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

Honeysucklelou2

Re school shoes, two of my girls choose from the boys range of shoes. The girls range look flimsy in comparison. As long as the shoes are black, school doesn't mind!

Treadingonplaymobil

Week 78: Day 3

Morning! Having a good week away with the DCs at MIL's. Coming here was actually inspired by you lot, when we were discussing trying to up my working hours as much as possible - MIL is looking after the DCs for a few hours in the mornings so I can get on and work, which she managed yesterday and should do again today and tomorrow. It's not a lot (only about four hours a day) but it's more than I would have managed at home. Plus free food and entertainment . It was a heck of a drive to get here (about 4.5 hours) but we managed it without drama.

Spending this week
Although we haven't had to pay our own way at MIL's, I've had an enormously expensive week ordering things we need and things that are less of a need.

So far I've spent on new swimsuit/trunks for all three DCs, who are all busting out of theirs, and wellies for the older two - both have been on the 'to replace' list for a month or more. Anyone who is wondering how to buy either of those things in a low-waste/eco friendly way, I bought swimwear with a high percentage of recycled plastic (Adidas do some, as do Speedo - although not all of them are from either brand - and a brand called Mini Rodini) and almost entirely natural rubber EU made wellies (Aigle). Aigle wellies are more expensive than the supermarket/Next, but are also the only ones I've ever bought where they have survived down the run of DCs without breaking, so I'm hoping this will actually be frugal as well as ethical in the long run.

More indulgent, I also bought a couple of new books for the older DCs. I know there's the library, but both have books they are really keen to read and the library waiting list for both is huge, so I treated them. I also bought two new beach spades and a bucket as two of our spades snapped recently and they have been making do, but we're camping by the beach for over a week in 10 days, so I wanted them to have decent spades. Plastic free ones were surprisingly tricky to find! Eventually ended up with wooden handle/metal spade bit ones, which were a fiver each. This all came to £33.

I also bought a 'new' frying pan - I've had an ebay search set up for months for a large cast iron Le Creuset frying pan and a used one came up yesterday so I nabbed it. £40, but we had the money in the house stuff kitty and it would have been more like £150 new. I still feel a bit guilty, as it's early in the month to clean out that pot, but I'm pleased the money was there to get it when it came up.

Oh, and I had to buy a train ticket for DH, as we are going directly from visiting family (without him) to holiday (with him) in a couple of weeks, and it's madness to drive all the way back down the south west to get him, so that was another £40, even on a cheap advance ticket.

All of that came to a horrifying total, although I haven't actually gone over any budget pots. The uniform shopping will take me over the DCs clothing budget though. I'm going to wait until we're home on Friday to check through what we've got to ensure I don't buy more than necessary. The change of uniform colour is a pain though, as some stuff needs to be replaced. I'll probably leave it as a negative figure in YNAB and top it up to zero with September's money rather than robbing other savings pots, as they shouldn't need anything new next month (hollow laugh).

Income this week
My smaller business has surprised me by continuing to tick over this week, with another couple of little sales. Along with payment for my contract work it's boosted my salary/expenses pot for September. Hoping to keep adding to that next week, as the more I can add before the end of the month, the more of my August contract work income can go towards October rather than September so I'm not in exactly the same position next month.

Extension
Looks like we need to find yet another chunk of cash - we need to pay a drainage consultant as we life in a tricky drainage area and the planners require us to ensure certain conditions are met. It's not something we'd allowed for in our pre-build costs, but should be able to cover it with the pre-build costs savings pot without too much drama, assuming it's not thousands. We have £710 in that pot at the moment, and are saving £460 a month towards it.

Food shopping
I got a really good discount code for online shopping delivery from Waitrose, of all places (£20 off five consecutive shops, which brings it down to what I'm spending in Lidl/Sainsburys, for much nicer food) and I'm really enjoying the ability to fiddle with the contents of the trolley to keep it within budget. Online shopping isn't something I've ever really considered, and needs to be topped up with a fruit and veg shop (because it all comes in plastic bags when you get it delivered), but I'm really seeing the benefits, because it limits temptation to overspend, is more convenient in terms of not needing to actually go to the supermarket (and I've booked a delivery for Friday morning, so don't need to worry about there being no food in the house when we arrive home late Thursday), and I can wriggle things around to keep within budget. I've got four more Waitrose deliveries with the discount, then I think I'll look more closely as getting a Sainsburys delivery. Of course, I'm being totally spoilt with the nicer frozen fruit/veg and basics in Waitrose, but I shall step back down off my middle class pedestal when the discount runs out :rotfl: .

So really...
It's a lot more about money out than money in this week, which is tedious, but hopefully things will come together to prevent it being a disaster.

To do this week
1. DH to phone next handful of builders on the shortlist.
2. Create full list of all the 'extra' jobs that we want done alongside the extension before the first builder visits on Thursday.
3. Check in with the people servicing my Kenwood Chef whether it's ready/needs open heart surgery. They are looking at it today apparently.
4. Order DCs' uniform. I will actually do this one day instead of just moving it onto the next week's list .
5. DH research new 0% deal for the one expiring in September
6. Invite the other guest to DC1's party so we can book the campsite.
7. Make a start on tax return.
8. Menu plan for coming weekend/next week and update shopping delivery.
9. Get a stock of social media posts ready for when we're away over the rest of the summer.
10. Get some website content up.

August money goals:
- £10.82/31 August rounding down pot.
- £3,230.98/£5,000 2018 debt repayment goal.
- £510/£932 extension pre-build costs predicted shortfall.
- £196/864 income needed for September :eek: :eek: :eek: .

Sea_Shell

Just a thought (well another of mine!!). . .

How are you going to visit your relatives IF you do have to go car-less for a while? Are these journeys do-able by public transport (door to door) for a family of 5? Or is this part of your cunning plan...that you won't be able to visit them?!!

Treadingonplaymobil

Sea_Shell wrote: »

Just a thought (well another of mine!!). . .

How are you going to visit your relatives IF you do have to go car-less for a while? Are these journeys do-able by public transport (door to door) for a family of 5? Or is this part of your cunning plan...that you won't be able to visit them?!!

Most of them are doable by public transport, but inevitably we'll do less rushing around visiting everyone, as that would eat up all the car savings. Hopefully we'll have a car again by next summer (assuming we actually get rid of ours), but who knows.

Cherryfudge

Le Creuset envy here... I have just been looking at the Buy Me Once website (and read the beginning of Tara Button's book) and I think it's a great decision. It should last a lifetime.


I've also just ordered a bar shampoo for the first time ever, which I think is thanks to a mention from you! You should be on commission

Sobl00dyblonde

With online shopping you might find the supermarkets will take the carrier bags back, I know it's not ideal but at least it's a better alternative than keeping them. I'm pretty sure Ocado do it and I'd be surprised if the other supermarkets aren't catching up too.

Also if I remember correctly you are quite a ways away from the nearest supermarket so there's some small amount of diesel to consider too. It's far more efficient for a van to make several stops than it is for you to do a large amount of mileage shopping around.

It's not the same of course but try to remember it's about persistence, not perfection, it's far better for both you and the environment for you to be able to be 70% perfect for 10 years than for you to be 100% perfect and it to totally burn you out in 18 months.

joeyjimbles

Yay for the Le Creuset pan. Must be something in the air.
We got le creuset saucepans, frying pan, griddle pan, casseroles and a large buffet pan for wedding gifts 26 years ago and they are all still going strong. I have always wanted a smaller buffet pan - the round flatter casserole - but horrified at how much it would cost to buy a new one. This weekend I finally won an eBay auction for £25 and only had to go two streets to collect it. It looks like it's never been used.

PurpleFairy26

My fleabay tip for said lovely kitchenware it to mis spell it in your search. I got a lovely dark grey casserole about 10 years ago for about £15 if memory serves me correctly, again never been used. Just misspelt :rotfl:

Cherryfudge

PurpleFairy26 wrote: »

My fleabay tip for said lovely kitchenware it to mis spell it in your search. I got a lovely dark grey casserole about 10 years ago for about £15 if memory serves me correctly, again never been used. Just misspelt :rotfl:

Good tip. There's a website called fatfingers which will search variations on spelling and typos in online auction listings. Can come in useful.

There will now be a run on mis-spelled Le Creusets :rotfl:

Treadingonplaymobil

Week 78: Day 4

Argh! I made an overpayment to the barclaycard a couple of days ago and it's just cleared, and I've realised I paid £422 off instead of £4.22!!! So daft. I've had to raid a couple of savings pots to balance it, but needs must in the face of epic stupidity. At least they haven't been raided to top up stupid spending in the traditional sense. :eek:

The child benefit lands in 10 days, which is £192 and is un-budgeted at present, so that can be used to refill a couple of savings pots, but I'll still end up short. Sigh. At least it will be reflected in a smaller balance transfer for a 0% card! Can't believe I've been so silly.

On the bright side, I'm now within £250 of the total CC debt being under £12k, and we've paid more than £8k off the debt in total since starting out on this journey (see my updated signature). Not exactly the way I would have chosen to get there though!

As well as that little 5am drama, we've got a total disaster/huge cloud with tiny silver lining situation with the extension. The planners have completely turned their noses up at our extension plans. They are fine with the single storey extension but want us to dramatically reduce the size of the dormer, which means only three small-medium sized bedrooms (two small doubles and a single) plus a tiny 2sqm study. It was all wailing and gnashing of teeth yesterday when we first found out, but after about 12 hours of 'we just need to sell and move and stretch ourselves more' DH and I were talking around it and have come back to the discussion we have had before that we actually don't use our bedroom at all really - we don't go in there at all between getting dressed in the morning and going to bed at night, so it's literally just a space to hold a bed and clothes - we never read on our bed or watch TV up there or anything.

The thought is that we could do the smaller extension, two of the children could share and whenever that becomes a problem (in a couple of years maybe) we could get a murphy bed (one that flips down from the wall) in the sitting room, with built in storage around it. The kids would then get a room each, and we'd have the storage in the sitting room plus the tiny study room as our space. In a few years time we could also look at putting a pod in the garden to give them a teenage hangout space if we felt they needed a 'living room' after we've gone to bed - we would have a reasonable sized kitchen diner for them to be in though, and a half decent bedroom each, so it wouldn't be a total punishment for them.

The more traditional design of the dormer would also mean that if the house just didn't work, size wise, it would be an easier prospect to sell. And of course (silver lining) the significantly reduced and more traditional dormer would make the build a bit cheaper.

It's not an ideal solution, but at this stage I think doing up, selling and moving might just break us financially, especially given the whole Brexit uncertainty with house prices. We would have to buy a doer upper, and would be in the position of not being able to afford to actually do it up for several more years, so we'd be done as DC1 was moving out, which seems a massive shame.

On the one hand, I think maybe we're too attached to the house and need to get real, sell and move on to somewhere with more square footage, and other I think 'wow, exciting tiny house adventure, we can totally do this!' I'm not sure which side I'm coming down on more at the moment.

To do this week
1. DH to phone next handful of builders on the shortlist. This is postponed until we actually know what we're building.
2. Create full list of all the 'extra' jobs that we want done alongside the extension before the first builder visits on Thursday.
3. Check in with the people servicing my Kenwood Chef whether it's ready/needs open heart surgery. They are looking at it today apparently.
4. Order DCs' uniform. I will actually do this one day instead of just moving it onto the next week's list .
5. DH research new 0% deal for the one expiring in September
6. Invite the other guest to DC1's party so we can book the campsite.
7. Make a start on tax return.
8. Menu plan for coming weekend/next week and update shopping delivery.
9. Get a stock of social media posts ready for when we're away over the rest of the summer.
10. Get some website content up.

August money goals:
- £15.04/31 August rounding down pot.
- £3,657.20/£5,000 2018 debt repayment goal.
- £382/£932 extension pre-build costs predicted shortfall.
- £196/864 income needed for September :eek: :eek: :eek: .