Getting shot of the mortgage sooner than 2049!

Bluegreen143

Sounds great @missrikkic, I’m sure I’ll expand mine too 😂

Lots of fun social stuff happening but not too much expense. 

Yesterday Monkey had a play date & dinner at his friend’s house, which was lovely as the other mum got him from school and returned him to me at 7pm. Felt very quiet with just one child in! 

Tonight I’m babysitting my friend’s two (same ages as mine) - they’re getting dropped off at 4pm and staying here til about 7.30pm - I’ve just got frozen pizzas and fruit/veg to feed them as I find it a minefield feeding other people’s kids 😅 I got a £3 Korean meal kit from Tesco to try out for Red & I - it includes the sauces/spices/seasonings and noodles, and you add the meat and veg. Don’t normally buy this kind of thing but thought it would be easy but nice since we’ll be knackered after four kids running about the house all evening 😂

Bambi and I have done the shopping and I’ve done most of the housework while she watched some TV. I’m now having a sit down while she does some sticker books and listens to audio stories 🥰

Saturday, we’ve got Monkey’s football and then Red wants to do a good bit of gardening, hope the weather improves 😂 then my mum & sister are coming over for a crafting evening. 

Sunday, I have two friends coming over for brunch (making hummus halloumi bagels) then I’m taking both kids to a softplay birthday in the afternoon. Then my mum is picking them up for a three night sleepover for half term! 

Think it’s been about 5-6 months since anyone has had them overnight 🙄 so Red and I are celebrating by going for dinner on Sunday night! 

We are going for really nice Japanese food rather than choosing somewhere overly cheap. I don’t *think* we’ve been out for dinner alone since Bambi has been born 😨😨😨 we’ve had a handful of dates but I’m pretty sure only for drinks, not dinner. So if we are only going for dinner once every four years, I’m not going to stint too much while we’re out 😅 we won’t be out for drinks after anyway as will both be working in the morning.

The dinner is mainly opportunistic, because the children are away, but it also serves as a nice celebration of our three special events happening in the last two weeks of Feb - Valentine’s Day, Red’s birthday (he’ll be 39 so a big one next year!) and our wedding anniversary (9 years so also a big one next year!). 

Spending

Lots to report as I haven’t checked in yet for a few days.

£55.32 Online garden shop
Strawberry, rhubarb and herb plants

£21.50 Wood recycling centre 
For the garden but not sure what

£44.96 B&M
Garden bark and compost

£46.85 Tesco
£38.25 food / £4 birthday gift / £4.20 household

£1.80 Bus fare

£7.50 Charity shop
£4.50 jeans for me / £3 school pinafore for Bambi (she doesn’t go for a year and a half but I’m pretty sure it’ll be the right size at the time, and it was navy which is the right colour)

£2.49 iCloud storage 

£2.99 Printer ink subscription

£14.70 Amazon 
2x fingerprint art kits - as Bambi has two little girls’ birthday parties this month. Will be accompanied by a big bag of sweets each. This brings both gifts in at under £10 which I don’t always achieve! 

54p Amazon
Needed another ball of yarn for my project, so used my leftover voucher credit - this was how much I paid on top

Baileys_Babe

Do the birthday presents need bags of sweets added to them?

Bluegreen143

@Baileys_Babe just trying to keep it roughly equal to what these girls brought for Bambi’s party! People were very generous.

All the kids had fun at our drop off play date last night. It was two kids of a friend of mine (rather than school friends of the kids) and when I saw her recently and we both bemoaned not having enough family babysitting help, she suggested we start a “babysitting club”. 

So yesterday was the first time I had her children on their own (4 and 7 like mine), from after school til bedtime; she’s going to reciprocate with a similar time slot, to make sure Bambi is happy in her house without me - then we want to progress to taking each other’s kids for a sleepover every few weeks so we can both get to have date nights with our husbands. Her kids are lovely and adorable, but rather more spirited than mine, and I have a suspicion her youngest still goes in their bed, so I’m hoping they sleep ok when they’re here and I can manage them ok 😂 Will be worth it to get the nights off myself though! 

I served a big plate of veg sticks, strawberries and blueberries about half an hour before dinner (rather than with it) meaning it all got munched as they were hungry; then did the very cheap Stockwell cheese pizzas from Tesco with HM air fryer chips. Homemade chocolate traybake cake for pudding. So not an expensive way to feed a gaggle of children. I’d do that again as every scrap got eaten including the veg sticks. 

I cut the chocolate traybake in half and put the other half aside for my mum & sister coming over tonight so that was also economical rather than baking twice 😅

I noticed Red has done what he did last Friday and bought crisps and junk from Lidl on the way home instead of asking me to get them in the shopping, but he hasn’t used the joint account either time so I’m counting this as a win. We now have far too many crisps as I got sharing crisps and so did he, but works out well as I can put out a couple of bowls tonight. If he wants to waste his own money on junk food I’m ok with that! 

Did have an additional spend of £3.60 in the little Tesco express. Red didn’t want the Korean meal kit I got last night, he wants to have it next week instead 🙄 he wanted to make crispy shredded chicken for us but needed sweet chilli and soy sauces. So expensive to buy these at the Tesco express compared to the big one!! But I couldn’t get back to the big one again because of still not having a car and needed to get straight back from the school run for the playdate - I need to pass the Tesco express anyway.  

Bluegreen143

Mealplan for this next week

Sa - hot dogs & chips (with corn on the cob & salad)

Su - halloumi & hummus bagels for brunch (for me and friends)
- out for dinner as the kids are away 😁

M - chicken & mushroom risotto (as the kids don’t like mushrooms 😅)

T - Korean meal kit 

W - spag bol

Th - hummus & falafel wraps 

F - chicken shawarma kebabs (meat marinaded & in freezer already)

Bluegreen143

While I’m here thought I’d do a quick mid month update. Note on income - I’ve not been paid yet - I get paid early next week. 

Obviously these figures will change a lot as the rest of the month unfolds. Income will go up when I get paid. The big expense still to come is our garage bill when we finally get our car back. Council tax still to be paid and of course groceries and other miscellaneous expenses will go up. Red and I are going out for a nice dinner tomorrow too.

£2,497.95	Income
£1,696.26	Total spending
£801.69	Total savings
32.09%	Savings rate

Category spending

£528.86 - Mortgage

£434 - Red’s spending (for the whole month)

£160 - Car loan

£145.78 - wood, compost, bark & plants for the garden 

£143.16 - Groceries (food only)

£55.38 - Household supplies 

£38.80 - Birthday gifts for 4x children

£37.50 - Kids’ activities (football class plus one softplay entry)

£29.26 - Life insurance 

£25.19 - Internet

£20.24 - Netflix & TV license 

£14.00 - Bus fares

£7.80 - Me: social (drinks at pub) 

£6.00 - Pocket money 

£4.50 - Me: clothes 

£3.00 - Kids’ clothes 

£2.49 - Me: bills (iCloud storage)

£1.80 - Icecream for Bambi at softplay 

Bluegreen143

Had a busy but lovely weekend 😊

Saturday
Took Monkey to football then spent about 2.5 hours in the garden after lunch. I did lots of pruning, used brick to edge a new bed and generally tidied up. We also had a fire in the fire pit and burned some of the garden waste which the kids loved. 

In the evening my mum and sister came round for crafting evening which was lovely.

Sunday
Such a busy day!

1. Two friends came for brunch - I made a big fruit salad and hummus/halloumi/avocado bagels. They did turn out rather nice and I’d go for that again if I had guests for brunch!

2. Took the kids to a softplay party, we had to get a taxi there but managed to catch a bus home (with a bit of a wait). 

3. My mum & stepdad picked up the kids - they have them for half term. I did have to buy an extra booster seat, as they’ve only got one and ours were stuck at the garage with the cars, but Tesco had basic ones half price at £22.50 which is good. They will use it for years now anyway and it will save us having to keep transferring one of our car seats over whenever they take the kids. 

4. Red and I went for a solo dinner out for the first time in years! Yay! It was a very nice Japanese teppanyaki restaurant, and we did not stint in any way with the food, of which we had three delicious courses (plus I had two cocktails). Red paid for the taxi there and the first round of drinks at the bar so the cost to the joint account was (ahem, avert your eyes from my frugal sin) £113.15 for the restaurant and £9.50 for a taxi home. In my defence, eating out is very much a rarity in this house, unless we are with family who are paying 😆 plus, time out alone with DH is priceless. So lovely to enjoy some adult food and conversation.

Spending
Lots of spends this weekend! 

£18 My sister
Our half of the cost to book two nights of camping together in May. Wow, camping is cheap! 

£9.50 ebay
Bundle of 6x shorts for Bambi for the summer

£9.75 bus fares over the weekend
I only remember getting 3 buses but have four fares in my bank statement 🧐🤔 might try to pay cash in future as I think they sometimes overcharge when you tap on and off…

£55.34 Tesco
Today’s grocery delivery

£12.48 Bike club
Hire costs for both kids’ bikes

£9.50 Taxi home from dinner

£113.15 Dinner out

£22.50 Car booster seat for mum’s car

Baileys_Babe

Ouch to the restaurant costs, but fully justified, especially if you think of that cost spread over all the years you haven't been in a position to go out with just OH. Sounds like you had a great time. 

Bluegreen143

Thanks @Baileys_Babe!

What a nice day that yesterday was 😁 I am working this week, but the children are at my mum’s for three days. 

It turns out that if you don’t have the school run, homework, dinner & bed routines to do, working within school hours makes for an extremely nice and relaxing day. I would love to think that if I can be frugal I’ll never work full time again… we’ll see.

After work finished at 3, I took a walk (as not having the school run meant I’d not left the house or exercised yet) down to the library. I was very pleased that my reserved books were still there as the pickup had expired for two of them 😅

I then popped into a charity shop next to the library and enjoyed browsing without Bambi to watch! I spent £2.50 on four big water tumblers (been on my list for a while but my usual charity shop was charging too much for them - I saw £4 for three there - cheaper to buy them new from Tesco!). Also got myself a really lovely soft grey tunic top, suitable for both work and home, for £4. 

I’ve been enjoying reaquainting myself with the “No S” diet which I read about years ago…

No Sweets (not no sugar altogether, just avoid obvious sweets and fizzy drinks etc)
No Snacks 
No Seconds

Except (sometimes) on days beginning with S (Saturdays, Sundays, sick days and special days eg Christmas Day or your birthday) 

Going to give it a go for a month as it’s so simple and easy to measure success! Got a green dot on my calendar yesterday as I successfully stuck to the rules. 

The guy who came up with it has written a book, but I think I’ve got the gist without it 😆

He also has a number of other quirky systems and rules which I’m enjoying reading about on his antiquated 2007 era website… things like “glass ceiling” eg no more than two drinks a day (I don’t drink every day, not even close, so I feel like modifying it to no more than two drinks at a time, no more than three days a week would work better for me!).

Spending

£6.50 Charity shop
£4 my clothes; £2.50 home (drinking glasses)

Meals

B - fruit, nuts & yoghurt

L - cheese & onion toastie, veg sticks, sweet chilli sauce to dip

D - chicken & mushroom risotto and a big salad

Bluegreen143

Continuing the theme of just generally having an excellent time while being child free, we’ve had a very nice Valentine’s Day 😁

We don’t do gifts, but we do make our own valentines cards and amusingly both choose bee inspired designs this year totally randomly 😅

Finished work at 3pm, Red was home already so we then decided to take a walk down to the pub for an afternoon drink. Such untold luxury being able to go to the pub at 4pm! 😅

We did return home for dinner 😇 and had the Korean stir fry meal kit I’d bought last night - was quite nice. I’m sure it works out cheaper to buy all the bits separately but then we’d be left with opened jars of paste and sauce cluttering up the fridge no doubt. 

Now watching Downton Abbey together and are about to get out all our seed packets to sort out planting for this year - we sure know how to have a crazy good time 😂

Oh and rumour has it we may get our car back tomorrow - watch this space, I’m sure you’re all waiting with bated breath to find out 😅

Spending

£10.50 Pub
My budget - I bought Red & I a pint each while we were out earlier. 

Bluegreen143

My babies are returned to me! They had a fabulous time at nana & papa’s house. Bambi was all snuggly when she came back 🥰 back to the usual school routine tomorrow which will be a shock to all of us 🙈

Spending

£26.60 B&Q
Garden pot - wood trellis

£31.44 eBay 
Garden pot - long plastic trays for the conservatory window sills, as we want to put loads of seed trays and pots on there. 

Meals

B - chocolate porridge with banana

L - cheese & ham toastie, fruit salad, carrot sticks & sweet chilli dip 

D - veg & lentil loaded spaghetti bolognaise with a mixed salad on the side (made double bolognaise sauce and froze one)

Goals stats

Books read: 11/52

Outdoor hours: 93hr 18 min

Craft projects: still on my first knitting project but getting there! 

Emergency savings: £5,639.50 (£2,700 of that in Help to Save accounts and £2,939.50 in our normal emergency fund)

No S Diet: 3 days in row compliant 😇