The Ultimate Incentive muddles along

Dinah93

So where we currently are - 

NIM got a new job starting mid August, however too late to go on payroll for August, so he will get paid 6 1/2 weeks on the 20th September. However his old job didn't pay him the right amount for the 7 days I think it was he was employed there (at £89.50 this would put him very significantly below minimum wage!). So this month we've only had my wage. Which currently IS minimum wage, as we took on our own premises for the business in December, and opened in March, but we had to invest around £65k to do so, and until that is paid back I'm only taking minimum wage. We have around £23k still to go. 

We don't have a mortgage or loans. We do have some debts of around £6k, if anyone is still out there I'll find out the exact amount. 

We sold our car in March as 23mpg just made my eyes bleed every time I got to the pump. We ordered a new electric due for delivery mid April. It's just a lease as our credit record is shot, but it's through the company so reduces our tax bill a bit there, and the monthly lease payment is less just than we've been spending on fuel, let alone services, MOT etc, all of which is included with the new car. We've only been running on one car since the pandemic, however NIMs new job requires him to be in the office 5-8 days a month and the office is 58 miles away, and not near a train station but on a pretty rural business park. Great for parking, crap for public transport. So we do need 2 again. Since the electric didn't arrive in April (currently due on 8th September) we bought a very old, cheap run about (155,000 miles on the clock, 12 years old) that was supposed to see us a few weeks until the new one arrived. It's now been on a 3000km tour of Europe, as well as doing 500 miles a week as our only car. Last night it had some major issues so it needs to go to the garage this week, but if the repairs are more than a few hundred it's not worth doing and we'll need to go car shopping again after the 20th when NIM gets paid. 

Savings. Oh we're bad at savings. £1000 as a complete and utter emergency fund, which I should probably just pay off the debt now I'm here and actually thinking about it..... 

We do have a few very small savings pots (like auto spare change round up type things). I've started recently paying into a private pension, since I don't get one through work, but I feel like I should be doing it through work so it's pre-tax income? Pensions are a bit of a mystery to me, I used to just do the standard one when I worked in local government and then I've had a decade's break. 

Family. Still 2 kids, still the same house, 2 cats, 1 dog. 

So, that's the general update, say hi if you're out there and I'll keep you updated with any progress, moneysaving and moneymaking I can rustle up. 

Dinah93

£997 withdrawn from savings, should arrive in a few days. Can pay at least half of that off a credit card, but do need to leave some in our current account as still have gas, electric, council tax, road tax, car insurance, life insurance, pension, pre-payment cert, boiler cover, swimming lesson direct debit, quartly water bill, pet insurance and national trust membership to come out this month totalling more than £1100. 

the_end_of_the_rainbow

Great to see you back.
Sounds like your business is doing really well still.
what ages are the children now?
How is dd’s health?

Dinah93

Good to be back  

DD is great, for the first time in her whole life she is currently off antibiotics, and doing well, if she can stay off them with a maximum of 1 short course needed through the winter we'll get discharged from respiratory. Her consultant has said this is not something he ever imagined she'd be well enough to do when she was born, and it's all down to how well she and us have stuck to the plan (medication is the easy bit, 2 hours of vigorous, out of breath type exercise every single day is the hard bit). She's now 10, so we have secondary schools to go look around in September 

DS is 8, he's not been well recently with scarlet fever, and he's having an ongoing, long term issue with head and stomach aches which no one seems to be able to solve. However he is the happiest child ever, very loving, easy going, not remotely ambitious whereas DD asks several times a week how long until I retire after she turns 18 so she can have the business! 

Working day for me as mum has DD while NIM is doing lego Hogwarts with DS who didn't feel well enough to go out, just waiting on a call from a facebook ads manager about some issues I've been having, some changes they implemented in May time literally stripped about 10k a month overnight from our business, but they think they may have a fix for it now so fingers crossed. 

wendz86

Hello ! 

Lovely to see how you are getting on . Glad to see you are all ok , although hope you eventually get some answers with your ds illness .

good news about Nims new job , annoying about the pay though . I just started a new job myself two weeks ago after 14 years at my old company. After interviewing a few people a lot less experienced than me and seeing how much they were asking for kicked me into looking for something else . I’ve weirdly been paid for the whole month of my old job even though I finished mid August which is annoying as now got to sort that out with my old Hr who are useless .

Also had a few car problem so feel your pain there .

My eldest Dd starts secondary on Friday , (scary) but also means my childcare is cut down as she won’t need it any more so just paying for youngest DD.

kavics177

Hi,

Nice to see you back, it was so nice to get the email about the thread being active again. I don't come on this site at all nowadays, just way too busy with life. Good luck to NiMS and hopefully you will get some answers to DS's health problems.

We are good here, mini Kavics is turning 10 this autumn and toddler Kavics is not a toddler anymore, starting pre-school on Thursday. They love and hate each other at the moment, there is no inbetween. 

Financially we are very stable fortunately, no debts at all, thanks to the years I have spent on here in my twenties. I'm afraid of what winter will bring but there is nothing much I can do differently. I'm still in the same job which is not ideal but the money is good. We bought a land a couple of months ago and we will try to plant as much veggies and fruit trees as possible, aiming to be self sufficient. 

the_end_of_the_rainbow

Dinah93 said:

Good to be back  

DD is great, for the first time in her whole life she is currently off antibiotics, and doing well, if she can stay off them with a maximum of 1 short course needed through the winter we'll get discharged from respiratory. Her consultant has said this is not something he ever imagined she'd be well enough to do when she was born, and it's all down to how well she and us have stuck to the plan (medication is the easy bit, 2 hours of vigorous, out of breath type exercise every single day is the hard bit). She's now 10, so we have secondary schools to go look around in September 

DS is 8, he's not been well recently with scarlet fever, and he's having an ongoing, long term issue with head and stomach aches which no one seems to be able to solve. However he is the happiest child ever, very loving, easy going, not remotely ambitious whereas DD asks several times a week how long until I retire after she turns 18 so she can have the business! 

Working day for me as mum has DD while NIM is doing lego Hogwarts with DS who didn't feel well enough to go out, just waiting on a call from a facebook ads manager about some issues I've been having, some changes they implemented in May time literally stripped about 10k a month overnight from our business, but they think they may have a fix for it now so fingers crossed. 

That's wonderful news about your DD.
Hope you get to the bottom of DS's issues soon.

the_end_of_the_rainbow

kavics177 said:

Hi,

Nice to see you back, it was so nice to get the email about the thread being active again. I don't come on this site at all nowadays, just way too busy with life. Good luck to NiMS and hopefully you will get some answers to DS's health problems.

We are good here, mini Kavics is turning 10 this autumn and toddler Kavics is not a toddler anymore, starting pre-school on Thursday. They love and hate each other at the moment, there is no inbetween. 

Financially we are very stable fortunately, no debts at all, thanks to the years I have spent on here in my twenties. I'm afraid of what winter will bring but there is nothing much I can do differently. I'm still in the same job which is not ideal but the money is good. We bought a land a couple of months ago and we will try to plant as much veggies and fruit trees as possible, aiming to be self sufficient. 

Kavics - it's so nice to see your post. I followed your diary in the early days when you were pregnant with mini Kavics and was so sad for you. Can't believe that was nearly 10 years ago. I'm so pleased life is good for you now. Does mini Kavics ever see her paternal grandparents (in Poland??)

Dinah93

awww, loving seeing familiar faces coming out to say hi! Really good to hear things are going well for people. 

Hows the new job Wendz? NIM left for similar reasons, but is currently worrying he made a mistake, he's not loving his new one. He has been approached by another company for a role coming up for January, which would be another £16k pay rise, but he'd also be working with people he knows and has worked with before, so I think he may be not so secretly hoping that one comes off. 

I've batched cooked two meals today, so that's about 5 portions from each of them remaining after we had lunch, ideal for just microwaving when it's just NIM and I home on a lunchtime, or for him to take to the office. We spent 2 hours going through our energy bills last night to work out why it's over £400 a month. Short answer is it's right, which depresses me, and if we want to prevent it hitting 4 figures by January we have to cut our usage significantly. So I'm going by the moto of turning off what we're not using, and trying to rationalise on using anything that makes cold things hot, or hot things cold as they're the biggest power drains. 

I downloaded the Snoop app after seeing it on tiktok, I'm not convinced it has much use, but it does tell me how much I've spent each week, and how that compares to my average over the last 3 months (so last week my Tesco spend was £16 higher than average, however as we'd been away for a month we had absolutely nothing in other than herbs, flour etc). It's also not wildly accurate as it tells me this week I spent £2.97 on kindle ebooks (true) and have spent nothing on them in the last 12 months (blatant lie, I have a problem when it comes to ebooks, I have about 4000 on my kindle, and I get through an average of 3-4 books a week, or 1-2 a day on holiday). 

With the car playing up a mum of a friend of DD's took her to a party this morning, then came back and asked if she was okay to stay with them for the afternoon as a bunch of her mum friends were meeting at the park, some of their kids DD knows. Oh, and did DS want to join them, she had a spare seat in the car? So I've unexpectedly got a few child free hours. Have I worked hard? No not really, I'm battling insomnia at the moment and not getting to sleep until between 3 and 6am, and then up 7.30-8 with the kids so I'm like a zombie and on a real go slow during the day. 

My main money goal for the rest of the day is to look into other bank accounts, I saw a cashback debit card recommended on another forum so I want to check out if that is a good option for us, or if there is something else better, I'll report back what I find. 

roomontheend

Hi, Lovely to hear that you and yours are all doing well.  You my remember My little pink person being born well she is now 13 and grandson is 10. I have found myself back on MSE in the last few weeks, looking for advice on cutting back on the cost of living.  We like many are worried at the moment on just getting by.  OH is not working and now semi retired/ Carer for family member/ house husband/ handy man/ builder as we would only have the pay someone else to do all the work on the house anyway.  10 years down the line and we are still doing it although as we are doing it all ourselves to reduce costs is why it is taking so long.  We could do with a side hustle as gas and electric prices actually make me feel sick. Last year we were paying £150, currently £279 and estimated to be £656 in October 😳😩 I can only imagine how we would be feeling if we had the debt we used to.  It must be such a worry for people taking to pay down debt as well budget the cost of living.