Only freedom will do

smallholdingsister

Swimming sounds lovely and DD adorable.
Know what you mean about sleep levels though!!

edinburgher

Halle-lujah! Halle-lujah! Ha-lle-lujaaaaah!!

Down at 8, up at half 6! :T :j :A :rotfl:

• Grocery shopping done
• Picked up fancy cake to butter up MIL - she has been injured and we're praying for a return to babysitting duties
• Car washed
• Picked up parcel for Mrs E

Today's jobs will be cleaning the tumble dryer heat exchanger and putting up a roller blind in the third bedroom. HM smoked haddock chowder for dinner.

Happy weekend all :coffee:

edinburgher

Well I never got the blind put up, apparently it is an absolute !!!!!! cleaning a heat exchanger! For anyone not familiar, it's basically a series of pipes covered with a 'plate' made of delicate metal fins that captures heat from the tumble dryer and feeds it back into the machine to save energy. It took *hours*. A little worried that I've dented some of the fins slightly, but the warning light has gone off for the first time in a year, so cautiously optimistic.

Sunday was a mad rush of preparation for returning to work today. I prepared today's breakfast, 3 days worth of lunches and yesterday's dinner while DD napped, then hoovered and polished my sadly neglected work shoes in the afternoon. Mrs E took us out for a park walk followed by a pint in a countryish pub, so the end of the holiday was better than the beginning.

I also ordered a new espresso maker and 6kg of coffee The coffee maker came from our 'Home Maintenance' budget (really stretching the boundaries of taking the !!!! there) and the coffee, well, it wasn't really budgeted for at all. Usually we take it from the groceries budget, but this is currently hovering at -£1 or so after a long month.

The groceries line of the budget isn't really working. There is a complicated formula in the background that is backed up by nearly 2 year's worth of real data to offer a forward projection of likely expenses (the spreadsheet updates itself as spends are added). I suspect that what has happened is that DD expenses (fresh fruit, milk, eggs and meat) are having a bigger impact than the long term numbers suggest. We've also started taking a few items like basic medicines (paracetamol etc.) and toiletries (cotton buds) from the groceries budget. Not sure how to fix this in the short term. I'm thinking either 1) discard the historical data, only count the last 6 months or 2) apply a management adjustment (i.e. add 20%). Not sure I'm really pleased with either solution, I think we need to reduce our spends, not just adjust the spreadsheet with the assumption that we will continue to overspend

I think I should join Elentan in trying to get our grocery budget under control.

edinburgher

Back to better habits in 2017, breakfast today was HM Bircher muesli, not bacon rolls A lovely combo of oats, milk, yoghurt, walnuts, sesame seeds, raisins and diced apple and very MSE as a) it's relatively cheap and b) it can be prepared the night before and left in the fridge, leaving more time for OPs :rotfl:

I did, however, opt for a work coffee as DD is cutting her final teeth and was up for half the night, not willing to risk waking her grinding coffee beans this morning.

In super exciting positive money news, I have increased my work pension contributions to 32% :j This means that we'll now be investing over £1,000/month between work pensions/SIPPs/ISAs, a meaningful step towards our FI plans. I feel almost breathless because it's a huge jump in £ terms, but on the other hand I need to keep reminding myself that we can do this because we've *been* doing it, just with less money going into the work pensions.

Right, back to the grindstone

misscousinitt

Heat exchangers of any sort can be a pain. We used to make some for boilers at work (cast iron ones). My understanding is that even with a couple of the fins damaged or missing - it will still work - can't remember what the percentage of damage that was detrimental - but I feel that a few damages will not affect the overall performance.

Fantastic that DD is on the mend and that she enjoyed swimming!

I think you might need to adjust your budget for food/groceries (upwards) and then collect some new data and then see what you can do to bring it down - as you well know - meal planning can help alot!

Good luck with it all - HM chowder sounds good....

MCI

LadyGnome

Glad to hear you are getting some sleep now. Long may it last.

You will need to adjust your grocery budget to allow for children but as they get older they will tend to eat the same as you so you can just batch cook bigger meals. Mind you with my two now I probably need an extra contingency for cereal and milk (especially for the teenager who is already taller than me). You could analyse the next month's spends and see where it is all going. Do you need a line for household /sundries to cover cotton buds etc so you can see it separately from your food spending?

Saving sound good. I am in the process of persuading Mr Gnome to focus more on longer term as we are older and have less time to get it all in place.

hiddenshadow

edinburgher wrote: »

In super exciting positive money news, I have increased my work pension contributions to 32% :j This means that we'll now be investing over £1,000/month between work pensions/SIPPs/ISAs, a meaningful step towards our FI plans. I feel almost breathless because it's a huge jump in £ terms, but on the other hand I need to keep reminding myself that we can do this because we've *been* doing it, just with less money going into the work pensions.

:j Yay!

I remember the heart-in-throat feeling whenever I upped my pension contributions. It always feels like it's a huge step but then you adjust to the new level of take-home pay and it sorts itself out. Plus the pension fund really jumps in value when you pump lots of money into it (shocking, I know).

elantan

Hey Ed, delighted the wee one had a good sleep ... life seems that much sweater when that hapens

Hope the dryer is working, with young us in the house a dryer can become an essential

Shopping budgets ... arrrrggggghhhhhh hubby's first wage of the year comes in in Friday ... gonna attempt the beast before then ... still trying to decide what to do... also don't forget food has seen a significant I crease lately due to the political nature were entering so it will increase even more soon ... I've heard talk of 5-10% increase, I can't say if that's right or not as .... well we don't look ( I know ... I am embarrassed)

edinburgher

@HS - I think we'll be ok with the reduced take-home, my main concern is that Mrs E hasn't really processed the fact that we *will* have less money in the short term.

I have explicitly stated this, have provided examples and am ratcheting up levels of 'stick to the budget' hardassery. For example, we've fallen into a bad habit of just booking a holiday with no real plan to pay back the credit card. Not crazy sums, say £1,000/year. It won't be happening again this year and I've had Mrs E involved in exploring the costs of different options so that the idea really sticks.

It can be hard to avoid infantilising someone when you manage the finances

@El - it's a fortnight until our next set of wages :eek:

I am unsure how much real food prices have gone up by (i.e. unprocessed ingredients), but junk food prices are shooting up. One of the most obvious examples for me would be the bays at the end of aisles in metro supermarkets (you know the ones, x chocolate bars for £1 etc.) I went to my local Sainsbo's on the way into work to use the cash machine there - £1 has now become £1.25 for the snack 'bargains'. I know that man cannot live on crisps alone, but that's one hell of an increase.

elantan

It sure is, and the sad thing is 4 treats of £1 are sadly what some people buy for food as buying healthier stuff is just not gonna cut it, the amount of obese malnourished people that I see is heartbreaking, yes a lot can't cook, they have never been shown how to make a pot of soup for example, and then can't afford the electric etc to make it, but 4 treats for £1 gives energy and will get a person through ... breaks my heart

I remember when my son was wee ( he's 25 now) he had a good friend, this wee boy was tall but didn't have clothes that fitted him, he used to appear with a packet of biscuits which was his dinner, not tying to get praise here ( honestly) but we used to time dinner for when he arrived and always made sure there was plenty left, our son was smaller ( still is) but I would accidentally buy too long a pair of trousers ... we never made an issue of things ( there was no need) we would just hand them over and move on, we would take him away for a wee camping trip often and just watch the kids being kids

That young lad got his degree, and as he became a young man started going abroad with us ..he now travels the world and stays constantly in touch with his second mum and dad ... we have a nephew with similar situation ... at one point I thought I ran a home for boys lol

This was years ago when my son was a kid, this broke my heart then... but now, now it's even worse, I see more and more people struggling every day at work, the soup kitchen we worked at is more busier than ever ... and with 4 for £1 becoming 4 for £1.25 I just don't know how people are going to manage

Sorry diverted a bit there, was just thinking out loud about the sorry state of our society