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

Bluegreen143

Not much to report here! I did buy some kids water bottles & segmented lunch boxes from amazon yesterday which arrived today, can’t remember off hand the amount but will square YNAB up tomorrow. Also bought a book on language learning. Apart from that I’ve been mainly avoiding spending. 

On non MSE news, nursery have messed up my carefully set out schedule by calling today to say they now can offer a place in the full time unit for Monkey even if he just takes two afternoons a week and gets picked up at lunch the other three days. I ended up agreeing to it. I feel a bit railroaded into it - even though it’s meant to be optional to take the extended hours, I’ve now been offered them four times by nursery even though I said no the other three times, and Red was keen to up his hours. It’s only an extra 6 hours a week. It totally changes his schedule now - instead of 8.30-11.45, he’s not going 9-12.15 (and staying till 3.15 the two days) and will get a free school meal every day before I pick him up, even on his short days, despite the fact he wouldn’t get this in the part time unit going the same length of time! Confusing, but I suppose MSE as that’s five less meals to find a week now. Plus he will get snack at nursery the two afternoons. Only I need to pay £7 a week rather than £5 into the snack fund now so I’m not really any better off. Oh well, the positives are that I don’t need to leave as early in the morning now and will have two afternoons a week totally to myself as Bambi usually naps 1-3 anyway. Sort of good though I do feel a bit that the world is trying to take my baby from me a bit too soon 🙁

Not doing much cooking or gardening today as I’ve been busy looking at resources for learning Gaelic as fairly sure now we will try to get the kids in GME (Gaelic medium education). Can’t remember if I’ve mentioned but Duolingo app is free so a good money saving resource for anyone looking to start learning a new language (there are lots of languages to choose from). I will need to spend some money on a course but fingers crossed I should get some cash for my birthday.

Tomorrow have a couple of gardening bits to do and have a bunch of baby spinach and pak choi plants to !!!!!! out and plant in modules. All the salad and other leaves I’ve planted direct more recently keep getting munched by something as soon as they sprout so I’m hoping starting in modules will mean they are a bit safer and at least have a chance to get strong before getting eaten!

MagicCat

It's difficult with the longer hours, particularly when you had your days planned out, but I'm sure he'll really enjoy them! My eldest is starting school in September, he was doing 3 mornings in nursery up until lockdown and my mum had him for the afternoons I was working - but with lockdown she couldn't have him and we 
had to extend his hours to full days, I was worried but he's loved staying and I think it's helped get him ready for school.

The Gaelic sounds really interesting. Is it spoken much where you are? I grew up in Wales though living in England now, I have friends with little ones in Welsh medium school/nursery and they get so much out of it.

Bluegreen143

@MagicCat only just over 1% of the population of Scotland speak Gaelic and they are mainly in the highlands & islands. It’s not widely spoken in the lowlands but one of the benefits of living in Glasgow (as it’s the biggest city in Scotland) is it’s got a decent sized Gaelic speaking community here because of young people leaving the islands to come here for work and education (though I think this has quite bad effects on the island communities but that’s another story!). And it’s got three Gaelic Medium primaries now and a Gaelic medium secondary so the kids could take their education right through. It’s a really good school, far better than our catchment secondary (ranked 10th in the country), and the thought of them growing up bilingual is really appealing. There is a big push for Gaelic education by the government and there are job opportunities in education or translation etc when they get older or it apparently makes it much easier if they want to learn a third language later on so we just feel there are so many benefits to growing up bilingual. I’ve heard really good things about welsh medium schooling too, good to hear your friends seem to get on with it. 

Baileys_Babe

Do the Gaelic Medium Schools have outreach programs to support families/parents of attending students?
I love Glasgow, I would love to live there, not that there is anything wrong with here, but Glasgow is wonderful.

Many years ago OH nearly got headhunted by a Glasgow firm, both of us were excited by the prospect of relocating to Glasgow, unfortunately, it never happened

Bluegreen143

@Baileys_Babe yes, they run Saturday classes for learning the language and I think a few other things. The in person Saturday classes are affected by Covid this year but I think they are looking at online instead so I need to get on the waiting list. 

Bluegreen143

Interesting you say that about Glasgow & shame it didn’t work out @Baileys_Babe. There are some things I really love about living here - we live a short distance from the west end and I love that there is a lot to do, museums, theatres, lots of parks etc. We often wonder if we would get more for our money moving out of the city and even further afield away from Glasgow. We could live anywhere in the central belt for Red’s work you see, he works in different areas. We would miss our all our friends a lot, both our families live near enough too (25 min drive to MIL and 45 mins to my folks). And I think I would miss popping down to the transport museum or science centre with the kids whenever I like (not that we have since lockdown but you know what I mean). We do live in quite a “rough” bit though and it’s not ideal that way. But because we went for a less desirable area we have a 3 bed house with a decent garden within walking distance of the west end and on our budget (house worth about £170k now) those certainly don’t grow on trees. I suppose everyone wonders what life would be like elsewhere.

Baileys_Babe

We've enjoyed the transport museum.

When we bought here it was on the edge of a sink estate. In the last decade, or so lots has changed. We chose here as the geographical location is great, the estate has a very good community which we are part of, the house and garden were good for the money.

Bluegreen143

First day back at nursery today! We walked down in the lovely sunshine, Monkey was excited to skip off with a teacher and then I took Bambi to the park across the road. Bumped into a lovely couple who used to have a daughter at the nursery back when he started (she’s a bit older than Monkey so has been at school the last year). They have a younger little girl too so we had a really nice catch up and agreed to meet again to let the little ones play together 🙂 I do miss playgroups etc, partly for Bambi’s sake but I’m reasonably outgoing too and need the social interaction for my sanity given I’m not out seeing work colleagues! So making the most of contacts I already have to organise play dates instead. 

Came home, had a relaxed time playing in the garden (Red isn’t back to work this week except for a day’s training yesterday) etc. Was so quiet without Monkey! On the plus side, I used the time to make a gorgeous looking plum pie and veggie pakora. Also made a smoothie/purée with a couple of leftover bits of fruit for Bambi - made one pouch for snack today and one for the freezer. So much veg left to use from last week and we got the next box today 😅 any ideas for Romanesco?! Never had it before but we have two in the fridge now...

joedenise

Just cook it like cauliflower @Bluegreen143.  Might be worth roasting it whole as long as it's not too big.  I actually prefer it to cauliflower.

Also makes a great gratin, like a cauliflower cheese!

MagicCat

I had to Google romanesco 

It sounds a great opportunity for you all learning Gaelic together - it sounds less widely used than Welsh, but the Welsh language has grown hugely over the past 40 years thanks to things like Welsh medium education, it's exciting to be part of the same sort of thing with Gaelic.

We moved from the city out to small town/suburb last year - we did it mainly as the schools weren't good and it was a high crime area. We have less outdoor space here, but closer to countryside and nice walks, I do miss being within walking distance of museums and things though. I think there's always pros and cons wherever you are!