Getting started but feeling daunted!

Dragonrider

Also, for weekly spending, I try:

Under £70 for weekly shops including nappies and cleaning stuff
£20 fuel - I put £20 in every Friday so that I never have to pay for a whole tank at once
£20 to husband for spending money during the week - coffees/lunches at work etc.
£40 for everything else - it's amazing how quickly this bit disappears!

ermine

£20 to husband for spending money during the week - coffees/lunches at work etc.

There's a savings opportunity there - if there's any way he can get a kettle or there is a tea point at work then making his own coffee is

• better quality,
• greener - no cardboard/plastic cups
• tastes better - no cardboard/plastic cups
• more pertinently to here, a lot cheaper

He'll recover the capital cost of a kettle in a month, though he probably has to get it PAT tested for use at work. Joining with some workmates to form a coffee club reduces costs even more, as well as being sociable.

And as for the lunches, well, home made sarnies are a damn sight cheaper and usually a lot better for you too.

Doing this saved me a lot of money, let's face it you are spending £800 every year on this. MSE Demotivator might help put things like that into perspective

Lois_E

ermine wrote: »

There's a savings opportunity there - if there's any way he can get a kettle or there is a tea point at work then making his own coffee is

• better quality,
• greener - no cardboard/plastic cups
• tastes better - no cardboard/plastic cups
• more pertinently to here, a lot cheaper

He'll recover the capital cost of a kettle in a month, though he probably has to get it PAT tested for use at work. Joining with some workmates to form a coffee club reduces costs even more, as well as being sociable.

And as for the lunches, well, home made sarnies are a damn sight cheaper and usually a lot better for you too.

Doing this saved me a lot of money, let's face it you are spending £800 every year on this. MSE Demotivator might help put things like that into perspective

True, but it depends on how on board he is with the whole MFW thing. The OP mentions that she holds the purse strings in the relationship. It may be that £20 a week is a comparatively cheap way of keeping the husband happy with the financial arrangements and willing for the OP to organise everything else to be as MSE as possible.

Of course, if he's as keen as you are to get the mortgage down, then by all means go ahead with the suggestions. Or perhaps a compromise would be to let him keep £10 a week for coffees and spending, and make him sandwiches yourself, so you get the savings without making him put any work into the changes you are introducing.

wantabetterlife

Hi Dragonrider, i am really enjoying your diary so far. You have made great progress with the mortgage already over the last few years :j
I think your way of managing the bank accounts is really good and i think something like this would work really well for us too.
Goodluck on your journey

CathT

Hi Dragonrider, good luck on your MF journey. It is more difficult when you have a big mortgage to see results but anything you can pay off does make a difference. I'm sure you will find lots of advice, support and tips here.

Dragonrider

My husband is trying to work out long term career plans at the moment, and we've gone round and round in circles so many times discussing it that I honestly don't know which is the best option.

I'm hoping that you lovely lot might have some pearls of wisdom or different perspectives that we may not have thought of. Ultimately I know that we are the only people who can make the decision, but it has got so complicated that all I want now is for someone to tell us what to do!

So here's to a long post - sorry.

His current situation:
Trained as a doctor (6 years in medical school), then went into the Navy. Left the Navy November 2010 as fewer training places within the Forces and wanted to see us more...
Now working as a junior orthopaedic surgeon in a very stressful busy job, where he gets paid £10k less than he was in the Navy, and still hardly sees the girls! It's such a busy job that he's not even getting very much training, as most of his time is spent doing admin rather than operating. It's really destroyed his thoughts of being an orthopaedic surgeon, and regularly says that his job is making him very unhappy. He is expected to do 3-4 hrs overtime per day for which he isn't paid, which means that his hourly rate ends up at about £8.50. :mad:

My current situation:
I also trained as a doctor (we got married while we were still medical students), but found that it wasn't compatible with the kind of family life that I wanted unless I wanted to be a GP, which I didn't. So 2 years ago, I moved into a still secure, but much less well paid job, which I absolutely love and want to do for the rest of my working life. However, I am very aware that I was only able to do this because my husband was earning a good salary and was incredibly supportive of my decision, and still is.

The Options!

1. Stay in current post - it will take him 10 years from August 2011 to become an orthopaedic surgeon, and we have no guarantee about where in the country he will be able to get onto a training rotation. I think he would make a good surgeon, and there is potential for lucrative private practice once you get there. BUT can he/does he want to stick it out for 10 years???
2. Change to Public Health - in the Navy, he gained a lot of project management experience and was able to influence the Afghan health service quite significantly, which he found very challenging and rewarding. He says his time in Afghanistan was his 'Perfect Job', if only it wasn't in a war zone, and he could have taken us with him! Public Health would mean 9-5 weekdays, and any on-calls can be done from home, and the training pathway is only 5 years. There is also the potential to do research in areas that interest him and continue his international perspective. However, it would mean a further £15k pay cut...:eek: and the consultant salaries are also lower.
3. Work for a private company - he has previously been involved with health IT, and has tentatively been offered a job with a rapidly growing small company who he really likes. He believes in what they do - using IT to make healthcare professionals' lives easier, not hinder them. There is also the potential here to lead on trying to crack the American market. The salary would be slightly more than he was on in the Navy, plus he would get share options and bonuses, and a car allowance. I think it would be hard work, because it always is in a young company, but I also think he would be very good at it. BUT it means leaving clinical medicine, and there is always a risk that the company could fold in a couple of years.

I am conscious that he supported me and I want to do the same for him, but the options are so different and there are so many 'what ifs...'

To have some objective, impartial thoughts or suggestions would be amazing. If not, sorry for the rant!

I know it's not directly related to mortgages, but he's going to be the main breadwinner for the next few years, so his salary is important!

katsu

My view: Doing 3-4hrs of OT a day could be a feature of 3 and maybe 2 also - hopefully not 3 hours but in most managerial jobs you can't work 40hrs p/w.

1 - He needs to look at how unhappy he is and will be for 10yrs and whether he would actually enjoy the job in 10yrs time. Otherwise I think life is too short (IMHO) to stick with being unhappy for money.
2 - Work the budgets - cut your cloth according to your means. Look at the salary and what lifestyle you can have (avoid Dr friends peer pressure) and then both decide if it is what you want. Sounds like his heart and interest is here.
3 - The hours are likely to be long and you need to look at what if it fails, what can he do then?

Ultimately, where is his real interest? Also, do an SOA (templates on DFW or look at Martin's budget brain) and think about your lives overall - what time do you want to spend together, what do you want to do with your lives, can you be happy with the income and expenditure and lifestyle from the various scenarios?

Sepa74

Hi Dragonrider, welcome to the board. Katsu has some great words of wisdom there, and I would also suggest doing the SOA as you will get some really good advice from people and it will also 'sanity check' your current costs.

With regards to the career, it's a tough one! My only advice is try and keep things flexible as much as possible - so that he doesn't end up in a dead end and can't jump from one career to another.

I wonder if his Afghanistan experience might mean he was able to go for more senior jobs than he thinks? Maybe he could do a CV and send it to various contacts to see what their feedback is? Not specifically applying for jobs, but perhaps just saying this is his experience and what he enjoyed about the job and why and can they provide any suggestions as to what directions he could go in.

Perfect CV http://www.amazon.co.uk/Perfect-CV-Max-Eggert/dp/1905211732 is the most fantastic CV writing resource, and it costs less than a tenner if he wants to do something like that.

Dragonrider

Thanks for the replies and the suggestions - he has sent his CV round to a few people, but I'll see if he'll do some more!

On a more positive note, we had a visit from an energy expert today on behalf of our local council, and they will insulate our loft for £50! He reckoned we'll save that over one winter, as there is absolutely no insulation up there now, so our bills should come down. Apparently they're really pushing to make our area greener, so they're subsidising energy saving measures.

Every little helps, right?

wantabetterlife

No insulation at all!!....you will notice a big difference and save a fortune :j