Getting it together...one £ at a time!

Homegrown0

Hey all! I've had a crazy busy week so have been pretty absent from here but thankfully have managed to contain the spending to a reasonable level.

Money was spent but was all budgeted for.

Price increases
It's that time of year again - pre-financial year increases have started to roll in! Swimming lessons x 2 have increased from £25.15 to £25.90 per child. Increase of £1.50 per month total. I can cope with that

Our council tax is also going up next month to £253 per month which is an increase of £13 per month.

I already mentioned this one, but our nursery are also increasing prices by £20 per week.

Because of all these fluctuations, i'll need to spend some time on my spreadsheet to bring it all up to date and make sure my projected overpayments/ savings still add up.

I generally get a salary review in June/ July so I'm hoping it will be a reasonably good increase and not just inflation!

kindofagilr

Yeah I used to have a PP of my son on here, but changed it as I didn't want to be known iyswim

I hate increases lol, we have the CT and the water going up in April, I need to change my home insurance in April, and we need to switch our gas and electric (I hate doing that) xx

doingitanyway

Just catching up.

You are thundering along as usual

Your talk about over sharing has rung a bell with me too.

I've been thinking about logging in again under a new name with a new diary. Seems like a good idea...

Homegrown0

Sorry to everyone who is now worried about oversharing - I don't want to be a scaremonger! Before my profile name was my name and similar to usernames i use elsewhere plus i distinctly remember mentioning my home town and I think that just scared the **** out of me! A little more anonymous works well, although I probably still share a bit too much.

Sorry you're being hit with increases too kindofagilr - it is frustrating but not surprising.

DIA - so lovely to see you back I'll stop by your diary for a catch up next!

Another crazy week is almost over, soon to be replaced by a crazy weekend of course. But it's always better when there's no work to worry about squeezing in. Husband is working all weekend so I'll be lone parenting which, if the kids are on good form, should be nice.


Pay day was yesterday so I have reset the budgets and gone through what's coming up for this month and we're all on track. My son is needing some new clothes so i need to go through his stuff, see what he needs and head to the shops at some point at the weekend. I'm sure it's just a few bits (mainly bottoms - he's long legged and has had a spurt) but I've now got £200 built up in the gifts/ clothes fund so I feel good that it won't need to come out of our normal spends pot like it normally would. I also have a funny feeling we're very close to both needing new trainers. The problem with that is that my younger son needs 2x trainers when he goes up a size (one for nursery/ out playing and one 'good' pair to keep un-muddy). However, my eldest would need 2x trainers, 1x school shoes and 1x indoors shoes for school. I'm loathe to buy new school shoes at this point with just 2 months left to go (after spring break) so i'll see what they're like this weekend and make a call.

Surveys
I have not even opened a survey site for weeks - life has just been too busy and on my down time I can't even bear to think about doing a survey. I want to remedy this, though, as my overpayments have slowed down. It was nice having the odd £5 or £10 extra to throw at the CC.

Childcare costs
We found out last month that we'd be getting an extra 200 hours free childcare from September and I'd approximated what that would mean for us financially. It turns out that it's actually worth a lot more £-wise than I thought so from what we pay now (pre-increase which is starting next month) we'll be saving an extra £100 per month which is just brilliant!

I need to confirm my sums then update my spreadsheet on that one. Every little helps and when you've spent almost £70,000 on childcare in the last 5 years, every £ really does make a difference.

Right, off to get organised so that Friday doesn't pass me by and end up in rushing around later...

teafor2

Hi HG Children seem to be sprouting up everywhere I turn on here - must be the spring weather

I've not had one survey this week and if you don't mind, I'm mentioning it to you because I tend to get one when I've had a moan about it :rotfl:

Fantastic news about the childcare - £100 is a really good sum of money to save. My eyes are watering at that figure of £70k :eek: Was there ever a point where you considered taking time out from work or did you always know riding the wave until the DC's were at school was the way you wanted to go? Now it's coming to an end I bet you're glad you stuck with your career aren't you.

Have a lovely weekend and enjoy Mother's Day. xx

Homegrown0

Hopefully the survey complaining works! Come on PA! Get a move on!

Yes, the £70k makes me feel a bit ill myself, but it's done now. I did consider staying at home when I was having my youngest but 1. Being a SAHM has never appealed to me and 2. I knew I'd need to start from scratch again with my career.

I'm currently earning 20k more than I was when I was on mat leave with my youngest 3 years ago so I know it was a realistic sacrifice to pay for the childcare to reap the rewards later. My earning potential still has quite a way to go if I decide I want to keep moving up the ladder so it's a good place to be. I dont feel like I missed out on the kids either, especially in the job I'm in now which is hard work but super flexible. I can be at every school assembly, parents day, sports day etc without question and I can take him to work with me in a service days if need be etc.

I know it's not for some people but our way has worked for us and I actually wouldn't change it if I could go back.

Mothers day will be lovely for me - I know my eldest has been making and is so excited to show me what he has made. And I get to spend the day with my boys too which is the most important thing. My son wanted his dad to take him to get some flowers for me but since he's been working about 90 hours this week, he promised him he'll take him one day next week and it'll be even more of a surprise because I won't be expecting it sweetheart!

Hope you have a lovely day tomorrow too, Tea.

teafor2

Morning HG Hope you had a lovely weekend and enjoyed your Mother's Day.

Wow, if you're earning that much more in 3 years and still have potential to increase your salary I'd say you definitely made the right decision. From what I've read it doesn't sound like it's detracted from your family life at all, you always seem to be taking the boys somewhere and have something nice to look forward to Good for you. xx

Homegrown0

Thanks Tea, i had a lovely day

You're right, it hasn't detracted from family life much. Of course, if i could make it work on a four day week then that'd be nice too but I'm quite happy with how things are working for now. I think i'm a better mum in the time that I have with the kids - I'm more present when I'm with them and more inclined to spend proper quality time. Not always, of course, because I'm human and I need to do my washing sometime! But i feel like I have more patience than i would if i was mum 24/7.

Homegrown0

Well, i spent some time on my spreadsheets to adjust the nursery costs from September and I'm quite pleased with how things are looking. It's looking like my DFDs from each debt will look like this:

Loan: January 2020 (9 months)
CC1: March 2020 (11 months)
CC2: June 2020 (14 months)

Of course, this is all dependent on me being able to afford all the extra repayments that I think i will be able to afford. If something big comes up then we might need to scale some of the payments back etc. but i think we'll be in a good position to meet them. Also, this includes a significant amount of snowballing so when the loan ends, that payment will immediately start going to CC1 etc.

While paying off hard, we'll still be saving through the credit union, sealed pot and general month-to-month savings which will differ every month.

I'm feeling positive about what's coming up and motivated for now. Long may it continue!

£2.40 into the sealed pot

Homegrown0

FINALLY my £100.01 that has been pending on TCB since December has cleared! I have cashed out to my bank account so it should be there in the next few days. It'll be going straight off the CC when it comes in Nice start to the month!

I also have £2.04 pending in there.