*sigh* this may take a while

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Bit of a gap between posts there!
Busy month.... I am no longer an NHS employee, which I found sadder than I expected after 18 years.  Mainly because I went into it for the right reasons and spent all those years trying to make it work and it never really did.  They expect too much, in too little time for far too little money.  
Started new job and so far, so good.  Very chill, no time pressures... I'm assuming there's more to the role than I've seen so far otherwise I'll have a lot of time on my hands.
Money wise, all ok.  No debt, but still poo at saving.  My new role is earning me £500pm more and that will be saved as is 'extra'.
Kids are on a wind down until summer hols  

savingholmes

Congratulations on starting your new role and ensuring you save the extra £. £6k in a year will be very welcome 

dawnybabes

ohdearhowdidthathappen said:

Bit of a gap between posts there!
Busy month.... I am no longer an NHS employee, which I found sadder than I expected after 18 years.  Mainly because I went into it for the right reasons and spent all those years trying to make it work and it never really did.  They expect too much, in too little time for far too little money.  
Started new job and so far, so good.  Very chill, no time pressures... I'm assuming there's more to the role than I've seen so far otherwise I'll have a lot of time on my hands.
Money wise, all ok.  No debt, but still poo at saving.  My new role is earning me £500pm more and that will be saved as is 'extra'.
Kids are on a wind down until summer hols  

Congratulations 🥳 

lucielle

Hope the new job is everything you want it to be!
L

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Thanks SH, Dawny and Lucielle
New job is going fine, although I'm still surprised how little work there is to do, but that's ok for now.  They're paying me for 3 days, but I can easily do the work in 2... if it carries on as it is, I might stop the boys' child care and do the hours 9-3 over the 3 days.  We'll see.

mark55man

clever about tweaking the hours to make other savings!!   

to me its just a sign of how hard everyone is working in the NHS that the change feels so easy - you might be surprised your new job probably thinks you are working super efficiently

ohdearhowdidthathappen

We're both getting bored with our finances and our inability to save.  We have no debt apart from our mortgage.
We've decided to go back to basics, do a new budget based on new salaries, bills, expenses etc.  It's on my 'to do' for this week, will pop a copy of it on here as an SOA. 
We don't have an emergency fund and after all the recent renovations we've done, we have NO savings.  We have pots for holidays and Christmas, but that's it. 
We've paid the balance for our summer holiday and have £600 in the pot as spending money, which is probably a little light, but doable if we're careful. We're self catering and we have 6 full days to fill, so £100 a day.  A meal out for 7 of us can easily hit £150, so that's going to be where we need to be careful.  Home cooking and maybe the odd takeaway!
Our Christmas pot has £2000 in it, which I know sounds excessive, but we spend £250-300 on each child, £50 on each parent and then rest is for food, drink, etc
First goal is £1000 emergency fund so we continue to stay away from credit card.  Then we need to build a FFEF... we're thinking £20k as that would cover 6 months of direct debits, childcare and food.  It's uch a big amount, it's a little daunting.

Humdinger1

A new SOA is a darned good idea @ohdearhowdidthathappen.  Life changes and it's good to look at the whole picture afresh.  I'm tweaking budgets when DD goes to uni in September.  You have done quite brilliantly; I don't often comment but always read with interest.  Onwards and upwards love Humdinger xx 

savingholmes

Glad new job is going well and you have some recovery time.

Good luck with budgeting 

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Thanks HD and SH
Quiet day yesterday and today, went for a long walk both days to get my 10K steps in before it got hot.
Mr A subbed or didn't deliver quite a few things on my shop yesterday, have ordered a top up for tomorrow to cover these things and buy in more fruit and ice creams as kids have been hoovering them up.
Our schools are doing half days the next few days, understandable because of the heat, but a nightmare logistically as finishing different times and the times are rubbish for work!  Also means no after school cover for the youngest two.  I'm tempted just to keep them off completely, DH is working from home so they're covered if they're here.  They're not going to learn a thing if they go in anyway, kids and teachers alike will be melting