Living in the black

Yellow_mango

I’m really liking this weekly budget thing.

Coming home from work this evening and my eldest son texts me “so when is the curry arriving?”!
Me: “when you cook it”
Him: but we should have enough in the weekly budget, we’ve hardly bought any food this week
Me: but Dad went out for lunch with Nanny. We have £23.91 left in the budget

He wasn’t pleased with my suggestion to cook from scratch, so he suggested going to Tesco to get some better curry stuff. I went with him and for our £23.91 we got a bottle of wine, 8 pints of milk, some microwave curries, and some ice lollies for dessert. With £2.57 left over.

I’m calling that a win :-)

Yellow_mango

Today I started school shopping. School shoes and shirts for the youngest. It’s going to be a speedy month...

Drawingaline

Hi, just been reading through. Your kids antics with money are similar to mine lol! I would definitely call theast conversation re curry a win. Once they start talking about budgets they are part of the way there!

My girl is 15. She gets a £50 allowance a month which began on her birthday. I am willing to pay up to £20 for her phone, she wanted a plan that cost £27 so she funds the rest. The rest of the allowance she has to fund everything bar shoes, underwear and uniform. She has a budget on my own ynab, she had been saving for a sims expansion thing but absolutely refused to buy it at full price so has had the money sitting there for two months waiting for it to go on sale.

She also earns £5 a day in the holidays babysitting her siblings while I work. 10% of this has to be saved into a long term savings category, trying to set up habits for her future.

My oldest son is 14, he gets £10 but can earn money in the holidays by working with me. He also has to save 10% if earnings. He will get an allowance at 15. He also has his own budget set up in ynab.

Things like dancing fees are funded partly by grandparents, and xbox live, ps network etc is funded by us as my husband is a huge gamer. So my son is lucky there lol.

Anyway best of luck, your level of debt is similar to ours (excluding the mortgage!) will subscribe.

mummypops

I'm currently on holiday and loving the opportunity to re familiarise myself with the MSE diaries, having dropped of the wagon myself.
Your diary totally resonated with me, we are fortunate to be earning well,
but it seems there are very similar points of note. My DH dislikes mince, doesn't take lunch to work, but has started to go with the flow (a bit more!!) with the evening meal, but it's taken ages to get this far. My DDs are great but they have what I would consider expectations that neither my DH and I could have even considered when we were growing up.
I loved reading how you manage pocket money, my youngest daughter has just turned 15, so after discussing with DH mentioned to her that from September she would be joining the monthly payment routine of 3x her age, payable into her bank account and this will cover any wants and that we would continue to pay for school uniform, educational purchases and basic clothing. If she wants branded items, make up etc, we are considering this as a want and she needs to purchase this herself. The next few hours have been hilarious, with lots of questions what about my nice shampoo? What about a magazine? What do I do if I fancy a bag of chocolate, how will I buy you a Xmas present.... To say my DH and I have been entertained is an understatement and shows this is definitely the right thing to do. So I thank you for your diary and the idea and wish you all the best in your journey. If you get the oppotunity, I would love to understand if you pay their sports clubs? And give them extra money to buy xmas/birthday presents etc.

for now....Good Luck, I'm subscribing and look forward to hearing more.
MP

Yellow_mango

Hi MP and DAL - it’s great to hear how you are managing kids pocket money in a similar way. I love to see them making good decisions on spending. We went charity shopping yesterday and dd found a cute little denim jacket for £5.99 and a baby dress that fits her bear for £2.99. She was so pleased with herself!

The older kids don’t really have sports clubs. They do all their sports at school. The youngest does a few extra dance classes, and I do pay for those. I also pay for piano lessons for 2 of them. Those are not really things I want them to opt out of to save money, and I’m sure they wouldn’t choose to spend their money on it.

Friends birthdays are tougher. In theory they should pay for that, and mostly they do. But if a party got sprung at the end of the month that they hadn’t budgeted for, I’d probably help out.

It was a bit of a spendy weekend, and I’ve got £32 for the rest of the week without having done a big food shop yet. So it’ll be a week of eating out of the cupboards and freezer.

Drawingaline

How are you getting on?

clearmydebts

Just came across your diary and wanted to say you're doing really well!

Yellow_mango

It’s been ages since I’ve been on here! Thought it was time to refocus and get back on track for the new year!

Things are going pretty well. December was a bit speedy, for obvious reasons. But I’ve just transferred some money from savings to pay off one of the credit cards which had come to the end of its 0% period, and pay off in full a large purchase we made in December on the pay balance monthly card (a table large enough to accommodate the whole family at Xmas!).

So going into January our only debt will be one credit card on 0% with a balance of around £2,800. And savings remaining of £2,600. So I’m pretty happy with that :-)

We are also currently dealing with an identity fraud issue, which whilst luckily we managed to catch before there was any real financial loss, has been a pain in the **** to sort out. So that has also put extra focus on our finances.

Plan for January is just to spend as little as possible and get back on track with saving.

mark55man

that sounds like a good place to be for 2020. Hope you manage to recover quickly from the extra spendiness that December always brings

CJRyder

I found your diary today. There are a lot of things that resonate with me, particularly with regards to food and cooking. SWMBO and I end up not cooking or eating together because of a number of issues, so I did smile when I saw your curry win. Keep up the hard work!