Keeping our options open

becky170

Thanks Savingholmes! We have had a fun holiday, luckily without spending too much money. We've managed to see friends and family, visit a national trust property for a walk and taken a bus trip into the city (DS favourite thing to do!). I'm not looking forward to being back at work tomorrow though!

So yesterday I made my first overpayment of 2023 and transferred £300 to the mortgage. I also transferred £200 to our savings so we are off to good start

 I did my decluttering of 2 items yesterday (a old gift box which had been hanging around in my bedroom and a damaged photo frame). I saw on another site about a decluttering challenge where you get rid of the number of items depending on the date i.e. 1 item on the 1st of the months and keep going until you are getting rid of 31 items on the 31st. I quite like the idea of this so and going to try giving this a go, although I may struggle on work days to do that much sorting. 

savingholmes

Well done on the OP and savings. I need to get stuck into decluttering too - but not happening yet.

becky170

I've overpaid £372 to the mortgage this month. £15 of that was from a Quidc0 payout and £7 was from vinted sales. I have also added £200 to the savings so I've completed all my financial goals for the month

The kids are now off on half term. DH is off with them this week whilst I'm at work They have both been really tired, with lots of tears, so they are in desperate need of a lazy half term. We're taking them out to a NT property today for a run round and a picnic and then they can have a couple of days hanging around the house. Apart from buying in more food and some activity books, it should be a relatively cheap and cheerful half term. 

becky170

I've made my £300 overpayment today bringing our total overpayments for the year to £972 £200 has also been added to our savings. 

We are thinking of booking our first family trip abroad for next year so we might be dipping back into our savings soon to pay the deposit on that. The prices seem scary though (£3000 to £4000 for half board in decent hotels in the canaries for a week in the school holidays). That's far more than I have ever spent on a holiday but I was able to avoid school holidays previously  looking at the same week at centre parcs it would cost £2200 so maybe £3000 isn't so bad..... I just keep thinking that maybe £3000 would be better spent on a new car, but even doing a UK holiday would be well over £1000 in a decent caravan. The joys of having kids and having to holiday in school holidays! 

fionaandphil

Its crazy isn't it the cost of having school holidays.  We save by booking direct with the airline and hotel and this saves us quite a bit.  If you'd rather not do that you can usually get some cashback.  One word of caution if you are booking direct, get your travel insurance as soon as you book just in case anything happens.  Hope you find something fun!

savingholmes

Best of luck with your holiday plans. Expensive but memory making 

becky170

Well the holiday is booked. Thank you for reminding me about cashback and sorting my insurance out right away fionaandphil! I would probably have forgotten the cashback if you hadn't mentioned it. I did take a look at costing it separately but in the end we did book a package as given our track record with holidays (DD I'm looking at you) I thought we would play it safe. I did have a bit of a panic attack afterwards about the cost but the anxiety seems to have subsided now....not that I'm tight or anything 

In other exciting news I am taking the plunge and booking a table at a jumble sale to try and get rid of some of the kids stuff. If anyone has any organisational tips let me know as I've not done a jumble sale/carboot before 

savingholmes

Good luck with the sale. 

becky170

We are going to do an experiment in April to see if we can live off DHs wage only. The childminder is starting to struggle with DS behaviour so we want the see if the worse comes to worse and I need to give up work that we can survive financially. It should be doable with a little cutting back on the grocery spend and going out fund but if we were only to have DHs wage we wouldn't be able to go on holiday or do mortgage overpayments but we would have to live with that. Obviously bills will go up when our fix rate ends on the mortgage and on our energy bill, so me not working wouldn't be ideal and we probably would be stretched at that point but maybe by the time that rolls around I could maybe have found a part time role in school hours. Of course there are always rumblings of roles not being needed at DHs work so redundancy always seems like a risk which is a reason for me to be reluctant to give up work but I'm not sure how long the current set up for childcare is going to last. 

savingholmes

Best of luck with your experiment.

Do you get benefits for DS I can't remember?