In a massive mess

iamana1ias

RoxieW wrote: »

Tomorrow I have to take our son for a hosp appoin a weekly/fortnightly expense - which will be £20 in bus fares - two buses and the 3 of us to pay for) and a full day out of the house so I will need to feed everyone. Where is the money in the budget for this? His solution is take packed lunches. So with 3 children and a buggy on 2 buses I also have to take packed lunches as well - to eat on a bench somewhere I imagine!

Yes, that's exactly what you do. Call it a picnic if it makes you feel better about it.

museumworker

I love packed lunches - they save an absolute fortune, and it is very rare we go out for the day without one (and a flask of fresh coffee made at home!). Kids can carry their own in a little backpack if there's not enough space underneath the buggy to slip it in.

tiff

I'm pretty sure somewhere on this thread you mentioned the cinema or somewhere where youre not allowed to take your own food and drink. (dont have time to look as on my way out) but you would be surprised, most people I know take in at least drinks. I have a big handbag and take a bag of popcorn from Tesco and some drinks. I know of someone who went to the cinema with her husband and they took in their wine! As long as youre discreet and take home your rubbish, its fine. A box of cinema popcorn is £4 something versus 89p bag of popcorn from Tesco.

MrsPorridge

I take packed lunches everywhere now - even if its just a shopping trip for a couple of hours then I would take a packed snack - eg. flask and a muffin. I've got some very small flasks from Lakeland - they hold about 1.5 mugs worth of drinks and work in our family as we all like different drinks - I have coffee and DS has hot chocolate.

For longer trips we've got one of those portable gas rings for camping. We take it everywhere with us in the back of the car - plus plastic mugs, tea bags, coffee, hot choccie etc plus a small flask of milk - then we stop on the side of the road for our brew - I often pack biscuits as well. Doing even this has saved at least a tenner a day - which believe me I can easily spend on cups of tea and slices of cake when I'm out and about.

Other posters are right though - both you and DH have to be on board and support each other with this.

Good luck - and happy birthday for today!

katsclaws

Hello RoxieW, Happy Birthday.


Katsclaws

serious_saver

tiff wrote: »

I'm pretty sure somewhere on this thread you mentioned the cinema or somewhere where youre not allowed to take your own food and drink. (dont have time to look as on my way out) but you would be surprised, most people I know take in at least drinks. I have a big handbag and take a bag of popcorn from Tesco and some drinks. I know of someone who went to the cinema with her husband and they took in their wine! As long as youre discreet and take home your rubbish, its fine. A box of cinema popcorn is £4 something versus 89p bag of popcorn from Tesco.

First of all Happy Birthday!!!!

I agree with the person above. You can take food into most cinemas. Personally I have a lovely big handbag that holds plenty. I have some nice little tupperware tubs that I use to put together my own pick n mix. Most of the super markets do their own value ranges of sweets that you could separate and mix up for the kids. Sainsbury's do a great bag of sweet popcorn that tastes much better than anything you would get in the cinema and it's only 99p.

The thing about cinemas is . . . . the food there is generally awful quality! The sweets will be the cheapest they can get (so they can make obscene profit) and the popcorn is probably 2 days old by the time you get it. Trust me I spent 4 years working in one! If you worry about quality and brands the last thing you want to do is eat at a cinema.

If you feel guilty about taking your own stuff then buy yourself a coke or an icecream in the the cinema to go with the other things you've brought with you! That way you're not going without but you'll still be spending less money.

Sorry if I'm repeating someone else advice with the info below!

Online shopping is a great way to monitor your spending. Most supermarkets do it and although you often have to pay for delivery it ultimately save money. I love it and here's why -

1) it forces you the plan for what you need.
2) you actually know exactly how much you are spending
3) you don't have to spend the money on travelling to and from the supermarket.
4) most supermarkets have a system where you can save a shopping basket from you last shop and order the same thing each week, allowing you to spend that time on something else maybe even some 'me time' which it sounds as though you need!
5) there's much less chance of over spending on impulse buys as you don't see them.
6) you can easily compare you shopping baskets with other supermarkets and many will offer you money off if they end up being more expensive than the competitor - especially if you are buying widely available brand goods.

If your husband wants to buy M&S food. I would sit him down and say "lets go through this shopping list, If we can reduce it by £25 a week then we can get the M&S food as a treat" That way you are covering the delivery cost, £10 M&S meal and reducing your bill by £10. Do that often enough and you'll start noticing the difference.

Also - keep an eye on what you are throwing out as well as what you are bringing in. If you throw away excess food then you know that you need to buy less or out less on the plate!

Personally I think the easiest way to save money would be to buy less brand goods. Most good supermarket own products are made in the same factories as the brands anyway. You don't have to change it all overnight. Every time you shop experiment by changing one or two items from you usual brand to something else. If you don't like it then it's not a huge loss and you only have to wait until your next shop to replace it. If you do like it then great, you'll start saving money!

You're not in huge debt and you have a good income, so please don't panic. Talk it through with your husband and you'll both see that with small changes you can start putting money aside.

Good luck and thank you for posting. It has reminded me to scrutinse my grocery spending as I haven't dome that for a long time x

serious_saver

oops . . . that was a really long post

dorisday

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROXIE hope you have a good one.

I do know there are always two sides to a story but I would be cutting your husbands bxxxs off, thats if he has any!! The first thing to break up a relationship is MONEY problems. Best of luck to you both.

jo1972

Hi Roxy,

I wasn't intending on posting, was just going to read the first post and here I am half hour later after reading the lot (:shhh: I'm at 'work' :shhh:)

Just wanted to pop on and wish you a very happy birthday, I hope that your OH treats you today, not a £500 present but just something simple like cooking the dinner or bringing home a bottle of wine and box of choccies.

I can resonate with you in so many aspects of your life. I am married and a mum to 3 kids. I always 'controlled' the finances as I was always the one earning money when we first met 20 years ago, my OH was a stay at home dad to our DD1. My 'controlling' of the finances meant that I managed to get us into really quite serious debt, probably around £22k's worth and I never told him. The spending started small but it got worse and worse, I was addicted to ebay, very lazy too so take aways EVERY night!! I was earning good money, but I lived beyond my means. Stumbling across this website has been my saviour, I've learnt to budget and how to snowball and chuck money at my debts. Right or wrong (I'll probably be flamed here.....but) I never did tell my OH about my debts, I have managed to pay them off and am now down to the last £1000 or so), so hopefully there will never be reason for me to tell him.

OH eventually got back to work and now he's loves to spend, he loves his clothes and CDs etc, although I am very fortunate in that he is sensible, won't spend anything until he's paid his bills.

Good for you for realising the slippery slope you were on, I hope that your OH will soon come to terms with it soon. It strikes me that you have just had your first of probably many LBMs but he hasn't yet.

Good luck, I will subscribe to this thread because I think you are going to turn into an inspiration on here

xx

belfastgirl23

Hi Roxie and Happy birthday!

Just stumbled across this thread and sorry to hear things are so tough for you at the minute. I'm also feeling sympathetic cos I've had a lot of extra expenses over the last few months, several of which are stupid/luxury/lazy buys and can't seem to stop spending! So I know where you're coming from.

I kind of think that you and your husband are approaching things the wrong way round. For this to work, you need to sit down together and come up with a shared solution. At the minute you feel like you're doing all of the work on sorting things out and resent your DH's spending. But maybe he feels that somewhere along the line he's compromising as well, although you might not know about it.

You need to look together at all areas of your life and agree a budget for different categories. I don't think you need to exactly go along with any advice here in one way, if you decide that you want to spend £800 a month on groceries that's fine but you need to decide what you won't do in order to make that happen. Then perhaps it's worth having a white board or a big sheet of paper somewhere visible in the house where you start with the budget allocated to an area - eg groceries £800 and count down as you spend. Keep all receipts so that both of you know what the spending was on. So then if he says 'can we afford' you can refer him to the board and let him make his own decision. You would also have a period of discussion - around a month - where you finesse things a bit - eg are nappies children spending or grocery spending, that sort of thing. BTW you could also at the bottom of the white board have a bit where you note down the money coming in from ebay if you want to make a point to him that you're doing this.

But the key thing is that you need to both put the past into the past. When you're having this discussion, tell him to give it to you with both barrells for the £3k right then and there. But after that, it's over and no harping back to it. Similarly you probably need to say to him that you feel he's spending recklessly too. But this is your birthday so for you, tomorrow is the start of a whole new year. Why not use it to turn over a new leaf? both of you.

The key though is to agree the budget together and find a compromise you can both live with.

Good luck and well done on noticing it before it gets to be a big problem!

(oh and PS if your hubby keeps throwing up the overtime thing, tell him not to bother doing it if it really is making him so unhappy!)