The Ultimate Hard and Fast debt clearing mission

Dinah93

Thanks for the replies everyone. Its fair to say my hormones and emotions were running very high last night. We stayed up and talked things through, and I feel a lot better about what we're going to do today.

duchy wrote: »

Would moving work in the short term ? Even letting your house for a year or six months and renting somewhere with no commute whilst you are on Mat leave at least ? Maybe you could find a job you love up there -and if not you've not burned any boats and revert to plan A ? (By which time NIM will have charmed his way into working from home two days a week)

Home may be where the mortgage is but really it's where the family is. It's not great timing but if it's an unmissable chance for NIM maybe it'd be a solution especially as you don't love your job anyway.

Our mortgage is about £280 more a month than we'd get renting it out (before letting fees etc) so while it would be cheaper to rent down there, we'd still need to be paying £350 (guesstimate to cover mortgage shortfall and letting agent fees?) a month back into this house, which isn't something we'd readily have available during maternity leave. We'd also be in the tricky position that my job still pays quite a bit more than this new one would, and it would be not commutable at over 2 hours if we moved to Leeds. I guess I'm both cursed and very lucky that my job pays an above market rate, by about £4k a year, but any change for me would mean a reasonable drop in salary. I find this difficult when I want to try something new, but right now it makes a huge difference to clearing the debt and my maternity pay. I think it would be quite a hard time to move as well, with a new baby, as I feel like we've got a strong family network here, for help with the baby etc, but I also don't think mum could cope with us moving away while she's going through so much with grandad, we're very close and she is so excited about her first grandchild, NIM moved to England so I could stay near my family and it makes that sacrifice of his pointless if we end up in a random location anyway.

What we've decided between us is
a) NIM will not take any job which will put us in a worse financial position than we are now. Any job must break even with what goes in the pot now ie right now after commuting say his job 'makes' us £1000 a month, any new job must still contribute this after commuting.
b) So long as the job breaks even, I can still return to work part time meaning no full time childcare, which is important to us both. NIM would still ideally like to find a way he can provide enough that I can take care of the baby full time, whereas I don't have an issue with working part time if it means the baby gets more of both of us.
c) I was being overly emotional and jumping to the worst case scenario, ie NIM moving away during the week for no more money. I can understand situations where couples agree to live apart if it benefits them in some way, but this current situation, while enabling him to take the job, would have us no better off financially and also have him apart from his family 5 nights a week.
d) For the next few months it makes sense to try to push ahead with the business, now that possibly things are finally happening. This could give us a way to provide for our family together and still structure our time to suit us more.
e) We were looking at the job from very different places. NIM couldn't work out why I was saying if he took this I would have to return full time - all the figures I had done were based on the absolute minimum salary he could take. Atm we have £350ish left after minimum debt repayments, all the figures were based on what he could take for us to have £0 left after minimum debt repayments. With having to pay childcare once I go back this meant full time hours not part time as we could afford atm. Once we clocked this irregularity in what we each thought the numbers meant we understood one another a lot better.
f) We have very different benchmarks for what constitutes 'providing' or a 'successful dad'. I'm more hallmark, he's more practical. One of my favourite sayings growing up was that the best thing a father can do for his children is love their mother. It's not always possible, but where it is I do think it is a great foundation for children to have their family as their rock, to see their parents as a source of stability, both in their relationship together and with the children. It takes time together and as a family to have this strength so I always planned to marry the family guy, rather than the executive guy. NIM however sees providing in a more material way, a dad should be bringing home enough money to support the family and enable his wife to stay home and raise the children if she wants to. He sees me worrying about my parents financially and doesn't want that burden on his kids, but I see their relationship is strong and know how much they've overcome together and are still happy. I also think kids will always worry about their parents in some way whether it be their relationship, finances or health, we worry because we care not because they did a bad job of parenting - we just want the best for them same as they do for us. When NIM named his two role models for dads I could see why we were coming from such different places, while both undeniably love their kids very much and are close to them, both are very career driven. Both work long hours every week (over 70 by their own admission), both bring in a lot of money, and are both divorced. NIM attributes this to marrying the wrong people, but I believe even if you marry the perfect person that won't keep a marriage alive without committing that quality time together.. An extreme example as most men don't work out the house for 70+ hours a week, but it really surprised me by how differently we see providing for a family.

Dinah93

And in lighter news my kitchen has a chocolate demon. It sneaks in every night and steals my supplies, so when I get my mid morning craving I have nothing

N.I.M

There should still be plenty of baking chocolate there. Make brownies, no cookie, no BOOKIES!!!!

Dinah93

Sorry, brownies are already in the oven (did I just apologise for making brownies?!). Will make you some bookies next week, I promise. Bookies need chocolate chunks in them and we have no milk chocolate left and not much white. After the brownies we're pretty low on dark too for that matter.

Tried a new brownie recipe, this is from the first Hummingbird book. I'm glad I've been baking for as long as I have as I was in the process of picking up the bowl to tip onto the tray and my mind was going 'this is a weird mix, it's far too thick, you could use it to pave roads' at which point my baking brain kicked in and yelled 'you've forgotten to add the eggs you stupid floozy!'

A question for other bakers out there - do you observe the traditional rules for spoons? I was taught to bake by my nana, who always said use a wooden spoon until you add the flour, then swap to metal as wood beats the air out and will give you a flat cake. But it's rare in baking books I see anyone advise you swap to a metal spoon. So do you find it makes a difference?

N.I.M

Dinah93 wrote: »

Sorry, brownies are already in the oven (did I just apologise for making brownies?!). Will make you some bookies next week, I promise. Bookies need chocolate chunks in them and we have no milk chocolate left and not much white. After the brownies we're pretty low on dark too for that matter.

Tried a new brownie recipe, this is from the first Hummingbird book. I'm glad I've been baking for as long as I have as I was in the process of picking up the bowl to tip onto the tray and my mind was going 'this is a weird mix, it's far too thick, you could use it to pave roads' at which point my baking brain kicked in and yelled 'you've forgotten to add the eggs you stupid floozy!'

A question for other bakers out there - do you observe the traditional rules for spoons? I was taught to bake by my nana, who always said use a wooden spoon until you add the flour, then swap to metal as wood beats the air out and will give you a flat cake. But it's rare in baking books I see anyone advise you swap to a metal spoon. So do you find it makes a difference?

I love you being off, I get baked treats constantly

Dinah93

Yeah, who am I kidding when I say I don't know if I could hack being a full time SAHM. You'd be positively obese and probably diabetic, but I'd be happy in my buttery world of baking with a tiny helper.

Birdie85

Errr I just use what's closest to hand! Usually it's a rubber spoony/spatula thingy. But my baking attempts tend to end in disaster so there's no point in my wading in with the spoon talk really! Maybe when you write your baking book you can bring back the old spoon switcheroo!

ETA: I miss my house husband, it was lovely when OH was off as he'd get bored and bake me treats! Was lovely!

Dinah93

I don't like using two spoons - I always smile thinking of nana but I look on it as twice as many scrapings of batter wasted

Dinah93

Free listings on ebay this weekend if anyone is interested. I think I'll have to pull my finger out this time as I haven't been good at timing things for the free weekends recently, but they always bring in a surge of money.

Birdie85

Why not invent a one-side wood, one-side metal spoon, so say you mix anti-clockwise, you make sure that the wood is doing the 'pushing' (IYKWIM) for the mix then spin it around so the metal side is doing the work when the flour goes in! Tah-dah... magic spoon! If you make a fortune with that idea I'd like a cut please!