£67,031.92 is a frightening number indeed....

stoplurking wrote: »

Hi ToP

Serial lurker here, I love reading your diary and look for update every morning. You're doing really well, your mindset is shifting even if slightly held back by teaspoons etc!

Re item 3 on this week's epic list, just thought I'd say that Aldi are doing camping stuff as part of their Special buys promotion sometime in the next week or two. Might be some things you identify as needs that you can get there and they're usually reasonably priced, good quality etc.

Good luck with it all. X

Edit - just noticed they have festival-type camping stuff on offer at present. The other camping stuff goes on sale Sunday 18th June. You never know, might be worth a look. X

Thanks for the Aldi tip! DH and I were just saying last night that we never time our requirements for things with aldi or Lidl offers.

reality_check wrote: »

Just wondering what was the paint called that you got? Also how much was it per pot? Everything I find for outdoor paint costs an arm and a leg!!

We went for Weathercoat from homebase. Since we only needed one 5l tin to do the whole front (tiny house) it was <£20 I think. And another tenner on grey Valspar masonry paint (b&q) for the bottom trim and sills. Both went on well, and only needed two coats.

Balanced all my budgets today and am feeling very poor. Always depressing. We have slightly overcommitted ourselves on cheap camping weekends over the summer, and actually when you add them up they cease to be quite so cheap! Ho hum. I have a bit of guaranteed work this month which will help, but really I need some more money to come in. I'm going to give myself the rest of this week focused on the house and tidying and decluttering, then I'm going to get really back on the case with work - I know I've been easing off the throttle a little bit with all the front garden work taking up every spare moment.

to do today:
1. Ironing (the pile is towering over me on the sofa as I type). Done, and even cleared another pile of ironing created by doing another two laundry loads today. The laundry basket and ironing baskets are both empty :T :eek: :T
2. Paint another batch of fence pickets. Done. Have almost done half now.
3. Chisel out some bricks next to the garden path to see how it looks. Not done
4. get another couple of laundry loads done. Done. Ironed. Put away. Have I mentioned? :cool:
5. Mend DS2's shorts. Done
6. Mend DS1's school trousers. Not done, but I did mend a shirt of DH's. Surely I get extra wife points for that.
7. Pack and post orders for smaller business. done.
8. Work on newsletter for larger business. Not done. I hate doing these and I'm not sure they generate me much business.
9. Reply to some work enquiries. done.
10. Declutter and clean our room (finally have finished downstairs by doing a room a day). Mostly done, have a bit of cupboard cleaning to do.
11. Do some more knitting on my mum's socks. done. Almost at the toe of the second sock!
12. Book camping weekend with friends for August. not done, DH needs to phone.
13. Delete £3k limit cc from the 'wallet' on the computer so I can't be tempted to use it for online shopping at Christmas or similar. Done.

to do this week:
1. Make picket fence panels.
2. Finish digging trench and make gravel channel under fence location.
3. Go through camping stuff and plan what we need for the summer's camping trips.
4. Keep focusing on smaller business while main business is quiet - made a couple of sales yesterday, the attention does pay off.
5. As my mum about the chair and relist it with better description (assuming it doesn't sell by Tue).

Holiday musings, complete with minor financial crisis....

We have always done a fair bit of camping over the summer. I think because it's a budget holiday, it always seems like a good idea, so we've always done a fair bit. So this summer we have done the same as we always do and booked a good handful of camping weekends with friends and family (I've mentioned that here already I think). Anyway, I've just come to actually take a realistic look at all the 'cheap weekends' and added together it comes to at least £250 on campsite fees over the summer, never mind extra money on new camping gear. Well boy, is my face red? Turns out that camping is not actually all that cheap when you do it half a dozen times in quick succession. And this is on top of the already-committed £350 family holiday (paid today, had to snaffle some money from other pots, but had saved the majority), bring our holiday fund to £600+ for this summer, rather than the £350 I had in my YNAB dategory.

Looking at it objectively, we have 6 weeks to fill with the 3DC, so filling a reasonable chunk of it camping (about 15 nights, plus packing up and unpacking days at each end of each trip) is actually quite effective, as we tend to spend very little money when we're there, but it's still a big chunk of money that we don't actually, currently, well, have.

It's not that I necessarily think we should/could be spending less over the summer holidays (well, obviously we should), but I think I need to be realistic about how much having the 3DC at home over the school holidays costs/affects our budgets, and plan the savings accordingly.

This is yet another 'invisible' expense that we weren't budgeting for before - because camping is cheap on a per-night basis, we were/are doing lots and lots of it because we felt like we were being budget conscious. I still think on a cost-per-day basis it's a great activity to fill the holidays, but I need to be aware that it isn't actually a free holiday, and start budgeting as such. Crikey, when am I going to get this budgeting thing sorted?