£67,031.92 is a frightening number indeed....

Suffolk_lass

arsenalbarnie wrote: »

Oh just remembered quite often the night before shopping was a bits and bobs night. Sandwiches, cut up carrots etc, plate of fruit cut up, jelly and a few baked cakes, they loved it! I could sometimes stretch the shopping to 8 days doing that.

I love this. We occasionally CBA to cook on a Thursday or Friday night and so I go to egg and chips - I always have a few chips in the freezer but I love the indoor picnic idea.

I should have made clear that if no meat met my budget, we go to freezer or veg meals (leek and cauliflowers are two of our seasonal staples and combining these with onion, carrot and cabbage with a veg stock thing makes a lovely veg mix that I pour a little cheese sauce over and bake for "veg au gratin".

I do have food enough for the next Suffolk Siege here and there are only two of us but I have spent £452.64 so far this year (including the next week)

Treadingonplaymobil

Am feeling really pleased with having nailed the work I wanted to get done today. So nice to not feel frustrated with how little I've achieved at the end of the day!

Ordered DC2's present and DC3's party decorations/pinata etc today. Am down to £96 in the birthday pot with DC3's present and DC2's birthday activity still to pay for (and a present each for two close child relatives too). It isn't really enough but will cover the bare necessities although not any extra gifts for either or cake/party food supplies. Hopefully will be able to top up the pots over the coming fortnight so I don't have to dip into any others. I'm pleased with how it's shaping up so far though, and that I haven't needed to rob other pots to pay yet.

Could it be that I am finally getting the hang of this budgeting thing? Even if I am only getting the hang of it by scrabbling frantically each month to cover whichever pot I have a shortfall in! I'm lucky I've had a couple of months of really good income which have enabled me to stay ahead. Hopefully if I can keep it up for another month or two each pot will build up enough so this won't keep repeating on a monthly basis.

Ooh, and another nice thing today - DH took on board that I'd asked for garden things for mothers day - and is embracing the plastic free thing - and I got presented with a lovely repurposed cardboard crate from the garden centre this morning with three tomato and strawberry seedlings, some potatoes and seeds for spinach, chard and salad leaves. And some biscuits and a hot chocolate lolly (one of those blocks of chocolate on a lolly stick you melt in milk). I felt thoroughly treated, and like I'd really got something that was a good use of money (he has form for panic buying something daft). :T :T

Three things to do today
1. Pack orders for smaller business.
2. Finish contracted work for client A.
3. Finish contracted work for client B. Hurrah to getting everything done!!!

Debt repayment:
- £19.32/31 March rounding down pot.
- £1,608.78/£5,000 2018 debt repayment goal.

PositiveBalance

Happy Mother's Day, ToPM!

Perhaps you aren't the only one who is getting the hang if the budgeting thing.

Silver_Queen

It sounds like things are really shaping up well for your family. Well done

Honeysucklelou2

What a brilliant Mother's Day present!

Treadingonplaymobil

Week 57: Day 1

Another new week! And maybe this week I'll actually achieve some work and house stuff! Fingers crossed for not losing another chunk of time to weather, poorly DC, poorly me or any other factors.

Thank you for the mothers day wishes, I hope everyone else had a lovely day too. It was so nice that DH had listened and got what I wanted, and sat and done homemade cards with the DC etc too. Really lovely day.

I have my 'houseowork' day today, and a fairly quiet week all round, until the weekend anyway, when I am working with clients all day Saturday, Sunday and Monday (all that extra money I've been earning has to come with some work attached I suppose!). Amazed the house isn't looking worse after being totally neglected for a fortnight, although our bedroom (which always becomes the dumping ground) is just awful. Hoping to get a bit on top of it all today. I'll revisit my monthly list in my next post too, which should be depressing - I don't think I've done a single thing from it yet this month, with one thing and another.

Sort of MS news: I have decided to give the DCs an ultimatum of either practising more, or stopping piano lessons at the end of the term. Just seems a bit pointless to keep sending them every week if they don't practise at home ever. They are quite happy to go for lessons, but not really getting anywhere with it. I suspect DC2 might carry on, and DC1 probably won't. We're going to put the money it frees up into a 'DC kitty' for nice cultural activities (sorry, that sounds a bit pretentious), even if it only pays for a trip to the local theatre or ballet once a year, it will be nice to feel that they're not just losing another opportunity because of our tight budget.

Menu plan for the week
Mon - boiled eggs and soldiers for DC, leftovers for DH and I (DC have early dinner due to clubs)
Tue - leftover stew and dumplings
Wed - black bean chilli with salsa and tortilla chips
Thu - winter veg soup with pearl barley
Fri - fish of some description from market (with greens and potatoes?)
Sat - sweet potato and coconut milk soup with lentils and brown rice
Sun - mujadara with green veg
Lunches - cheese + crackers + houmous + veg sticks, leftovers, savoury cheese and veg muffins.
snacks - fruit, toast, drop scones, flapjacks.

Three things to do today
1. Town - present for relative and top up food shop.
2. Clear ironing.
3. Savoury muffins for DC lunchboxes.

Debt repayment:
- £19.90/31 March rounding down pot.
- £1,608.78/£5,000 2018 debt repayment goal.

Treadingonplaymobil

March's lists update

Ha, have just read this from my post at the beginning of the month:
I'm seeing March as a time to instill some new habits - I've succeeded in slowing down and doing less, and now I need to work out which habits/routines I want to re-incorporate into our lives. At the end of the day, cleaning, work, exercise etc all need to happen, so I need to make sure they appear somewhere in my routine. I still don't feel I've sorted out the balance between looking after myself and actually achieving everything that needs to be done. My yoga practise is always a symptom of this - when I am relaxed, eating well and managing to both get things done and have some downtime, I practise well. When everything else isn't quite right I can't face practising at all. At the moment I am leaning more towards the latter than the former.

Well that's been a total washout so far! <shakes fist at snow and illness>

Hopefully things will start to improve now. Anyway, here's the lists for the month...

Home/Family
1. Defrost the freezer. Ooh, I've actually done this.
2. Repaint bathroom tiles.
3. Tidy up the front garden.
4. DH finish front fence.
5. Plan/start veg planting. Well I have A Plan. Need to check when what I've been given can be sown/planted.
6. Put the word out about needing a little trailer for camping.
7. Mend DC3's dressing up costume (Elsa's plait is coming loose...).
8. Buy cheaper spoons for packed lunches - the DC have been taking in our proper cutlery and I'm fairly sure we've lost one or two of our nice (not cheap) spoons.
9. Try to get back into a daily laundry/ironing rhythm.
10. Try some new budget recipes. I have tasked DH with this as his mission for the week.
11. Experiment with greater food planning - snacks and lunches as well as dinners (we usually rely on there being leftovers or cheese/crackers/veg, which is OK, but I wonder if we could do better by cooking more soup and stew batches or something, especially for weekends when we are all here). This is actually going really well and definitely improving what I personally eat day to day.

Me
1. Stick to three things on my daily list at any one time. Well three things would count as a huge success in recent days!
2. Eat proper meals and snacks, instead of grazing more or less continuously. Improving.
3. Self care - downtime, nice baths, morning and evening rituals. Ha. No.
4. Daily yoga. I'm only doing a short practice, but I am actually getting on my mat each day.
5. Finish handmade presents for friend's imminent baby.
6. Make any handmade presents for DC2 and 3 birthdays.

Work
1. 10% growth on my main social media platform (296). Amazingly am up to 293 so far.
2. A new blog post for my website.
3. Get well ahead with contract work.
4. Focus on my key aim - of developing some passive income that allows me to move away from my current (not hugely enjoyable) main income source.

MSE
1. £31 minimum overpayment from rounding down YNAB pots.
2. List wooden marble run on ebay.
3. Fund birthdays somehow! This is going surprisingly well.
4. Keep the food and diesel bills down. This is going less well.
5. Experiment with smaller food shops, more often. We don't have masses of waste but I do feel we could improve a bit, and also up our veg intake - I often don't buy much veg because of the risk of it going off. We have plenty in the freezer, but it can get a bit samey. Experiment is ongoing. It's no cheaper, so far but a huge amount more enjoyable as I am going to the grocers etc. Need to fine tune what comes from the supermarket and what gets bought fresh.

I'm actually quite impressed that anything on that list has happened! I feel quite buoyed up seeing that I have done some things

cocalls

looking good-keep it up!

PurpleFairy26

TOPM have a look at Campbell's website. They do really good meat and fish and often have offers on boxes. The quality really is excellent and you can freeze it too. They have on offer on a family fish box at the moment .....

Glad the lergy has gone and how lovely you got useful but nice gifts for Mothering Sunday. It'll be lovely eating your gifts and your budget benefitting from them in a few months

One thing on the architect, I know you have mentioned a few times you need to pay him for further design changes. Can you not negotiate an all in price? What if he does a design you don't like, but wasn't wholly your idea? Just a thought, ours gave us a price, but it was all in,as many iterations as we wanted and overseeing planning for one fixed priced. Worth a thought to stop cost creep (or having to pay for another iteration of the plans to get the final design you really want)

DawnW

Another recommend for Campbells. Once you have bought from them, they often send voucher codes / additional special offers. The meat and fish comes nicely packed ready to freeze, if you want. Might also be worth investigating local butchers - ours has started to do monthly special offer packs, again, all ready for freezing if preferred.