Getting shot of the mortgage sooner than 2049!

Bluegreen143

Meant to say my manager has approved the change to my working hours. So it’s just a case of confirming when the change will start with HR - I’ve requested Mon 23 Oct (after the October week here!). 

Once I know this date I can notify nursery to start Bambi attending on Friday mornings. 

My new hours will be 32 each week - 8.30-3 each day except finishing at 2.30pm on Fridays. Hoping I’ll continue to be in the office just once a week but it may go up to twice in time, which is OK. 

The plan would be to then keep that working pattern the next few years while I have young primary aged kids 🤞🏼

It’ll all be easier next year once Bambi starts school, as I’ll just have one pick up/drop off and will be using a different school bus route, so I should actually get home by my 8.30am start which I never do currently 😂

Cheery_Daff

Oh that is good news, well done! 

Sounds like a rather epic date night!! And good that Red has realised how expensive it was - it's never nice to be the party pooper!

beanielou

Good news. 

Our schools are off for two weeks. 

greenbee

Good news that Red has realised you don't need to spend vast amounts of money to have fun. And VR is known to cause motion sickness in women (although I think that newer tech has make progress to improve it). 

Maybe you can agree with Red that the kitchen is worth doing, but create a project plan/timeline that starts with the mattress, then the stove, then the kitchen. After all, the kitchen will take more time/planning. And he might be able to work on some bits while you do the others. Particularly if you set him the challenge of starting to source as much as possible for free, and working out what he can reuse - be enthusiastic about the planning and join in with his ideas, and by the time he has finished his design and sourcing you might have saved for it!

Bluegreen143

Interesting about VR sickness more affecting women, I didn’t know that! 

I’m happy to have tried it once but I’m not into gaming or anything. I can’t see it as being something where I’ll try to overcome it making me sick 😂 I’d rather be doing something in the real world…!

Well I must have been distracted when doing the online shopping yesterday. Red has unpacked it and informed me I forgot bread AND crisps and so he has no lunch supplies 😂😂😂🙈 woops. He’ll pick some up tomorrow. 

Dunno how that happened as I spent about £100(!) but it was partly due to a big cleaning supply top up and I got a hairbrush, bobbles and hair pins etc too, so it was about £70 on actual food. 

Eating has gone a bit to pot today as I have a cold and sore throat starting, the kind where you fancy shoving your face with carbs constantly rather than the kind where you lose your appetite 😂 we had minestrone for dinner which was nice though. I’ve eaten a few of the kids’ kinder bar things as we didn’t have much other sweet stuff in 😂

Bluegreen143

I have solved my childcare dilemma by getting out of my training this week 🙈😂 I didn’t get let off the hook due to the childcare issue, I could probably have just left a bit early to solve that, but we realised that me and my colleague both going would leave the team extremely short staffed at a busy time due to annual leave of others. So we’ve both been let off! 

Tbh I have quite a heavy cold and shouldn’t be in the office this week infecting people so there’s also that (my manager excused me from coming in when she let me off the training). 

Have felt really rubbish today and must confess to MSE sins - stopped by Greggs on the way home from the school run for a pastie & juice which I’ve literally never done before 😂 and then walked to the corner shop and bought lots of chocolate 🙈

Also have to confess to working from bed whenever I wasn’t actually on a meeting…!

Hope Red isn’t late back as I suspect my parenting skills will be low and I’ve not lifted a finger re kitchen or laundry today…

Bluegreen143

Urgh, still feel rubbish. Ended up with an extra child for an hour and a half too, as one of her mums texted asking if I wouldn’t mind picking her up because her back had suddenly seized up. I took her back to mine til her other mum could get her after she was finished work. Luckily they all played nicely while I vegged out on the sofa! 

I’ve seen the nationwide bank offer - £200 switching bonus, you get 5% interest in the current account and you can get an 8% regular saver too. As we’ve never been with nationwide we’d qualify for the whole lot and it is rather tempting. 

I don’t know if it will be an admin nightmare though as ideally we’d switch our personal accounts and get £200 each, however we can’t keep our Monzo joint account if we don’t have personal accounts and so would need to switch that too. But obviously wouldn’t qualify for the switching offer for this so I dunno if you use the same link to switch it 🤷‍♀️ I’d need to switch the joint account somewhere so maybe I could switch it to a separate bank if there’s another switching offer going on 🤷‍♀️

beanielou

Feel better soon ❤️‍🩹

Bluegreen143

Thanks Beanielou! 

Spoke to Red, who was all for switching bank accounts. 

So we’ve now switched both our personal accounts to Lloyds (£175 switching bonus each) and switched our joint account to Nationwide (£200). Not bad making £550 in 20 minutes or so! 

We’ve agreed we will each keep £100 towards boosting our personal spending budgets. 

Then the remaining £350 will be halved - £175 to the emergency fund and £175 towards buying paint and wallpaper for redecorating the hall. 

Had a quick discussion with Red about the next house priority and he favours decorating the hall first, which won’t be very expensive, then is provisionally ok with a new mattress and bedding next, but wants me to price it up before he commits. 

Doing this switching will throw out all the savings pots and automatic savings transfers I have in Monzo, but it can’t be helped because £550 is too much to pass up. Hopefully I can set up a similar system using savings accounts at the new banks. 

Staffordia

Nationwide allow you to have multiple savings accounts which you can helpfully rename.  You can then use a SO between your joint account to fund them.