks is that you shouldn't have to become a master of any budgeting method, you haven't got time for a start you just want one that you like right? Deciding what to spend your money on before you've earned it will set you up for far greater success than merely reporting on what DID happen. You'll see the bumps in the road ahead & be ..read more