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

Karonher

At the moment Aldi have a lot of vegetables on offer - cabbages are 19p, bags of carrots and bags of leeks 19p and Maris Piper potatoes 29p. Using their offers would leave some money for more expensive items.

Honeybug

I can only speak from my experience and that is that i find that unless i give the family regular good quality meat protein they seem to end up eating lots of carbs to 'fill themselves up'. Are you falling into this trap? If so, the answer may be in eating more meat. I think it has been mentioned on here before, but i buy from muscle food which is good value and i think, good stuff.

I really commend your eating less meat and always try to have one meat free day per week. I guess it is about finding out what works for you and yours.

Still really enjoying your diary :beer:

apple_muncher

Could the aim to try to earn even more than currently in order to improve the diet possibly wait until Sept when dc3 goes to sch(?) And you get more 'free time'? Would that take away some of the striving to fiteven more into your current hectic life? Just a thought.

Treadingonplaymobil

Week 59: Day 6

Morning! Another crazy day of baking and prepping, for DC3's party tomorrow.

Thanks for all the food thoughts yesterday, and for not bashing me for thinking it! I was expecting much more stern language .

I really don't think meat is the issue - we've not eaten much for years, and it's never been a problem, but we used to add in nuts, oils, seeds, avocado etc etc to add to our diets, and these days we don't. Although I am not yet feeding proper teens, I am effectively feeding one extra small adult (DC1 eats pretty much what I eat) and two 'proper' child's portions - DC2 eats almost as much as DC1, and DC3 eats a normal good sized child portion, and I am providing every single meal for every member of the family, with the exception of DC2's lunches during term time. I already use the fruit and veg offers at Aldi/Lidl (depending on where I am shopping that week). Looking at that daily dozen list I would say we are managing perhaps 1/3 of the items on it. I never buy berries, nuts, houmous, flaxseed etc, and certainly not in the quantities he recommends.

I don't really want to wait until DC3 starts school to address the issue - I will actually only gain one more school day, as she is at preschool 4 days a week now (although each day is 30 minutes shorter than a school day too), and the school's slow settling in system means I won't actually have her in school for those five full days until close to half term in October, more than six months away. Also I will need to find huge sums of money for DC1's tutor from September, so I'd rather that was the only increase I faced in September!

I think short term I'm going to try to add a tiny bit to the food budget, even just a few pounds, splitting earnings as I mentioned in my previous post. I'd ideally like to be looking at a food budget of £120 per week, plus £20 per month for household supplies to save for the things we run out of less frequently - toilet roll, vinegar for cleaning etc. This would amount to a £140 per month increase on our current budget, which is a lot but not unthinkably huge. Even upping the budget to £100 per week for food would make a difference - it's currently £400 per month including household supplies, so around £87 per week for food. Until recently it was £375 per month, which was just about doable but highly depressing.

Looking on forums other than MSE, the average spend for a 'budget conscious' family our size seems to be around the £120-140pw spend, including houehold supplies, and anything above that for less budget conscious families. On those same forums when I was searching 5+ years ago (back when we tried to budget and failed utterly!), I would say the similarly budget-conscious people were spending more like £60-75 on their weekly shop. Food prices are insane.

Anyway, enough rambling about food. I need to figure out where to find the money from next.

Many many things to do today
1. Make unicorn cake.
2. Make soft bread rolls.
3. Make sausage rolls.
4. Make biscuits of some form or other.
5. Prep treasure hunt for tomorrow.
6. Prep pinata for tomorrow.
7. Make noodle soup for dinner.
8. Town for sweets for party bags.
9. Log in to childcare account to confirm free hours for DC3.
10. Decorate for party.

Debt repayment:
- £22.77/31 March rounding down pot.
- £1,608.78/£5,000 2018 debt repayment goal.

Suffolk_lass

I read before you posted yesterday but I did want to mention something re food. In January last year I started the 8-week low blood sugar diet until Easter. Yes, I lost weight but it is how it has made me feel and how it honestly seemed to reset my metabolism. Since Easter my diet is primarily a mediterranean diet but over this cold winter I have eaten more carbs like potatoes, hm bread and cake :eek: In summer I grow lots of fruit and veg (for the taste, more than the savings for veg) but it made a difference - I lost another stone since Easter (I needed to) but my joints don't audibly creak or click and are more mobile and my aches and pains diminished. I genuinely feel better

Now we are at Easter it could be a good time to look at a bit of a shift as temperatures warm up to reduce the carbs and increase with more seasonal veg. I have one homegrown butternut squash left from August's crop (they do take quite some space to grow, even tying them vertically) and two strings with a few onions but you could build your meals around the seasonal veg mentioned yesterday and make a few sourdough wraps for the children, to improve without the cost going up too much.

I agree with prices going up but I have substituted such as rapeseed for olive oil I am going to cook with, and keep the good oil for a last minute sprinkle or dressing. And I only buy budget butter (£1.40 in Morries yesterday). If I am stocking up I do a my supermarket comparison and check the main site for coupons.

It is hard. I have spent £211 against my £200 target this month for food and groceries

warby68

I think you're absolutely right that your food budget is probably too small for the long haul and that good quality protein (and for us that's meat/fish/eggs) visibly helps with energy, weight and avoiding filling up on stodge.

I just don't see much leeway in your budget though unless you can change some things you usually resist such as Christmas spends and giving up some time consuming lifestyle things like candle making and long party prep in favour of income generating activity. Because of the debt and housing needs, I really think what your family needs most is actually more income full stop

Rising food prices have had more impact in the last 12m than I've ever noticed before in over 25y of running a household. Plus the pressure of growing appetites will not go away for many years. I have 3 adult male appetites here now (plus a spoilt grumpy cat)- it can be hard filling them up as they are never full as such - they can just eat til it runs out!!

Honeybug

Hi TOPM,

You my have answered your own question. Whilst you do not wish to up your meat intake, you said you use to eat a lot more nuts and seeds. Depending on which ones you eat, these are high in protein, albeit plant protein.

Silver_Queen

I think that Warby has hit the nail on the head. Whilst you are eternally busy, a large amount of your time seems to go on home and family things such as candle making, huge amounts of baking, handmade gifts, party planning etc. In contrast your income earning hours seem to be closer to part time employment hours. Obviously these add up and I'm not diminishing the amount that you do in a day but perhaps it's necessary (even if not desirable) to up your income earning hours and lessen the hours you spend on things that usually only a SAHM would be able to achieve. This way you can increase your food budget without having to lessen any of your other budgets. I really think it's a case of picking your battles.

I don't think that you should go back into employment as I seem to remember you saying that in comparison to the hours of work, you'd never be able to get employment that pays as well. But I do think that putting extra hours into your business and fewer hours on the "extra" would be worthwhile.

joeyjimbles

11+ tutor

Just to say that of course only you know if your DS needs a tutor or not but it's definitely worth buying some practice guides and papers - check first which tests your desired school uses as they don't all do english for example but they probably will do maths, verbal and non-verbal reasoning - we found the CGP ones the most useful and user-friendly.
It might help you to pinpoint where the tutor can best help your child. Some of the reasoning ones are fun - DS1 liked them as he loved solving puzzles and codes as a child - some of them remain incomprehensible to us all and he's now just coming to the end of his first year at uni!

Treadingonplaymobil

Week 59: Day 7

Phew, last party today! We actually had a really productive day yesterday getting everything ready, so I'm not too stressed this morning - just a bit of tidying up to do, some fruit and veg prep and we're good to go

Yesterday's list of many many things
1. Make unicorn cake.
2. Make soft bread rolls.
3. Make sausage rolls.
4. Make biscuits of some form or other.
5. Prep treasure hunt for tomorrow.
6. Prep pinata for tomorrow.
7. Make noodle soup for dinner.
8. Town for sweets for party bags.
9. Log in to childcare account to confirm free hours for DC3. One for today.
10. Decorate for party.

DH was laughing at me yesterday - DC3 wanted iced gems, but since they come in plastic I kind of went, 'meh, I can make them'. They were actually really easy, but DC2 came in halfway through, gave me a Paddington hard stare and said, 'you know they sell those in shops, don't you Mummy?' Made me :rotfl: .

Haven't had a chance to sit down with DH yet and look at budget/food budget/working a bit more. I know that cutting down on some of the 'nice to haves' is theoretically possible, but I tend to do a lot of those things on 'family' time, usually with one of the DCs kicking around 'helping' me, so working during that time seems doubly irritating, as I enjoy doing things like that with the DCs.

I am hearing what you're all saying about cutting the SAHM-type activities in favour of working more hours/having more cold hard cash coming in, but it feels almost unthinkable to do so (although I may skip the iced gems in future :rotfl: ). Also so much of the time I spend is food based, so stopping doing it in favour of earning more would need to be a double whammy of earning even more again so I could afford quick nice food instead of slow nice food, if that makes sense - e.g. a nice fillet of salmon, potatoes and beans takes much less time to make than a similarly nutritious hm tinned mackerel and veg curry and hm naan bread, but is several times the price, so the time I've saved needs to pay me enough to both pay for that salmon and give me extra on top to be worthwhile.

Likewise, candles bring a huge amount of pleasure to us, and making them saves us an absolute fortune, given than a single essential oil soy/beeswax candle costs anything from £10-40 (depending on size), and I can make one for £2-10. Of course there is a balance that needs to be struck somewhere, and that's what I need to figure out.

II think there must be times when paying for something to be done must be more 'efficient' though, and can still fit into our values of eating proper food and low plastic usage. For example, finding someone who makes lovely birthday cakes locally, who would respect our eco/using natural ingredients wishes, and therefore feeling good about making a choice that isn't me spending more hours making things. Because with a birthday cake, I suspect that it often costs me the best part of £20 in ingredients/decorations, plus perhaps four hours (or more) to make and decorate, whereas if I can pay someone £60 to make one, I can use that time to earn more than the £40 difference. So sometimes that sum will make sense, it's just a case of figuring out where it does and where it doesn't.

Saying all that, I've just had two more provisional client bookings and this is normally a fairly quiet time for me, so if I keep earning a moderate amount from my client facing stuff during my usual quiet period, we'll have enough money coming in to be able to do what we want anyway. I think this is an area to watch and wait and see how things shake out in the next month or two, making some gentle adjustments to work time and seeing how it pans out. I'm not going to make any dramatic changes like working 10 extra hours a week or anything.

In other news, we are going to see the architect's initial sketches for the extension tomorrow, I am super excited to see what he's come up with

Debt repayment:
- £22.77/31 March rounding down pot.
- £1,608.78/£5,000 2018 debt repayment goal.