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

Treadingonplaymobil

A quiet Saturday morning while my kids lie in... (Also, I love love love having full weekends with the kids, so much more than I expected to - long time readers might remember that XH used to look after them a lot on the weekends so I could work).

Mumtoomany thanks for the book recommendation, I've added it to my reading list.

I'm hopeful that it is a civilised separation. I know the really tricky bit is to come, and the reason XH and I have agreed things relatively easily so far is that they have been temporary financial/logistical arrangements, so we've both been willing to compromise more, but hopefully the fact that we've made it this far means we'll continue to be able to work through our separation relatively amicably. We're both obsessively committed to making it as stable and OK for the DCs as possible, and I think we've achieved it so far.

Menu planning/budgeting
I'm doing my menu planning/online shop this morning, and I thought I'd talk through the process I use now, which seems to be working pretty well for my circumstances, and is the result of literally years of trial and error (mostly error :rotfl: ). Also, menu planning and food shopping has become one of my favourite activities, weirdo that I am!

I have a peculiar situation in that XH and I currently swap in and out of the house to look after the children (we are renting a studio flat which is where the non-resident parent goes - not enough spare money for a whole house. I actually tend to stay with new chap now, but the flat is there if I ever need it). This means that I am planning, budgeting and shopping for some of XH's meals with the children too, so I’m feeding 1 adult and 3 kids 7 days a week, plus me when I am the non-resident parent too. I have to be really cler with XH about what he feeds the kids, which is tricky, but he was terrible about bringing his own food and kept raiding my cupboards so we decided together that this was the best solution to avoid arguments. More work for me, but better control over finances and coming home knowing what food will be in the house.

Each week I start with a menu plan on a Notes document (it's a shared document with XH at the moment, so he knows what to eat when he's in the house doing childcare). I have a much bigger food budget than him, to reflect the fact that the kids eat here all the time, and he is here on the days I'm not, but I do all the menu planning, batch cooking etc for the main family house. It's not ideal as I am still 'housewife', but it works well enough until we come up with a longer term solution and have two proper households. I usually menu plan before looking in the cupboards, spending a bit of time googling frugal recipes, as well as using old favourites (I keep a pinterest board of frugal recipes, as well as a list of ideas/favourites from magazines etc at the bottom of my menu plan Notes document). I'll also make sure I include anything that got planned for the previous week but not cooked for some reason (so it might be that I made a big batch of soup from leftovers and we had that instead of a planned dinner one evening).

I come up with seven days of breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. Then I go to my freezer/cupboards and see what I have. Quite often I'll find I have the ingredients for an entire meal that isn't on the plan, and I'll swap things around. And if the freezer has leftovers for a whole meal, I'll swap that into the plan as well (eg I might have made a second chicken pie when I cooked one the previous week, and froze it). If there are loads of single portion leftovers I'll also add in a freezer dive meal or two, where I'll just defrost a few portions of whatever there is, and let the children choose what they want. I don't love this, as it tends to result in a bit of 'I want what he's got', but it serves a purpose. I generally try to use those single portion leftovers for lunches etc (the kids all have food thermos flasks for packed lunches as well as lunchboxes), but sometimes they just build up too much.

Once I have my seven days menu planned, I'll write a shopping list. There are some things which appear pretty much every week - milk, flour for bread, fruit etc - but I'll always check whether we have enough of those before adding them automatically.

I have a food shop delivered weekly, from Morrisons. While Aldi/Lidl is fractionally cheaper, I‘ve found that shopping online means I juggle my basket till it fits my budget in a way I would never do in a RL supermarket. I get a shop delivered every Monday, and usually book it and start menu planning for it the previous Wednesday, so I have a few days to play around with it and seeing what gets used up (it doesn't need to be confirmed until midnight Sunday night).

My monthly food budget is a not-entirely-horrific £460 per month for one adult and four children all of the time, plus me when i'm non-resident, so it's basically 10 days worth of adult meals plus 7 days worth of meals for three children, aged 11, 9 and 6). I am, however, trying to come in significantly under that, because there is virtually no money in the budget for fun/extras, so this is an area where I can free up some extra money.

First I shift £50 of the food budget into a YNAB pot for my solo food shops when I'm either at the flat or with the new chap. This pot usually barely gets touched and I generally have about £30 left over from it (this has previously been added onto the Christmas pot, but in future will go into either my family entertainment pot or into my emergency fund). I also try to have about £30 per month for bulk food shops - things like spices, chocolate for cooking, dried fruit, are so much cheaper per gram to buy in bulk online. Have a google for what you're after, and remember to take postage into account (I try to use sites with a 'free postage over x amount' and make sure I have enough to order to hit that threshold, and just make do until I can do that).

So I actually have £76pw for food (if it's only four Mondays in a month I generally very easily end up with some leftover for the following month - before Christmas I was adding it to the Christmas pot so we could have nice treat food). I aim to keep my Morrisons delivery as close to £50 as possible so the rest is available for a top up shop, then I generally only spend £15 max of the top up shop money.

I'll book the shop and load everything in from my shopping list, and if it's coming in over £60-ish I'll have a really ruthless look through it and look again at my menu plan to see what I can shuffle around to make it cheaper - either more freezer meals, or some really cheap dinners like black bean chilli, homemade bean burgers, dal and rice etc. Sometimes it just needs to be more, if we need laundry powder, washing up liquid, a load of fruit etc all in one week, but generally I manage it.

Because we bought quite a lot of extra food in the run up to Christmas with the extra money I'd put into the Christmas budget pot (both treat stuff and just meals which ended up with frozen leftovers), the freezer is currently pretty full, so I'm able to be ruthlessly frugal in January and I'm hoping to have £100 or so leftover from my food budget this month for some nice bits to improve my living space - I'll talk about the slightly grim living space another day, but suffice to say XH and I separated in the midst of the extension being built.

Having a decent sized chest freezer is one of the most important parts of my budgeting - I put all leftovers straight in the freezer, avoids the pressure of needing to use them next day (especially as XH is unreliable at using them). Even leftover porridge gets frozen and used next time I'm making it. It also means if we visit relatives and there's a big meal, if we're offered leftovers we can take it etc (family know how tight the budget is, and there seems to be much more acceptance/positivity over it now we're a separated couple than there ever was when XH and I were together).

Next week's menu plan
Monday
Breakfast - porridge with sugar/honey, raisins and cream
Lunch - sausage rolls (batch cooked, in freezer)
Dinner - fish fingers (leftover nut roast in freezer for grown ups), homemade chips to use up leftover potatoes, frozen peas

Tuesday
Breakfast - french toast with stale sourdough
Lunch - aubergine and chorizo stew
Dinner - sweet potato and coconut soup with brown rice and lentils, plus homemade sourdough

Wednesday
Breakfast - porridge with sugar/honey, raisins and cream
Lunch - ham rolls (I cooked, sliced and froze a ham that was on offer over Christmas)
Dinner - Cauliflower/tofu korma with rice and homemade chapati

Thursday
Breakfast - pikelets (crumpets without a crumpet ring!) using discarded sourdough starter, stewed fruit (mostly from freezer, I have tons in there from my mum's fruit trees last autumn).
Lunch - leftover soup/chilli from freezer, in thermos flasks for children, bone broth soup for adults
Dinner - whole baked fish/potato recipe from Delicious magazine (chosen by DC1, I am getting them to rotate helping me menu plan and cook each Thursday's meal).

Friday
Breakfast - porridge
Lunch - sausage rolls
Dinner - freezer dive

Saturday
Breakfast - pancakes/waffles/something treaty, with stewed fruit
Lunch - leftover soup in freezer, sourdough
Dinner - Pizza (dough and ham in freezer, tinned pineapple in cupboards, use up any leftover onions/peppers etc), ice cream for pudding

Sunday
Breakfast - porridge
Lunch - leftover pizza/cheese on toast/quick cheesy pasta meal
Dinner - bacon and cabbage pasta (bacon in freezer)

Snacks
- flapjacks
- gingerbread
- fresh fruit
- sweet potato pancakes with golden syrup
- tinned fruit and yoghurt

To make:
- Batch cook something for next week's lunches (mini pizzas/wraps/something else?!)
- Bake 4 loaves of sourdough (freeze 3)
- Bake soft bread rolls for lunches (freeze and use as needed)
- Bake flapjacks for school lunchboxes (freeze and use as needed)
- Use leftover gingerbread dough in freezer to make biscuits

Any questions, do let me know!

Honeysucklelou2

Very impressive TOPM . I menu plan but feel I'm rotating the same few meals. DD1 has picked up a few recipes from her fellow students so cooks those when she is home, which has widened our menu plan a little! Do you ever cook loaf cakes? I find banana bread is popular, easy to slice for packed lunches and freezes well.

Verbatim

Hi Topm,
It's so lovely to 'see' you again, albeit in different circumstances. I hope that your ongoing separation continues to be amicable. You sound very focused and calm. I feel that before you sometimes appeared desperate to get through your overloaded to do lists combined with impossible juggling of goals, money and home life.
I'm so glad that your business is working out well and sad that your marriage hasn't.
What is the plan with the, (now extended?) house?
Also could you explain the colour coding on the menu plan.
Best wishes again,
V

Sea_Shell

You’re back!!!

Sorry to hear about your break-up, that must be hard, especially with 3 children. Glad to hear that it’s all being dealt with amicably and that you’re in a better head space now. Sounds like your business is taking off too.

As you’ve said this isn’t now about busting the debt, then maybe a new thread IS the way to go. As you’ve found, this board can be all about the numbers!!! Old style board will be good for meal planning, batch cooking and other tips, in that area. Definitely not my area of expertise!!

You mention that there is still a lot of debt, and I understand that’s not your focus at the moment, until you know exactly how your financial settlements will pan out, then that’s all a bit up in the air.

Maybe once you have a clear financial path ahead, that will be the time to post a new SOA, if you feel you need help tweaking it around the edges.

Welcome back.

Silver_Queen

Wow, it seems you really have a handle on things! Those recipes sound wonderful but very labour intensive. Are you still working on your businesses as much as you were? How do you find the time in your day to do all this?

Are your finances with XH still largely joint or do you divvy it all up on payday etc?

enthusiasticsaver

Impressive post TOPM and it sounds like you have menu planning down to a fine art. It looks like a varied and healthy diet and as you say you are still catering for the whole family including XH so £76 a week doesn't sound too bad. I have never made sour dough but may give it a try.

As you say it sounds like this thread is about making your budget work to fit your new circumstances but I think it still fits in here on DFW because presumably you still have debt and you or XH have to manage that until your finances are sorted. There is always a blurring between finances after a separation. My sister split from her husband a few years ago but because they can't sell the family home their finances are still merged. It can take time as I am sure Honeysuckle could tell you. Have a nice weekend.

How far along with the renovations did you get?

Kantankrus_Mare

Great to see you back TOPM :j......If anyone can get this all sorted...you can.

Ive missed your updates especially the recipes and the yoga side of things. So sorry to hear about things not working out with your husband but sounds like you are in a good place.

Good luck for the future.

Treadingonplaymobil

Just finished doing the online food shop for next week and have it down to £40.91 (minimum spend is £40), and I had a fiver of Morrisons vouchers, so actually only £35.91 spent. Although that doesn’t include the fish for Thursday or the chorizo stew ingredients as I’ll need to make that before the shop comes on Tuesday, so I’ll probably spend £15 on both of those, and might need a fruit and veg top up for the weekend. It does include 3x 4pts of milk, pasta and flour for sourdough though, and I always feel if I have bread, pasta, milk and store cupboard stuff then I can manage a bit of a crisis!

I have a really pleasing looking week ahead - one of my focuses for this year is keeping my calendar ^really^ empty, so I don’t delude myself about having five days to work when I’ve arranged to see a friend one day, run errands another etc, and end up cramming too much into too little time. The only fixed commitment I have is meeting XH’s new partner for coffee (first meeting, really looking forward to it), and a sports lesson on Tuesday evening when XH has the kids (the sport is new chap’s obsession, and something I’ve always wanted to try, so he gave me lessons as a present).

Other than that my priorities are packing a couple of orders for the new business, contracted copy writing work, and a proposal for more copy writing which the people I work for at the moment have asked me to put together to solve a problem they have.

Honeysucklelou2 I do sometimes cook loaf cakes, but for added fun to my whole budget challenge, my oven is barely functional these days (we have the old, knackered kitchen bodged into the new extension space, and are making do until we figure out what we’re doing with the house). That means that cake baking at my house is out, although I do bake at the new chap’s.

Verbatim thank you, I feel really focused and calm much of the time, although I have moments of huge anxiety about big picture stuff like maintenance, childcare arrangements, and the new chap meeting the DCs. The house situation still up in the air, although mediation started last week (and I think will go on for 6 weeks or so), so hopefully we’ll have a clearer picture then. XH would like to keep the house (and I would like him to, since I realistically can't) but I just can’t see how we can afford two lots of living costs without selling the house to pay off the majority of the debt.

Oh and the menu plan isn’t colour coded - do you mean the coloured text? Those are recipe links.

Sea Shell yes, it’s impossible for the debt to be my focus because I have NO IDEA how much debt I will walk away with (it will almost certainly be some, but I really don't know what's going to be reasonable, and I guess it will depend whether XH keeps the house or not). I will probably do an SOA when things are clearer, but my financial focus for now is:
1. Be as frugal as possible where it doesn’t destroy our quality of life (eg by embracing the menu planning challenge and experimenting with free weekend activities, not by cutting out the DCs’ clubs), in order to develop a larger salary buffer/emergency fund - this can then be used to pay debt, fund a rental deposit, pay for house improvements if we need to sell - whatever seems appropriate, but whatever I do, more money means more options.
2. Earn more, as far as practical. I’m about to take the leap (and this is a very tiny leap) of one day a week after school club for two of the DC (eldest can bring himself home), and I’m hoping this will gradually increase as my business grows so I have more full days to work - I anticipate the DCs being in after school care 2-3 days a week (unless XH can have care of them more than expected) by Easter, which will give me at least a couple of full length working days each week.

Silver Queen time is, as ever, my biggest challenge! I have realised that if I really throw myself at it, I can manage the increased labour of those budget recipes in one school day per fortnight, plus usually a bit of cooking on ‘my’ weekend with the DCs. And although that's one five hour day a week when I'm not working, the immediate short term benefit of being able to knock perhaps £100-150 per month off my potential food bill makes that worthwhile, for now. Might change in the future, of course. My biggest efficiency with food is double/triple cooking, so almost any meal that can be doubled, is (eg 2-3 fish pies at a time and freeze, double batch of chilli etc). I’m also a fairly experienced cook, so I’m pretty speedy. The double cooking also means that, although I look at the calendar during every menu planning session, if I miss something which means we’ll be out during the evening, there’s always something we can defrost and heat in the oven if I won’t have time to cook.

To free up more time, I have also started getting the DCs more involved in chores, which is saving me more time than I expected it would, even though they are very new to it. Hoping to increase that over the coming months, and also hoping it will help them feel more bonded as a team helping to run the house, and more responsibility for its smooth running.

Honestly I also don’t often sleep enough, and that does net me an hour or two more each day - I always (well, 9/10 days) get six hours a night (11pm-5am), and I tend to catch up on my couple of nights a week away from the kids, when I’ll get 7-9 hours as I don’t need to be finished with yoga by 7am. I’m sometimes tired, but not alarmingly so (and no more than many working parents of three, I’m sure!), but it feels worthwhile right now because my priorities are so clear and the rewards so visible.

I’m working maybe a fraction less on my business, but ridiculously being a single parent makes it easier in a way - I have 2.5 full days (weekend) off from childcare a fortnight, which I can work long hours in, as well as a long day during the week when XH has them. Also, Universal Credit, for all its flaws, does top my income up if I have a lean month. However my profit is steadily increasing. It was down to zero in January last year as new business expenses matched income, and I’m making around £500 profit a month now, with every expectation it will grow at least 100% this year. I would like to be working a little more, but that should come naturally as I am able to add money to the pot for more childcare.

Finances with XH are joint in the sense that we figured out our separated budgets together, as money is so tight that we had to (ie work out what we could, as a family, save for DCs’ birthdays etc), but beyond that point we take no role in each other’s budgets - he pays me a maintenance sum each month and we both have our own YNAB accounts.

Enthusiasticsaver I expect XH's and my own finances will be heavily linked for at least the rest of this year, longer if we can’t sell the house, but I hope to have a firm agreement about how things will be divided up, so we can both plan our futures as far as possible, within the next 3 months.

Renovations wise, we did ‘phase 1’ (ground floor extension) - it's completely watertight, insulated, plastered etc. We don’t have a proper floor down, just fibreboard, and we have our old kitchen fitted into the space rather than a new one, but it's a fully functional living space. And the new bathroom isn’t finished either. BUT we do have all the stuff for both bathrooms (suites, shower trays/screens, and tiles), all the floor tiles for the ground floor (but not the planned wood which would cover 80% of the downstairs), windows etc, all stacked and waiting in the new bathroom. So most of the remaining cost would be labour/cheap kitchen/cheap floor to get it saleable/for one of us to live in it.

Kantankrus Mare thank you for the kind words. I’m looking forward to sharing more recipes. And I’m still practicing yoga 5-6 days a week - that and journaling are the two things which make the single biggest difference to my mindset and therefore my whole day. Swiftly followed by how realistic I keep my to do list for the day.

Isitdoable

Wow, I'm really impressed with your menu planning! I am new to all of this - one of my big areas for improvement is the food budget and meal planning, and I've been quite stuck with how to even start. This has given me a bit of inspiration!
I'm assuming your children are of an age where they are not waking you up in the night? I think I can just about get by on 5 hours if needs be, but its the broken sleep that is an absolute killer, and when you have money worries and that stops you dropping back off again, its amazing how quickly your sleep dwindles!

Sea_Shell

Just one comment regarding meeting XH new partner. Just be careful and don't let your guard down too much. You don't know this person, and you have no idea how much she might "get in your XH's ear" about how things progress from here.