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

enthusiasticsaver

Treadingonplaymobil wrote: »

Week 75: Day 5

Wow, what an interesting discussion. I think a couple of key points from all your thoughtful posts are:
(a) There are no guarantees - one could spend a small fortune and end up with children who grow into unfulfilled adults, and vice versa.
(b) It depends a lot on the child.
(c) Experiences are unlikely to be a bad thing, but neither is showing respect for the reality of income vs outgoings.

DH and I have resolved, in the short term, to be a little more thoughtful about the experiences and influences in our children's lives - rather than just dashing off in the car every time a family member summons us, we're going to think about whether it's good for us, for the children and for our budget, and if it is, whether we can add anything to the experience to make it even better (eg stopping on the way for a national trust property or turning it into a camping weekend). All the DCs have expressed a desire to do more things outside (when I asked what they'd like to do, more walking on dartmoor, canoeing, sailing and reading outside all came up), so we're going to look into ways to do that as DH and I are also outdoors people and it's easy for that to fall by the wayside in the endless dash to clubs (during the week) and family (on the weekend).

Longer term, we'll see where that takes us, and as the budgets shake down over the coming months maybe we can look at adding a new 'experiences' budget category.

Something sort of related that I've found interesting recently is how much less my children want to buy when they have to spend their own money. I have always made sure we have decent everyday art supplies in the house, but recently I've insisted that anything beyond the usual paper, pens, pencils etc needs to be bought with their own money rather than funded by us. DC1 has rejected pads of A3 paper, which previously he went through like water, and DC2 has rejected fancier paints. Both older children have £50+ in their piggy banks from birthdays and saved pocket money, so I feel they have the means to buy what they want if they feel they can't live without it.

Nice summing up of recent posts. I think being more selective about what you do with your family spare time is a good idea. You do always seem to be here there and everywhere visiting friends and family at weekends/holidays so perhaps being more creative with your time by perhaps combining activities and insisting on some quiet weekends every month to go out on to the moors or to the beach would benefit you all. As we too live in the West Country and miles away from our family we had loads of invites to family occasions when our kids were small and still do now. We also had loads of people wanting to visit as we live in a nice part of the country. Due to time and money we ended up being really selective and there are some family members and friends we lost touch with when we stopped making the effort to visit. I don't regret that though as we then had time at home to spend with our daughters and each other.

Could not agree more about asking the DC to use their own money for some things. They then get into the habit of choosing what is most important to them when they pay instead of you. An early start to budgeting and deciding on priorities.

natsplatnat

enthusiasticsaver wrote: »

I asked my DD yesterday if she was sending my DGD1 to ballet and she laughed and said she has the grace of an elephant.

HA HA! This is exactly why my mum originally sent me to ballet at the age of 4. I did love it and danced until I was 16!

Hopeless_Case

On the subject of giving your child confidence and the belief in themselves, I was talking to a friend yesterday whose granddaughter is going through a really tough time with mental health (she's 18) and she's having counselling, and one of the factors she's identified was the pressure her parents unknowingly put on her by believing her to be so good and clever etc, so she was burdened by what she had to live up to, which is obviously devastating for her parents.

So as others have said, it really is about being guided by the individual child and what they want and helping them to achieve it in their own timescale/manner - which I guess is easier said than done!

Golightly72

Treadingonplaymobil wrote: »

As a child I was able to take part in clubs, partake in an expensive hobby, go on regular holidays abroad, visit nice restaurants and generally have a wealth of experiences that my DCs have not had, and my parents and step parents were all on good-but-not-outstanding incomes - <£40k household income per family unit for all but my latter teenage years - with two children in each family unit.

Has this been as good for you as think it has though? Have you been left thinking you should be entitled to a certain standard of living, even though your income doesn't stand up to it, which is why you are in a pretty large amount of debt?

Has it left you feeling your DCs should also be having a certain standard of living, but might it actually be better for them to learn how to have life experiences that fit in with their budget?

I honestly don't mean this to be nasty, it's just a recurrent theme in your posts, that your DC's may be missing out somehow, but I really do believe the best life experiences are free. You have said you are not bothered by your debt level, but how would you feel down the line if your DC's followed your example and owed nearly £70,000 at some point, would that worry you?

Treadingonplaymobil

Week 75: Day 7

Morning! Busy cake baking for a friend's birthday today. Busy weekend generally - I had a client yesterday, which reminded me I am so mentally done with my client facing work. It's going to be a good 12-18 months before I can build up my other work sufficiently to plug the gap (about £3k per year for the client work and £5k for contract work that relies on my expertise with clients, so would dry up over a year or so after stopping seeing clients) so I just need to keep on keeping on with it for now.

Armchairexpert your comments about studies adjusting for parental income/education are fascinating, and I agree you are probably largely right, especially in terms of the basics - more people with well motivated, well educated, involved parents will do better than those without. I think the relevant point here is that we don't have the 'affluent' tag, so there's a degree of making up for the lack of affluence in their childhoods, if that makes sense. Affluent parents are more likely to motivate their children to be similarly affluent because of their lifestyle and happiness expectations, but if we give our children a low income lifestyle, will they only aspire to a low income lifestyle and potentially be less content? It's an interesting question. To take a random example on the earnings=happiness example, my sister earns reasonably well (>£40k, no children) and adores travelling. If she didn't earn well, she couldn't travel in the way she wants to. It's all very well to say a higher income doesn't equate to happiness, but it certainly greases the wheels along the way, up to a certain point.

Golightly72 I had a lovely childhood, but I would say the key difference between mine and my relatives (the ones who are very well adjusted, well off etc), after discussing it with them, is that their parents were always absolutely clear that if they wanted a life like that as adults, they needed the income to fund it, and they had the choice to do that or to have a different lifestyle and have an easier/less well paid job. I wasn't exactly spoilt, but I certainly had no idea about the costs involved in my lifestyle, whereas my relatives did. I think this is a key difference - to give children the information they need to make choices later in life. In all honesty I was never going to go for a high paid city job, as I'm just too lazy and am fairly horrified by office work, but it might have made it clearer that by doing so I was giving up the opportunity for a certain lifestyle. I think it was the lack of awareness of that lifestyle requiring a certain income that influenced decisions I made, both in terms of career and smaller spending decisions day to day. I don't blame my parents at all though - they came from a family of over-achievers, and I suspect it never occurred to them that I wouldn't be one too .

One could go round and round in circles on the subject for hours I suppose. I think the key thing is to continue to remember our goals for our children - for them to be secure (emotionally and financially), confident, resilient, contented, practical etc etc - and ensure that what we can do builds on those goals rather than being neutral or negative in terms of those goals without risking our own financial security any more than we already have.

Dragging myself back to the reality of right now and our budgets, I'm feeling smug today about my bulk order of stickers and albums last month, as I had a gift ready to go for one of DC3's friends who has a party this morning. I also sat with her and made some cards the other day (having failed to buy any plastic free cards, I went for a bulk lot of 50 card blanks in only one cellophane wrapper for 50, and am making my own). I'm really pleased with how they came out - some of the DCs' watercolours to make a nice colour wash then a 'happy birthday' ink stamp we had lying around. Also it cost £2.50 for 50 cards from hobbycraft, which I'm calling a win. Definitely a lot cheaper than the £10-15 + card + wrapping DH has been spending in town each time there's been a birthday.

To do this week
1. Pack orders for smaller business.
2. Tidy house. It's official. My house is never going to be tidy again.
3. Clear emails and deal with any firefighting that needs to be done as a result of not working for virtually a week.
4. Restart daily social media (again, a week off!).

Mini goals:
- £19.82/31 June rounding down pot.
- £3,135.13/£5,000 2018 debt repayment goal.
- £416/£932 extension pre-build costs shortfall.

DawnW

Just wanted to point out TOPM, that your children are having a lovely childhood too

Verbatim

Lazy! You! Where does that leave the rest of us then......

Well done in the present and cards.

enthusiasticsaver

There are downsides to having well paid jobs and they usually mean long hours and lots of stress and very little time to spend with your family. Somewhere in the middle sounds ok to me.

armchairexpert

Giving my children the ability to be content with a lower cost lifestyle is one of my #1 aims, not a downside! I'd hate them to grow up thinking that they had to have [overseas holidays/fancy car/certain postcodes] in order to be happy. It's interesting that you're seeing it as, if you only teach your children to aim for a lower income, they'll be less content - why would that be?

I wouldn't call us affluent either, by the way - both Mr E and I stepped out of high earning career paths so that we could have more time with our families, each other, etc. These days we earn roughly half of what we would have been earning in our old careers (mining and law!, maybe a third, but we have time on the weekends to make sourdough and take a picnic to the park. To me, that's exactly what "teaching our children to aspire to a low income lifestyle" looks like.

Of course all of this presupposes a certain base level of income. Studies show (me and my studies!) that happiness does increase with income - but only up to a certain point. Basically, once you have enough money to feel stable, safe, able to cover emergencies and fund a well maintained roof over your head, that's your 'satiation point'. So that might not be where you are at the moment, but you'd hit that point a long way before £200K/year. It's here, if anyone wants to read it, but there are lots of studies on this: https://qz.com/1211957/how-much-money-do-people-need-to-be-happy/

I'm going on at some length because all of this is at the heart of it all, isn't it? What really is best for our children? What really is best for us? Where lies the greatest happiness?

Treadingonplaymobil

Week 76: Day 1

Last Monday of term - DC3 finishes for summer today, and the older two finish on Wednesday. Six weeks of summer holidays lie ahead, and it looks like at least the first bit will be pleasant and sunny. I've been expecting the rain to start as soon as the holidays did, like last year!

Back to the debate over children - armchairexpert I don't in any way think money/good jobs/a certain lifestyle is required in order to be happy (for me the required 'office time' of a well paid job would absolutely override any happiness that the extra money brought), but I do think there is a choice involved. As I mentioned the other day, my sister loves to travel, it is a key part of her life, but part of that passion means earning the money to do it. Yes, she has travelled cheaply, but as she gets older she loves to travel in style and it makes her genuinely happy - she couldn't begin to do that without the well paid job she has. One of the relatives I mentioned the other day is absolutely passionate about having amazing experiences as a family as he has a degenerative illness that will limit how long he can do those things with his wife and children, and without the good income her has worked for he wouldn't be able to do that while he is still mobile and healthy.

I am in no way saying a good income is essential, I'm saying that for me, educating my children about the financial options ahead of them is an important part of parenting as they get older.

It's an incredibly difficult subject to debate though - we all want to do the best by our children, and inevitably one person's ideal looks different to another's, and it's very hard to maintain impartiality when discussing life choices we have made - I can feel myself bristling every time someone posts a different opinion to mine, but when I look at it rationally everyone has an interesting point to make, and by listening to all those points and taking them on board rather than sticking our heads in the sands and going 'but they neeeeeeeed holidays in the Maldives', DH and I are more likely to make good decisions in the future.

Once again dragging myself back to reality - I am slightly stressed this morning as I have realised that somewhere along the line I completely forgot to make candles for teacher presents. It's fine for the older DCs, but DC3 breaks up today and I haven't got anything ready for her lovely keyworker. Not quite sure how I'm going to resolve that. Maybe some candle making before the DCs wake up and put them in the fridge!! The jars I have to put them in are only small so they'll set fairly quickly.

I feel like we're in the home straight of this month - the last full week - and the budget is still looking surprisingly ok. No major shocks, so the savings pots are all still looking as they should. DH is going camping with the DCs on Thursday and it would be nice for them not to be counting every penny, so I'm trying to keep the remaining £110 of food budget and £50 of entertainment kitty as intact as possible until then - I'll need to spend some of the food budget, but the entertainment kitty should remain untouched, barring any dramas.

Of course, the car needs checking over for yet another minor issue, so hopefully I'm not speaking too soon with my budget confidence!

We also haven't overpaid the debt very much this month - only about £70 - which I'm not wildly thrilled about but you can't have everything. We have at least managed that, and have £30 in the 'parental loan repayment' savings pot, and we have added c.£250 to our extension pot. So actually in terms of extra income saved and used sensibly, we've done ok. We are trying to split our money in so many different directions that it's very hard for any one pot to look impressive at the moment, but at least everything's heading in the right direction this month.

Have just realised the barclaycard is at £10,241, which means next month's payment in the first few days of the month (as soon as the statement appears) will take it BELOW the £10k mark, which will be rather nice. However, I think one of the 0% offers expires in September, so we need to investigate the best solution to that. DH and I currently both have near perfect credit scores, but very low affordability according the MSE credit club (which makes sense, as I earn about 8p a year, and he has most of the debt in his name and a £16k limit card with a zero balance on it, I'm not sure if that gets considered), so not sure what will be available in terms of 0% cards. Also nice to see that £5k debt repayment goal for this year being eaten up - less than £1,900 left to pay to meet it. It does include minimum payments, it's not £5k of overpayments, but given the other pressures on our money this year as we work towards the extension, I'm pleased that £5k reduction looks like it might happen.

To do this week
1. Make teacher gifts - candles.
2. Keep up with social media for work.
3. Have a total blitz of the house, either during the week or when DH takes the DC away (I'd like to get at least some of it done before they go so I can get some work done while they're away instead of endless cleaning).
3(a) sitting room.
3(b) dining room.
3(c) kitchen.
3(d) bathroom.
3(e) hallways and stairs.
3(f) our room.
3(g) DCs' room.
4. Phone garage to get the car checked - it is emitting an 'interesting' smell of burning plastic. Maybe my budgets won't be looking quite so healthy very shortly.
5. Make a list of preliminary questions to ask builders, and of builders to ring around.
6. Ring at least 3 builders to ask preliminary questions and arrange a quote.
7. Pay balance on final camping trip of the summer.
8. Change all the sheets, with attendant washing and ironing implications.
9. Check 0% offer end dates and discuss with DH if we need a new balance transfer card.
I know there's more to add here, but I haven't looked at my bullet journal yet this morning. I'll be back to edit this list later.

Mini goals:
- £19.82/31 July rounding down pot.
- £3,172.38/£5,000 2018 debt repayment goal.
- £430/£932 extension pre-build costs shortfall.