The Ultimate Incentive part 10. The only thing holding you back is you.

Dinah93

Morning all. Hope everyone has lots of nice weekend plans.

Had a really nice day yesterday, met a nice new lady at playgroup in the morning, then met up with some NCT ladies in the afternoon to go to butterfly world. They're all a really nice bunch, but one in particular I got chatting to it just felt like I'd known her for years, she invited me to another kids play place on Monday which is great as I finally feel like I'm making some mom friends.

Grace was pretty freaked out when butterflies came close to her, strange since she loves bubbles, but she got hysterical over the first one and stopped toddling about and climbed up into my arms and clung on for dear life. She liked the plants though, and the fish, but it was the meekcats that stole her heart. Photo below shows her meerkat face.



Yesterdays spends from me
£3.45 entrance to butterfly world (had nothing in the cafe afterwards and had taken Grace's juice and snack with me so I didn't need to buy anything)
£16 drinks and overspend on food on a groupon we had that was expiring. Our first date in over 3 months!
£2 euromillions ticket
NIM will have spent more, he certainly got fuel, but I haven't gotten any spends off him all week, he's in for some stern words!

On Thursday night we sat down with many, many squares of paper with all our possible priorities on them and made some decisions. What came out of it really surprised us. I didn't realise how much NIM felt he'd lost me recently to the anxiety and depression. His priorities therefore were very much on the things that would bring me back. Because of the beneficial effect this would have on our family life these things therefore ended up staggeringly high up our priorities list, when things I do 'for me' I would naturally put fairly low down.

We did find the exercise very useful, we realized physical stuff had pretty much no importance to us, getting new cars, a bigger house, even littler things like a new mattress were all right down the bottom, with the agreement that if a car started having major issues then it would become a much more important priority, but while they're running just fine and are safe, there is no need, want or desire to fork out our pennies for a newer one.

All the stuff at the top of the list was about getting our family life to a happy structure really. The top 10 came out as:
1. Grace (pretty self explanatory, whatever we do she's our #1 concern)
2. Write and publish ebooks (it floored me that this came so high up, but it's something I've been keen to do since Grace was born, I feel writting her story will give me closure, and NIM very, very strongly believes me doing this will start to bring me back to him)
3. Dinah home with Grace (I was surprised this came above NIMs uni dreams, but again he feels he could live without being a doctor, he doesn't feel he can live without having the 'real' me back)
4. Dinah's dad's business (time into this is important as it could enable #3)
5. Debt cleared (suprised it didn't come higher but this fits into our longer term view of things. Slogging away at ebay, surveys etc might get the debt cleared quicker, but finding permenant other sources of income like #2 and #4 might keep us out of it and lead to a happier life overall rather than just hitting some arbitrary number on a spreadsheet)
6. NIM back to uni
7. Pay back Grace's savings (when she was born we were given some money for her which FIL insisted we pay off the debt and pay her back later, we'd like to get this paid back to her as soon as possible)
8. Build up £5k savings
9. Build up a property development pot and implement it (something I've wanted to do for about 13 years now and doing our own house only bit me worse with the bug)
10. Replace conservatory and extend kitchen (you all know the leaky conservatory/dining room woes, this needs doing, but we'd rather use our money to make more money aka #9, then use that more money on this, even if it means waiting a bit longer)

As you can see below there were a lot, lot more things we considered, and some we still consider quite important, but these are what came out as mattering most to us. The one thing we couldn't agree on where to put it was 'second baby'. NIM is adamant no baby until the debt is cleared, which I agree with, but for me it would still come second on the list after Grace, as I believe life is all about family not money, whereas for him a second baby would come below clearing the debt as he wants the old me back and our finances sorted more than he 'needs a second happiness multiplier'.

I doubt you can see it clearly but here is the full list.

Dinah93

Birdie - I found you a great maternity top. It's not a maternity range but it's stretchy and I just saw it and thought of you and I bet even as non maternity it would do you until at least 7 months x

Buffythedebtslayer

Dinah you are so inspirational.

Thank you so much for continuing to share your story.

xxxx

*goes off to find index cards*

floella80

*subscribed*
I hope I'm not butting in ladies. Just wanted to say how fab your Diary is Dinah, and how much I've enjoyed reading the posts between you ladies. I have a 15 week old boy, who is the most amazing little person ever. I've finally done something fulfilling in my life. Dinah, I look forward to reading more of your journey.

Dinah93

Awwww, thanks floella and buffy, really made me grin

Got up early, despite Grace being at her grandparents and got a few hours writing in, at the moment I'm mostly going through old texts working out what happened when, and they also help jog my memory of amusing incidents (in pre-baby world NIM and I text one another anything from 30-120 times a day.... now it's probably less than 10 a week and most of those are 'get milk'), but I did get a thousand words or so of proper writing out of my system too.

I couldn't get too lost in it though as I need to get the guest room cleared of all my sewing and ebay stuff before the weekend when it needs to have guests in it. My old way of doing it would be to shove it all in the attic then hurriedly close the door. This time I decided, in a moment of madness, to reorganise the whole attic. All I can say is the guest room is currently in a much worse state than when I started.

NIM and dad have been working on the fence this afternoon, and I'm excited to say I think it's nearly there. The last fence panel is too big so they need to do something to fit it in, but that's all thats left, very excited that Grace can play out there now without straying into next door, or going under the huge gap into the garden to the back.

Lara44

That sounds like great progress Dinah :j Glad that the writing is therapeutic, I can see how it would be. Next step to run the figures of lots of possible scenarios? Good luck with the attic clearout, I love organising things.

Things good here - attended a great conference on Friday with some inspirational ladies. We all ended up hanging out over the weekend too, which was loads of fun. Some possible things to apply for post-PhD are emerging which is nice. I was worried that there would be nothing to even try for, so it's a good motivator to do the best I can with the time I have left.

I haven't been doing enough lately, and I am carrying loads of deadlines over. So the rest of June and early July will be about trying to regain some control over those. So this is my new JDIJune / July:

[STRIKE]TAE Presentation[/STRIKE]
AD Presentation
Chapter 3 - finish last section (1-2 days)
Chapter 4 - finish rewrite
Chapter 5 - finish rewrite
Chapter 6 - start and finish rewrite

I got my OH to change the wifi password so I have to come and sit in the living room to get online. It's definitely helping!

Hugs to all x

Birdie85

Aww, glad Grace enjoyed her time at Butterfly World, even though she didn't like the butterflies!

Sounds like you and NIM had a great meeting of minds and index cards, nice to be able to talk frankly about your priorities and figure out where you both want to be and how you're going to get there.

That top is very cool! Pay day on Thursday so I may have to treat myself!

Hope you managed to get the guest room sorted some more yesterday! I'm such a bad room sorterer as I get carried away going through everything and never seem to make any headway, rifling through boxes and separating everything into little piles of keep/donate/bin. OH does an arbitrary look, pulls out anything that looks promising and bins the rest without even thinking about it! Gets the job done but I hate watching him do it! Felt a little smug yesterday though as he'd binned some random golf balls we'd had hanging around and lo and behold we needed one! There's a little crazy golf course in the park around the corner and we happen to have a putter and one ball (used to be more, but at least we'd held onto that one!) so we went along yesterday evening and had a little play. Love finding free random entertainment like that!

I'm feeling so knackered today. Do you think people would notice if I booked out a meeting room for a 2 hour lie-down?! I'd even think about it if the meeting rooms didn't have full glass walls so people can see exactly what you're up to!

Can get on with my JDIJ paint the walls task next week, with paying off the holiday and ordering blinds our bank account has been emptied so need to wait 'till we get paid before buying loads of paint!

Dinah93

I used to nap on the bench in the ladies shower room and on the back seat of my car when I was in first trimester. I even napped in the loo a few times because I just couldn't stay awake. Bless you, it'll pass soon.

kavics17

The first 15 weeks were horrendous , I slept standing up, sitting down, in the bath, on sofa, at lunch time, at dinner time. Wherever and whenever I could. I honestly can say that never in my life I experienced tiredness to that degree.

Dinah93

As promised to myself for this month I've worked out all our debt totals. I didn't say I'd post the breakdown but given it's a financial diary I kind of feel like I really ought to. It's gone up from the sig, which doesn't suprise me since we've been on one wage for 6 months now, and one wage comes within a few pounds either side of just paying our essential household bills ie mortgage, heating, insurances etc, but not food and fuel for the car and anything else at all we spend. So, (drum roll):
Natwest: £5836.37 £0 until Feb 2014
Barclaycard: £3776.37 0% until December 2013
Overdraft: £1297.47 £19.9%
Amex: £1992.20 - £12 a month if not paid on time
Total: £12,902.41