One income family of four - can we get ahead even after pay cuts?

Bluegreen143

Thought I’d share my current YNAB screenshots as @missymoo81 was talking about setting it up on her diary. We will I think get some child benefit on the last week of the money I’ll squirrel away probably in savings then get paid on the 31st so I can fill in all the bills & spending for August.

thriftyish

I am relieved that we are not alone in having unequal child savings, I have always planned to even things out but it's not easy!
  
Your sourdough bread looks amazing, thanks for sharing the recipe site you use, we have just received another 2 loaves in our latest 'too good to go' box, but I think I might make some anyway next week, just to try!

I was telling my friend about YNAB recently. Does it automagically connect to your bank account, or do you upload statements? Does it cost to use? I use 2 spreadsheets & have savings accounts that I use as 'pots' - then standing orders magically send all the money to the right places on payday - I love my spreadsheets so enjoy doing it, but YNAB sounds better for people who aren't quite as weird as me   

Bluegreen143

You do pay for YNAB - think it’s about £5 a month it works out (I pay annually). It doesn’t connect if you are in the U.K. I don’t want it to connect though. I think you can just upload statements but I never have. I add in every transaction manually which is what YNAB encourage so you are more “on the ball” and paying more attention to each transaction. It only takes a few minutes a day 🙂

joedenise

I have the old version of YNAB (now called YNAB Classic) which I had to pay a lump sum upfront for but no more payments, however it is no longer supported so if it goes wrong that will be the end of it and I'll have to give the online version ago but I'd try the free 34 days before committing.  I would also advise watching the tutorials whilst using the free 34 day period before committing to it.  As @Bluegreen143 says you can pay monthly or annually - I think it works out very slightly cheaper paying annually. I think I'd be lost without it.  However if you're happy using your spreadsheets then I'd say "if it ain't broke don't fix it!"

Bluegreen143

Going to take some time this week to plan in a few bits for next week. Felt a bit meh and had a serious case of can’t be arsed-itis this afternoon! Usually happens when I’ve stopped planning and wing it for too long. I do like to have a plan and routine. I think the kids’ routine needs switched up a bit too, just a few things that could be working better. 

My plan is for next week to do a “maths week” with my 4.5yo to add a bit of focus in. Made a wee list of activities (a lot are just everyday things like counting as we put away shopping or counting out food to share out etc, practising counting in pairs). But some more specific ideas I thought of are below, we don’t do these all of course! Bonus is that all are free:

- hopscotch
- dice & domino games
- playing connect 4
- baking (weighing and measuring ingredients)
- using twigs/leaves, pattern blocks or Lego to make patterns
- using playdough or kinetic sand to make 3D shapes 
- hiding magnetic numbers in the kinetic sand tray for him to find and guess which they are by feel
- number treasure hunt 
- throwing different objects & using a measuring tape to measure the distances 
- practising drawing numbers with pens, outdoor chalk, a wet paintbrush, or tracing over numbers with his finger
- feeding written down numbers to a sock puppet (identifying them correctly first)
- number hunts on walks (trying to find specific numbers or the biggest numbers etc, taking photos of them)
- filling jars with pebbles to estimate then count the total 

Bambi is a bit young for all these, but I’m going to try and do some wee colour sorting based activities with her, plus letting her just play with the playdough and kinetic sand, sticks etc. 

Should be fun 🙂

joedenise

Some great ideas there Bluegreen.  Love the idea of throwing objects and then measuring how far they've gone.  Might be worth weighing them first so he can see that lighter objects don't go very far, things like a paper aeroplane for example compared with a ball.

Never had of kinetic sand - off to google to see what it is!  Not something my kids played with 40 years ago, LOL!

Baileys_Babe

When you do throw & measure you could alternatively measure without a measuring tape, you could use strides or pigeon steps or hops. It would be fun and keep with the Maths theme but the numbers will be lower and easier to grasp for a younger child.

You have come up with lots of great suggestions.

You could also send him to collect certain objects then they can be rearranged is different groupings/sets

Bluegreen143

Ooooh good suggestions @Baileys_Babe! 

@joedenise Kinetic sand is the best 🙂 it’s indoor play sand that sticks together. You can shape it like wet sand but it doesn’t feel wet, and it sticks to itself (but not the child or your surfaces) so cleaning up is easy, it doesn’t make a huge mess if it gets spilled. Pricey but lasts for ages. I have it in a lidded plastic tub (the shape of like a roasting tin so low sides) and have some mini toy diggers in there and they will play with it for ages.

Meant to log that I spent just under £5 in lidl on a huge pack of nappies & some wipes (going back to cloth hasn’t really happened, woops. Red isn’t keen and I can’t be bothered!) All the nappies were second hand, most have done two kids and we used to use them 80-90% of the time for Bambi (maybe 50% of the time with Monkey as he went to a childminder’s before I was a SAHM) so we have had our money’s worth. Red wants to just sell the ones in good condition to get extra cash now and pointed out we want to potty train Bambi pretty soon anyway so hopefully won’t need to buy that many disposables. I’ve just totally gotten out the habit now and am really enjoying having less washing 😆

No other spends to report. We will go over on food this month, definitely, but should be considerably lower than what we’ve been spending through lockdown. And I can bring it down again next month. We’ve done well on everything else and having a plan has really put a stop to all the random amazon deliveries I was so guilty of.

Bluegreen143

Meant to post my meals for yesterday:

B - cereal (Weetabix for kids, HM peanut butter granola for me), fruit

L - Red made Bambi beans on toast. Monkey and I were out visiting my parents and came back really late. I made us a ham & cheese quesadilla with various salad veg & fruit.

S - just gave them some fruit & oatcakes as lunch was so late anyway 

D - instant pot honey mustard chicken with cauliflower, homegrown mangetout and rice. New recipe for me and it was amazing! You can even put the chicken beast in frozen which is what I did. So convenient. 

Thinking I will make some kind of vegetable pie tonight. I’ve seen an interesting recipe for a spiced lentil one basically filled with a lentil & spinach daal. We have chard in the garden so could sub that for the spinach.

Currently harvesting from the garden: eggs (so many!), salad leaves, radishes, herbs, mangetout, blackcurrants, redcurrants, the occasional strawberry, chard, some of the different raspberry type things (we have loads of varieties and most are autumn fruiting so not ready yet). The broad beans are giving us some extra pods which is good! I was sad how small the harvest was but didn’t realise more pods would grow.

MagicCat

Your activity plan sounds amazing @Bluegreen143, I'm so rubbish at thinking of things to do (and when I do S just gives me a blank stare and says he'd rather play with his Duplo  ) I really like the growing and measuring one, I bet he'd do that, or at least the throwing!

Thanks for posting the YNAB pics, I had a trial of it about a year ago but never really got the hang of it, I always feel I should give it another go.

That's such a shame about your libraries. Ours are doing click and collect so we did that last week which was nice. I've started to do some chapter books with S too, it's a lovely milestone. Do your libraries do ebooks? Ours does and it's not too bad using a tablet, I think it would be a bit difficult to read with kids on a phone though. Also I don't know if you've come across fadedpage.com, it has lots of classics and older books you can download free, it has quite a few Enid blyton though not the wishing chair I think.