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

Treadingonplaymobil

Unfortunately we are literally the only family in our group of friends with no local parents! Everyone else has babysitters/childcare on tap, so it would be hard to organise a reciprocal arrangement.

debtaghh

I know it's not the same but we have date night at home. We always try and have dinner with the chn but on date night we don't and will buy a ready meal and pudding and put candles on and then watch a movie.

wishingthemortgaheaway

Treadingonplaymobil wrote: »

Unfortunately we are literally the only family in our group of friends with no local parents! Everyone else has babysitters/childcare on tap, so it would be hard to organise a reciprocal arrangement.

In which case, just ask. If they are true friends they will recognise that this is a way they can support you as friends. I'm sure you support them as friends in a whole host of ways.
Whilst reciprocal agreements are good, have the days of the 'it takes a village to raise a child' really disappeared? Our villages are different these days, not the 'village' in which we live, but the community or 'tribe' to which we belong.
A general text message out with some specifics
'Afternoon all, I wonder if one of you could help us, we're having a tough time at the moment with the extension planing, crazy life at work for both of us and the summer holiday shenanigans. Mr TOPM and I really need some time together to help us plan for the autumn. Is there any chance one of you could babysit for us on friday or Saturday night next week please? Just a couple of hours. Many thanks TOPM. '

Suffolk_lass

Just to echo wishingthemortgaheaway, you could always offer some form of personal remuneration/credit - offering a sourdough loaf and a bag of snacks, or to cook a dish for their freezer, would be examples.

I can't get over your attitude shift in the last year. Your Ostrich tendencies re overspends have well and truly gone.

My sympathies re your architect. I had my reservations when he did not research with local planners before your plans were submitted.

Treadingonplaymobil

Week 81: Day 3

Morning! We're limping through the last few days of the month on pretty much £0 and wishing September were here.

Managed the last food shop of the month on something approaching a reasonable budget - it should be enough food to last a week or more with just a bit of a fruit and veg and milk top up, so we won't start hammering September's food budget right away. I finally benefitted from shopping local a bit - the grocers gave me a massive squash that weighed in at 3kg for the price of a 1kg one, as apparently no one buys the big ones. It's got a lovely colour skin - sage green with a blue tinge - and I'm reluctant to cook it as it's so pretty! They have also taken to chucking in a couple of free peppers or bananas to make up for the weight of me bringing my own cotton bags (which weigh about a gram more than paper, but I'm not complaining).

I have absolutely tons and tons of store cupboard food at the moment - because I've been getting online food shops delivered in between camping trips, I've been having to actually place the order while we're away and I haven't been able to check the cupboards, so I currently have about 6kg of bread flour, 3kg of plain and self raising, and seven packs of butter in the fridge! Plenty for a good chunk of batch cooking before the DCs go back to school next week. The older two will both be on packed lunches as DC2 is going into Key Stage 2 so no more free lunches, so I need to make sure my packed lunch game is strong this year. At least DC3 will now get free meals for a couple of years.

DH and I had a real heart to heart yesterday after the tension of the last few weeks, and have decided we need to make some effort to focus on our relationship. We had both started taking out the stress of money/extension stuff/parenting/work/keeping 9,000 plates spinning etc on each other rather than dealing with it. As wishingthemortgageaway suggests, we do have good friends who would cheerfully help out with a bit of babysitting or a weekend playdate so we could go out for a couple of hours. I've always avoided asking as I know they'd never ask us to reciprocate, but actually I think we need to bite the bullet and ask for a bit of support. And Suffolk lass I love your idea of repaying them with sourdough or baked goods - they would never take money so it would help assuage my guilt at asking!

I normally love the school holidays, but after the stress of the past couple of weeks with arguments with the architect and having to totally reassess the extension and the mad spending of the summer holidays, I am so ready for the DCs to go back to school and to get back to my normal routine and earn some money. Although it will be a few weeks before normality fully asserts itself, as DC3 will only go for half days for the first three weeks, annoyingly. But at least it will begin to feel like normality again.

Ooh, we had a great builder pop by yesterday for a chat. We were so impressed with him. He's responded to emails really quickly and comes very highly recommended by friends who have had two big bits of work done in their house. And he just seemed very 'on it' and in touch with reality (a refreshing change after architect hell). Still haven't decided whether to stick with architect, and obviously this builder might quote through the roof, but it does give me hope for the post-architect bit!

I had a bit of a check through my pre-build costs list, and we've still got the following to cover (prices are based on internet research on the whole):
£300 architect to get through planning (minor revisions, communication with planning officer) - estimate
£1,000 architect/technicians to get through building regs - quote
£1,000 structural engineer (this may be a fair bit less, but I have absolutely no idea at this stage) - estimate
£500 building regs application - estimate
£2,800 total

The total is rather higher than I'd like, but we're still saving £460 a month, so assuming the build doesn't start until March next year or even later, we'll have all that covered before the build starts. I had hoped for Jan-Feb savings to go towards actual build costs, but you can't win 'em all I guess, and at least these costs aren't going on a CC - am still determined not to get into debt for the build until we're actually into the building period! When no doubt the pre-build costs will pale into insignificance and I'll wonder why I tried so hard to keep the debt moving downwards at this stage, but there we go.

Lots to get done today - we're off back to my mum's tomorrow so she can look after the DC while I work on Friday, then we have a wedding to attend on Saturday and work on Sunday. Busy busy busy! Have not stopped this holiday.

To do this week
1. Tidy all the camping gear away. Just a couple of cooking/crockery bits left to tidy away.
2. Update YNAB with the new SOA I posted the other day.
3. Clear emails and respond to all client queries that came in while we were away.
4. Confirm balance transfer to Santander and transfer additional balance to Virgin. This has been showing as pending on the Santander card for over a week now, but not actually cleared from the barclaycard. DH is going to phone and check what's happening.
5. Check birthdays this month and write cards.
6. Research alternatives to current architect and get some quotes.
7. Batch cooking:
(a) granola
(b) vegetable soup
(c) soft bread rolls
(d) black bean chilli
8. Look through the calendar for this autumn and see how busy it's getting - we need to think about how we will manage commitments already made if we don't have a car (cancel or manage by public transport).
9. Next week's contract work. Made a start.
10. Contract work for the following week. Made a start.
11. Clear the laundry backlog from camping (not actually too horrendous as I used the expensive campsite washing machines and dryers, which was a rare treat).
12. Tidy the DCs' room.
13. Reassess pre-build costs for the extension and establish what still needs to be paid for and how that's going to happen over the rest of this year.
14. DH to phone a handful of additional builders to get more quotes in.
15. Pack orders for smaller business.
16. Order stock for smaller business.
17. Figure out some sort of plan and incentive strategy for weight loss - I usually motivate myself by buying clothes or similar every time I lose a pound, but can't exactly do that at the moment!

August money goals:
- £15.04/31 August rounding down pot. Um. I might not add to this much more this month after the accidental £422 overpayment .
- £3,684.18/£5,000 2018 debt repayment goal.
- £382/£932 extension pre-build costs predicted shortfall.
- £214/864 income needed for September :eek: :eek: :eek: .

wishingthemortgaheaway

So pleased you have such good friends who you could ask. So, stop the guilt and just do it. Sometimes I have to, I don't particularly enjoy the asking, but I do enjoy the time I get to spend with hubby when we do.

efes_shareholder

ask the question and have a date night

its very easy to not give your relationship the investment it requires when life is so so busy - You are important and need some "you time" too x

Silver_Queen

efes_shareholder wrote: »

ask the question and have a date night

its very easy to not give your relationship the investment it requires when life is so so busy - You are important and need some "you time" too x

Could not agree more :T

Treadingonplaymobil

Week 81: Day 5

Last day of the month! Woohoo! I'm working today (hence being at my mum's) then staying with friends tonight and tomorrow without the DC so we can attend a wedding which they haven't been invited to. Can't remember the last time I left the DC with someone apart from DH overnight, but I think it will do them good - they've all got really quite clingy to me after six weeks of basically just me caring for them, with DH being so busy at work. I love them, but have been feeling a bit claustrophobic the past week or so. <terrible mother>

Will be so nice to invoice for this big chunk of work after I've finished today - the invoice will cover all of September's remaining salary and make a bit of a dent in October's too. I think much of September is going to be about repeating the 'earn enough' performance for October - I can't wait to begin to build up a bit of a buffer in my business account again, it's just that bit more stressful living month to month. Hopefully that will improve slightly each month so I have a couple of months' buffer by the end of the year - I think with the build (hopefully) starting in the spring I ideally need at least three months income buffer by March, as inevitably some of my work time will be taken up by the build, and my income will drop slightly.

Goodness, this summer has been so busy. I feel like we've barely been at home. It was all in a good cause - either earning money or holidays - but it was too much. Next year needs to be slower. Speaking of slower, I keep revisiting the fact that our weekends are so busy, and I just don't know what to do about it. I find myself resenting how much we do, but equally can't work out what to drop as there's nothing that we don't want to do. I know the ideal is that I will stop working weekends eventually, but I can't see that happening any time soon, unless my work fortunes change significantly. Our autumn weekends look like this:
Staying with friends (1) to attend wedding
Staying with friends (2) to attend christening (only sat afternoon to sun afternoon)
DC1's birthday camping trip/me working around that
Family (a) visiting us for the weekend
Me working
Visiting family (b) (only one day, so one day at home)
Staying with friends (1) - planning some homemade Christmas prep and making sloe gin.
WEEKEND WITH NO PLANS!
Me working
Friends (3) visiting
Working/DH flying to some work thing so solo childcare
Working

Do other people's weekends look like this? Maybe they do and I'm just being a wimp. I guess a first step could be hosting more rather than visiting people, but our house is so tiny at the moment that's tricky, especially if they have children. Suppose it will improve post-extension. All our friends and family are spread our from London to Wales to the Isle or Wight to Cumbria, so it's really difficult to manage seeing more than one lot at a time. At least when I'm working the DC do get some downtime at home (DH looks after them), which has been my primary concern this summer - not much relaxing time at home for them. Be nice if I got some down time at home too though! I see perhaps four days of 'at home with no plans' over the next 12 weekends!

To do this week
1. Tidy all the camping gear away.
2. Update YNAB with the new SOA I posted the other day.
3. Clear emails and respond to all client queries that came in while we were away.
4. Confirm balance transfer to Santander and transfer additional balance to Virgin. This has been showing as pending on the Santander card for over a week now, but not actually cleared from the barclaycard. DH is going to phone and check what's happening.
5. Check birthdays this month and write cards.
6. Research alternatives to current architect and get some quotes.
7. Batch cooking:
(a) granola
(b) vegetable soup
(c) soft bread rolls[
(d) black bean chilli
8. Look through the calendar for this autumn and see how busy it's getting - we need to think about how we will manage commitments already made if we don't have a car (cancel or manage by public transport).
9. Next week's contract work.
10. Contract work for the following week. Made a start.
11. Clear the laundry backlog from camping (not actually too horrendous as I used the expensive campsite washing machines and dryers, which was a rare treat).
12. Tidy the DCs' room.
13. Reassess pre-build costs for the extension and establish what still needs to be paid for and how that's going to happen over the rest of this year.
14. DH to phone a handful of additional builders to get more quotes in.
15. Pack orders for smaller business.
16. Order stock for smaller business.
17. Figure out some sort of plan and incentive strategy for weight loss - I usually motivate myself by buying clothes or similar every time I lose a pound, but can't exactly do that at the moment! Any suggestions?! I am struggling here.

August money goals:
- £15.04/31 August rounding down pot. Um. I might not add to this much more this month after the accidental £422 overpayment .
- £3,684.18/£5,000 2018 debt repayment goal.
- £382/£932 extension pre-build costs predicted shortfall.
- £214/864 income needed for September :eek: :eek: :eek: .

Sea_Shell

I don't lead a hectic life by any means...and your weekend diary brings me out in a cold sweat, just thinking about being THAT busy!!!

For what it's worth, I'd try literally drawing a line though (initially) one weekend a month, as BUSY/ELSEWHERE/NOT AVAILABLE, and then making that a SLOW weekend. If you can try and get into that habit it might help. The trick is not to then be tempted into doing something that weekend if an offer comes up!!! - Stick to the plan!!

If anyone wants to see you etc. you say "sorry, can't do that weekend". (I don't know if you use FB, but then you need to keep a low-profile....as to not give the game away!!)

In life, no one GIVES you time....you have to TAKE time for yourself.