TUESDAY 6TH JANUARY

Today was a good day. Accomplished everything on the daily task list. And had a huge haul for the Christmas pot.

The Sealed Pot Challenge runs on the Money Saving Expert forums. If you're at all interested in looking at your finances then I can't recommend this site enough. In one of the sub forums, Debt Free Wannabe, there are a number of fun, financial challenges you can take part in. The sealed pot challenge is for people to save for Christmas, or whatever falls at the back end of your year, and the idea is that you put money in a pot and then ignore it. Captain Obvious is obvious, eh?

The way mine works is I try to feed the pot every day. Anything under a pound coin gets put in the pot. If I have a No Spend Day (NSD) then I feed the pot with a shiny pound coin from my purse. The idea is by the time Christmas rolls around you have a wodge of cash saved that you wouldn't have saved under normal circumstances.

When The Nipper (my 20 year old son who is in his final year at University) lived at home he threw all his change in an old binoculars case. Never cashed it in, wasn't ever bothered about it. So I offered to buy it off him. Last night I counted it and added over £52 to the pot! It 'cost' me £40 transferred into the Nipper's bank account - however, that's £40 I wouldn't have saved this month if it was in crinkly ten pound notes. I doubt the pot will ever have such a day again. Monsieur Pot is satiated right now.

I started watching 'Place Beyond the Pines' but it got to midnight and I still had 40 minutes to go - review to come when I watch the rest of it.

Not a sausage on the comping front. I've changed how I comp splightly and am going for fewer comps entered but really only entering for the ones I want. This will mean my number of wins will go down - I'm going to need to learn some patience.

Dogs 1/1
Kitchen 1/1
Pot 1/1