A Diary of Reinventing Ourselves

welshlady33

Hiya FT - enjoy some time away but please come back, I promise I won't make you cry again!!

Get some early nights, have a glass of plonk, some cadburys mini eggs ( its nearly Easter!!) cuddle the kids and hubby (if you feel like you want to! ) I'm sure you'll be feeling better in no time xxx

brizzledfw

Take care x

Forward_thinking

Evening!! Just checking in on my phone before bed. My keyboard broke today - son spilt a glass of water over it. It's amazing how dependent life is on technology!! All my plans were scuppered as they all needed use of the computer!!

Went to see a car yesterday. Drove for an hour and were told another couple were in the office paying for it. So we drove home again. I rang this morning about another one they had mentioned. Turns out the couple didn't take it in the end. So we should have hung around. They rang up this evening to change their mind!! Anyway, if we were meant to get that car it would be sitting in our drive.

Lots to do tomorrow. My YNAB is just too chaotic this month. Looking forward to getting into February so we can take one payment and track it properly. OH has paid off one credit card and is now moving another over to avoid the interest. The balance transfer is annoying but it's still so worth doing. Plans are underway for moving the higher one to the card we're in the midst of moving. So he's addressed this.

Nothing on the house front yet. Looking at all kinds of houses up to 10 minutes drive. Waiting to hear whether the landlord can be slightly flexible to give us a little more time.

Feeling upbeat again. It's the only way. I just fell asleep on the sofa and OH woke me up with a kiss. The first time in weeks. We had a rough night on Saturday and I said I wasn't sure we were going to make it together. He has been really working hard to be kind since; said he is really happy with 'us'. I can't imagine us apart; we make a good team. But I really do need us on the same page. I am very aware of a shift in the power in our relationship. I feel far more independent and less worried about keeping him happy if it is to the detriment of me.

Son came back from the hairdressers today - cost £12. He usually pays £30. It was actually a good cut; he wasn't happy that it's a bit too short but we can work on that next time. Definitely a good move - he still got his cup of hot chocolate. OH isn't convinced it's the right place for him and said he's off to Toni and Guy. Baby steps.

Hope everyone has had a good day. I'm tired. Wish I was a morning person. I always get to this time of the evening and wake up. It always seems a great idea.....until the morning. Going to head up now - an early night for me.

Verbatim

Baby steps? More like giant strides! I'm glad you're feeling more independent and in control and I hope you had a good night's sleep.
Remember you don't need to answer every comment, especially the negative ones. Just ignore them and don't feel you have to defend yourself.
You're doing amazingly well.
Vx

Gettingtherequickly

I'm glad you were a bit more upbeat in your last post FT.

You have got to think about yourself in all of this. Over the past few weeks you have been completely changing your lives at the same time as maintaining them. You have information zapping at you from every angle, you have strangers giving advice/opinions, you are dealing with the stress of having to move home, you have a hubby who is very slowly coming on board with you. With the best will in the world, something will have to give if you don't think about yourself. You need to tell yourself every night "I am NOT number 5 shouting input, input!" ( I love that film!) Sit back and bask in what you have achieved so far. This will give you the opportunity to charge your batteries and focus on the next goal. Maybe it is time to walk rather than run for a bit?

You have 2 important aims at the moment, a new home and a car. Once you have succeeded in these, what you have learnt/achieved so far will be the basis for moving forward. I understand that you want to keep going, but you need to remember that once you have achieved everything savings wise, you will only be able to tweak to get the best costs. Think where you are at the moment as where you will be in the near future, you have done your best and you are achieving the best.

Then when you are more financially secure, you can teach the kids financial management:D. I know that it is finally being taught in schools, but there is nothing like life experience to inform. They obviously don't need to know all the ins & outs of your experience, but if you can teach them to be stress free financially, that will be a priceless lesson.

Hope today goes well for you.

Claree__x

Morning FT! Hope you had another good night.

Just another 'voice' to say that I'm really proud of what you've achieved so far and you've done 100x more than most people would and that's with obstacles like having to move house thrown at you!

Sanctioned_Parts_List

Evening FT - finally caught up! I was only gone a week and the thread ballooned from 8 pages to almost 30 and still growing!

Bad luck about the house move - not what you need right now. I do understand the reluctance to move further afield due to schools (and I do fully sympathise with the "getting the kids into schools" thing - we've moved countries a couple of times recently, and of all countries, I think England's bureaucracy around school admissions is the worst!) Only thing I'd add to CCL's posts is that, if memory serves, years 7 and 8 are largely taken up with filling in the gaps left by primary school to provide a common foundation for year 9 SATs and GCSEs, with little added value. So a move in the first 2 years of secondary school isn't the end of the world, educationally.

When you set your mind to something, you certainly go all out, don't you? I think this whole process will be a reinvention for you, personally as well as for the whole family.

A sketch of the future - entirely in jest, as I'm not going to tell you what you already know you need to do. Here goes:

In the next month the changes you've made already will bed in and become the new normal.

In two months you'll finally get to grips with the variability of your accounts - meanwhile you'll start taking paying clients for your new business and growing your income. You'll only tell OH about 50% of your income until tax return season in December, as this will form the basis of your emergency fund.

In 3 months, OH will start transferring regular sums just to make your life easier - three months is in the Man Manual for when he can officially claim your ideas as his own. (Volume 2, section 5, clause 18, for those men who want to check )

In 5 months your resolve will waver, when on a delayed Thomson package holiday flight from Luton at 5am.

In 6 months you will have taken a visible chunk out of your debts and start to feel that all this might just be worth it.

In 7 months you'll start spotting the signs that your friends and acquaintances are also swimming in the deep end of the debt pool. You'll have a delicately-phrased conversation with a similarly-challenged friend over drinks, and be hailed as a saviour.

In 8 months, your kids will go trick-or-treating with Exocet-level accuracy, and come back with a year's supply of candy, saving your snacks budget even while it increases your dental bill.

In 9 months, nothing will happen. November is a boring month.

In 10 months, Christmas Eve, your smaller pile of presents will have been selected much more thoughtfully and be loved far more than the big ticket gewgaws of yesteryear.

This time next year you will get impatient with a new DFW who just "doesn't get it" and isn't cutting back fast enough - we all do it

:beer:

JustAboutThere

Sanctioned Parts List,

Love it Especially month 2 (the keeping back 50% for tax / emergency) and months 3 (Man Manual - oh so true) & 5 (hopefully no delayed flight).

getmore4less

Forward_thinking wrote: »

Son came back from the hairdressers today - cost £12. He usually pays £30. It was actually a good cut; he wasn't happy that it's a bit too short but we can work on that next time.

tell him there are cut backs and his hair is a contribution shorter == longer between cuts.

if it get bad it's a No.1

getmore4less

Forward_thinking wrote: »

Went to see a car yesterday. Drove for an hour and were told another couple were in the office paying for it. .

Was this a dealer?

If it is, another breakthrough.