Enjoying the Sunshine whilst Saving for the Rainy Day

debtfreewannabe321

mummytogirls wrote: »

Morning DFW,

Sounds like youve had a nice few days, I love that you avoided spending about £9+ yesterday at the walk!

Our school holidays are a week behind yours as ours dont go back until next week. The weather has been kind to us though so its been easy to entertain them. I do always feel the month feels longer when the kids are off school, what we going to do in the 6 weeks :eek: haha!!!
Enjoy your last day with them anyway xx

I've already had thoughts about summer hols and am trying to imagine what we can do especially if weather is rubbish! I'm thinking of a NT membership as I keep seeing people always using theirs and going lots of places, also thinking about halving the savings that month and enjoying the money for once so we can afford swimming once a week, theme parks etc all the things the kids want to do also thinking of a few days in a hotel somewhere (well by hotel I mean cheap boarding :rotfl: )

Best start planning now then

mummytogirls

Its fab that youre planning in advance.. its needs to be done.
Ive been thinking along the same lines as you but seriously the hoping we have a good summer to make the most of picnics in the park. Ive started saving £25 a month so that we can have nice days out etc especially if the weather is rubbish.

If you think of anything else please let me know!! xx

debtfreewannabe321

mummytogirls wrote: »

Its fab that youre planning in advance.. its needs to be done.
Ive been thinking along the same lines as you but seriously the hoping we have a good summer to make the most of picnics in the park. Ive started saving £25 a month so that we can have nice days out etc especially if the weather is rubbish.

If you think of anything else please let me know!! xx

DO you have a local beach? Our local one around 10 miles away and is dog friendly all year so great for days out and pretty cheap too (plenty of free parking a little further walk away from the car parks!). We take a bucket and go crab fishing there :T

We also have a few country parks with signed up walks, the kids like these and we get them to spot the coloured signs on the way round...great for picnics and tree climbing too

I've recently found a cheap(ish) cinema (£20 cheaper than the 0deon for all of us!!) and I think we will make use of that on rainy days and now that the kids are a little older maybe the local bowling/roller skating places :think:

I'm open to other suggestions too if anyone has any!

debtfreewannabe321

Back again!

I've gone and borrowed more money from the emergency funds (tut tut) I found an offer online for NT membership for the family, it was 25% off and 10% cashback so I paid £73.50 and I have 10% of that coming back to me as well :T I'm hoping this will be a good investment and save some money for trips over May half term and Summer holidays If anyone is interested I found the offer on w0wcher and it runs out tomorrow, hence me getting it today!

I also found my computer had a virus !!! It's brand new so i'm not impressed. We ended up paying out for a subscription for a year to protect it. We had a free one on already and it didn't help so we gave in and paid for one. £25 on that. Let's hope that is the end of computer problems for a while hey. Internet is back up and running a lot quicker though :T

Aside from that we've had a quiet day, a dog walk under a huge black cloud that just about held off, we met DS1 on the way back as he was getting off his bus too so we walked back with him. Should have been a nsd if it hadn't been for the 2 big expenses above

We are also planning on buying a new car soon. I say new, I mean new to us. Our budget is not huge and we will be using whatever money that DH gets in his bonus he is due so a few grand tops I should think. I would like a 4x4 size car that is cheaper to run than ours and just as reliable. If only our car were bigger I wouldn't be bothering, it's a shame really for such an old car we've had no major problems with it, it's fully equipped with all the luxuries (heated seats/air con etc) I just need to stretch it out and make it bigger then we could keep it :rotfl: So that will be next on my list of jobs to do. Research cars, and I hate doing that.........I somehow always get it wrong and buy pieces of junk (DH chose the car we have now!) :eek::rotfl:

Anyway I've rambled on enough for one day. I'll be off now

please-let-me-be-lucky

I'm sure you'll get lot's of use out of your NT membership. We love ours. They are well geared up for kids and usually have brilliant play areas as well as extra activities for them to do Xx

Ps, I reckon you are right about being bored without all the drama :rotfl: Xx

*Robin*

NT membership is a great source of entertaining family days out!

Something else we used to do was go for lots of short camping trips - sometimes they were wonderful breaks, sometimes the weather was awful but then everyone was glad to get home again (very effective for stopping cries of "I'm bored!" :rotfl:).

We had too many kids to fit in a 'normal' car as well, back in the days before people carriers existed. Best solution at the time was a minibus, which also provided plenty of space for shopping/luggage, dogs, camping gear (kitchen set up inside the back doors, so with a small awning [beach umbrella's second function ] it meant someone could produce a meal easily and quickly no matter what the weather, while everyone else was putting up tents etc).
..Ah, those were good days.

debtfreewannabe321

Afternoon/Evening! Thanks Robin & lucky, I'm glad you agree, i've not had NT before although we did have EH a few years back but tbh we didn't get much use from them which is why i've dithered for so long on getting these

We plan to use them this Saturday as we are supposed to be at a party I don't want my DD going though and she doesn't want to go either so we are going to go off out for a good few hours at least to avoid the times of the party (across the road) I don't think they particularly wanted us there anyway but felt obliged to send an invite as our DD is in the same class as the birthday girl. Said birthday girl is the one who was picking on my DD so really don't think a party invite is the way forward :eek:!

We went window shopping for cars today and only found one with lots of leg room in the back out of so many I hate car shopping as much as I hate shoe shopping (for my fat wide feet!!!) DS1 is probably going to be 6ft at least and he's not far off that now so squashing him in to our car won't be an option for much longer :eek: However the car I liked was around £10,000 out of budget so i'll have to lower my standards a tad haha! It's not even that I have too many kids like you did Robin, cars just seem so titchy in the back these days for even 3 of them ???!

I've got a pedometer on today and am trying to walk around as much as possible just so it tells me i'm not fat and unfit like I think! Might have helped had I put it on first thing rather than at 1.30pm though. So far i've done just shy of 6,000 steps. I am recalling from somewhere that 10,000 is a good average??? (I hope I didn't just make that up??!) I will do it for the week and see what my average is

DH & DS1 are at rugby. I'm sat in with just 2 kids and it's soooooooo peaceful! I have classic fm on, a tidy front room, the dog is not being harrassed and the kids have both done some homework (reading and extra maths) and are playing nicely together outside long may it continue. A childminder I doth not make........!

Right anyway, best get on and do my banking** and then i'll have a little catch up on here (**still desperately awaiting rental income......)

slm6002

Sounds great both the NT and the no squabling at the mo It is 10,000 steps per day that is supposed to good for us. I find i do this and more on a weekday but come the weekend when i dont do the school runs it is not quite there. OH away tonight so trying to catch up on a few admin bits.

Are you still looking after friends children or did i miss something - sorry if i did

mummytogirls

Morning DFW,

We dont have a beach nearby, nearest is about 2 hours away so thats not an option for us, would love to live 10 mins from the beach though!

Poor DD not surprised you dont want her going to that party, dont think I would either. Enjoy your day out instead xx

Skint_but_Optimistic

Good work planning now. I am sure this will be worth its weight in gold at school holiday time