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

Bluegreen143

Enjoy the muffins ladies! They freeze well too.

Thanks @Mumoffourkids, thankfully it was 7.30am this morning, long may it last.

Feel a bit out of sorts this morning as I always do when my routine is disrupted 😅 Monkey is having a sleepover with MIL as we are her social bubble. She doesn’t feel ready to take Bambi yet til she’s a bit older and we don’t feel it would work either (she’s a bit older etc so struggles energy wise and with how physical a toddler’s needs are). 

Bluegreen143

Done a couple more bits from this month’s to do list:

ACTIONS

• Cancel phone insurance (£7/month) - done, and it was actually £7.50 saved each month 
• Cancel old life insurance (£15/month) - emailed the company re this as their phone centres are busy just now, will call again if I don’t hear back in a couple of days 
• Once paid, move most money out of Red’s account and into my account and savings accounts
• Pay £220 credit card (bringing this to zero)
• Apply for universal credit
• Email greengrocers to reduce veg box order & cancel milkman - both done now
• Keep posting here and on the grocery challenge threads and work on bringing this down over time
• Make a plan and budget for birthdays/Christmas with Red 
• Post off proof I’m not working to the student loans company as requested by them 🙄

mumtoomany

Hi, Bluegreen. I have read your diary and you are doing well. A couple of thoughts on reducing your food bill a bit. When you are making the muffins have you thought about replacing the butter (or part of it) with cooking oil? The recipe I use has oil rather than butter, and they taste just fine. Also as a snack have you tried popping corn, really cheap, makes loads really quickly. Can be flavoured with icing sugar, salt, butter or just eaten as is. Keep up the good work, mumtoomany.

Bluegreen143

Thanks @mumtoomany for the helpful tips! I’d totally forgotten about popcorn as snacks actually 🙂

Just had a fright and thankfully it ended well. Everything tripped off when I put the tumble dryer on. I had visions of having to buy a new tumble dryer... then Red tested the socket with our (brand new just delivered today- £25 and bought with an amazon voucher lest you think I didn’t stick to budget 😂) kettle. We both got a massive fright when it went bang! Luckily it turned out to be the extension cable rather than the tumble dryer or the socket or the kettle. And the kettle was miraculously fine too. My husband is electrical trained and tested it all to make sure it was safe. We will need to order a new extension cable for there but I had already budgeted for some cash in DIY/home next month.

Good day today. Took Bambi to the playpark in the rain this morning as they reopened today in Scotland. It was lovely actually taking her alone as Monkey was still at MIL’s - as a second child she gets little alone time with me given Monkey’s nursery is closed. Then later on, after her nap, we met a good friend and her two kids (same age as my two and her elder daughter goes to nursery with Monkey though we’ve know each other since they were babies) for a very wet, muddy play session in a local green space. It was absolutely glorious and heartwarming to see the children splashing in giant puddles, chasing each other and climbing/balancing on logs etc together after months apart. 

Made two sourdough loaves today and baba ganoush to use up some of the veg box aubergine.

Meals:

B - Bambi had cereal, I had cheese/ham/mustard on toast which was gorgeous

L - beans on toast for Bambi, I was very bad and just picked at crisps etc

S - oaty bars for the kids and hot choc for us all when we got home from the wet afternoon out

D - lovely “hidden veg” beef pasta with lo beef from the roast, plus some kale on the side 

MagicCat

Good progress with all your actions. Glad the extension lead didn't do any damage, it's v handy having someone who can check out electrics!

It's so nice that parks are opening again, I think ours open at the weekend, looking forward to it.

I love that so many people are baking the muffins. Tinned fruit is s good idea missymoo81, let us know if it works.

Bluegreen143

Thanks @MagicCat, we have been enjoying the parks here today too! Hope you can get there at the weekend.

Quite a spendy day today - but all going to plan I think.

Red got paid today and transferred me £1,000 which is his daily maximum - the rest is coming tomorrow (minus what he gets to keep for his spends).

He has ordered the extension cable (£15) which is fine, and new wellies for Monkey, which are needed (his have holes in) but I am annoyed he got them off Amazon as I specifically asked him not to due to my friend getting a dud pair off there. He thinks they cost about £15 which isn’t even cheap for kids wellies v getting them at the supermarket 🙄

I went to Lidl - we are still getting our weekly food shop delivered from Tesco which we will continue to do for the foreseeable. However I’m going to try to do a monthly Lidl shop for toiletries and cleaning supplies as it’s always cheaper there.

Spent £31.29, mainly from my household budget:

Wipes 4pk
Toothpaste x2
Bin bags x3
Kitchen roll x4
Antiviral kitchen spray x2 

Bleach
Mens deodorant
Womens deodorant
Tin foil
Washing up liquid
Hayfever tablets
Dishwasher tabs x2

Did also (naughtily) spend £2.99 on a little playmobil set for Monkey - it’s a lollipop person and schoolchild. He has a slightly weird and intense love for our lollipop man and went through a phase of wanting to be one when he grew up so I couldn’t resist 😅 and £1.99 on plastic bowls for the children as they only have two left and they are always in the dishwasher when needed. There is room in the fun and home budgets for these spends though.

We also decided to get a payday takeaway which was £21 (curry for us and a small pizza and chips for the kids to share). We have just over £25 left in the fun budget and as everything is still closed we hope to keep it til the end of the month - if we do we will have a “date night” takeaway just for DH and I. I don’t think two takeaways in a month is too bad 🙂

Last spend I think - £31 on a bulk flour order - 25kg white bread flour and a bunch of smaller bags of things like malt flour to try. But my mum is taking some of the flour so is sending me £8.50 for her share. This is the second bulk flour order I’ve done in lockdown so it’s worth it for us. I’m baking 3-5 loaves of sourdough a week at the minute then sometimes wraps, bagels, pittas or pizza dough as well. And that’s not to mention cakes, muffins and biscuits...

mumtoomany

Good morning, Bluegreen. Just popped on to say putting oil, rather than butter, in your muffin recipe, seems to be a success. Home grown raspberry and white chocolate ones here, being demolished by the grand children.
Regarding wellies. Here we live in them, I even go shopping in them! I have discovered that they can be repaired. I bought some glue called aquasure off Amazon. One tube mends 3 or 4 pairs of wellies, (and a pair of glasses and a child's toy). Costs about six pounds of I remember correctly. Two pairs I had to patch, I just cut a piece of ribbon, (because that was the first thing I found), covered it in glue and stuck it on. Wellies are now waterproof and sheep poo proof! HTH. Mumtoomany. 

Greying_Pilgrim

Bluegreen143 said:

@MagicCat just realised the link for the oaty bars didn’t paste in, sorry! It’s here https://www.myfussyeater.com/sugar-free-flapjacks-for-baby-led-weaning/

Bluegreen143  - Thank you for posting the recipe link for the flapjacks.  I made them yesterday with my lil'un and am delighted to report that they are something that the whole family likes (even my sweet-toothed DH!) and so I will be adding them to my recipe card box 😁  I added in  dried cranberries (soaked) to my version, as well as some ground chia and flax seeds to help with binding (plus to add in a few extra 'hidden' minerals and omegas 😉).  

Greying x

Bluegreen143

Baking successes all round! Glad the recipes work for you both. White chocolate and raspberry muffins sound divine @mumtoomany 🙂 and glad the oaty bars worked well @Greying_Pilgrim and were enjoyed by all!

Lots of cooking been going on here - made rocky road with Monkey yesterday to use up all the odds and ends of cooking chocolate and biscuits and mini marshmallows. Lentil & veg soup in the instant pot right now which will be lunch tomorrow and then probably again at the weekend - I think I’ll whizz it and add coconut milk as that always goes down well with the children. Loaf of sourdough in the fridge to bake later. And I’ve made the filling for a beef & root veg pie (with leftover roast beef) and the filling for a peach & nectarine crumble (tin of peaches plus wrinkly nectarines from veg box stewed with sugar).

I’ve picked a big bowlful of redcurrants from the garden and there are more out there (I got driven in by the rain) - there’s enough to make redcurrants jelly, yum. And I want to make pickled beetroot as we have lots from the veg box. I have spent £6.50 on 6 jars from amazon as I haven’t many left in. Going forward I’ll start saving them again, I stopped as I wasn’t making jam so much.

Fruit & veg boxes came today containing:

Fruit 
Apples
Pears
Oranges (only four thank goodness as we have still got satsumas left from last week)
Melon
Red grapes
Cherries
Nectarines
Strawberries
Blueberries
Bananas

Veg
Onions (but only two so will need to ration them - have a red one left from last week too luckily)
Carrots
New potatoes
Cauliflower
Broccoli
Beetroot
Aubergine
Courgette
Red peppers
Cucumber
Tomatoes on the vine
Celery
Kale (I had emailed to cancel this but it’s gone wrong somehow- never mind, I’ll email and remind before next week)

So plenty to do us especially with a few bits left from before (1/4 swede, beetroot, 1/2 butternut squash, bag of new potatoes etc). Will post mealplan later. Tesco delivery coming today too.

Bluegreen143

Great day today - lazier morning at home (playing in the garden til the rain drove us in, did some painting with the kids and then later on after Bambi’s nap I took them to meet a couple of my friends for a walk in a park in a different part of the city. It’s a really nice park with lovely pond, swans/ducks etc and a fantastic playpark, and I always love going there because Red & I lived round the corner from it for a few years in our first flat together before we had the kids. So lots of happy memories as we would go there for walks together and I used to run there back when I did running 🙂

Meals today:

B - weetabix for kids, baba ganoush on sourdough for me

L - leftover takeaway curry from last night for me & kids had the leftover pizza - as there wasn’t much of that I gave them beans, fruit and veg alongside it.

S - toast w/peanut butter & jam, tomatoes and strawberries for the kids. I ate a lot of rocky road... need to sort out my snacking really as I could do with losing about 1.5st to get back to healthy BMI. I can’t really call it baby weight anymore as it’s been 18 months...

D - steak pie made with lo roast beef, broccoli/sweetcorn and then peach crumble with custard

The Tesco order came, cost £76.71. Red and I play a little game where he optimistically adds treat items into the order and I remove them, but this week I forgot to log in after him and vet his choices so he got to keep them all! Luckily the damage wasn’t too bad. Breakdown as follows:

Alcohol (Red’s budget): £21
Food: £46.54
Household: £8.02

I also order facecloths at £1.20 for four and they subbed them for four hand towels then price matched it 😂 bargain! They were for cutting up to make cloth wipes (for cloth nappying as I’m going to go back to it & some of my wipes appear to have vanished), but probably one hand towel will make enough wipes and then I’ve got three free hand towels so I can’t complain 🤷‍♀️

Actually am quite impressed I got the food down to £46 given that Red added chocolate, frozen chips, fish fingers, sea salt (he thought we were out of salt - I bought a huge cheap bag last week), crisps and a pot noodle. So I must have been on the right track before.

This is turning into an epic essay so I’ll leave it here and post my mealplan tomorrow & where I’ve got to with my to do list.