Our forever home

bellevie

Completed and submitted the assignment a couple of days ahead of schedule. I've done my best, just hope it's enough 🤞

Had the news our childcare bill is going up by £117 per month at first it appeared to be over 300 per month but thankfully they agreed we keep existing discounts. It's gutting, swallows up my payrise fully.

I restarted the search for a childminder, one may have availability by January house move depending but 2 areas worried me, the lack of a hot meal at lunch and finishing time was 30 minutes earlier than we'd ideally want and that was 'ish time' so I don't know if that means.

We'd save £175 monthly on bill, but Have to supply all meals and drinks. So that shrinks the saving to possibly around 100 monthly if that. Then I start to think,  its not only time of for their DS being sick, but also their or family sick, their AL. I then started thinking is it worth swallowing the increase for as long as we can handle?


With 15 hours coming in in September  we will pay an extra £117 per month from January to august.

From sept 24 the bill will go down again by around 200 a month (from the new increased price) but with a further increase next Jan 25- if it followed the over £100 increase 2 years on the dot we could wind up paying the same as we are now pre the increase.

After 30 hours funding which would be the next September 25 our monthly bill would still be over £1k, in every nursery I have checked locally, how does that even work!

It's such a headache. 

In other areas:
Pretty sure gas & electric direct debit needs to go up, we had built around 2 months credit but have started eating into that in the recent payment. I might manually pay extra for now to be sure the credit will last the winter.
Over budget again for this weeks shop, I didn't fight it this time just tried to be sure to cover meals drinks and snacks. We didn't need laundry or shower bits. I did actually buy pork mince to try for our next bolognese, it was a bit cheaper than beef and had good reviews so will see how that goes. I'm not a pork fan usually but I'll try it, if it comes to it I don't mind green lentils in mine, canned lentils are quick and cheap to use.

Dds upcoming birthday, she'd like a meal with friends so we are planning to drop them to a place of choice while DH and I opt for something cheaper. That'll be followed by a sleepover and a birthday breakfast the next day.

For ds birthday between Christmas and new year, we will have a little home party lunch with whoever can make it family wise 

bellevie

Different meat for spag bol was a fail, total fail.
I'm really not feeling meat at the minute.

I'm going go have to maybe think up meat free recipes.

I've worked out aswell in not fighting the food budget this week, the more I order the more is eaten, double the crisps ordered 3 days later still quickly running out - how? Its laziness I'm sure, dd & dh are just grabbing the easiest thing.

In 2 minds re childcare. Loathe how much we are paying,  but very aware of how well ds has settled, I'm starting to think I don't want to have to re-settle him. Weighed up splitting time between 2 settings but we'd loose discounts that we get for a full time place so it would work out more expensive. 

Not fully set either way, lots of yoyoing.

Payday disappointment, was due a backdate of the payrise agreed, expected 2 month backdate instead of 7 months due to maternity but it appears to have been missed, weird as the kit day pay was updated. I've raised it as a query but expect I won't see that until next pay day now. My current month pay was up to date, so still an increase. 
Silver lining less to spend on unnecessary bits for Christmas?!

I've asked for a couple of surprise books for Christmas, fictional. I've not had new books that aren't study books for a long long time. Would like to have another way to relax at the end of the day that doesn't involve my phone, TV or a spreadsheet. I read intensly as a child, but aside from a few good reads in my 20s haven't really found much has gripped me as an adult. 
We shall see!

Jessy103

Can highly recommend Linda McCartney meat substitutes if you fancy an alternative. We find the mince and sausages are great at this time of year for stews and casseroles 🙂

bellevie

Happy new year to all ❤️

Jessy103

Happy New Year, all the best for 2024 🙂

bellevie

It was a bit of a funny new year. I usually enjoy the feeling of fresh start, setting goals or targets to reach, excitement about how the year may turn out.

I'm not sure if it was the flu that knocked me out the week running up to christmas, having a knock on affect on my mood or really just the reality that it's going to be a very difficult year. It's just made me feel very low.

I know we have lots to be happy about,  and that's what I've tried to focus on although deep down I can't help but feel complete dread.

It's absolutely the financial side of things. Childcare rocketing, possible gas/electric increase, upcoming mot, car insurance renewal. I just dread it all.

School lunches have stopped we can't afford them, 15 year old dd is refusing to make herself lunch, not because of shame its pure laziness. 

We couldn't afford to sign dd up for a Spanish trip. 4 months notice to pay up, we'd have managed if the nursery costs hadn't gone up 137 a month.

I ran a universal credit check. It said we'd qualify for £147 a month, however if we claim that we don't get tax free childcare which works out at £166 a month.

It also came up we'd qualify for a support for mortgage interest loan but we are not keen on that, unless we reach a point we literally cannot pay.

If we can get through until Sept, I've calculated childcare should drop £100 with the 15 hours kicking in. Not really a true drop given the 137 increase. Appears to have been a well thought out plan by the nursery. Nevertheless it'll be a little breathing space.

Chance of a holiday this year are slim to none! We've only really done uk holiday parks for the past 6 ish years but they seem out of reach unless we find a good last minute deal.


Still, despite dreading this year, I know if we can get to 2025 should be the year a lot eases for us. I should qualify and get promoted at work, our loan ends and 30 hours childcare kicks in so possibly another 100 saving.

I don't want to wish the year away, especially having little Ds who we want to experience things and DD looking forward to a big birthday. I have to find a way to pick up my mood and find some small wins somewhere.

We've agreed we can aim to stretch to maybe a swimming pool visit every couple of months, maybe a couple of soft play /farm visits over the warmer months, and there are lots of parks around we can make use of for DS.
For DD, she's hoping for a 16th party, I'm not sure we will stretch to that but will get our thinking caps on. We have 11 months to plan!

There just talking about our small goals, has made me feel a bit brighter seeing the year isn't going to be completely void, just a bit more careful than usual.

bellevie

Late mortgage update post:
Balance as at 31/12 £263140
Total paid in 2023 £16889
Of which £8627 was interest

Total overpayment to date 514.40 - running Total. For quite a while we've had a minimal £5 monthly overpayment sadly no plans to increase that for the forseeable. Still over the long term hopefully with time we will make progress

bellevie

My aims this year:
1)Where possible buy second hand. We are looking for a bookcase for DS. I'm determined not to buy new, so I'm keeping an eye on market place. Second hand for ds clothes is a bit hit and miss we've found some amazing things, others have been a waste eg haven't fit possibly shrunk during last owners use so that's why it's 'where possible'. Overall I'm becoming very conscious of waste both in terms of packaging, how much we may be sending to landfill and spending more than we need to. I'm trying to pass on as much as we can eg giving ds clothes to colleagues, it all helps doesn't it?

2)Strict £75 max grocery spend, early days but so far shopping at Aldi have been in budget, long may it continue. Ds is being weaned off formula, currently on his last tin, not planning to buy any more hurray!!!

3)push down /freeze any bills we can.

bellevie

Bills: car insurance was due to go up over 200 this year. 16 years no claim, not a flash car, its just not justifiable. I had to shop around, managed to find the same premium as I'm currently paying, and £24 cashback as we went through a comparison site.

Dog1 insurance was due to be renewed but previous supplier if I understand rightly is no longer offering senior dogs insurance, so the broker (if that's what they are?) are covering it for 6 months under the same premium whilst they look into others.

Car: mot passed but lots to pay our for this year, likely to need 2 rear shock absorbers, 2 rear tyres, rear discs, and steering joint, minor oil leak. Shock absorbers they said should be priority. Its not aged at all well this car, its 8 years old, been regularly serviced, I do around 8k miles a year. I've had older cars that have not needed half as much. That's a bit of a downer, but we can only do what we can do. I'm hoping to have saved for some of the work to get done at the end of placement when I've got time off work.

bellevie

Shop budget stuck to, only really thanks to built up vouchers. It was a bigger week with top up of nappies and laundry bits needed.
We don't buy half as much when he has a few good weeks at nursery so it creeps up on us that we are low.

I suspect there is an intolerance to dairy, well I'm not sure if that's the right word really, he seems OK with some dairy, buy when all his bottles changed to dairy (gradually) it turned his nappies became stinky and loose. I removed dairy from milk bottles tested oat milk out, with just dairy for mid afternoon drink, and things have returned to normal.
So he's not allergic, he can have some but too much upsets him. Dd is the same we worked out a couple of years ago, she gets bad reflux if she has too much milk, and can be sick at the extreme, but in small doses like cheese, tea, butter she's OK. I'm sure the signs were there when she was younger, I just didn't link them all.

Payday has been, nice to see a little boost with stepping up a grade. 
Childcare paid, joint bill money allocated and I'm back to a low balance.

Need some very strict control over the next few months to get out of our overdraft. We start going into it roughly half way through the month, but hopefully there's enough leeway in our budget tp clear that by june