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

Sarahwithlove

Ref hay-fever tablets I bulk brought mine 12 months up front and worked out really cheap so might be worth looking into. Saying that I now get a stronger one on prescription so have about 6 months spare lol but if you know what type works for him then might be worth looking into. 

Baileys_Babe

We also buy our antihistamines in bulk from an online pharmacy and go through Quidco for the cashback.
On the main site, there is an article about bulk buying antihistamines. I have used various online pharmacies in the past, I shop where ever is cheapest for what we want.
If you look on Reds antihistamines for the active ingredient and then search the online pharmacies, look in a few as the price can vary. 
We usually get Cetirizine 10mg from pharmacy first, they are selling 6 x 30 tablets £4.79 including free delivery.
All the main active ingredients are available both generic and branded.

Spendless

I'm very envious of you having a 2 year old whose fav food is soup. Easy, cheap and filling, perfect food. Yours could do with teaching my daughter a thing or two, mine is a vegetarian who dislikes many veg! Has been one for nearly 5 years, soup would make thing a lot easier, she only occassionally eats it.
I also noticed your wedding date in your signature and see your babies were born 9 months after your anniversary, hahahaah mine too - lol. 

Bluegreen143

Thank you so much ladies! I was totally unaware of online pharmacies. I’ve ordered a year’s supply of the cetirizine as that’s what he uses. It’s half the price of the Lidl ones, which are themselves much cheaper than if we have to get them in Tesco (Lidl is often sold out). Great tip.

joedenise

I wasn't aware of the online pharmacies either until a couple of years ago and on one of the weekly MSE emails there was a free postage offer for Pharmacy First so I had a look and have bought from there ever since.

Bluegreen143

Spendless said:

I also noticed your wedding date in your signature and see your babies were born 9 months after your anniversary, hahahaah mine too - lol. 

Now this sounds ridiculous but I have never made that connection before!! Explains a lot!

Bluegreen143

Oh and @Spendless re kids eating. Monkey is annoyingly picky now (devastating as he ate EVERYTHING til he was 3, people commented on how adventurous his tastes were, and he is really bad now). Bambi was much harder to wean and picky as a baby but she’s much better now and eats most things. Unlikely to pick up and eat a bit of cooked veg on its own except peas. But eats them cooked into soups, sauces, curries etc. I’m so hoping that she doesn’t go like her brother. We are all foodies in my family so it’s a bit embarrassing especially as he was great as a baby/toddler. 

joedenise

I'm sure things will improve with Monkey soon.  I think children often get a bit fussier once they go to nursery/school when they see how picky/fussy others are.  I certainly noticed it with both of my girls when they started school (they didn't go to nursery) when they were nearly 5.

All you can do is just keep offering whatever you have cooked.  No child will let themself go hungry!

enthusiasticsaver

Bluegreen143 said:

I think you need a saver and a spender in a marriage don’t you? Well it’s not going to work out well if you are both spenders, but one of you being a bit more laid back helps balance it out a bit. If Red let me I’d probably embark on all kind of mad saving challenges and we’d never get any new stuff. If I complain about needing something (eg say my headphones break) Red usually sneakily orders a replacement for me as he knows I will never actually get them if left to my own devices and will just moan about it forever instead 😆

I think that is true and applies to us or did.  I am better at spending now  but was always a saver and my DH was always a spender and still enjoys spending but is more selective now so we have met in the middle.  I have pointed out on numerous occasions though to my DH and he acknowledges this that if I had not insisted we save extra into our pensions and overpaid the mortgage from a fairly young age (late 20s/early 30s) we would not have been able to take early retirement  at age 58 and still be financially secure.  So I saved for a reason but hopefully with a balance of living in the present while saving for the future.  It might be worth pointing that out to your DH that if he wants to do holidays or other things then you need to save for them so he can see the reasoning behind being a bit more selective with his spending.  

I think for you the difficulty seems to be you do not have a great deal of spare money and possibly unless you return to work and your joint income increases it will be  difficult to save and also do things like holidays etc. At least you do not have any debt though.  Certainly we found that once I went back to work part time when our children were 2 and 3 a lot of my money went on childcare but it soon improved once our eldest went to school and before long we were just using my income to pay for  holidays, home improvements and put into savings/investments or overpay the mortgage. We never depended on it as I said if the girls suffered I would give up the job so it paid for extras. I wanted to return to work though so did not only do it for the money so if you enjoy being a SAHM then this will be a more difficult decision. 

Spendless

Yes, I agree that life will be better financially for you once you have a 2nd income coming in. Especially if by then you have got so used to living on one income by then and the 2nd one can be thrown at 'extras' rather than 'everyday bills'
I'm guessing that childcare is too astronimical at the minute though. That was the situation I faced, my employer didn't allow part time workers and the childcare bill alone was equal to my take home pay. No help with childcare costs back then and I had a 'job' rather than a 'career' I needed to keep. For a while I was able to do a part-time evening job, when husband was home, when we just had eldest, but ill health in the relative helping out babysitting for the time between him coming in and me going to work meant I had to resign.

 Remember no life stage will last forever with children, not even school life though that seems to go on forever! You'll be in a different position once both go to school, and then another one again as they go to Secondary school and become teenagers, both in terms of how 'free' you'll be to job hunt and what they cost.