Just joined, where to start??

pinkyXstary

Hi everyone!

It's been a long time over due but iv'e finally joined this site.
A little about me:
I'm a stay at home mum who has been excused from work due to caring for my disabled daughter Aimee. Aimee is 20 months old and severely brain damaged, suffering with cerebral palsy, epilepsy, poor motor function and very low mobility. She needs constant care hence why I no longer work. (I used to work in care and also a bit of retail). I also have another daughter Emily who is 32 Months and is happy and healthy. I have been married to my wonderful husband for 4 years and we have been together for 8. I also have 2 cats and a cockatiel.

Due to Aimee's disability my husband now only works 2 days a week (16 hours) in retail which pays next to nothing. I do get benefits to help us by but seem to find we are always struggling. We don't have any debt but would like to start making savings so it doesn't have to get to that stage.

Iv'e just made myself a "big book of money saving" and have wrote about 2 pages so far but mostly on common knowledge things like "turn off taps when brushing teeth, switch all sockets off, energy saving bulbs etc"

If im honest iv'e never done anything like that because iv'e never really thought about it (as weird as it sounds) i rarely miss a payment on anything but it does leave me with what a call a "skint week" and i find i struggle to get by that week or even two sometimes.

It's time for me and my family to make some really big lifestyle changes so any tips or advice that people can throw at me to start filling up my book would be greatly appreciated.

My biggest waste of money is probably food. I am rubbish at planing meals, have no idea what to cook and am a slave to the takeaway. If im honest we eat RUBBISH and i need to get my bum into gear and change this for all our sakes... especially my girls.

We have no mortgage as the council has just placed us into a bungalow adapted for aimee's needs and we pay £10 a week rent for it. No council tax.
We have no credit or store cards, no debts and we have a £100 overdraft that we have NEVER used.

looking at it this way were doing ok, but i dont want to be doing ok anymore i want us to be doing great

Thank you in advance for any help

Bex x

pinkyXstary

Also i should point out that my husband only works 2 days a week as Aimee has a lot of appointments (physio, ot, pead, hydrotherapy, motor group etc) and I don't drive but hubby does

pigpen

Sounds like you are doing really well to me.. most people would be in debt and moaning their lot in your shoes!! So a massive well done!!

I would suggest looking at meal planning.. what meal do you like and what foods you don't, and each week look out a new recipe to try.. I am doing my first ever moussaka on Monday.. I loathe cooking and once I've cooked it I don't want to eat it.. I tend to stick with boring bog standard meals..

Mince and mash (tonights delicacy)
tuna pasta bake
toad in the hole (which used to be yorkshire pudding packet mix with sausages thrown in)
meatballs and spaghetti.
Sausage casserole
Corned beef hash

all quick and easy and cheap.

SailorSam

Welcome to Mse Pinky you'll get loads of good advice here, just ask a question and there's always someone that knows the answer.

indsty

Good luck with your new outlook on life! It sounds like you have a sensible approach. Yes, meals/grocery shopping will be a good place to try and cut down a little, and can be fun too if you make it a family effort.
Do make sure you are getting all the entitlements you should be eligible for in regard to your wee girl.
The pennies all add up - when I was working I used to buy a newspaper every day - worked it out at 70p a day = 70x5 a week = £3.50 a week.... £14 a month .....£168 A YEAR ... eeekk.
I started adding everything up like that and happily cut out cups of coffee at work in the afternoon (£1.20 a day = £6 a week = £312 a year), and now apply it to everything I do.
Also, put some savings away every week, no matter how small, they will mount up until you have a little "cushion" for the inevitable unforeseen breakdowns etc.

Fruball

indsty wrote: »

Good luck with your new outlook on life! It sounds like you have a sensible approach. Yes, meals/grocery shopping will be a good place to try and cut down a little, and can be fun too if you make it a family effort.
Do make sure you are getting all the entitlements you should be eligible for in regard to your wee girl.
The pennies all add up - when I was working I used to buy a newspaper every day - worked it out at 70p a day = 70x5 a week = £3.50 a week.... £14 a month .....£168 A YEAR ... eeekk.
I started adding everything up like that and happily cut out cups of coffee at work in the afternoon (£1.20 a day = £6 a week = £312 a year), and now apply it to everything I do.
Also, put some savings away every week, no matter how small, they will mount up until you have a little "cushion" for the inevitable unforeseen breakdowns etc.

I do the same now. I don't look at the singular cost of anything - I do the maths and work out how much it costs per week/month/year etc. Even small savings add up to a lot over a year. And I then apply it to something, ie if I save £14 over a month, that is like getting my TV licence for free, or Phoneline etc.

Hi PinkyXstary and welcome to OS :hello:

The other thing I did was to cut most of what I use by half. ie half the amount of shampoo (still got clean hair) half the washing powder (I use even less than half now!) half shower gel (I don't smell ) half bubble bath, half dw tabs,,,, you get the idea By doing this you are effectively getting 6 months free products per year

Also, using leftovers to make tasty meals. ie if you cook sausages, keep 2 or 3 cooked ones, slice up and use them in a sausage pasta bake the next day. Same with bacon. Also, cook a whole chicken and strip the whole lot off the bone once it is cooled and use in several meals/sandwiches etc. (Don't refridgerate the whole bird as the meat welds itself to the bones! Much easier when warm or room temp)

Once you find your way around the boards, you will soon be saving money without even thinking about it esp when you see some of the yummy recipes which will make your takeaways seem like a poor substitution

Enjoy x

pinkyXstary

Thank you so much for your reply's everyone!

I definitely need to start looking at meal planing as i think this is where i'll make the biggest saving! Also using leftovers sounds like a great idea!

Also, looking at how much things cost in a week/month/year will more than likely make me stop and think "do i really need this?"

Great advice guys thank you so much x

RAS

Any thoughts about working yourself a day or two a week.

1. Would improve income and would not be taxed.
2. Would actually be almost respite as you would get contact with adults and leaven the caring experience?

Do you know how your family situation will be perceived under the Universal Credit situation?

tina_malteser

Welcome PinkyXstarey xx

Tink_04

Hi Pinky and welcome my best tip for meal planning is to make a list of your favorite meals this is breakfasts lunch and dinner, then start looking through the recipy threads for some ideas. You then can pick what you are going to eat and do a plan! Good luck - start simple then once your used to it try adding a new meal every week, I started doing it when DD was small and now have a folder full of meals and even added snacks, picnic foods and holiday food to it.

Tink x

pinkyXstary

RAS wrote: »

Any thoughts about working yourself a day or two a week.

1. Would improve income and would not be taxed.
2. Would actually be almost respite as you would get contact with adults and leaven the caring experience?

Do you know how your family situation will be perceived under the Universal Credit situation?

To be honest (and i'm preparing for a massive backlash now) I don't want to work. I have worked since I was 15 years old, worked right through my first pregnancy and through my pregnancy with Aimee, have paid my taxes and never before in my life claimed a penny. Now it's come to a point where I can't work. I think it's important to point out that I physically can not work because of how complex Aimee's needs are. Aimee doesn't sleep either on a night time, im lucky if I can get 3 hours broken sleep a night... VERY lucky. So in order for me to then go to work a couple of days a week I would need to be rigged up to red bull and coffee, I would be no sort of mother to my children. Aimee has between 2 - 6 fits a day, she needs me there to monitor them as sometimes we need to administer emergency medication and call an ambulance. She also needs a lot of sensory stimulation throughout the day that I have been trained up for. And besides all that I have a piece of paper here, from the government excusing me from the need to work due the above reasons. Aimee can not walk or crawl or anything... to put it bluntly her diagnosis at the hospital was "IF she survives which is highly unlikely she will lay in a chair and dribble all day" the most horrendous thing we were told, but thankfully she is better than that.

In regards to the universal credit situation I haven't looked into it too much but I understand that circumstances are made for working family's of children with disability's will not feel the brunt of it as much. So long as one of us is a career and the other is working a minimum of 16 hrs pw and the child recieves highest rate DLA, I could be wrong though.

It honestly wouldn't pay me to work, and it wouldn't benefit Aimee at all. I'd be taking time off constantly to get her to appointments as usually both parents are required to go