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

missymoo81

Ah love your photos, I need to make some banana bread with the babies. Going to order some cream of tarter and food gel on eBay! Thanks for coming over to my diary too, really appreciate your comments! 

mumtoomany

Hi Bluegreen, if it's not too late try replanting the potato plants. I usually put them back in and earth up well, at this time of year and often get a second crop. 
Do you have a Farmfoods near you? Don't know where you are. They have butter for 99p per 227gm pack, other supermarkets are at least £1.45 per 250gm. If you go to their website you can download vouchers for 10% off too. 
Mumtoomany.

Bluegreen143

Thanks @mumtoomany I had no idea! Too late for this year but I’ll try that next time.

Did a couple of useful bits this evening - cut up a big Tupperware of melon, grapes and satsuma and added a few handfuls of redcurrants I picked today as the kids as loving them. Fruit salad for the next couple of days. I just put the tub out at basically all meals except dinner til it’s gone 😅 and I cooked up two wrinkly nectarines, a apple and a wrinkly pear in the juice of an orange and whizzed up. It’s a bit babyish but both kids love fruit puree. Now Monkey has no issue eating enough fruit tbh, he inhales it, but Bambi is a bit pickier so making puree to clear out the fruit bowl each week helps make sure she is getting her 5 a day... she does get offered plenty of cut up fruit each day too as I’m a firm believer in offering everything repeatedly until they start to like it 😅

Between my two they eat a normal diet. Monkey loves fruit, raw salad veg, breakfast foods, sandwiches, anything in a wrap or pitta, pasta, beans, chicken drumsticks, chips, bread, soup, any kind of home baking or cake. Have issues getting him to eat most meat, won’t eat mushrooms or potatoes, picks cooked veg out of things or leaves it on the side. Bambi loves pasta/risotto/stew type meals including usually eating the veg, breakfast foods, strawberries, bananas, soup, potatoes, meat, yoghurt. Very hard to get her to eat most fruit, raw veg, she is often highly suspicious of new baked foods, dismantles sandwiches and wraps, doesn’t always go for bread, doesn’t really like drier foods like fish fingers or snacky type foods. Monkey has never drank milk since I stopped breastfeeding him at 1.5 and now rarely chooses to eat yoghurt. Bambi drinks two cups of milk a day, at nap and bed, and would eat yoghurt all day long if I let her. So interesting (and irritating) that they basically like opposite foods (except breakfast and soup and pasta). I’m quite mean about it and they just get served what we are having regardless of their ever changing dislike list and I live in hope they will learn to eat properly one day. They are offered Greek yog and honey after dinner regardless and Bambi at least has her milk at bed so doesn’t go to bed with an empty tummy. In fairness she hasn’t all her teeth yet so I do think some of it can be related to teething and also not being able to chew all things that well... Monkey was the best eater til he turned 3, people would remark on his adult size portions and how he would eat absolutely everything with no pickiness at all. How I long for those days now I have two picky eaters 😅

Bluegreen143

Lovely day today despite a rubbish night with Bambi last night (following her not napping yesterday. She napped today so hopefully back to normal tonight.

Met friends for a playdate in a park (the one near my old flat that I met different friends at last week). Kids had a ball despite the rain.

Meals today:

B - blueberry overnight oats & fruit salad

L - beans on toast with cucumber/red pepper and fruit salad 

S - a refillable pouch for each child of homemade fruit purée & yoghurt mix, plus some HM muffins from the freezer, breadsticks and cashews (only for the bigger child)

D - bacon & tomato pasta with salad from the garden. Made the sauce by grating loads of different veg in. Kids ate it all mwahaha 😜

Baked a loaf of sourdough today. Plan to do some baking tonight after I’ve done some yoga - thinking I’ll make some wraps and either pancakes or scones as don’t have much sugar to make a cake.

All is well money-wise. Red confirmed he still has plenty of his spending allowance left in his account. He had accidentally used the credit card for £9.50 but transferred me the funds to cover it. So far I’m on target for everything. I’m really keen to bulk up my savings for both Christmas (and the kids birthdays, which are both in December too) and for emergencies. So I think I may stick to paying no more than £50 a month to MIL til after Christmas - we’ll see how things go with Dave’s work and how much UC we get too.

Bluegreen143

Been doing some thinking about financial goals. Which is actually really refreshing as I feel like I’ve been in goalless limbo since the kids were born and am usual relentlessly focused on making it through the month rather than the bigger picture.

It’s hard to make too many goals at the moment with quite a bit of uncertainly about what our income will be in this second half of 2020. But I think I’ve fleshed out three priorities:

1. Pay a minimum of £50 a month off MIL debt til Christmas

2. Save £500 in our emergency fund by Christmas (barring any real emergencies causing us to use it of course!)

3. Finish 2020 with no Christmas/birthday induced debt ie save enough over the next 5 months to cover it all. December is hellishly expensive when you have two December born children. Rather poor planning by Red and I, I admit.

Looking forward to 2021, I’m hoping that might be the year we open a savings account for Bambi and save a bit for her to make up for the fact her big brother got £1,000 in an inheritance when he was tiny to start his savings off, plus he was given cheques in his name as presents at birth (meaning I had to deposit in his account instead of buying baby stuff with it). No such cheques forthcoming when Bambi was born. Poor second child always misses out 🙁

Bluegreen143

Few random more pennies to assign in YNAB, always exciting. Mum sent me the £10 for the flour I picked up for her but added in an extra £10 too. She mentioned something about sweets for the kids so I did add a £1 bag of chocolate buttons to the Tesco order but will take that from my grocery budget and have added the £10 to my emergency fund. And Red has transferred me the £10 for the credit card and £30 in advance for booze he has ordered this week in the Tesco order so at least that’s covered. He has added other things to the order so I did trim some of them off but it wasn’t anything too outrageous so he got to keep some. Four minutes til last check out time so I think I’ve won the game this time 😎 

Mumoffourkids

I know what you mean about December being an expensive month. Two of my kids have birthdays in December, so that added to buying for the six of them for Christmas is expensive. Then add in my dad’s birthday is also December and my ex’s birthday is also December (I always get him a little something from my youngest) and I may as well just give up now! Oh and both of my ex father in law’s birthdays are also December but at least I don’t have to worry about them anymore!

missymoo81

Oh wow December birthdays are a nightmare. I used to have soooooo many people to buy for for Xmas when I was with ex, as second cousins and their children and great aunts etc etc all had to have presents bought. It used to be so expensive and so stressful. Me and OH don’t buy for eachother and we just buy for the children now. A lot less stressful. But we have loads of birthdays April/May. Literally half of my family, so that gets very expensive! 

You make me want to use YNAB BlueGreen. I may have a look at it again later and sign up with a different email address to see how I get on with the free trial. 

It looks like you’re putting some thoughts and plans in place as to what to do with your money. Well done!

sonyarita

I am a long time lurker on this forum and yours is the first diary I have read, I am going to try making the playdoh and some of your recipes. Your cooking and baking sounds amazing, I am practically drooling here! I have definitely been inspired to be more adventurous.
Well done so far and I'm looking forward to reading about your progress.

Bluegreen143

Thanks for dropping by and commenting everyone and for the commiseration re Dec birthdays. Sorry to hear others are in this v expensive boat too!

@sonyarita thank you for your lovely comment, I hope the recipes & playdough work well for you! I love this forum and have dabbled on and off for years usually on the Old Style board but never managed to stick to my own diary before. It is motivating so I recommend starting your own if you are trying to pay down debt 🙂

Today we have:

- gone on a truly lovely countryside walk with friends at a loch I didn’t even know existed before, and it was only a 15 minute drive from my house. Nice to feel like I was properly in the country as I actually live in the depths of the city but we are lucky in Glasgow, there is so much green space everywhere around.

- made 12 wraps/chapattis with Monkey, for dinner tonight but will freeze the extras for a lunch later this week

- received our veg & fruit boxes which were really good this week and no satsumas thank goodness (we like them but usually get 8-10 a week and are bored of them now)

Fruit box 
Strawberries
Blueberries
Raspberries
Cherries
Apples
Peaches
Nectarines
Pears
Grapes 

Veg box
Onions
Carrots
New potatoes
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Courgette
Aubergine
Peppers
Beetroot
Cherry tomatoes on the vine
Cucumber

Tesco coming later. I need to nip out to Tesco later too. Red forgot to order bin bags. I also want to buy tahini because I’ve not been able to get it for weeks in our online shop but I know they sell it I the local Tesco. I forgot when I did the order that MIL is coming for dinner tomorrow (she’s in our bubble) so I’m going to get chicken breasts and potatoes as she has more particular tastes and has requested Red make his famous chips. I should be too far over target though (will update later on) and will make it back next week.