Getting shot of the mortgage sooner than 2049!

Bluegreen143

A few expenses to update this morning:

£22 - digital copy of Monkey’s school picture 
£36 - Sainsburys Tu - winter boots for Monkey and that second pair of trainers for Bambi (these are required for nursery)
£84 - Tesco (weekly bigger shop)

Got a meet the teacher thing at Monkey’s school this afternoon, then need to pick up our Tesco shop (didn’t book delivery in time), then Red’s nephew is coming for dinner, then Monkey has Beavers, then I need to make back the two hours of work I’ll miss this afternoon… phew, already tired! 

Baileys_Babe

That is tiring me out just reading about it. Take care of yourself 🤗

angela110660

Great to see you back posting. Been away and just caught up last couple of weeks posts. 

Bluegreen143

Another very busy day at work! This week feels a bit mental 😂

I’ve set up a Moneybox account and started the process to transfer my Lifetime ISA into it, because it seems much easier to use than my current provider. I’ve also set up a Stocks and Shares ISA with them and set up an automatic transfer for £10 a week from my personal money.

VERY excitingly, last night Red and I booked flights for a weekend break to Paris at the end of Feb to celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary 😍 cost £360 (taken from our Holiday pot).

We also reviewed and decided on our holidays for the year ahead. 

As well as our weekend away just for us, we want to do a week away in our favourite beach cabin in Argyll towards the end of the summer and a then few days (or up to a week) on some kind of adventure in Scotland in early July - probably going to an island. 

We decided to increase our monthly savings to our holiday pot to £300 to make sure we have enough aside for all of these. However Red thinks his mum may pay for some of our weekend away as a gift, so if that happens we can decrease our monthly savings again. 

beanielou

How exciting 

TallGirl

Paris sounds fab it’s great to have something to look forward to. 

smetf

Lovely to catch up with your posts BlueGreen. Sorry to hear about Red's brother, we recently updated wills to account for older children not needing guardians any more! It's certainly worth revisiting to make things as straightforward as possible at a difficult time.
Paris sounds like a fab thing to do for your wedding anniversary ❤

QueenJess

Your musings on Red being involved in the budgeting made me think. DH keeps moaning he can’t see the transactions going through the joint credit card (it is everything we spend together) as it’s in my name and online. So I changed it to paper statements so he’ll be able to peruse it at his leisure. If nothing else, hopefully he’ll realise exactly how much stuff costs!

I’ve also got a 10 year wedding anniversary coming up and no plans yet on what to do. Will have to be something in the day though as no babysitters! Very jealous on the Paris trip - I hope you have a fab time.

Bluegreen143

Morning all!

Been such a crazy busy week work-wise. We had a very good away day yesterday - often these things can be a bit rubbish but the morning session where we had an agency come in to help us with strategising aspects of our work was very very helpful and we brainstormed a lot of changes which will help how we work.

The afternoon session on using generative AI in our line of work was genuinely mind blowing! I can see over the next few years that this will change many workplaces and roles. 

We then went for dinner paid for by the work so that was very nice too!

Kids’ school and nursery have both been closed due to strikes this week. My lovely friend took the kids out with her kids all day 9-5 on Monday, she is such a star. She was taking her own kids to a bunch of stuff (a ukelele class she runs for preschoolers & young kids, a playgroup etc) and was quite relaxed about having an extra two kids tagging along. 

Then they went to stay at my mum’s overnight as my stepdad wasn’t working yesterday so was able to watch them for me. 

Today I’ll need to WFH while also looking after them but they are generally very good at playing independently and with a bit of extra TV time we will muddle by. My manager is extremely flexible and it’s such a godsend that she never has a quibble about us working out compromises when needed for childcare. 

Annoyingly we upgraded our internet this week (faster speed but a lower price!) staying with our existing supplier but moving to fibre. Well they installed it on Tuesday but now our internet doesn’t work!! Normally I’d go to the office but can’t due to having the kids so my manager has told me to just tether my work phone to my laptop all day. Hope it doesn’t cost the company a fortune but apparently it’s allowed! Red is dealing with the internet company so hopefully it’s fixed ASAP.

Spoke to both my manager and nursery about changing my working pattern. My manager is going to take it to our director - I can’t imagine he will say no as only a month ago she asked me to increase my hours herself! But she still needs it signed off as budgets are tight in our department the rest of the financial year. If it doesn’t get approved right away it’s no skin off my nose tbh - they’d likely approve it from next financial year instead. 

What I’ve proposed is working Fridays 8.30-2.30pm for a total of 32 hours a week (rather than 26 which I do ATM). Finishing at 2.30 rather than the 3pm (which I do on other days) allows for picking up from school instead of Monkey getting the school bus, means it’s easier to have play dates and social plans on a Friday and it’s only losing 30 mins pay a week. 

Nursery can give me 8.30-1pm on a Friday which will cost very little as I’ll only go over my childcare allowance by 1.5hr a week - the head teacher was insinuating she may be able to fudge it a bit so I don’t pay but if I need to that’s fine. My manager is then happy for me to nip out to pick up Bambi at 1pm on Fridays and then do the last 1.5hr with her at home. Obviously from next year she will be at school too and then it’ll be a case of just collecting them both at 3. 

Bluegreen143

Meant to talk about the finances in all that 😂

If my increased hours are approved I’ll then earn £35k (gross) which feels pretty good for being part time. This is actually Red’s full time base salary, but he gets bonuses each month that increase his take home pay. But I’m catching up on him after all those years of earning nothing!

Red’s work are going through a complex situation but the guys were all getting TUPEd over to a new company on existing salary. However they all realised they are now under market rate and they (included Red) all promptly went and got another job offer elsewhere which paid more so now their company are matching that in their transfer offer. So his base is going up to £38,000 with up to £2k annually in bonuses. This is important as they don’t get an annual cost of living increase so they need to swap jobs or at least threaten to every so often to get a raise… he’s happy with how it’s turned out as he’s gotten the pay rise the other company offered but is getting to stay in existing role and it’s still be treated as continuous service etc. 

I’m conscious that we now have 18 months until our mortgage fixed term ends so these pay rises may all get eaten up at that point, but at least we can use them now to save a bit extra while also doing the things we want to in life.