My mortgage-free journey

LannieDuck

So we did pretty well on food costs this week. Out of the nominal £150 I'd allowed, we had about £30 left over... and that included a bottle of Pimms for the lovely weather yesterday

My OH did a 'small' shop yesterday and spent £50. He was thinking that £30 of this can be incorporated into last week's budget, but I'd much rather see if I can keep that £30 in savings and aim for £150 again this week. Only problem is that we have guests at the weekend and he does find it difficult not to overspend when hosting.

LannieDuck

I've had a tough day today. It started on Friday when my OH took the LOs shopping to Tescos because he needed some bits and bobs we can't get at Lidl. I expected him to spend about £50 or so and we were going to do a second shop later in the week at Lidl to get food for the week, so was caught completely off-guard when he msged me to say it had come to £160 :eek: (our weekly budget is £150).

It's been quite difficult because he doesn't really understand why I'm upset by it. He sees it as 'stocking up' on things we need. He wants the £160 to be spread across the next two months so it doesn't wipe out our food budget for this week. The trouble is that I can pretty much guarantee he'll do another 'stocking up' shop next month, and then where do we spread the cost of that?

So I spent the afternoon getting YNAB up to date. We knew last month was bad (it was half way through last month that I had my eek moment and set a weekly food budget for us), but I think it makes more impact to see in black and white that we spent more than we had coming in... by £200

We'd been doing really well since the last pay cheque (slightly under on our food budget for the first two weeks) until OH blew it this week. However, after I was so down about it this afternoon, he sat down with our meal planning spreadsheet and worked out a way that we can get through the week without any more shopping (excluding bread and milk). He really is lovely and definitely pulls his weight, he's just not used to not being able to buy what food he wants when he wants it.

(I did suggest that he might like to take over the budget spreadsheet for a couple of months so he can set what he thinks is a fair weekly food budget. But that went down like a lead balloon )

ourcornercottage

Could you withdraw your weekly food budget on Friday in cash and when it's gone, it's gone.

My BF struggled with money saving to start as he was so bad with money but now he shocks me when he comes out with some money saving comments or tells me off for spending! I heard him saying to his mates this weekend that we've given up takeaways to save money to put towards mortgage, they were laughing, to which he said he'd discuss in 5 years or so how funny it is when we're nearly mortgage free!

LannieDuck

ourcornercottage wrote: »

Could you withdraw your weekly food budget on Friday in cash and when it's gone, it's gone.

My BF struggled with money saving to start as he was so bad with money but now he shocks me when he comes out with some money saving comments or tells me off for spending! I heard him saying to his mates this weekend that we've given up takeaways to save money to put towards mortgage, they were laughing, to which he said he'd discuss in 5 years or so how funny it is when we're nearly mortgage free!

Hmm... I'll have a think about that. Sometimes OH or I shop on the way home from work, and other times OH shops when he's home with the kiddies, so we'd have to be more organised about that. But not necessarily a bad thing...

cookie9

It is hard when your partner has quite different spending habits. I try to avoid letting my DH shop with me or even worse shop on his own as he will spends lots. Could you do an online shop to cut down on temptation?

PrincessLou

I agree with Cookie - from the sounds of it I really think that online shopping would be the way to go. I started online shopping about a year ago and it is fantastic. I can budget accordingly, see how much I'm spending before I go to the checkout and there are no nasty surprises with out of control shopping sprees!

LannieDuck

I used to online shop before the house move (when I was on mat leave), and you're right - it definitely helped to control costs. The trouble is that it was always me who used to end up doing it.

That was fine when I was at home all the time, but now we both work nearly full time, and him going shopping saves me a job. (I've tried to get him to do it online in the past but he didn't normally get around to it, whereas going in person he's fine).

Perhaps it's worth it tho just for a couple of months to get costs under control.

PrincessLou

LannieDuck wrote: »

I used to online shop before the house move (when I was on mat leave), and you're right - it definitely helped to control costs. The trouble is that it was always me who used to end up doing it.

Have you considered that this may actually be a good thing though? If you can keep your husband away from the shopping then you have control over how much you spend

LannieDuck

I know, and I agree But I'm soooo busy I absolutely have to have help from OH otherwise I'd just drown.

He does almost all of the cooking and all the IT stuff. I do all the budgeting+admin, the lion's share of the tidying (although he tidies the kitchen), all the bed linen washing, all the bins, I do the hoovering, he mows the garden etc etc.

The trouble is that we both work 4 days a week and have two small children. And we've just moved house, which has meant a massive amount of paperwork (almost all falls to me and I've nearly got it all sorted now), and a huge pile of boxes still to be sorted through in the garage. We just don't have any spare time at the moment.

I literally didn't stop yesterday and still didn't manage to find time to hoover... which I really needed to do. I might try and squeeze that in when the kids are in bed tonight and before we have our dinner.

If I take on the online shopping I'd have to get him to take over something that I do to free up some time. I'm not sure he'd be amenable to that! (He quite enjoys taking the girls to the shops.)

LannieDuck

Hmm... thinking about this some more, he's pretty good with not overspending at Lidl shops now. Maybe I could leave those to him and I could just do an online Tescos shop once per month to buy the miscellaneous extra stuff he misses from the normal shops. That might work