Bricks Not Books

VintageHistorian

A little TT of £3.70 this evening.

I did not, in fact, remember to get the John Lewis/Waitrose giftcard for the TCB cashback. But I did get a decent sized gammon joint yellowstickered to under £10, which has gone in the freezer to provide multiple meals in the future, so it's not all bad. Last week I got a very cheap piece of pork shoulder reduced from the butcher counter, at this rate I'll have half a pig to provide meals in the freezer 😅

More expenses this month - contributed to a retirement gift for one colleague and sponsored another for a charity fundraising event. I've just purchased some flowers for Mothers Day and DS will be set the task of making a nice card this weekend. My own card made at nursery was waiting for me at pick up time.

Swapped DS's bag of clothes for £15 today. Cash has gone in the Disney jar.

New side hustle website went live at the weekend. Still very low on content but I know what I want to do. I just need to actually find time to do it! (The eternal call of the working Mum with lots of on-going projects) I try not to give too much away on here but I'll say it's women's fashion related and leave it there.

Not much else to report at the moment. I'm considering buying a thermal label printer as an increasing number of potential side hustle places seem to require you print off your own label, and it would be quite useful for my online shop when I'm struggling to get to the post office to buy more stamps. I'm just not sure if I would use it enough to justify the price, the most recommended one is £66. Will continue to have a think.

Mr VH is working tonight so I've cleared some freezer space by making a beige picky tea for my dinner. Nice and easy to chuck in the oven while getting DS into bed.

Have a good Friday everyone!

beanielou

Think about the £66 outlay against your time. Priceless.

VintageHistorian

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81920885#Comment_81920885

This is true and will be the argument that wins the day in the end 😂

VintageHistorian

£3.78 Tilly Tidy to the mortgage last night.

Did a talk this week and they very kindly rounded up my mileage so gave me £50. I've put £35 in the S&S ISA and £15 towards the new car.

We have had A Week again. DS woke up fine Sunday morning and by Sunday night was crying, had a temperature and was clearly poorly. He woke up multiple times during the night so Mr VH decided to work from home Monday and I took a half day. Got him to the GP surgery Monday afternoon and they confirmed a chest infection for the poor mite 😭 So Mr VH tried to feed him dinner (he ate a few mouthfuls but refused the rest) while I spent 35 minutes queueing at the pharmacy for an urgent medication request that hadn't downloaded properly, so they didn't know it was there until I arrived and asked for it 😞

But one dose and a good night's sleep later and DS was almost back to normal. He's continued to improve all week so we've had two mornings at nursery and then I've had the afternoons off to look after him at home. The antibiotics finish tomorrow, yes we are making sure to give him the full course even though he feels better because antitiotic resistance scares the bejesus out of me.

In between all of this I got an excellent reduced crispy duck leg and pancakes for the freezer, we'll see if that lasts to Eurovision time as it would be lovely for a picky tea. I batch cooked some more cottage pies and bolognese sauce for the freezer for DS. I also made rice crispy cakes last week so we're munching our way through them for afternoon/after dinner treats. I've still got half a bar of chocolate and a load of rice crispies left so I'll make some more soon.

My Mum got a free small box of Twinings teabags from Waitrose through the loyalty app. No one in the family drinks Twinings so she got the Earl Grey box for Mr VH. This prompted me to finally download said app and I discovered that I have the same offer! So I'll be getting a box for Mr VH too, and one of them can live on the top shelf of the pantry cupboard.

I must wrap DS's birthday presents. I know what I'm getting my brother so that just needs to be ordered too, and DS needs to exercise some more card making skills.

Dinner tonight is a yellowsticker M&S cottage pie from the freezer, and tomorrow will be one of my recent reduced pork purchases 😋

Have a good weekend everyone!

VintageHistorian

I took DS to Asda on Friday afternoon to take some photos for the new project. We also got 3 Easter eggs as they seemed to have the best offers for the medium size ones. DS has chocolate buttons, DH has rolos, and I have chocolate orange as the Galaxy Minstrels one had sold out and I didn't want to come back.

On the drive home DS insisted on stopping at Waitrose for a walk around. Clearly that boy is getting some kind of instinct from our shopping trips as they had a load of cooked rotisserie chickens reduced to £3.50. So we brought one home and I stripped the meat off while sorting DS's dinner.

I must admit I'm a bit disappointed with how much meat I got off it. I've had one sandwich and then I've managed to make one small curry portion (for DS) and one large curry portion (for DH) with the meat, and that's about it. But all three of us were eating little bits of it here and there (it was quite delicious) and even an uncooked small chicken would be over £5, so technically 3 meals for £3.50 isn't bad. Next time I think I'll focus more on lunches for me and Mr VH and dinners for DS as he could either have a roast chicken dinner, or I can add some chicken to a tomato-based pasta sauce, and that would make the meat go further.

Back to work tomorrow. I have made my sandwiches for breakfast and lunch. No baking this weekend so I'll just take some biscuits for my afternoon cuppa. Payday on Friday so I will wait until that comes through then buy the thermal label printer.

Dinner tonight is beef stew in the slow cooker. The diced beef was in the freezer so that's more space, I need to start doing a bit more batch cooking to fill in some gaps!

Have a good week everyone.

VintageHistorian

March overpayment total - £37.23 🎉

Given how expensive the whole bloomin' month was I'll definitely take that as a win.

We're back firmly in illness territory. DS went down for his nap on Wednesday with a tummy ache and ended up being sick all over himself, his cuddly toy and his bed. An hour later he was sick again on himself, me, and the bathroom floor. I will forever be grateful to Mr VH for leaving work an hour early and then immediately scrubbing the bathroom clean once he got home. My Dettol-scented hero.

DS hasn't been sick since and is getting his appetite back today, albeit we're still being careful about what he eats. Will try him on homemade cottage pie this evening, no need for him to eat it all we'll just see how far he gets. However, Mr VH is now feeling wiped out and has a bit of an unhappy tummy. So after catching up with my work this morning he retired to bed and I've been entertaining DS.

Tempted to have an entire sage bonfire in the living room at this rate.

Luckily though DS had his birthday before being ill so we had a lovely day. Trip to London, a packed lunch, and me and Mr VH had afternoon tea for dinner as our own mini celebration. We got most bits from M&S and while there I picked up their pack of 3 chicken legs for £1.50. Very good value, I managed to make sandwiches from them and two meals (2 chicken roast dinners plus 5 small portions of chicken chasseur) for the freezer for DS. Lesson learned - Get the rotisserie chickens if very reduced (they are very delicious), but go for the M&S chicken legs if I'm just in the shop and need to restock DS's freezer drawer.

DS got some lovely gifts for his birthday so I'm already eyeing up a few things to remove from the rotation and sell on. My brother gave some cash so I bought something DS had asked for (but we're going to give it to him later to break the association between demanding it and getting it as he had a small tantrum originally) and the rest of the money will go in his savings.

I need the mortgage money to come out on Tuesday and then I can do the main money shuffle. Already paid EDF and council tax, and put £150 in my ISA so it's definitely done in the current tax year. Not that I ever come close to the maximum but you never know what each year will bring.

Money things for this month? Got 2 talks, so that's a minimum of £70 coming in. We've also got our holiday so that's money going out. I am crossing everything that no one is ill while we are away but we're not going abroad so that's one potential issue out of the picture. I just want a week of doing nice things in a nice place without anyone being tired, having a temperature or throwing up. I've sold some more of DS's outgrown things so that should be £10 coming in next week and I've got another pile to photograph. I also did the freezer inventory so now I can clearly see how few homemade things I have for me and Mr VH, that needs to be dealt with this month!

Dinner tonight is…I'm not sure. I got some reduced mashed potato in Waitrose yesterday so I might have that with a beef in red wine that's sitting in the freezer. I did originally want some bacon and cheese crispbakes that are also in the freezer, but I'll want wedges with those and I don't know if I want to be trying to sort out wedges while managing DS this afternoon. Beef and mash would definitely make my afternoon easier, so they're the frontrunners right now.

Have a lovely Easter weekend everyone!

South_coast

Hope that's the last of the illness for a while 🤞🩷

VintageHistorian

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81948978#Comment_81948978

If it isn't I'm going to fumigate with Dettol 😫 My Mum did point out that DS was much healthier before the cold snap when nursery could turf them all into the garden so hopefully some warmer weather and open windows will work some magic.

VintageHistorian

I am now incredibly paranoid every time I hear DS shuffling over the baby monitor as I'm expecting the sound of gagging and then big wailing 😭 He was very good this afternoon as he understood Mr VH is poorly, and he ate most of his pie. But we had a big meltdown at the mention of an early bedtime because he'd definitely got way too tired. Poor little mite.

Anyway, Mr VH put him to bed and then went to bed himself. I had the beef in red wine with mash for dinner and froze 2 portions of mash for DS's future dinners. I also cooked a yellowsticker gammon joint I bought in Waitrose last month so that can be sliced and some bits used for dinner tomorrow.

And that brings me to why I've popped back this evening. Because I'm sitting here on my own listening to some music and quietly panicking every time I hear DS move, I have been distracted myself with the OP spreadsheet. In particular after seeing people mention trying to time Mortgage Free status with landmark birthdays on @Jessy103 's diary, I had a play around to see how much I would need to overpay by my 50th birthday, since that's in just under 10 years time.

It was a bit eye opening and a bit depressing. Unless we started to overpay £450 a month right here and now, we wouldn't have a chance of reaching it. And sadly the only way I can achieve that kind of overpayment is by cutting off all other savings. No ISA, no new car fund, absolute zero. Could only really have holidays if I side hustled like a second fulltime job and even DS doesn't have enough crap for me to sell on to achieve that. It also doesn't take into account the fact that I would like to move at some point and a bigger house would necessitate a bigger mortgage.

Buuuut it does at least give me something to think about working towards in the future. I am certainly not as frugal as I could be with our food spends. We have a budget of £100 a week for the three of us, which includes toiletries and cleaning supplies, and inevitably we go over this by about £10 to £20 a month as I spot things that are "nice to have" but not necessarily essential (and if Mr VH comes with me then it's "nice to have" plus "that looks new and interesting" and "I've never seen that before but I'd like to try it"). I suspect that if I were a bit stricter with baking our treats once a week and kept a firmer eye on the freezer contents I could actually cut some of this down and manage to get around £10 to £15 a month under budget. Not a huge amount but our basic overpayment is £16.92 so if I could double that without breaking a sweat I'd be quite proud of myself. If I had a year of using my talks money that would be another £200, if I was stricter about getting cashback for things I would probably a further £200 to £300 a year etc.

£450 a month would be £5400 a year. That's quite a substantial jump from where we are now, but I feel like in a year or two it might not be completely impossible. Certainly worth an on-going think.

beanielou

Always something to think about.