The single track road - life on a different path

MeandO · 24 February 2015 at 10:38PM

Put me on the list!!!! :rotfl:

I'm a big Aldi fan too, I used to shop there religiously when I was on maternity leave and it saved us a fortune.

Unfortunately though, now my routine is such that I don't have time to stray off the beaten track to get to it during the working week and the nearest one is quite a long way away from where I live.

And the thought of going grocery shopping with the little guy at the weekend is just :eek:!

Tonight I have mostly been worrying about money, or the severe lack of it. My workplace has been unusually quite at what should be the busiest time of our year and everyone is extremely worried. I've even been looking into unemployment insurance (or whatever it's called), but at £35 a month, I need to look into it in more detail to see what the terms and conditions of it are.

The bank account is overdrawn to the tune of £700 now, mostly thanks to DS's childcare paying the cheque in the day before payday. :mad: They aren't consistent with the days they bank cheques every month, so it's a bit of a nightmare sometimes. I need to speak to them to see if I can pay them online instead, but I think it might trip them out a little...

The overdraft will be covered in a couple of weeks when the ex pays over the remainder of whatever is left from his house purchase going through, but I wanted to throw as much of that at the credit card as possible. I guess I'll have more of that debt left to pay off than I wanted, but he has been so much more than fair in all this, so I can't complain.

I have been YNAB-ing like a busy bee tonight.

I've finally got round to downloading the dropbox thingy so I can link my laptop with my phone, with my mac at work. Hopefully between the three, I should be able to keep a firm grasp on the account.

A quick question for any YNAB-ers out there - do you set the monthly bills you have as automatically recurring outflows (eg. gas, electric, mortgage etc.), or do you just record them as they get taken out of your account? I am thinking it's easier to set them up to recur automatically, but lots of people seem to do it manually... thoughts appreciated!

Right, eyes are tired, so cuppa and bed for me - I'm living on the edge again! :rotfl:

Night all
xx

Levi- · 24 February 2015 at 11:27PM

I've recommended your thread on mine so I hope everyone pops over to support you, they are so awesome - and you will be in the right hands with Lilty, the wizard of all things budgety and YNAB!

Try not to worry about your job - (pot kettle again) but if anything does happen, it will all take ages to happen and you will have plenty of time to find something else - you have so much to bring to the table I am sure if 'worst case scenario' happens and you lose your job, something else will come along for you. Insurance not a bad idea - I explored that when I first took full custody of LL - I found one for £12 a month but only covered £600 a month and had loads of stipulations which I felt were designed to make it very hard to actually claim. I didn't go for it in the end but I'm sure you have shopped around as best as poss on that, I found the idea of it very reassuring but the small print and the extra outgoing put me off $:\$ It might be worth it though for your sense of security and don't forget that again if worst came to worst, you could be able to claim government help.
Try to put the thoughts of it out of your mind until you actually hear anything real. A quiet time can just be a quiet time and they won't just get rid of people at the drop of a hat - it may all pick up again soon and then they'd have no staff

Don't listen to workplace scaremongering, just listen to real, valid information from those in the right position to give it.
Have a good night.

you're doing fine and you're in the right place with the MSE fam behind you, you can't go wrong!..x

liltdiddylilt · 25 February 2015 at 12:16AM

Hello Me&O - I spotted a couple of your posts on Levi's diary and your situation sounded as heartbreaking as mine was this time a year and a half (:eek: where did that go?!) ago...

I went and read your old little diary to get some background and I think you are in the exact same situation as my cousin rather than my own convoluted lifestyle choice. Her DS was about your sons age when she and her husband split due to being the best of friends and nothing else. Fast forward a few years and a few false starts, and she is engaged, has a beautiful 1 year old little fella as a brother to her older son, who still spends half a week with his dad and half with his mum even now. His dad also has a new wife and a baby there for him... The older one is well adjusted, bright, good natured and generous... and absolute delight.

So please don't write it off. I know a year ago I was steadfastly saying I was never ever dating anyone ever again and I was just having the one kid.. but it is amazing what life throws up to surprise you. In my own case it was my ex figuring out he did not like life without me and Jelly one bit once I finally kicked him out. I know that that isn't your situation, and I am not convinced it is 100% mine either... he lives with his parents for most of the week and comes to cover childcare and stays over 2 nights of each week when I work.

The point it... IT WORKS FOR US. And your situation works for you. For my sins I read the daily mail online, and it is the comments on the 'this celebrity & her husband have split, and their child is only X months old' that really make me angry. So many people wishing that families gave it more of a *chance* without ever knowing what went on, or probably not having the slightest clue how children change the entire dynamic of a relationship. Stick together and be incredibly unhappy/angry/depressed around your children 24 hours a day rather than removing yourself from a situation like an adult and doing what is best for all involved. Or the ones who judge that people were not married before they had children, and THAT's why they split. Yeah sure, everyone knows a bit of paper holds things together.. :rotfl:

Anyway... I am here to say you are doing a great job! YNAB is my favourite piece of kit ever. It saved me vastly more than I paid for it in the first month alone. And for nearly a year it has been my go-to evening toy. I cut my groceries down from £400ish a month to £150ish due to no more top up shops and stupid purchases, and have savings for the first time ever. I hope you get on with it!! Don't forget to add your purse as a bank account, and record 'transfers' to it from the bank and what you purchase. That rescued me!!!

Congratulations on getting the remortgage and getting that bit closer to being debt free

will be nice for you to start a clean slate again once ex is gone!

I find mysupermarket to be a real faff sometimes. And downright misleading. Yes I could have saved 30p but then I would have had a 4 pack of baking potatoes and not a kilo of new potatoes... :rotfl: - it is right that Mr A's comes out on top though. I've purchased from them all dependent on where I live. and now I split it between Leedl and Mr A's!! By far the cheapest way for me to shop and the meat is amazing quality from Leedl

Anyway whilst I have rambled on I have had 2 mails from Levi which I am guessing are telling me to come and discover you.. if you don't mind I will stick around to cheer you on!! You seem like my kind of person

x

MeandO · 25 February 2015 at 10:37AM

Welcome Liltdiddylilt and am honoured to have you on board as a cheerleader.

Thank you so much for your post. Like Levi, you have a great way of making sense of things and, from reading your post, you've made me look at my situation in a positive light, rather than the negative brush I have been tarring it with all this time. I almost feel *a little bit* excited about the future now.:D

Really nice to hear the success story that is your cousin's life too, I really hope both mine and the ex's life pans out in a similar fashion.
So glad to hear that you are happier now and are in a much better place than 18 months ago. To be honest, your setup sounds pretty marvellous - I am a big fan of my own space and (as I have discovered this past year), starfishing in my own bed at night :rotfl: so I could handle that!
Like you said, as long as it works for you, what gives a flying monkeys as to what anyone else thinks.

Unfortunately we've had issues with the ex's family in that they have wrongly assumed one person (ie. me!) must have done wrong to the other to cause our split, despite hearing from both parties that this is and was not the case. They cannot accept the reasons why we actually decided to separate. They have been quite awful to both me and the ex this past year, to the point where he now has very little to do with them. It has not helped and has really exacerbated my anxiety as, overnight, I was dismissed and I 'lost' the only family local to me that I thought I was part of for ten years, but I have decided that I have no time for negative people in my life, so have drawn a line under my relationship with them.

I feel your 'My Supermarket' pain... It took me an age to do it via there and I will be going direct to Asda or Tesco's website in future as there was only a few £s in it. The points do come in handy with Tesco as I always change them for days out vouchers to use with DS, but I won't pay over the odds just to reap those benefits.
There is a 'Leedl' near me, but unfortunately it's not a good one.

The fruit and veg seems to go off within hours of getting it home and the bread is always stale, so I've avoided it ever since.

Ooh, thanks for the YNAB budget tips, I hadn't thought of the purse account thingy. Do I have to declare the supermarket trolley coin in it too though, considering I've tried to spend it twice already this week thinking it was a £1 coin!

Levi has me down as some sort of Lilt & Levi hybrid which, after 'finding' you as my new MSE family, I feel honoured and a little bit overwhelmed to be 'associated' with you lovely lot!

xxxx

Levi- · 25 February 2015 at 10:51AM

Yipppeee @ Lilt coming over, I knew she'd love ya as much as I do :j

Sorry to hear about the ex and the way his family have been toward you - that is awful. One thing I am very grateful for is that my ex's family are very supportive of me and see things quite logically despite their blood-ties so I am very lucky in that respect, you really don't need that drama!! We had a rather complicated transatlantic situation at one point where it would have been more than likely that LL's maternal side fought for him to be in the US (where they are) on a permanent basis and I was dreading the fight but they saw sense without it coming to all that, thank God!!
You and Lilty have a lot in common and hopefully you will gain perspective and practical support from all the amazing titbits she has to offer. Titbits? Tidbits? No idea but titbit sounds a bit wrong.

I hope in whatever way it can that being on the forum can provide you with some support and friendship and big fat squishy emoticon hugs whenever you need 'em... it's worked wonders for me, my 'real life' support is minimal and I keep it that way on purpose somewhat, especially on the money front because of my male pride etc

so it's great to have this place to be fully open and accepted in all areas, good bad and ugly..

BOOM <--- thats more love for you to feel. Levi...x

MeandO · 25 February 2015 at 11:04AM

Sorry, thanks for all the loveliness, but I'm still sniggering about the *titbit*

:D

Yes, I have the mind of a rather naughty child, I'm just very good at pretending to be a grown up.

Levi- · 25 February 2015 at 11:09AM

Oh and meant to say but forgot - agree with Lilty on the 'never say never' front.. I imagine my future as being single forever and only having one child but have seen loads of examples of people who feel that way in the same situation as "us" and then stuff happens and a few years down the line everything is so different and a whole new family unit can develop if that is something you want. There's no reason at this stage that you'd need to assume O will be an only child or any of that! You are only a spring chicken after all, at 21

MeandO · 25 February 2015 at 11:13AM

I guess we'll see what the future holds for us eh, although I can just about handle one little person present, he is growing up so quickly though.

Yeah, I kinda just stitched myself up with the whole 21 thing... my previous post would suggest I'd been married since I was 11 - dammit!

Levi- · 25 February 2015 at 11:20AM

:rotfl: not unheard of in some cultures but probably not happening THAT often in Wales.

MeandO · 25 February 2015 at 11:27AM

Good job I'm not Welsh then!

:D

The single track road - life on a different path

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