Getting shot of the mortgage sooner than 2049!

Bluegreen143

Another crazy busy day. I didn’t finish working til nearly 5.30, despite being officially done at 3, and actually have some work to do tomorrow too (my day off). Next week will be busy too, but somewhat less frantic. Then it should calm down a little 🤞🏼

Do feel the children have been utterly neglected today. They were both home as the school and nursery are closed due to strike action. And I basically ignored them all day, they played a lot plus watched more TV than usual… Monkey made us all tuna sandwiches for lunch so at least the neglect is encouraging independence and pitching in 😅

Red and I had booked in a financial chat yesterday but I’d forgotten about the work dinner out. So hoping we can have that tonight 🤞🏼

Baileys_Babe

I feel the occasional day of downtime for the children is good for the children it goes them an opportunity to rest, recuperate, use their imagination, and develop a little bit of Independence.

Well done Monkey on making the lunch.

When we were young and my parents had to be at work on days we were off we were given a list of chores, which we were expected to do after breakfast. Mum recently admitted there were two reasons for this, firstly to help keep on top of the housework and secondly, to fill some of our time so we had less time to get up to mischief 😉

badmemory

Sounds like a sensible Mum to me.  Much better than mine as when I left home at 23 I hadn't been allowed in the kitchen.  Can you imagine setting up home at 23 & not having the first idea how to cook, not even boil an egg & have never even run a vacuum cleaner over the floor.  That is not what any of us should want for our children.

joedenise

Absolutely agree @badmemory!  Although I was allowed in the kitchen once a week to make cakes for Sunday tea with my older sister but that was the only thing I could cook when I got married at 19.  Had no idea how to cook meat or veg - not even how to boil them!  Didn't take me long to learn though - it was either that or me and DH were going to starve!  We couldn't eat fish and chips every night (only takeaways there were back then!)

Bluegreen143

Good point! I’m very keen that the kids won’t graduate my care without being able to cook!

I remember having to teach some of my flatmates basic cooking skills when I moved out to go to uni 😅 especially the boys. 

Quiet day today, mainly at home then took the kids to the school playpark after school. 

Monkey’s wee friend accidentally lost his ball under a portacabin and I was really impressed that long after everyone had given up, Monkey was lying flat on his belly working out how to use a hooked stick to get it out - and he succeeded! The wee boy’s grandad was so pleased he gave him a pack of sweets 😅 Monkey does have a lot of perseverance and resourcefulness in him, he definitely gets that from his daddy ❤️

Meals

I can’t remember if I said, but I’m on a health kick again so the grocery budget is correspondingly large 😆 as long as the overall finances are good I’m happy enough with this. I’m still half a stone lighter than my previous heaviest but keen to lose another 1.5 stone! 

Today I had:

B - porridge with cocoa powder & banana 

L - caprese salad (tomato, mozzarella, basil & balsamic dressing)

S - plate with sliced pear, strawberries and slivered almonds 

D - tikka chicken thighs with rice and a very big mixed salad 

Made the chicken for dinner in the air fryer (first time) - super impressed! I find bone-in chicken thighs take an age in the oven but it was only 35 minutes in the air fryer and they were done to perfection with crispy skin. 

I’ve previously not used the air fryer much - just for chips mainly or sausages - but I’ll definitely be using it for this again. Obviously you could vary the spices and flavours on the chicken instead of doing tikka too. 

Finances 

Red got paid today and transferred £1,900 to the joint account, he kept just over £400 for his spends. 

Spent £60 in Tesco today on a shop, around £10 of which was packs of children’s gloves. 

Did indulge in finest strawberries, blueberries and tomatoes (wouldn’t always buy a premium brand but must admit premium tomatoes and berries are much nicer when you can stretch to them). 

Also bought milk, various breads, yoghurt, butter, some veg, pasta, chicken, nice beef stock, lots of tins of baked beans, bananas, garlic, toothpaste & brushes, cola/crisps/olives/hummus for Red snacking. 

We have our monthly date planned for tomorrow as my sister is having the kids overnight. Red has planned a bunch of activities which is so sweet of him ❤️

beanielou

Enjoy your date time. 

KajiKita

Yaay for Monkey being a good friend to his mate 👏😊 I would be proud too.

Hope you enjoyed your date night 🥂❤️

KK

Bluegreen143

Well date night was fairly fun but horrifically expensive. 

Red had organised it all and wanted to do something different to our usual. So we got an Uber to a shopping/entertainment centre type place (the type of place I never ever take the kids due to the cost 😂) - you know, the kind of place with a variety of outrageously priced family entertainment venues and mediocre chain restaurants.

We had to rush a very quick dinner due to poor planning with time and then did a VR session, laser quest and adventure golf then very expensive cocktails and shooters before getting chips on the way home.

I was pretty set on not criticising the night so Red didn’t feel I didn’t appreciate his efforts but he just sat and counted up the £230(!!) we spent and said unprompted: “gosh, it wasn’t worth it at all!”

We did have a nice time, but primarily because we were with each other and both making an effort to be nice and fun, not because of the entertainment! 

The VR session actually made me feel sooooooo sick I had to stop before the end, but I guess I can at least tick that off my list and never try it again 😆 the adventure golf was a bit dull except for the fact we’d gotten into deliberately cringy flirting and innuendo by then so we had a laugh anyway. 

The best bit was laser quest which was fun, not expensive and most importantly I got way more points than Red 😂 I also had a very nice baileys based shooter when out which I plan to recreate at home. 

We both agreed that it was nice as a one off and Red said: “it’s nice to have the reminder that we aren’t missing out that we don’t ever spend money places like that. I sometimes wonder because it seems like a thing “normal” families/couples do on Saturdays”. So I think it was a way better financial lesson to him than me nagging would ever have been. 

Anyway we agreed the joint account would pay £100 of the date and I paid £50 from my own spends, Red paid the remaining £80. 

I’ve set up a “dates” pot on Monzo and plan to add £100 a month into it - if we spend less one month it can build up a bit, if we spend more it’ll come from
our personal accounts. 

Rest of the weekend

It was very kind of my sister to take the kids overnight last night so we did enjoy a lie in today. My dad had come to visit (he lives three hours away and tries to visit monthly) so I met him at hers then we went for lunch out, paid by him. 

He also wanted to take the kids to Smyths toy shop and spend money on them. My kids have never been to this kind of toy shop, we don’t do shopping as a leisure thing and buy everything online, so they were very excited 😂

Monkey is now the proud owner of a very overpriced Lego set and Bambi got a stuffed animal, sylvanian family and a baby doll’s bed (because all her things were much cheaper than the Lego). Very good of my dad! 

It was a nice day though so I was a bit mournful we were in a restaurant and shopping centre rather than going for a walk 🙄 I’ve definitely had my yearly quota for shopping centres in just this weekend 😂

Next week I have a childcare issue as I forgot I have training on Thursday and it’s billed as being a full day. So I doubt I’ll be done by 2.30 when I need to leave the office for the school run…! I asked my friend, but she can’t do it. I may be able to get Monkey’s wee friend’s mum to have him for a playdate after school if nursery will keep Bambi a couple of hours longer 🤞🏼 they have done that in the past and haven’t ever charged me for the extra time, they’re really good! 

beanielou

Blimey. That was just a wee bit expensive 😂
I didn’t like VR the only time I did it! 

Bluegreen143

@beanielou never again for me!! 😂😂😂

I feel like the past few months we’ve been on a bit of an experiment of trying out different things after so long of being utterly skint. Fun but a bit too much at times. I was glad Red came to the conclusion himself about how much the date night wasn’t really worth it! Better than me being the party pooper. 

I’ve got the following savings pots set up in our Monzo joint account currently (current balances in brackets):

- emergency fund (£3,310)
- bills (£77)
- gifts/Christmas (£1,000)
- holidays (£750)
- home & garden (£25) 
- kids (£35) pocket money, clothes, activities 
- family fun (£25) outings, ice creams, eating out 
- dates (£0) 

I have automatic transfers to the top four but once we get our pay increases I’d like to set up automatic transfers to the rest so the balances start to build up. 

Once these transfers happen, the rest in the joint account is for groceries, petrol & miscellaneous spends and the amount we keep in our personal accounts is for our own clothes, hobbies, socialising and other misc personal spends. 

I actually think this is the simplest budgeting technique I’ve tried so far 😂 hoping we stick to it. 

My priorities atm are:

1. Get that emergency fund back to £5,000

2. Start paying extra to Red’s pension, as he is nearly 40 and only has about £10k in it 🙈

3. Start paying extra to mine, I have about £25k between pension and LISA and I’m 35 so also not great. But boosting Red’s is a bigger priority as his situation is worse. 

4. Start overpaying the mortgage even if just rounding up our payment to the next £100. 

In terms of nice things to save for - holidays are taken care of with our automatic savings. I’d like to save up for a new mattress and bedding first, then get our wood burning stove for the conservatory. 

May need to compromise though as Red wants to redo the kitchen (cheaply, himself, using reclaimed materials,  but realistically it will still be a reasonable amount). I’m less fussed as I think that’s just aesthetics whereas a wood burning stove and mattress will materially improve our comfort/the feel of the house. We’ll see.