March is not my favourite month. Maybe this is the introspection of round number midlife birthdays, but I've realized that I almost never have a great March. This also might be affected by recency bias (we put higher cognitive importance on recent things than historical things).
Kyria gave an awesome rundown of her various March adventures on her blog and it got me wondering if I had any trends with March. Read Kyria's blog for exciting adventure, read below for... the opposite:
March 2024 I had 6 month old twins. 6 month old twins is not fun.
March 2023 I was feeling terrible and wondering why I was gaining weight so quickly and so early in pregnancy (spoiler - I was pregnant with twins, which I found out in April. reading my line a day it seems very obvious now).
March 2022 Things at work were getting weird, I felt like my career was going nowhere and weird stuff was happening. The kids were 18 months and 2.5 and both ill a lot.
March 2021 I was still under lockdown and at home every day with a 6 month old baby, people were still banned from visiting or socializing (Also will take a moment here to remember that Wales had one of the longest and most restrictive lockdowns... which has almost zero effect on covid mortality as compared with the slightly more open England)
March 2020 Lockdown started and I was 3 months pregnant and had an 18 month old and was working from home full time.
So.. March is not my favourite. Here's a short summary of this March, which was far better than most of the above!
Weather (first, because I'm sort of British now so everything is the weather):
It was very sunny this March, if cold. That was a nice change from rain
Sport:
Days I did some exercise: 28 (this includes walking, walking is exercise)
Cardio Sessions: 14
Strength Sessions: 9
Yoga/Stretching: 12
Days where I walked outside: 23
Other good things:
+ I have done 31 strength workouts this year of my 100 goal - 31% complete with 25% of the year over.
+ I did my 100th Peloton ride
+ I joined a local ladies running club
Budget:
I know this is a random one but I must confess that we are, for the first time ever, doing pretty bad against budget. I realized that historically Jan-Mar are high spend months for us (not sure why? My birthday? New year energy? Time at home to fix house projects?).
This is a sort of useless graph of our cash float (basically a snapshot of bank account, so kind of useless because when we do things like pay down mortgages or pay off student loans it shows as a massive dip) but I can see that generally we lose cash in Q1, though not as fast as we have lost cash this January Q1.
Andy Adventure:
One of my goals this year was to have an Andy-Rachel adventure every month. This month's adventure was going to be a trip to the bike park! Unfortunately it was not to be as Ezra was ill that day. Instead we added a store-bought takeaway to our grocery order on Saturday and had a curry night at home after the kids went to bed. It was still very nice.
Other Goals
In March I took the kids to see a children's ballet. I had a goal to take the kids (or Andy) to the theatre and I did. It would be fun to see a theatre show with Andy still, but I need to keep an eye on shows and then buy tickets so it's a big project
I hung artwork in my office. You know what looks better than art hung stacked on a bookshelf? Art hung on a wall. Also, 100% love command hooks. Also, that's where another £20 of house budget went.
In Summary
Was March the best? no. Was March the worst? no. It was a month with lots of changes, but it feels like a pretty good foundation month for what's looking to be an exciting (and possibly chaotic) April and May.
How was your March? Do you have high-spend times of year? Have you ticked off any yearly goals for 2025 (if you do that kind of thing)?
March was a pretty decent month. I like March since it's the start of spring, but I like all the months that come after it up until November a lot more.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with budgeting for any kind of maintenance is that you don't get a say in when maintenance stuff comes up or what it is. Sigh.
I feel like I always have a really expensive December or a really expensive January, and usually a really cheap summer month to balance it out. The reasons why are always different. I actually spent a ton of money this month, but it's for travel, so exactly where I want to be spending money right now.
"I like March since it's the start of spring, but I like all the months that come after it up until November a lot more." So true! March did feel like the start of spring but it was really really cold which felt... less like the start of spring.
DeleteNothing that we spent money on for the house was truly necessary so hopefully we don't have any big baddie expenses coming soon. Exciting that you spent money on travel this month! We actually spent a big portion on travel as well, although just to pay off a December trip we are taking. I do track my spending monthly so I wonder if I generally have cheaper and more expensive months - that would be an interesting graph (to me lol!)
Woot, woot! Thanks for the shout out! I think March is a strange month, especially if you live in a cooler place where it is not quite spring yet generally. I have been lucky to either live in the Bay Area or travel in March to places that do not have a cooler month, or at least not a snowy one. Also I think having the pandemic, a lockdown, a pregnancy and then babies is probably not the most fun. What month is normally a good one?
ReplyDeleteIf you count property taxes and insurance, my spendiest month is probably normally April, as both of those were due, plus taxes every year. Now I want to go and do a deep dive to find out if my guess is true. Currently my spend depends on where I am; however, I do often purchase a lot of things up front at the end of Nov/early Dec, plus holiday gifts, so that is likely where my actual heaviest spending will be for the foreseeable future.
I really enjoyed that post! It made me think about certain months and if I have exciting months. I generally love September/October but I'm sure I have other good months as well... just not March! May and June and July are fun too. And January is my birthday and December is christmas and February is short... so I think I just like most months except March.
DeleteIt would be interesting if the time of year impacts your spending while traveling - is summer cheaper than winter? free camping vs not?
Last year, it definitely did, but it was twofold. I was in Ontario, where there is not a lot of crown land (like BLM, free to use), and it was summer, so some of the "campgrounds" which were really RV parks, were $50-$90/night! Often a hotel was only a little bit more, so I would do that, but it did eat into my budget!
DeleteI think it sounds like an “average” month… which as you said, is just that! Not good or bad, really. Definitely lots of good stuff in there- awesome job on your workouts, and checking off some other goals. The homeowner stuff is annoying, but I bet it feels good to have tackled some of that. I feel like we end up dragging our feet when it comes to stuff like that too often. Like we see an issue and think, ah, we need to fix/call someone/do something about that, and then 3 months later, I’m still looking at it thinking about it. lol. I need to be better about this because it’s mentally draining to drag the same problem along for months! Budgeting is so hard. What seems like a reasonable number upfront always seems to end up being too little. Ha… I guess that’s why currently we kind of gave up on strict budgeting in all the categories like that. Things seem to ebb and flow naturally I guess (ie if we spent a bunch of the house, we end up spending less somewhere else for a while…). But probably not a great idea long term so I really should revisit this, too.
ReplyDeleteThanks Kae, definitely average. I love your tracker because I can so easily see how I'm getting on in my strength training goals. I also think feet dragging can be a legit financial approach! We thought about replacing our bath panel for months before we actually ordered a new one. Maybe we should have ordered it last year when house budget ended robustly instead of thing year!
DeleteI think I like tracking money for the same reason I like tracking time - it gives me a second moment of joy writing down what I spent stuff on and what budget it was part of. Like I get to enjoy my coffee, and then enjoy the memory of my coffee when I put the line item in my excel. Also, it's nice to see if I can accurately guess how much we are spending on things. I think if I was putting pressure on myself to stick to my budget then I wouldn't enjoy doing it.
Daria from momofchildren.com
ReplyDeleteI am in the similar boat, we did a lot, spend a lot, T had a car maintenance situation that no longer be could be put off, we had a few dead trees removed from the forest part of our yard, spring clean up cost a little, and of course all those lessons: piano, jiu jitsu, gymnastics. Typical but still costly. And the shows, we saw three shows in March and that is also expensive.
March is my birthday month so I feel attached to it, but it feels like my birthday was also the only really good day this month.... or this year so far. So much going on over here :(
ReplyDeleteThe beginning of the year has been more spendy than usual and I just sent a big chunk of money to the IRS, so I am not feeling very good about our finances right now (meaning, I need to stop bleeding money) LOL
Haha yes I agree with this for sure "so I am not feeling very good about our finances right now (meaning, I need to stop bleeding money)"
DeleteI want new trail shoes and other fun things but I have spent sooo much at the start of the year it need to wait to later.
March (birthday aside) seemed like a very rubbish month. I hope April is better (although I know it wasn't immediately better)