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

Bluegreen143

@missymoo81 it’s ridiculous isn’t it! Like the world would end if they took a month off buying treats 😂

Just checking over the finances and have *just* enough to squeak by. I transferred Red enough that he should be OK too. We have a £25 bill to come off and just under £40 for food this week. Which I’ve just realised doesn’t account for my veg box 🤦‍♀️ I’ll need to budget £24 from the child benefit which has just come in. I was just congratulating myself on not needing to touch it for July and being able to start budgeting August’s expenses. Oh well. It was a 5 week month, and our first month of trying to cut back too.

Assuming we spend £65 on food (inc the veg box) but don’t buy anything else til payday, here’s our totals this month:

Food: £422
Household supplies: £68.14
Petrol & parking: £39
Fun: £53.86
Home & garden: £47.82
Clothes: £30.72

My spends: £43.77 (Red did buy me a bottle of vodka from his own money too bless, which should last me all month as I just have a couple a week)

Red’s budget: £240 (Roughly) 

Current savings:
Emergencies: £172.06
Christmas & birthdays: £442.70

Amount paid off debt:
Credit card: £211.35 (balance now £0)
MiL: £50 (balance now £1,200)

Bluegreen143

Re the grocery budgets. It was a 5 week month for us as we shop on a Wednesday. So roughly £85 a week on food and £14 a week on other household goods like toiletries, lightbulbs, cat/chicken supplies and cleaning stuff. Ie £100 a week counting all the groceries except alcohol. These can both come down I think so that will be my primary aim for next month. How does everyone on a monthly budget deal with 5 week months? I try just to spend less each week so the overall total doesn’t go crazy but it doesn’t work that well. But if you budget more for food that month it needs to come from somewhere else...

Moneywhizz

Five week months come around every third month, so once you have worked out how much you spend each week on food then you divide that amount by three and save it somewhere separately. For example if you spend £100 a week, then you need to be putting aside £33 each month which will give youth extra £100 every third month. It can take a few months to make this work and have the extra money available when you need it, but it does save trying to stretch 4 weeks food money to a 5 week month. 

Bluegreen143

Thank you @Moneywhizz that makes a lot of sense. I have a separate account I put money aside in every month for annual bills, MOT, boiler service and the like, currently putting £100 a month in there. Might up it to £125 then every third month I can take the extra £50 out (as well as not adding £25 that month) and that’s an extra £75 then to budget that month. I think I get so focused on trying to bring the monthly total down I forget some months have more shopping days than others. So I think I will calculate my average weekly cost each month and focus on bringing that down over time rather than the monthly total.

Bluegreen143

Tried a new thing today. I normally make pastry with all butter (I don’t generally buy other hard baking fats/margarine, for both health and taste reasons I prefer butter). I’ve been trying to stick to three packs of butter a week but we are baking lots right now plus Red is constantly eating bread/toast. So when I went to make pastry today I realised that we were running slightly short on butter, only one pack left and we won’t shop again til Wed, and I’m likely to want to bake a cake before then. So I thought I’d try out pastry made with oil. Was very skeptical it would work, I’ve done vegan pastry with hard veg fat but never oil. Actually it’s turned out fine - not quite as rich and tasty as butter pastry but great texture. I didn’t think it would have a cost benefit as I only had extra virgin olive oil in rather than anything cheaper, but I actually costed it and the olive oil cost 34p and if I made it with butter that would have cost 59p. So I may actually switch to doing that for standard quiches and pasties and save butter for when I want a really rich tasting result. On reading this I realise it’s quite a basic tip to use a cheaper fat but I’ll share in case anyone else is as clueless as I was!

Used the pastry to make cheese & cauli pasties. Haven’t actually eaten them yet except tasting a corner of the pastry, so hoping they taste nice! Want to experiment with different pasties as a lunch option Red can take when he goes back. He was in bad habits before lockdown of usually buying lunch out - generally at McDonalds or a roll van or supermarket sandwiches, nothing too expensive, but he will save £10-15 a week if I make extra of our lunch and he takes that. He is in a van all day so it can’t be anything needing reheated but he’ll eat pasties cold. He can take soup in the food flask too but it’s getting him to bother heating it up in the morning - he’s away at 7.30 and I don’t have the time myself to faff about sorting his lunch before then, usually by the time I’m showered, the kids are dressed and we are coming downstairs he’s already left. Sandwiches and wraps are always a staple (he generally likes ham or tuna but I can get away with hummus and/or falafel in a wrap) but I’d like to mix it up a bit as he won’t take salad veg or fruit to have with it whereas he will eat veg in soup or pasties or pasta salad so it’s a bit healthier for him.

natlie

I hadn't realised that it was a longer month, this month and I also shop on a Wednesday so that explains my overspend this month, we managed £474.74 for food and household this month target was £400 we have a lot of special diets in our house. 

Bluegreen143

@natlie I guess it depends on your payday or when you start your budget but we get paid last working day of the month. So we shopped 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd, 29th. If you are the same I’m not surprised you’ve gone over. I’m going to try as suggested above and put more aside on short months to smooth the longer ones.

thriftyish

Thanks for the braised cabbage idea @joedenise & @Bluegreen143, someone (me  ) didn't label our cabbages correctly this year, and instead of mostly green and a few red, we have mostly red and a few green  The only problem with growing your own cabbages is they are all ready at the same time, and no one wants 50 cabbages at once 

We also run our dishwasher 3 times a day usually, with small children and a lot of home cooking/baking it just mounts up, doesn't it? I am trying to wash as many of the bigger things by hand to reduce the amount it goes on, but it doesn't always happen! 

Great idea with the pastry, we don't eat much at all but the children love it, so I might try and add some more pastry dishes next month. The pasties are a good idea too especially for lunches. Do you make your own falafel?

Well done on clearing the credit card!  You are doing so well! What's your next target?

Bluegreen143

@thriftyish this is the falafel recipe that I use. I’ve made it successfully with carrots to replace the beetroot too. I do season it well & add extra spices (garlic, cumin, coriander & paprika) as I think it’s a bit bland as is.

Your cabbage tale made me smile! So typical of home gardening - gluts then famine! We aren’t in danger of having a glut of anything except blackcurrants which are coming out of our ears... have some in the jelly bag now for jam making later but also have a huge bag in the freezer whose fate is yet to be decided.

I think we will try to pay £100 a month off from what we owe my MIL and put any extra in emergency savings for now. We currently have £175 aside so we are only covered for very tiny emergencies 😂

Baileys_Babe

@Bluegreen143 please could you share your falafel recipe again, I can not see your link, probably me I asked OH to pass the milk pan earlier, I meant the tea pot, we don't have a milk pan