Something to aim for

jodles16

Hi Dragonrider,

Love the name and very impressed at how well you are managing! Incredible stuffs! Congrats on the promotion and looking forward to seeing you kick that mortgages butt!

Jodles

gallygirl

Well done on your progress, being in control is a wonderful feeling


Well done on your promotion as well Ouch to your three hour commute though! If you were to work out your hourly rate including the commute and taking into account travel costs would you not be better looking for a lower paid job close to home?

Dragonrider

September Update

Thanks everyone, for your good wishes! It does feel like an achievement, and that things can only get better from here on.


So, what are my figures for September, I hear you ask....

Food 344.74/400
Fuel 49.29/100
Personal spending 194.31/150
My travel 70.20/100
General spending 175.75/200

This gives me a grand total of £834.29 / £950, and an OP from daily spending of £115.71. Plus £200 from the finished car loan gives me a total OP of £315.71!!!


I'm really pleased with this - I have managed to cut back on impulse spending so much that this month I managed to include:


1. Dinner out at Pizza Express for all 5 of us (using Tesco points to get £40 off the bill)
2. Bowling for all 5 of us (with a small amount of cashback)
3. A bulk buy of skincare for me (The Ordinary, if anyone is interested!)
4. A chance for everyone to choose their favourite home-cooked meal, no matter the cost
5. A concert ticket with a friend for me
6. A new snazzy, posh Paperchase 2018-19 diary to keep me organised

But even with all that, I am well underneath my total for the month.

I have been working out my budget for the year, and it actually looks quite rosy. Because my childcare costs have been so high up until now (£1650 per month!!! :eek:), child tax credits have only paid a proportion of it. However, even though my childcare costs have now gone down (because I only need before and after school care), my child tax credits haven't gone down by the same amount. This leaves me with a bigger surplus each month. I'm not counting on this until a few months have gone past - I know that HMRC are notoriously bad at calculating these things and can ask for it back at a later date. But it does mean that I should be able to make even bigger OPs.

I bet my heating bills are going up soon, though - definitely colder tonight and will be thinking about putting the heating on soon Have resisted so far!

Hope you all have a lovely Sunday night and a good week.

Dragonrider

Dragonrider

Evening all,

My October update is a little delayed, and was quite a spendy month because I decided to take the kids away for half term. I found a cheap caravan offer, so the accommodation wasn't that pricey, but we did do some activities and eat out a bit. It was a lovely few days, so worth every penny to me! Kids were fab, we were really active with minimal time in front of the TV :A

Anyway, here are my figures...

Food 462.59/400
Fuel 110.99/100
Personal spending 125.41/150
My travel 88.60/100
General spending 165.65/200

So my grand total is 953.24/950. I'm actually pretty pleased with that, because my overspends in some categories were cancelled out by underspends in others. I still have my money from the car loan stopping, so I OP'd a round £200 - very respectable!

I've also spent some time looking at my budget, and am going to mostly stick with the above targets for the next academic year. The only change will be that I will take £20 off the fuel allocation and give it to food.... Looking back over the last few months, I think that's more realistic.

I've also worked out my monthly OP target. I have £200 from the car loan, the same target of saving as above from everyday spending (£200) and a little bit extra from the surplus now that my childcare costs have come down. So, I am going to aim for £500 per month. This feels like a real stretch, but I like a challenge, and it will really help with getting my ex off the mortgage at the end of my fixed rate in 4 years time.

And so onto my musings....

I am feeling much more emotionally stable since my divorce in January - the previous 2 years were very much about surviving and protecting the kids from my emotional turmoil as much as possible. They definitely reacted to my ups and downs, and sometimes I really wasn't parenting in the way that I wanted to.

One of the things that is so liberating now is that I don't have to consider another adult in the decisions that I make. Most of my marriage was about flexing around my ex's career, and it's been quite weird realising that I no longer have to do this - I can actively design my life the way I want to live it.

Here are my priorities:

1. A happy household - I've realised that this completely depends on me looking after myself. My mood influences everybody in the house. I know that it is impossible to be happy all the time, but there are various things I can do to help myself be mostly positive and cheerful
a) Sleep - I look back at when my kids were small and wonder how on earth I managed to get through every day! Or how it was legal to be in charge of small children (and driving them around) when I was so exhausted. My ex often used to get back very late in the evenings as well, and I wanted to stay up until he was in the house - I don't have to do that anymore!
b) Exercise - I promised myself when I was getting better and more regular sleep that I would start exercising properly again - I just couldn't face it when in the midst of small babies. I had a brief spurt of exercise earlier this year, and felt brilliant, then everyone got sick and I never got back into it. But I remember how much energy I had, how much more patient I was, how much easier it was to motivate everyone to get out and about rather than slouch around the house
c) Mindfulness - the biggest influencers of my mood are my internal thoughts and feelings. I obsess over things, and go down rabbit holes of questions, and then over-react inappropriately to the kids when they talk to me/behave badly. I have signed up to Headspace, and would like to meditate regularly.

2. Financial stability - although I am lucky that I have a stable job with hours that work for me and my family, and enough at the end of every month to overpay the mortgage, money is still one of my main concerns. So one thing I would like to do is increase my income.
a) I love my new job, and have already had positive feedback and encouragement to go for promotion again within a couple of years.
b) I have been a bookworm since I was tiny, and have always secretly wanted to write a book. I know most people who write and submit to publishers get rejected, but hey - it's something enjoyable I can do at home and I may as well give it a go!
c) I'll be going into my kids' school in the spring term to pilot teaching a 10 week music appreciation course. I'm so passionate about the benefits of music for everyone, and music is always one of the first things that gets cut when funds are limited. If this pilot works, then I might consider formalising it into some teaching aids, and seeing whether other schools might pay me to deliver the same thing for them.
d) I've also always secretly wanted to run a little shop. This one is a bit more pie in the sky as it would need significant capital, but I enjoy day-dreaming about it every now and then.

3. An organised household - with 4 young kids, "stuff" accumulates faster than dust. Now that I have more energy and general motivation, I would like to have a clear out of all the cupboards and drawers, all the toys, the loft etc etc so that I can get rid of stuff, and have a place for all the stuff that remains.

Here is my masterplan!

I always feel enthused on the way home from work, and plan out all the things I'm going to do that evening, and then don't actually do any of them as by the time I've put the kids to bed all I want to do is go to bed myself. Or if I do start something, I end up staying awake to the small hours, and sabotaging the rest of the week. At the beginning of the year, I did a month of "Miracle Mornings", which was absolutely brilliant. The idea is to get up earlier than usual, and fit certain things in before anyone else is awake, while there is peace and quiet. I'm going to start this again, and my mornings will go something like this:

0530 get up, get into sports stuff, go downstairs and drink some water
0545 do a 15 minute HIIT session
0600 drink some more water
0605 do a 10 minute Headspace session
0615 do some writing
0630 onwards - get joined by at least one kid, chat, get breakfast, go upstairs for a shower at 0700
0730 do some music practice with a different kid each day
0745 leave for work

Then when I get home at the end of the day, I've already done my self-care and all I have to do is clear up the kitchen, put the kids to bed and then go to bed myself.

The idea between writing this all down is that I want to do this everyday in the run up to Christmas, and writing it down for someone else to read (even for a bunch of strangers on the internet) means that I will hold myself accountable. I'll try and post more regularly on here too in order to keep my motivation going.

Wow, if you got through that essay, thanks for reading!

Goodnight,
Dragonrider

Dragonrider

Day 1 of 39

39 days takes me to Christmas Eve - so I could also call it "The 39 Steps"!

[STRIKE]HIIT Exercise[/STRIKE]
[STRIKE]Headspace[/STRIKE]
Writing - not yet. I'm going to have my supper and then have a go, as I have just dropped the kids off at their Dad's

So first day successful!

Dragonrider

Dragonrider

The 39 steps, one week in

So, I can proudly say that I'm mostly sticking to this!

I have meditated every day.

I have done my HIIT most days, plus a 5k park run last Saturday. The morning I didn't do my HIIT was Tuesday, when I woke up to a large puddle of cat wee on my bed, which had soaked all the way through my duvet. As this is a king-size duvet, it doesn't fit in my washing machine, so the only way to wash it was to stick it in a bath with some washing powder and walk up and down in it!

I have got my main character for my book, and want to do some research into a certain topic, so I found a very MSE second-hand book for £1.50 which I am currently making my way through. Quite excited about it, actually!

Plus I have started my Christmas shopping (all budgeted for already), and have plans for most people.

Looking forward to a nice family weekend (it's my sister's birthday), hope everyone keeps well...

Dragonrider

Dragonrider

November Update - in December....

Well, you can probably guess that my miracle mornings haven't gone according to plan by the lack of updates from me. This time of year is the anniversary of my marriage falling apart, and this year I have found it extremely hard, for some reason. So my motivation has been non-existent.

I will feel more positive in the New Year, I know, so I will re-start my daily habits for well-being.

In the meantime, November was a good month financially -

Food 333.38/420
Fuel 59.24/80
Personal spending 91.72/150
My travel 111.10/100
General spending 189.24/250

This gives me a grand total of 784.68 / 950 so a saving from day-to-day spending of 165.32. I then had 200 from the car loan, plus I managed to find 135.54 from surplus, which gives me 500.86 overall! Good going for my first month of a £500 target.

December will be a bit more spendy - all Christmas presents were budgeted for in advance, but I have the kids for 10 days now before they go back to school, and I want to have a good time with them.

So we went out for lunch today to the local greasy spoon, and we are going to go to the cinema tomorrow morning (£3 per seat kids' showing), then swimming on Monday. New Year will be a good meal followed by board games and silly dancing, then I'll stick a film on and see how long they can stay awake! I'm tempted to change all the clocks on the day so that they think it's midnight when it's actually 9pm....:rotfl:

Then after New Year, I've told them we're going on a Time Travel Adventure. One of the things I remember really clearly from my childhood is going to the Viking Experience in York, so I've booked us into a youth hostel for a couple of nights and we're going to go and visit the Vikings! They keep asking me what we're doing, but I'm not letting on.

So I know that December is going to go over my budget, but I also got some money for Christmas - my decision over the next few days is to decide what goes as a mortgage OP....

Hope you've all had a good festive season,

Dragonrider

Dragonrider

Well, I was right that December was a spendy month, but perhaps not as bad as I expected. Here are my figures:

Food 410.09/420
Fuel 165.18/80
Personal spending 141.90/150
My travel 72.10/100
General spending 163.96/200

We did lots of driving, so my fuel budget was smashed, but luckily it was mostly cancelled out by underspends in all the other categories, giving me a grand total of 953.20 / 950. That's really not bad considering everything that we did, including 2 parties, a lunch Christmas lunch, a £30 parking ticket , dinner out for me and all Christmas presents from my Christmas account (which I put some money into each month throughout the year).

I still have the £200 from my car loan stopping, and I was very lucky to have some money as gifts from parents and grandparents. I have kept some of this back for some sales shopping (I need some new work shoes!), but have put most of it towards the mortgage, figuring that this counts as a present to myself - in fact in terms of interest saved, it's probably the best thing I could do with the money!

So I have OP'd £600 - this will give my New Year a real kick-start, which feels good.

Having now come back from our 2 days away, my commitment to my early morning habits starts tomorrow.

And so to bed!

Dragonrider