George T - well done that man.
Personally I DID keep a diary listing every expense involved in gaining my licences. I included food and drink whilst away from the parental home on courses as me dear old Mum wasn't in the habit of charging me £4.50 for my dinner...
I was suprised by the high proportion of my total expenditure that went on non flying training in the end. Something a little over 10% went on petrol, accomodation, phone calls, stationary, clothing, food and drink. Just as an example, take postage. Going modular meant that I had to send off my licence and logbooks to the CAA twice. Each time it needs a £3 jiffy bag and £13 in registered delivery charges. When getting quotes from schools and B&B's I sent off over 40 letters and then when I was sending out CV's when I had a BCPL I sent out another 100 letters. In the end it seems I easily spent about £70 on postage to get to the point where I had a CPL/IR Frzn ATPL in my hand. I am not including CV's to airlines in this figure because that is a post training cost.
Now in my initial budget which I still have around there was no column for Postage:£70
It all mounts up and people would be well advised to plan for that. I have had students for both PPL and CPL IR training who have completed 80% of the course and then run out of money. They go away for a while and comeback with some more cash. Unfortunately they have regressed in their abilities die to lack of continuity and they now require more money than they have come back with to get them up to a Pass standard. And then you are into a vicious circle whereby their training takes them twice as long as someone elses and costs them twice as much. All for the sake of an unrealistic initial budget...
Good luck,
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