*sigh* this may take a while

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Drawingaline wrote: »

Have a good one!

Thank you, you too!

Hasn't been as relaxing (so far) as I'd painted in my head! Loads of errands and catching up with stuff I was behind on.
I always feel a bit twitchy this time of year; taking stock of the year and plotting for the next. Lots of health and money plans for next year!

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Had a lovely Christmas, although the familiar post-Christmas feeling of feeling a bit fat and skint is definitely creeping in Improvement on last year, is that Christmas is all paid for, so no nasty surprises in January credit card bill (just a slightly inflated food bill, but easily absorbed).Looking forward to setting some 2020 targets to aspire to!

Hope everyone's having a good one! I'm pretty sure I'm 70% Amaretto and cheese right now

Mummy_bear

Merry Christmas!


Finally caught up (since September, Ooops). Found myself nodding along at several different points.


A particular one being about taking time off for sick kids. My DS was off for a whole week beginning of Dec with chicken pox (all the girls have it now ) and it was me who had to have the time off. DH just started a new job. I've had to take the hit from work....it's not good when you've not long been back from Mat leave! There really is no back up plan for these things.


Anyway, look forward to reading your journey into 2020!

clearmydebts

Happy Christmas! Hope you are having a well deserved break and the kids are happy with their Santa presents.

savingholmes

Glad you got a nice long period off.
With the CC - could you aim to halve it in January and axe it in Feb? Pretend it wasn't available - and that all your access to new credit was withdrawn - what would you need to do differently? What could you sell? I had to do a version of that as I was regularly using it and as you say it keeps putting pressure on the following month.

enthusiasticsaver

Great that Christmas was all paid for upfront rather than put on credit. When is that last £8500 to be repaid? That is family debt isn't it?

ohdearhowdidthathappen

clearmydebts wrote: »

Happy Christmas! Hope you are having a well deserved break and the kids are happy with their Santa presents.

The break has been lovely, still only half way through Kids all loved their gifts thanks. Jope yours has been lovely too?

savingholmes wrote: »

Glad you got a nice long period off.
With the CC - could you aim to halve it in January and axe it in Feb? Pretend it wasn't available - and that all your access to new credit was withdrawn - what would you need to do differently? What could you sell? I had to do a version of that as I was regularly using it and as you say it keeps putting pressure on the following month.

We need to do something like that, it's silly always being a month behind, I don't mind food and petrol on it, so it's just reducing the rest. We were averaging £2200-2800 a month and have got it down to averaging £1500, so another £700 would do it. Might try and get it down to £1150 with January salary and down to £800 with February's. WIll do some sums!

enthusiasticsaver wrote: »

Great that Christmas was all paid for upfront rather than put on credit. When is that last £8500 to be repaid? That is family debt isn't it?

Yes, family debt. My FIL isn't in a rush for it and doesn't charge us interest, which is lovely of him. My husband gets his bonus in March; so we paid back £4500 this year and plan to pay £4500 in March 2020 and the rest in March 2021. In an ideal world, we'd pay it back sooner (or have it saved ready), but we'll see. We're still renovating the house and the kids have a few expensive school trips pending, so it's a bit of a juggle prioritising where to send any spare funds

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Mummy_bear wrote: »

Merry Christmas!


Finally caught up (since September, Ooops). Found myself nodding along at several different points.


A particular one being about taking time off for sick kids. My DS was off for a whole week beginning of Dec with chicken pox (all the girls have it now ) and it was me who had to have the time off. DH just started a new job. I've had to take the hit from work....it's not good when you've not long been back from Mat leave! There really is no back up plan for these things.


Anyway, look forward to reading your journey into 2020!

Chicken pox is a nightmare, it has such a long incubation period! You think they've escaped it and then it appears 10 days later, better to get it out the way in one fell swoop though, I guess? Sad it was over Christmas though
I tend to cover kids' sickness more as my husband earns loads more and we feel it's more important to 'protect' his job. In reality though, he could work from home, whereas I can't. But his employer is one of those that frowns upon working from home, so he avoids it.

ohdearhowdidthathappen

So I've been looking back to the start of my diary from this time last year and overall I'd say progress has been a bit stagnant.

Finances
We've paid off £36.5k of unsecured debt, but £30k was added to mortgage, so doesn't really count :rotfl:
On the plus side; we haven't increased our debt at all and are living comfortably within our means, we didn't increase the mortgage term and we're making overpayments to mitigate some of the increase.

House
Loads of work done on the house, I'd estimate about £6k spent over the year. It's looking good, with defined projects for the future rather than the whole place looking a bit dodgy like it did last year in the wake of the major extension!

Work
Some decisions made, streamlining done. I'm earning the same money, but for less hours and I only have one side hustle now. I average 28 hours pw work and only work two weekend days a month. I still don't want to work in healthcare long term, but until I can find a job that pays the same, I'm stuck in it. At least until I don't have childcare costs to factor in

Health
Annoyingly, I'm the same weight I was last year. I didn't give my health the focus it needed this year, my BMI is in the healthy range (23.5), but I'm a stone heavier than I want to be. I also still drink too much wine and am prone to sitting on my bum rather than exercising!

Life/Kids

My littlest started school this year, major landmark for us.
Entitled teen is as entitled as ever, but I'm learning how to deal with her better.
I'm feeling stronger with dealing with losing my Dad, it's over 18 months ago now and have struggled through all the 'firsts'.
All in all life is good

in_need_of_direction

Such a positive post,thanks for sharing