Back in the black before baby

moo2moo

Welcome to my world.

I have a very high profile job in a very small village so everybody and their dog know that I spend my waking hours with my head down a toilet or cleaning up other peoples kids vomit. Even my offspring are convinced we are poor people. They horseride because they adore it, its the one thing that makes life worth it for them bu t we get discounted lessons in return for gardening or cleaning or mucking out the stables in return maing it affordable. Meanwhile the Poshington Smythes children have a horse each and a spare one for when thats having an orf day. Mummy pays a dog walker to walk their pampered pooch each day and the dog walker also takes it for hair cuts more regularly than I get mine cut.

Having said all that my children get to spend time with me not a babysitter or an au pair or a child minder or a nanny (although they'd probably claim I was the booby prize). We go to the park, we go for bike rides, we do things for the sheer joy of doing them. They're never told no sorry dahling you can't play at the park with your snotty nosed little friends as you have ballet followed by piano followed by elocution lessons and at 7:45 you're scheduled to see mummy for 10 minutes before she goes out.

Theres more to life than nice things. But it sucks when you can't have the nice things that you'd like because its a choice of that or food on the table.

So what if other people think you're inundated with children. As long as the children are clean, well fed and loved who gives a stuff what other people think.

Good luck with your pregnancy. Two children drive me round the bend. I'd be insane with three let alone four although my two are planning a third. They've even named her. School have helpfully told them all about it.

LittleMissKitty

Thanks guys. It was just one of those days where the hormones were in charge! I rarely give in to them but somedays it has to happen
Beverley - I'd like to think the house is a sanctuary but at the moment it's too covered in toys for me to see straight.
Moo -My kids are definitely clothed and fed however the 'clean' can be a bit hit and miss. They range in age from 18mths to 4 so no matter how clean they start the day it doesn't take long for them to rectify the situation!

Onto matters money saving - Well, we were going to stay in at the weekend to save petrol but eventually gave in and went to visit my parents. We did get a free meal out of it plus it was a take-away, something I haven't tasted in a long while, so I think that works out about fair. Food delivered today so there goes another £62. But it has to be done and I got a lot for the money. Cheap petrol week too as it's half term AND DH isn't working Friday.

5 of my 10 ebay listings sold last night so I've spent today packaging and labelling them up for posting first thing tomorrow and I've listed 16 more due to start Tuesday evening. Just need people to buy them now and that's the hard part. My two BIN auctions are still sitting there but they're pretty niche so I can't see them going fast, just need the right person to find them that's all And everything that goes helps to clear some more space inmy rediculously cluttered house - I think I'm happier about that bit than I am about the actual money coming in!

Today also heralded a rather unexpected surprise. A few months ago my Dad was at risk of redundancy so he asked my brother and me to look after some premium bonds for him incase the worst should happen. I just kept it sitting in a small savings account and gave it back a few weeks ago thinking nothing more of it. Well my brother had actually transferred the bonds into his name to keep the chance of winning alive and, I'm given to understand, a little happened to come in his direction. This morning when on the phone to my Mother she mentioned that she'd transferred a little 'gift' into my account as a thankyou for looking after the money (I told her not to be so bl00dy silly - in a nice way - but she insisted) I expected £20 or something but she gave us £150! Apparently when the money came back from brother and I it was an 'uneven' amount so she'd given us both a bit to make it look neater! :j

Parents - any excuse to help you out! :rotfl:

LittleMissKitty

Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! I just wrote out a whole weeks update and the bleeding laptop had a freak out and deleted it :mad:

I'll do it again tomorrow........

elfen

On the kids front. When your kids grow up, they won't care that they didn't have everything, they will care more that they had a loving relationship with their parents. I grew up with buggar all, but I knew I was loved, and that's much more important than money, every time

Pinky15

Just wanted to pop by and say HI!!
I have 3 little ones so def understand the mess. Most of my friends have big fancy houses and most of them are mortgage free thanks to parents and inhertiance and such like. Having said that they are no happier for it. I keep thinking in a few years when the kids are bigger and we have paid off our debts we can have the fancy house and will still be happy. I do know what it feels like though and I can sick of the toys and mess too and feel like I just move things around the house. It is hard to stay positive all the time isnt it.
But having said that you are doing well on the debt busting front and have made a fab start. Keep up the good work - will look forward to following your progress x:)

Lemon_Tree

hi, you're right parents are brill. reading your rant earlier put me in mind of my sister, her hubby has a good career, wage etc yet the kids from across the road have told her kids that they can't play with them because they're too poor. what makes it worse is that the other kids are from a family with so many children that they get more from social than many a person earns and he still does jobs on the side, yet he gets away with it. What it gets down is if you can live with your lifestyle and love your children that that's all that matters.

Moneytroubles_2

Hiya, I just wanted to pop in and say hello - congratulations on your pregnancy and good luck with the debts!

I know how you feel sometimes with regards to being 'the one' with the crappy stuff. Today when I arrived from work SIL was at my house and she said to me 'Oh there nice trainers' looked down and totally forgot I had got her 8 year old trainers on that she leant me years ago to go bike riding in - actually felt like i could of died was so embarassed, esp as shes so 'done up' all the time!

But then after she left OH informed me that she had asked if she could borrow so money - so there! sorry im ranting too now lol xxx

LittleMissKitty

Oh! Hello everyone! I have friends :j That's made me feel really cheery!

Well, as with every diary I've ever kept I've let this one slip. I'm determined to chart progress on MSE so I WILL update this thing. It's the closest thing I've got to a spending diary so I need to keep it going.

I've been doing very well with not spending on extras. Last weeks food shop I managed for £62 and this week's was £57. I'm getting better at working out what'll last us a week and what I can leave a fortnight between getting etc. I think really it'll level out about £60 a week if I'm careful as there's some stuff I didn't buy enough of this week. It's not as little as a lot of people survive on (they have my utmost respect!) but everything we buy is own brand and we brew our own wine so I think we've found our natural limit.

The £150 from my parents went straight to pay for DH's blade at his meeting. He got one of his friends to share the room with him so that halved accomodation costs and he ended up only paying £30 towards petrol. All in all he got the whole weekend inc. blade, food, drink, ticket, travel and accomodation for £330. That was far less than I'd budgetted for it so it was one hell of a relief when the bank account settled and I saw what the OD looked like.

Just to add to the general happiness he also got a £260 part-time student grant that we weren't expecting! I filled the car up this week and I think DH will have to fill the bike tomorrow but, if I've got my numbers correct I could finish the month bang on £500 overdrawn after only 1 month of being a DFW :beer: (I'm not celebrating the fact I'm overdrawn for anyone who's thinks I'm strange, have a look at my OD on the sig and you'll see why )

Pinky15

Wow thats great - you are making progress!!:j
I try and keep up my diary as I dont think you realise how far you've come until you look back and see it all written down. Certainly keeps me motivated!:)

LittleMissKitty

Most of our bills seem to have not come out :undecided I was prepared for some of them to come out twice as I'm in the middle of a bank account switch over (which I'll admit is taking rather longer than expected) but I didn't expect them to actually NOT come out. The mortgage is gone which is obviously most important and it's a council tax and water free month but the only other one that's paid is the home insurance. We've had letters from sky, the TV licensing peeps and car insurance to say they'll take the payments slightly later in the month but that still leaves Gas & Electric and the bike loan. I'll call Scottishpower in a bit to check the energy DD has been switched and I think I'll get DH to call the bike people at lunchtime tomorrow because the last thing I want is a missed payment on the credit report.

Managed the weeks shop for £62 again this week but I think the lack of food based 'treats' is beginning to take its toll. DH bought Easter eggs for the kids for £1 each last week (because he wasn't sure when easter was and knew we didn't have any yet :rotfl:) and I ate all three and the creme eggs that went with them!!! I have now re-awakened the demon and am having MASSIVE chocolate cravings. Not good when coupled with baby hormones too. I'd not entirely sure quite how I'm managing right now.

Got DH to cancel all the CC's last week. They were all empty anyway but I wasn't keen on having them floating around incase we used them. We have been considering doing a super balance transfer to cover the upfront cost of buying the new car but now don't have to as MIL has temporarilly leant us £3k to save us the interest on repayments. I'll add this to my sig when I know how much of it we're actually going to use but it was an expense I was fully expecting and I aim to pay it off from Maternity Allowance when it starts in May. As I stopped working in November this is 'extra money' we're not using in the budget so I really happy about how it's worked out Whatever's left from the MA is going into an offset savings account to reduce the mortgage interest while we save up to pay off the inlaws in a lump sum. So assuming all goes to plan we should have paid off the new car, the overdraft and the inlaws by Christmas. On the offchance that inlaws refuse to take the money (which is likely and I'm secretly praying for!) we're going to pay the lump straight off the mortgage