It's time to begin.....

Kakiste

Just to explain about division of bills; We work out our household bills with my husband paying the full rent (£650) out of his account. 
I pay all the other bills which come to £789 which I think personally think is fair given I earn about £400 more a month than him;


Thanks - I think the more loans to pay interest is what really gets to me. Without £40k of debt I could have easily saved for and bought a house by now but I have literally nothing to show for it all. But I guess that it's best that I learned the lesson now and can sort myself out for the future. 

findingthisdifficult

Just read your diary from the beginning and wanted to say well done on your progress so far, looks like 35% of the debt you've paid off already.

I remember having days where I felt like I wasn't making any headway on the debt busting but looking at how far you've come makes you see the progress you have made.

Kakiste

Thanks. I hadn't realised what percentage I was at
NSD today- the poutine for went down very well with everyone and I've used up the massive amount of potatoes we had in the cupboard to boot. 
My daughter did a scavenger hunt via zoom for one of her friend's birthdays this morning- really nice idea and they all loved it. 
I've spent the afternoon working on a sewing project that a friend commissioned me to do- it's about half way done and should be done by the end of the evening. I'm hoping to spend the next couple of days clearing my backlog from the last 2-3 weeks and then I can start making some more money. 
I need to start savings pots for my half of my daughter's birthday in September and for christmas. That's the next thing to crack. 
Last year I saved up £400 for christmas which covered half the presents and all of the food. Hoping to do the same this year. 

Kakiste

Just had a look in the cupboard and I think we'll do veg soup for lunch tomorrow and then mushroom risotto for tea- don't need to buy anything for either of those so another NSD again. 

I've told the sprog that we'll make chocolate chip cookies tomorrow as well and have all the stuff to do that in the cupboard.

Sewing project is almost done (about another hour or two left) so I'll get that finished tomorrow morning and then get into the garden after lunch. I planted a tonne of veg and fruits out there 3 weeks ago and they're all doing well. Need to get the next load of carrots, spring onions and a pumpkin (we're trying to grow our own Halloween pumpkin this year) planted out tomorrow. 
I've got my usual haul of strawberries, tomatoes and peas outside but this year I'm also growing broadbeans, sweetcorn and potatoes for the first time. 
We moved to our current house (rental) a few years ago and thing I love most about it is the garden. We live on a really quiet new build estate but at the very edge of it so right next to farmland as well. We're on the end of a small close and because we're on the edge of the whole estate all the spare inches of land for each house got pushed up until they reached our plot and didnt have room for two more houses and so we have four times the garden of the standard house pattern. So we have a garden that wraps around the house on 3 sides and has three beautiful mature trees at the front (a sycamore and 2 ornamental cherry trees) 
So there's lots of grass, lots of borders and lots of hanging baskets everywhere and I found a nifty little device that lets you suspend a hanging baskets from each concrete fence upright post. I even put in a herb border which has come on really well even if my cat insists on sitting on the Rosemary plant! 

Kakiste

Cookies were great, made 14 and between the 3 of us they're all gone, good job it's a low fat/carb dinner
I'm really pleased with the sprog at the moment, one of the big things that I try to impart is good financial management to our daughter so she grew up for a good handle on financial stuff.

We started giving her pocket money linked to extra chores (didnt want her to see the general tidying up of her stuff as 'optional' and wanted to separate out the 'you live in this house too' jobs she's always been expected to do and extra stuff that kind of represents a job for her.) So she gets £1 a day if she completes all of the extra 7 jobs she has- so she can get up to £31 a month. 
Anyhow the original idea was to get her to realise that If she wanted to spend her money then that's fine but she could only spend until it ran out and then she had to stop (given all of my debt was due to originally living beyond my means, champagne rates on a beer budget.) 
She took to that really quickly and within a month she was clearly stopping and thinking about whether her purchase were 'worth it' which was awesome as a more mindful approach to money was exactly what we were hoping to impart. 
Now she's a year older we've moved on to trying to teach her that if she saves up her money she can get better things than if she spends it everytime she gets £5 ish. So far she's done pretty well and saved up to £30 a few times and bought stuff she's loved. 
BUT! She's just asked today about getting her own camera and we had a look on Amazon together at kid cameras, there is a camera she could get now as she has just under £30 but we looked at some other ones and there is an excellent one which also does filters(!) and can record video and has some simple games on which is £48 and she said "I can get this other one now, but if i save up a bit longer in can have the better one and I think that I would like that better'
So aged 5 and starting to understand delaying gratification to get a better version of something. Took me until I was 31 to understand that. 
Super proud.

joedenise

That's absolutely amazing.  Wish I'd learnt about money that young!  Well done on teaching her the value of money.

findingthisdifficult

How clever is your little lady!! So good that she's starting to see the value of money, I wish somebody taught me that when I was younger.

DancingInTheRain

That's fab, a very well earned proud Mama moment

CreditCardJunkie

Kakiste said:

Just had a look in the cupboard and I think we'll do veg soup for lunch tomorrow and then mushroom risotto for tea- don't need to buy anything for either of those so another NSD again. 

I've told the sprog that we'll make chocolate chip cookies tomorrow as well and have all the stuff to do that in the cupboard.

Sewing project is almost done (about another hour or two left) so I'll get that finished tomorrow morning and then get into the garden after lunch. I planted a tonne of veg and fruits out there 3 weeks ago and they're all doing well. Need to get the next load of carrots, spring onions and a pumpkin (we're trying to grow our own Halloween pumpkin this year) planted out tomorrow. 
I've got my usual haul of strawberries, tomatoes and peas outside but this year I'm also growing broadbeans, sweetcorn and potatoes for the first time. 
We moved to our current house (rental) in 2016 and thing I love most about it is the garden. We live on a really quiet new build estate but at the very edge of it so right next to farmland as well. We're on the end of a close of 8 houses and because we're on the edge of the whole estate all the spare inches of land for each house got pushed up until they reached our plot and didnt have room for two more houses and so we have four times the garden of the standard house pattern. So we have a garden that wraps around the house on 3 sides and has three beautiful mature trees at the front (a sycamore and 2 ornamental cherry trees) 
So there's lots of grass, lots of borders and lots of hanging baskets everywhere and I found a nifty little device that lets you suspend a hanging baskets from each concrete fence upright post. I even put in a herb border which has come on really well even if my cat insists on sitting on the Rosemary plant! 

Your garden sounds beautiful. Tell me more about the hanging basket contraption please!! 

Kakiste

It's getting there! I'm trying to be a better gardener across the last two years so I'm making a real effort to do the less fun bits as well as the bits I really like. When we moved in it was all overgrown lawns and now I've got a bunch of borders and planters in. My favourite one has a Wisteria and Buddleia right at the back that I got as cuttings and they're both about 4.5 foot now. 

The contraption is the first thing that comes up on Amazon if you search 'hanging baskets fence posts' (wont let me post links yet as I'm too new)

I have a really long back/fence where the garden joins some waste land (that I'm turning into a wildflower haven on the sly, by scattering seeds I get free from work-) so it looks lovely out the bedroom window!  As a result I have 18 fence panels down that side and I bought a bunch so that I have hanging baskets, strawberry planters and tomato planters hanging on the fence posts so its what you look at when you sit on the patio.