Beating Lifestyle Inflation and Staying Mortgage Free!

apple_muncher

You review your life so regularly that you can see when things are slipping/too much. Good move on dropping that part of tutoring that was yucky. And great about the student being with you.

earthgirl2

Hello All, 
Very busy here inthe earthgirl house. We are having an old area of decking replaced with some paving as the decking just looked awful and was so hard to maintain. It has taken a few days to chop it all up to be used as firewood. I have been busy tutoring (my reduced hours start after Easter hols) and also teaching the student. A little. 

Money update:
£2860 net to add to savings pot this month.(includes money from student staying almost a month).
A lot of money saved by using up what we have in the cupboards which has allowed me to 'fill up' the student. I would hate to think he was hungry!
I used an amazon voucher from doing a food diary and a discount code to get myself some heated rollers. Very old style, but I am hoping that they will save me time in having reasonable looking hair some days!
Parents evening said ds2 needed to work on times tables, and I spent £2 on an app that is brilliant - so simple it totally suits his personality and needs. He is progressing well. We are still using free kindle books for reading and books we borrowed from a friend.
Other than that wehave had a very cheap couple of weeks as we have just been doing local walks and haven't really been anywhere!

apple_muncher

Well done you! On everything!

beanielou

All sounding good

jimjames

Good luck with the journey.

Just a bit puzzled on the first post, it says you're mortgage free in your forever house but then you have a budget item for home? Is there another mortgage you're paying?

edinburgher

£2680? That's insane! 👏

earthgirl2

jimjames said:

Good luck with the journey.

Just a bit puzzled on the first post, it says you're mortgage free in your forever house but then you have a budget item for home? Is there another mortgage you're paying?

Yes we have the mortgage money in savings and have a mortgage payment as if we paid it off, we would incurr enormous charges.

earthgirl2

So an interesting week. My student left on Monday and I have been enjoying more freedom. I have been really reducing my hours and enjoying time with the kids. It was very good this week as one child was amused in a morning football camp, and the other was very easy to amuse and also had something to do in the afternoon. This would be a great thing to keep going in the summer holidays if I can.

I have a bit of a throw back to when I was really quite unbalanced about work - a summer homestay student. Even though I could refuse it because it was out of the period the student had to accept the placement. It would be really problematic to refuse, so I am going to have to take another student this summer, even though I really don't want to. Sigh. its for 4 weeks as well.

I have managed to rearange camping, so we have camping, student for 4 weeks, then another short break.
During the time she is here I will try to find activites for the children, I will also split the teaching so I teach early in the morning and later in the afternoon when my kids don't need me. 

beanielou

Blimey. $ weeks is a fair whack. 

earthgirl2

MIA for a while as work reached new levels of crazy. I had to work in an additional needs school and I also have had a big setting, marking and moderating workload due to having no exams. I have had to work all hours to get it done. I haven't been sleeping well and I have been waking up with quite severe headaches that clear as the day goes on. I've also been using a few costly conveniences instead of putting the work in bc I just haven't had the time. Also I think I need to be a bit stronger with my decision making as it hasn't always been great! I am also going to let all of those decisions go, and not worry about them any more. I need to be more focused on what I want and not get swept up in emotion.

Anyway enough of the negative start! I have about an hour of marking left, so I will do that tomorrow. I have a free month of delivery for Mr Ms, so I have been using that, and tbh we have had home cooked meals every night, not rubbish, which could have happened with massive workload increase, but I just feel its more expensive than A1di.

To do:
Phone doctors on Tuesday, get blood results and try and find out about headaches.
get back into the routine of making the kids eat fruit!
Bake healthier snacks again instead of buying unhealthy snacks
fit in my daily beach walk, weekend hike
catch up on MSE emails
do any banking tasks that need doing
spending freeze other than groceries and budgeted items for May.


I just have to mention a success though, I have been using the F1ton app, totally free and I've loved it! I have been able to 'book myself' into fitness classes or yoga every day and track my progress which I love!