Our forever home

Aimingforthegoodlife

Things have not been easy have they, you have done so well to shake things off and carry on! Hope you are all feeling better now, nothing worse than feeling poorly on top of everything else. Sorry to hear about the car as well, that was just truly bad luck, hope the new car is still holding up well! Hope uni is going well!

bellevie

Thank you!
Still circulating illness like crazy, but on the plus side car had turned out to be a good buy!

Uni is back on and yes going well, after this semester it'll be year 4 at long last! The end is almost in sight 🙏🤞😊

bellevie

We have a place at a term time nursery from September. Still sadly full time for little one, but Dh will take the week off at October half term and we will split christmas between us.

Timing may have worked well, if I finish my course next June/ july I plan to book.a chunk of time off.

Dd will have just wrapped up her gcses and be prepping for college and DS will be off for the summer, I'd love to get some fun memories in whilst we still can. It won't be long before DD is working and won't have the same free time. Whilst Im excited for what the future holds for her I can't lie makes me feel sad, the years are flying.

I'm going to calculate the impact the nursery move makes, try to make best use of the savings. 

Bills will vary from month to month and we will be spending more on food and nappies so might take a while to see how much can be regularly considered savings.
I know from January when ds will be 2, the hourly rate drops a little so it may become clearer then.

We've agreed the priority is a savings pot to cover sufficient wages for any unpaid time and any adhoc childcare we need to book.

But we'd also like a little more breathing space month to month to be able to do activities.

I do like a project, but my brain has been like fuzz recently so haven't properly made a plan.


Ds is going through a fussy eating stage so I'm a little worried about packed lunches, but hopefully if he's hungry, he will eat. 

This weekend he really just picked at things, but nursery all today shows he's eaten lots, maybe he likes to copy his peers. 

bellevie

I thought I had updated since my last post, I suspect I got distracted mid typing!

Calculations show after costing nursery fees, meals and nappies we should save around 300pm until Jan, then 400 pm, rocketing to 700 from next summer.

I'm budgeting 100 pm nursery food and nappies, as I'm barely managing to keep our standard shop below £100 pw at the minute it's insane.

Ds doesn't like sandwiches, wraps, bagels.

I've tested out so many recipes all from toddler books, he turns his nose up.

Offer him a family meal of paella, macaroni cheese, sheppherds pie, lasagne, salmon risotto and he clears his plate and wants 2nds sometimes 3rds! He also loves scrambled egg & beans on toast. So I'm not sure it's a texture thing.
 
So in the hope of making it a not stressful start at nursery for lunch he will have a meal cooked with snacks on the side. 
Just need to plan cooking lunches, we rarely have left overs the more I cook, the more servings dh & dd have, I just can't keep up!
He doesn't tend to like meals that I've frozen and reheated, but sometimes we get lucky with fridge leftovers.
It'll be trial & error I expect.

Part of the savings will be swallowed up by the average weekly grocery spends.

Then it's being split between saving for other childcare/ unpaid time, bathroom fund and credit card, when credit card is cleared we can increase mortgage overpayments!!!

It's been a long time coming, both the bathroom and overpayments!

Aimingforthegoodlife

I think it is good to get a budget and make it as realistic as possible, it is flexi and can be altered as needed. Hope you find a happy medium for DS, he obviously has good taste in food!

bellevie

Yes we will do, I don't want savings to be swallowed by casual spends.

bellevie

After contemplating it a while ago and seeing 60% off 1st week we are giving a recipe/meal delivery a try. 4 meals x 4 days came in just shy of £22. 

I don't expect ds to have a big portion but DH likes 2nds moreoften than not and he's worried re portion sizes.

I'm actually wondering with being sent only what you need, less waste, could it work out cheaper than a weekly shop even full price? Historically I'd have said never, but the past few budgets blown have me rethinking.

If nothing else for a few weeks experimenting with different recipes will be nice for us all.

bellevie

We had an amazing holiday, loved by all the family. So glad I backtracked on my decision to go without a holiday. It was only a budget uk break but with lovely weather and a great park we found it was so enjoyable. Exhausting running after a 19 month old, but we both realised at the end of the week how work related pressure had just fallen from our minds. We left the holiday physically tired, but I guess mentally and emotionally rebalanced?

Arrived home Friday, its given us the weekend to adjust before the chaos restarts Monday!

The food delivery arrived, 2 meals tried so far, they were great. I calculated to buy, first meal would have been around £10 for 4, the second around £8. This week we've saved as it was a huge discount, going forwards the discount isn as big. However, so far its been hugely convenient and even encouraged dd to help with the first meal and dh helped with tonight's.

The jury is out on whether we will continue long term, will keep reviewing costs vs convenience. Debating maybe viewing it as treat nights ie twice a week to keep trying new things. Will see if new recipes are frequent.

In other news, the insurance company contacted us, they had audited my claim and decided I'd been underpaid the value of the car back in february, so very unexpectedly came a little lump sum. Gobsmacked was an understatement, I was not expecting such fairness and honesty from an insurance company.

Money set aside in savings for the time being.

Nursery fee came in lower as ds stops half way through the month before moving to the new nursery in Sept, so it looks like we will now be out of our overdraft assuming I can budget properly through August.

A new employment scheme has come in offers some good discounts, I think for our remaining shops we could get 6% off, this kind of trumps my 1% cashback ac. And similar discounts for other shops so may help towards birthdays & christmass. Small savings maybe, but if we tuck away the difference it'll soon build.  

Our shopping spend and food delivery this week totalled £104. This did include extra snacks with DD being on summer hols, food disappears quickly. 

Last weeks (self catering holiday) was £85. We ate out twice, used holiday budgets for that.

Will be doing the next shop towards end of the week, doing my best to keep it below 100 including recipe delivery.

bellevie

How quick has the month flown!

We wrapped up recipe deliveries without getting through the promotional period, quickly calculating it isn't cost effective.

I would have liked the convenience of it, but a couple of important missing ingredients caused, suddenly it wasnt so convinient. So that was the end of that!

We had our MIL for 2 weeks, shops were £140 week 1, £120 week 2.
Yesterday she went home & i shopped for the week, was £100 though I purchased a discounted gift card through work so it cost us £96. I did forget sugar and a block of cheese, and we will top up milk & bread at some point, so budgeting £10 top up.

Dd finally had her dyspraxia assessment, I was certain she had it after years of difficulty with speed of writing, buttons, cutlery, poor coordination in sports and generally appearing quite clumsy. No surprise to have it confirmed, but what hit me processing is this week along with a little relief has been intense guilt, frustration that its taken so long to get here, and at what cost to her education! 

Pulled money from savings to replace her slow old laptop, in the hope it reduces pressure at home for revision. They recommended use of laptop inplace of writing and extra time for exams.

She said the school are often short of laptops, so I'll see if they'll allow her to take it in to make sure she can keep up with work. The school haven't been great in this area to date, in 4 years no support to try to get the assessment we finally had this summer.

Most boys get diagnosed around age 5, dd is 15. It's apparently not uncommon as girls find solutions or mask difficulties. Still that's an unnecessary 10 years of struggle, particularly at school.

I've tried to reassure her, she can only do her best. She needs English and maths, but if needed she can resit at college alongside her main subject. I hope she doesn't need to resit, it'll be a lot easier focussing on 1 subject.


College tours coming up in the next month or 2. This academic year is going to fly!

bellevie

This weeks shop has come to 110, Need to restock on tomatoes and babybel (ds lunches) and get his cereal for nursery. Cereal will last them a month or so.

For DS nursery budget including the cereal, lunches, nappies, wipes I think we've spent around 25 for week 1. I had hoped to keep it under 20, so have bulk bought some things, split between supermarket, amazon & boots then tried to work out rough weekly calculations.

However as a back up as I'm nervous about making sure ds has reheatable left overs I also picked up 3 of the toddler fresh meals for 7.50, will save a last minute panic.

If I don't need them as part of his nursery meal plan next weeks will hopefully be cheaper, otherwise I'll see how much he gets through and tweak what I give.

Planning: breakfast weetabix
Lunch: hotmeal with sides of yogurt pouch and fruit
Tea: babybel, crackers or rice cakes, fruit pouch, apple and date bar (a favourite at the minute) I'll include a sandwich or wrap but he hasn't been keen to date so not sure it'll be touched. Planning some kind of baking possibly banana cake, not sure how long it'll last once cooked it's usually gone in 2 days through whole family.

The nursery provide a mid morning snack and I think post nap snack, so I'm hoping if he doesn't eat all lunch he won't go hungry for long.

Plans to date:
Cottage pie
Macaroni cheese we include brocoli tomatoes and frankfurters in this.
Lentil bologneise.

I haven't thought as far as Thursday Friday...maybe I'll look through his recipe books see what lasts for a few days in the fridge.