Wandering on

System

Hello diary!
I've had a lovely couple of days off from work. Went to Bath with my mum - treated her to a facial and lunch for her birthday and mothers day (all saved up for) and then did a bit of shopping. Didn't go too mad - but did spend about £150 - had about £90 put by, and then my TCB payout of £105 came in - so sorted it out out of that. Means that i'm unlikely to do much of an extra debt payment this month, but we will see - still 14 days to go.

Now at home on my customary Friday - but am housebound as car is back in the garage to have a sensor fixed, and the final tyre. Asked for tracking to be done too. Have only got £63 left in car pot - so this will have to come out of buy a house fund as the sensor is £120 on it's own and tyre will be about £75, so plus labour and tracking I reckon £250?
Annoyingly it also needs a full service as light has just come on - but will wait for this and book in again after payday as that should just about cover it.

Hit a bit of a snag too with me setting up 2 of those regular saver accounts to try and get a load of interest - the household account is looking depleted!! I have to pay final balance on holiday accommodation next month so hopefully there will be enough in there for that....but when we want to take our spending money it may be stored in those accounts - which means they will stop gettting interest. Oh well!! At least I will get interest for when it was in there!

So jobs for today:

• Do some of DH's accountancy sorting out
• YNAB up to date and plan spends
• Freezer write up and meal plan
• make banana muffins
• a bit of gardening and weeding with DD
• check on all the animals and enjoy the sunshine!

System

Hiya,

It's been a long month!

Positives = - we have come in on budget for food and eating out. Not sure how, but it has happened!

Negatives - 3 car tyres and a sensor light wiped out the car maintenance pot. And now the service light has come on! I should be getting some work expenses this month so will throw this all at the car.

DH has negotiated down to 20 hours a week. Not a negative really as he will be much happier. BUT.....we will see how long this employment lasts - Hopefully with a better work life balance, he will put up with it as the money is great (£15/hr) - he's getting more than he did in previous job full time even just doing 20 hrs! So fingers crossed!!

Nursery this month is cheaper than usual - short month - so we will be £83 in credit towards next month.

Debt bust down pot is not going so great. Still saving £500 a month for holiday though. With less income coming in, this means other pots are not being funded. When holiday is done, I'm hoping to fund some more into debt pay down, but can't see me achieving it by the end of the year. Unless a miracle premium bond comes good!

No major plans for this month - just a calm and quiet one. Weeks holiday at the end of the month - but just for me, so chilling at home.


2018 Challenge Debt buster pot:£191.31 of £3670 goal (5.2%)
EF is at £225 (+£400 on loan due back in at some point)
Holiday pot is at £1275/2372 (54%)
Car pot is at £0
House deposit pot is at £0
Christmas and gift pot has £67 in it. No presents to buy.
Grocery budget has been set to £300 with an entertainment/ eat out pot of £80. Last month we did £400, so be good to see how we do.

Expecting child benefit in, and interest payment - not yet accounted for - if I have a really behave-myself month then I might be able to put some of this towards debtbust down.

Off to do my work expenses!

Happy bank holiday folks.

System

Hey.
Work expense total £356, so that should cover getting my car serviced and the aerial fixed - been over a year with no radio - driving me bonkers!
Hopefully may be enough to do a valet. All in readiness for our holiday at end of July.

Good news on the DH front - he has found a new and much cheaper vehicle - insurance dropping from £75/month to £15 a month, and will be less of a gas guzzler too. Every little helps.
Only down side is having to pay up front to get the new vehicle, before he can sell the current one, so money had to come out of a regular saver. But hey ho - it can go straight back in there all being good.

Organised a fee free abroad CC for when we go holiday and plan to load it up with cash before we go, so that should save £££.

Feeling a bit skint - but nothing major to pay out for either.

TTFN X

System

Just a check in. Everything pretty tight -and petrol up in price too.
Expense claim now approved for £350 so that will be in soon but going to use to sort the car out.

Just organised European breakdown cover for holiday - £68.

Realised that I need to reduce the amount of childcare vouchers I am paying for as now paying too much - by about £100 - works out about £60 up on wages (just shows what a fantastic deal that is!)

Starting to budget for logs and oil now as we don't have enough logs of our own. Have contacted a nearby sawmill to see if we can buy some unprocessed timber in lengths for DH to process - won't necessarily be ready for this year, but a good future investment so we might need to do a bit of buying processed too. Oil tank is full though already which is good (aga broke down so will need to be fixed before we get going.....)

Called roofer to get a quote to repair holes in roof and guttering issues (yep there are holes - we had snow in the attic this winter!!) Am I selling a vision of our house yet? It also has stone flag floors and resident slugs.

Urge to spend money, but going to be good. Do need to food shop though so will make a plan (going to Aldi)

In other not so good news, I found a lump in my breast, got an appointment next week to follow that up - I am hoping it might be cysts rather than anything more sinister as got smaller and less painful so thinking it may be menopause related. Nothing like that to make you appreciate what you have got. Also made me get some quotes for life insurance (and hope it's not already too late - being optimistic, I will wait and see what happens and sign up for it if all OK.)
Feeling pretty chipper about it all really. No sense in stressing.

TTFN Ramble

pidge04

Oh, how are you? Have you had your appointment?

System

Whoops. Sorry for posting delay. Thankfully all was well - it was a cyst rather than anything more sinister...although probably heralds the start of the big M with hormones going awry. Huge sigh of relief from me. Also have now arranged life assurance as being the major breadwinner, this at least means I know everything will be sorted should anything go wrong in the future.

Isn't the NHS amazing. Was seen within 2 weeks and the staff were fantastic.

So June has been a reasonable month from a family budget point of view. DH now working reduced hours and it is much better as a result - and we can manage with the income too.

We've spent £411 on food and eating out, which is within budget. :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: Doing 2 big shops at Aldi has definitely helped with this.

We're still saving £500 a month towards holiday and just managing to do that (with the aim of having an £85/day budget on holiday which seems like loads - so hoping we can come back with some.) Have organised a CC that you can spend on fee free abroad, and I'm planning to preload it with our funds. Wanted to buy an in-car DVD as will be a lot of driving for DD - managed to find one 2nd hand locally so will be £40 rather than £140. Next challenge will be finding suitable DVD's!

Next couple of months will be a bit tricky as discovered that my free childcare for nursery has not been stretched over the whole year so I have to cough up £588 for August!! Some of that will get covered by vouchers, but need to find the rest. Also SS needed an extra £140 this month for school trip.....don't begrudge the spend, but we only ever find out about this the month we need to pay it - happens every time. No idea if it's just that his mum forgets to give us advance notice, or if it's the school. VERY ANNOYING....might write to the school and complain and ask to get the letters as well....or find a polite way of raising it with SS mum. Really don't want to embarrass her or make things awkward.

Extra debt busting is not really happening at the moment - and won't until we have finished with holiday saving. I am hoping then I may start being able to save £300 a month for holidays, £300 a month towards debt. So no way the first one will be gone this year but hey ho. Small steps.

In DH's world, not great news in that he's had a machinery failure so extra expense needed, but he's going to borrow on a 0% CC and pay back within 2 years - all easy to do with this current budget.

At home all week and weather is looking glorious.

Aims for the week:

• Tidy Garden
• Do several tip runs
• Take copper to the scrapyard and make some £££
• Haircut
• A day off with DH
• car to garage for service etc (money all set aside)
• and there's probably more....

System

Money in the bank. Complicated money movements all done, and budget looking ready to spend.
Car currently in garage having service and other stuff done. Have £300 put aside for this so fingers crossed it comes in on budget. If there is any change, I am going to get it valeted....and if there isn't I'm going to do it myself. Be more MSE to do it myself anyway so may just do that.
Was planning to do garden and tip runs tday but can't do that with a courtesy car so will tidy and get ready and do the tip run later or tomorrow.

Right time to catch some rays and do some work in the garden.

2018 Challenge Debt buster pot: £221.42 of £3670 goal (6%) - if I manage to increase payments to £300 from end August, then I will be able to pay off in full June 2019.
EF is at £166.02 (+£400 on loan due back in at some point)
Holiday pot is at £1541.75/2030 (76%) - Going to give us £77 a day budget.
Car pot is at £350 (expecting to spend £300 today tho)
House deposit pot is at £0
Christmas and gift pot has £167 in it. No presents to buy. Have stashed the money ahead in YNAB so not very visible, but there ready for Xmas!

System

Nearly ready to go on holiday.
Have about £1300 saved up for spending - which £300 is for fuel - so £1000 spending for 15 days (£66/day) eek that feels tight. Might try and find another £150 as that would take it to £75/day which feels OK.

Had some bad money news this month - I have to pay full nursery bill for August - I thought my childcare vouchers were being spread out over whole year - but they are not - so I am going to have to pay the full august bill. After some childcare vouchers coming off, I think I am going to need to pay out £299!! A bit of a shocker after paying nothing for months.

Feeling in general frustrated with how budgeting is going month to month and feeling that a change of focus is needed as we are not really getting anywhere. Talked to DH about trying to build a buffer (YNAB's 4th rule) so trying to get a month ahead. So have been thinking about how I can do this after we have got through August (reduced income from DH due to holiday) and I think it is do-able - I also want to increase my DMP payments. Having spent some time looking at it all - I think I can increase my DMP payments by £50 a month to £150 (and then my plan is to increase again when I get a payrise next April - ultimately I want to get to paying £300 a month. I had thought that I could "save" this up to pay off - but the reality is something always happens to steal this away so I think I will just up my payments after all.

I also think we can then allocate £150- £200 a month to paying ahead - and starting to build the buffer into YNAB. We'd need to start with DH's work account first - and then the Farm account - and then move onto the household. Had a good look at what we are budgeting for monthly too to make sure we had the right categories in place. This will have to start from end of September I guess as we will be too short to do too much at end of August paycheck.

I always feel so impatient - I need to take a long term view and just slowly chip away at it all. If we start to put money aside for our true expenses as well as trying to get ahead - ultimately we will be in a much better situation.

We've invested a huge amount into the farm business this year - but hopefully the worst is over - I would like to pay that back too - but in reality, if we want to buffer our accounts, I can't do that as well. Only hope there is that at some point in next 2-3 years, we will be able to get a bit of money back out - so I will have to just be patient there too!

Still feel like a budgeting failure most of the time. DH NEVER knows what is in budget and what he's spending - and if I try to get him, he tells me I'm nagging. Stressful situation that makes me unhappy.
I'm going to try and get him onboard when we are on holiday.

Chrystal

Take a deep breath and try to relax (((hugs))) Rome wasn't built in a day.
You are doing a great job in difficult circumstances so don't be so down on yourself.

Is it possible for OH to have his own accounts to take the money from? Even cash in different envelopes so that he is aware what is left in each and what it's going on? Other than/ as well as that maybe a short time every night to go over what's been spent on what by each of you? It must be really difficult if he doesn't put the effort in, but he HAS to realise that the way things are ALL of the pressure is being put on you..... which is totally unfair. Then lots of praise and appreciation when he does something right ( male bodies grow up but I've found that in their minds they are still about 7 years old and need treating as such..... without them realising it )

System

Thanks Chrystal - Perhaps I could do a small cash envelope that he can use for emergency food spends. Mostly I get irritated by him popping to the shops and getting stuff we don't really need - and that all adds up to scupper my budget usually. Perhaps I need an extra DH wreck the budget pot!!!
I think though I will just have to force him to sit down and go through it all with me once a week. I don't think it's too much to ask.

Sigh.

Anyway on the up side, I sold his car today so that's back into the bank account.