The Four D's

FootyFanDan

Morning All, 

Wide awake! Hope everyone is taking care of themselves. Yesterday was spent few hours sleeping off night shift and then i spent rest of afternoon building the little one's trampoline...boy that was fun! 😂😂. She spent a good few hours on it though and was shattered come bed time, it must be so tough for these kids right now. It was nice to spend a few hours in garden in normality.

One good thing about this whole lockdown though is my fuel costs have dropped so much! Although i am still working the lower cost per litre plus the fact not really going anywhere else has been good for the bank account. Food is going okay at the moment although i do need to pop for bread and milk at some point. Today the plan is to get caught up on diaries and do some house work, think time for a cuppa tea could be a long day

mark55man

we bought a big old trampoline - the biggest we thought we could fit in, and the company sent us a 14' instead of the 12' as they had run out of 12' and my OH was so nice on the phone when they called.  It only just fitted in the back garden

It lasted 5 years and pretty much every sunny school holiday day thereafter the kids spent most of the day chilling on the trampoline.  Best £150 I ever spent! You wont regret buying that

FootyFanDan

mark88man said:

we bought a big old trampoline - the biggest we thought we could fit in, and the company sent us a 14' instead of the 12' as they had run out of 12' and my OH was so nice on the phone when they called.  It only just fitted in the back garden

It lasted 5 years and pretty much every sunny school holiday day thereafter the kids spent most of the day chilling on the trampoline.  Best £150 I ever spent! You wont regret buying that

We have been meaning to get one for a while but were waiting for right one. We also figured that at present it would be good to try get her out in garden whilst we can, although i have now created another task as i now need to clear garage to make room for all the old garden stuff until i get a skip...why do i do this to myself haha.

Hope you and family are keeping safe

FootyFanDan

Well, still awake despite the very early start haha. Today has been quite productive and i have managed to catch up on a few bits of work stuff that I needed to get done. I have just had tacos for late lunch so hopefully that will keep me going for a while . Its strange but i think the little one been on GF diet means we have kinda all just adjusted and seem to be eating way healthier food and more of us eating together at the same time and being the same meal can only be good!

Today I have also made an additional payment to DT3 of £60 which brings that down to a nice round £300, with a view to overpaying more possibly at end of the month. I am aiming to try get this one paid off by middle of May so lets see. I can then focus on next one, currently trying to decide what to do for my next one though. The current plan for DT4 was to pay off catalogue account that was passed to DCA, but this is the newest of my defaults as only recently passed to DCA so unsure in terms of impact on credit improving as this is going to impact me for 6 years now so need to decide whether to put this one on back burner and focus on something else. All other defaults are quite old, so once paid they will be off my report completely (default wise) in 12/18 months. ...happy for advice haha - 

I have also decided what pots to set up to fund my annual costs and i have put in these onto YNAB and set my ideal goal target but that might change. I have transferred over the amounts today to cover April contributions and will continue to do this monthly into Monzo pots

Pot 1 - Xmas (£300) - This will probably flex dependent on financial circumstances but at present this do-able and i can then add some from normal expenses if i need to.

Pot 2 - Car Costs ( MOT, Service And Repairs) (£500)- This is all due in December and will give me a chunk towards costs. In the meantime if anything does come up i will fund with EF and anything that is built up in pot.

Pot 3 - Car Insurance (annual) ( £250) - This is due next March as i have only just renewed and had to pay monthly due to not having the funds for full payment up-front, it will be a little more than this however the plan is to try my best to keep Council Tax on 10 payments ( which for first time in ages i can do as i have no debt on the account) I can use the two free months to add to this £250 and that should cover it.

Pot 4 - Family Vacation (Orlando -2021) - This is more of a dream at the moment, however this is something i have promised and promised i would do and keeps getting put off, i do realise this for our little family is a big cost and not something most in debt would do.......but if this whole COVID thing as taught me is you never ever know when your time is up (as morbid as that sounds) I am determined that this dream trip will happen . PS sorry for betraying my MSE values for a little dreamy moment haha. 

Pot 5 - Emergency Fund - I have no set figure for this but as i rent and probably will be for the forseeable future i plan to get to a small fund of £300 ASAP and then i will continue then to just top up every month what ever i can.

Hope everyone is keeping well in these very tough times 

mark55man

that looks like a plan and a half - but all logical and achievable

with respect to holiday - absolutely go for it, because your new attitude will mean that you won't overspend what you have budgeted for, and your budget works for you.  I am not sure how old your kids are, but when I look back on the holidays (inc day trip to Euodisney) - I would say on  average we did things a bit early - when the kids were a bit younger - so that the stuff we had done when the kids were 5->9 they would have enjoyed and remembered even more when they were 9->13.  

In my circumstances when the kids got a bit older, we limited ourself to UK and seaside, which was fun but the kids would have liked Disney when older and the seaside when younger.  Also we were a bit adventure park newbies when we went so we could have done a bit more locally to train us up to fully appreciate the "big adventure"

FootyFanDan

Haha yeah, if i am being honest its strange for me to have a plan Mark. I just need to keep up with my positive outlook on fixing my finances and seeing the long term benefits of saving up through the year, its not something i have even considered before but i can certainly see why it makes sense i just have to be committed to it.

Re the holidays we have done a few uk stuff mainly the seaside and the little one has enjoyed it, she was a little unsure of the sand at first but she got there. We have just the one kid who is 5 - she would be six IF we get to Orlando in 2021. She is big into Disney...mainly princesses obviously haha so we always thought we would take her when she was around 6 or 7 but i am still unsure yet.  I think she would still love the Disney stuff but we shall see, but i am conscious of a few things the flight time, the heat and just been out and about for so long in the heat but I just don't want to live with the regrets if we don't go.

FootyFanDan

Evening All, 

Hope you have all had a good Friday, today has been a nice relaxed day. I had to do the weekly shop which was busy but quite well organised, once shopping was done we spent a few hours in the warm weather in back garden with pizza, a few treats and a few cold beers hehe...lockdown as some benefits.

Hope you all have a fun, safe weekend.  

mark55man

cool - don't not go, just at 6 she would probably be just as happy with a trip to the disney store in your local city and save the big trip for later.  or maybe hit EuroDisney 2021 and America 2023/4.  If Trump gets back in I'm not heading US ways until 2025!!

FootyFanDan

America / Disney is going to be a big adventure and possibly only a one time thing so i would want it to be memorable so possibly might save for longer and go the whole Disney experience, at the moment my focus is on doing the right thing finance wise which i think i am doing okay with right now. It looks like this month i will be in a position where the income we get pays this months bill and a fair chunk of funding the savings that would normally be taken by my April pay, so we are making really good progress.  I think the general thing i would like to do is be debt free so that remains my first goal 

mark55man

I just asked my DD2 who was 5 when we went to EuroDisney (now 20+) and she thought 8-10 for Orlando as its huge (plus all the other stuff around there) so you need a lot of energy and money - but Euro Disney would be sweet for a long weekend when a bit younger

sorry sound like I'm lecturing - but it's painful to me that I kind of messed up getting these things right for my kids