A new royal start

South_coast

QueenJess said:
To my amusement, he came back from shopping last week saying how excited he was that he had been using the loyalty card every week and we got £8 of vouchers to take off our shopping.  He then told me it was great and worth doing!  360-degree turnaround!   

Love it when the menfolk think things are their idea 🤣!

QueenJess

DS went back to nursery today, which was a bit of a relief for my addled brain.  Bit of a wobble going in, but not as bad as last week.  I think it’ll be worse tomorrow as he hasn’t been in since Friday and he did want to see his friends today.

I took the opportunity to enjoy my lunch in peace and quiet.  A nice luxury.  Randomly decided to throw together tomato soup and some soda bread for lunch.  Had to substitute some items in the soda bread based on what I had in the cupboards and wasn’t as good, but still edible.  The tomato soup was lovely with my homegrown basil.  Even DH gobbled it down later after his meetings!  Got leftovers for tomorrow of course.

Love a good soup… must dig out some more recipes.

Dinner was cod kedgeree followed by more of the blackberry and apple crumble and custard.  Love that making about two desserts a week seems to cover the whole week, plus ice cream in the freezer for emergencies.

Should have made more progress with the cleaning etc, but I just didn’t.  The most I managed was to clean the toaster out (which took 2 mins).  Lazy day….  must get back to it tomorrow!  Want to be caught up on all the cleaning by the end of the month.  Should be doable.

Not much money making today.  A couple of surveys and that was it.  Must try harder!  Getting a bit anxious about having no income soon, so I need to fix the joint account deficit as quickly as possible so I can drop the amount we put in before my income goes and therefore plough it into the mortgage.  I'm not very patient..

Only to make myself feel better, I'm updating the mortgage now based on little bits of income and moving some things around.  Now at £88,345.34 (was £88,462.91).  Aiming to get into the 200's next.

QueenJess

Weird conversation with someone at nursery whilst waiting for DS.  Our nursery has a uniform for this final year (it’s nuts..), but it isn’t enforced.  I bought some cheap white (terrible colour for a 3-year-old boy that loves playing in the mud..) polo shirts so he looks like he blends in and might stretch to a jumper/fleece for the winter as their ones look really warm and the government guidelines require all the windows to be open now.

They were talking about how cute the kids looked in their official nursery clothes and how because of that they may as well get them the whole kit.  Seeing as we are required to change their clothes daily (CV-19), that is going to cost a fortune.  I wasn’t sure what to say since the nursery clothes are grossly overpriced in my opinion.  Plus they are only there for a year.  Seems like a total waste of money to me..  I don’t think they are on my wavelength!

Just realised we are now 1/3 of the way through September already!  Took a look at the joint account and groceries/electricity/mortgage/council tax aside, I have spent absolutely nothing.  Also on my own personal account, I have spent zilch.  Unfortunately need to keep this up to get the joint account situation cleared ASAP (still three budget categories in negatives).  I am working on throwing everything at the food one first as it’s the biggest, but also the one I feel I have the most control over to fix for the future.  Will review at the end of the month.

Trying hard not to plan my overpayments too much.  I love to plan ahead, but I fall into the house buying trap where you keep saying “what if I could just find another £x” and before you know it, you have thoroughly depressed yourself because you could never possibly find that much.  Instead, I am trying to only think of the next £50 increment as it is challenging but equally doable.

My current challenge is to get below £88,300 (then will move to £88,250 etc).  Had a couple of survey sites pay into my account today and have done loads more today.  It should be possible to get into the 200’s, just need to keep going.

Lunch today was leftover tomato and basil soup from yesterday.  Dinner was chicken fruit curry with rice (extra meal for the freezer) and plum cake/chocolate chip muffins/ice cream from the freezer for pudding.

Deep cleaned the en suite bathroom today.  Abandoned attempts to clean the kitchen whilst cooking as DS was having lack of attentionitis  Washing done and hung out.  Sewed up yet another sock on its last legs.  Looking forward to a relaxing evening!

QueenJess

Posting early today as I am just intending to put my feet up later and not do anything

DS went into nursery happily today, so I am hoping he is all settled in now.  Something less to worry about.

Didn’t sleep well last night, so been a bit lazy today.  I did make a lemon drizzle cake for pudding though.  As it’s my favourite cake, I’m not sure why I’ve never made one before!  DS doesn’t like lemon, so I made him his favourite biscuits instead as a weekend treat.

Veggie night tonight, so it’s gnocchi in a tomato sauce with mozzarella, garlic bread and salad.  No complaints from DH yet about the veggie night once a week... I seem to be getting away with it!

Only managed to do one load of washing and change the beds today.  Definitely got that Friday feeling.

No money-making activities today and trying not to beat myself up for the audacity to take a day off!  I’m my own worst enemy  

Was originally hoping to get my work extended to the end of December.  It seemed likely it would happen last month, but increasingly unlikely this month.  I wasn’t counting on the cash, but annoying nonetheless.  An extra two months of work would make a big difference.

QueenJess

A very lazy day today.  Did one load of washing and achieved absolutely nothing else.  Just been relaxing and playing with DS.

Scoured my budgets again for any spare cash, but I think that's it now for the month.  It means the only mortgage overpayments I can get is from bits and pieces like surveys, cashback etc.  It's going very slowly.  All the usual savings I make from my income are going straight into my emergency fund to get it up to the right level before I leave and will have to continue to do so right up until leaving.

The only other thing I can do is reduce the amount we are paying into the joint account, but until I get rid of these negative amounts in my three budget categories, I can't do that either.  I'm looking at potentially November as the next month I can reduce the amount we pay in.  So until then, it's going to be very dull and slow-moving!  I'm not particularly patient either, so will be a test for me!

I'm also thrown by this hot weather coming for a couple of days next week.  I am not prepared for that at all!  I don't like it too hot and had mentally prepared myself for some cold weather and snuggling up inside.  It's only a few days though.

Better balance out my posts with some positives... so here goes:

• My job ends in October, but I hate it so will be a weight off my mind.
• DH is finally finishing a big deadline next week.  It's been weeks and weeks of ridiculous hours and I've felt quite alone (and stressed on his behalf!).  Will finally get some time to spend with him.
• DS has settled back into nursery and is perfectly happy.
• Good weather for a bit means I have more time to do some gardening jobs I need to get done before the winter.
• House is more than half sorted in terms of being back on top of the cleaning.
• Although I don't have much money for the mortgage, I significantly overpaid in the past (mortgage is under half what it was when we started almost 5 years ago).  If I hadn't done that (and to be fair DH has been doing it for the past couple of years too), we wouldn't be in such a good position now and I don't think we'd be able to afford for me to be out of work.   I have also been sensible with pensions and savings/emergency fund and so even without more mortgage overpayments, I think we'll be fine for a couple of years.  No one will go hungry.  I am simply trying to create more wriggle room for comfort as well as some reasonable holidays (I'm not bothered too much about going abroad or spending a fortune and am happy to spend it in the UK).
• House was new when we bought it.  We do have a list of things we would like to do with it, but it's a small list and nothing at all on it is urgent and can wait.

Hope everyone is having a good weekend.

QueenJess

Oh - and also, I checked the epic mortgage spreadsheet and it looks like we are on track to reduce our monthly mortgage payment by £250(!) next year when we will fix for another 2 years.  So all good.

South_coast

Great list of positives there 😀 And a £250 mortgage reduction would be epic, £3k a year back in your pockets as a reward for your hard work, whoop!

QueenJess

I had big plans for today, but apparently it wasn't to be.  Felt ill all day and mainly sat around feeling sorry for myself.
I've started writing the shopping list for next week though and have been discovering recipes online for puddings I can try to cheer myself up!  Also managed a few surveys, so I should be able to cash out again soon.

Hopefully all back to normal tomorrow.

South_coast

Hope you feel better tomorrow. Browsing recipes sounds like a great use of the downtime though 😋

rugbymadfamily

Love the positive end to the post, lots of things there to be very happy about. Sometimes it can be so hard to think of the positives so that is a really good thing to add in :-) Hope the pudding recipes cheered you up a bit, I have to say, reading about all your puddings makes me very hungry!