Getting shot of the mortgage sooner than 2049!

Bluegreen143

Been redoing my joint/household budget this evening - we both put 80% of our salary into it plus the child benefit.

INCOME 💰£2,970

Me £1,130

Dave £1,700

Child benefit £140

BILLS 🧾 £1,435

Mortgage £421

Childcare £670

Council tax £154

Other £165

Subscriptions £25

SPENDING 🛍 £550

Food (all groceries) £375

Fuel £75

Fun & misc £100

POTS 🎁 £525

Annual bills £50

Gifts & celebrations £150

Holidays £125

Home & garden £50

Car £100

Kids £50

SAVINGS 💷 £435

Help to save £100

Emergency fund £231

Mortgage OPs £79

Conservatory £25

My personal budget is about £280 a month and pays my LISA £50p/m, phone bill and a couple of subscriptions, any clothes/books/socialising/fun costs for me and I want to build up some personal savings too from this.

Baileys_Babe

Your summer child care arrangements for Monkey sound fab. It must have been a logistical nightmare for you arranging everything but he must have loved it, lots of time with friends and family but also enough change that he wouldn't be bored.

The next couple of years are likely to be a bit different where you need to factor in Bambi but your Mum might not be up for her staying for a week.

In the school holidays, we used to go and stay with my grandparents for a week or two. If it was 2 weeks my parent would either join us for a week (my Grandparents lived in a holiday destination) or a long weekend at either end when dropping us off and collecting us. If it was a year when my Grandparents were living abroad my parents each took a fortnight off which overlapped by a week (ie Mum off week 1 & 2, Dad off week 2 & 3 and we would go away week 2). In either case, my other Grandma would take us for days out or come and stay for a week, she had a wonderful imagination and was happy to spend days playing with us. Other times my Mum would go to work early leaving us in bed and we would have a list of chores to do and then she would be back early afternoon and in her words that shouldn't have left us much time to cause trouble 🤣 another thing my Mum did was take 2 or 3 days off work a week breaking up the time we needed to be at home, I do remember going to holiday clubs sometimes but I would have been responsible for getting the pair of us there and back.

This is a selection of things that happened over a number of years.

Will you be saving money on Bambi going to the council nursery? If so can some of this be saved to pay for childcare in the school holidays for the pair of them?

Bluegreen143

Loving your memories of your summer hols @Baileys_Babe! 

My mum didn’t work til I was in secondary school and my grandparents always used to have us for long stretches in that holidays (taking us to their holiday home in Portugal) too so I never really experienced much in the way of holiday clubs. I have fond memories of the summers and while clubs can be great I do want the kids to get as much of a proper break as possible but you’re right that we’ll need to try a mix of things.

In terms of cost savings…

We will go from paying about £670 a month for Bambi’s nursery to £0!! (Actually there will be a £24 monthly consumables charge I think but no other fees)

She will be going 29 hours a week in term time (8-3.30pm x4 days) and is entitled to 30 free. This particular nursery allows you to take the hours in a way that maximises their usefulness (for my circumstances) rather than as 6x 5 hour blocks like most nurseries so they will count all the hours she goes as free ones. I know this is right as this is what we did with Monkey and we didn’t have to pay anything while he did these hours. It even includes a free school meal and 2x snacks. 

If she stayed at the private nursery, she would only get 20 hours a week (as would be spread through the whole year) and this needs to be taken as 2x 10 hour days even though I only send her 7 hours at a time as always pick up at the end of the school day. So I’d still have to pay for two full days a week - at around £350p/m after the tax free childcare discount. I think you need to pay a consumables/snack charge too on top though it does include lunch too.

Of course it’s not a totally fair comparison because the private nursery is the full year and the council one is term time only, but even if I need to pay for a bit of holiday childcare for them both it’s way less than the cost of remaining in the private nursery, and way way way less than we pay now. So long as I get kept on we will be in a much better position to save 🤞🏼

Also we had a wonderful experience of the council nursery - it’s a very education focused and child centred setting and the staff are just wonderful. To be fair the private nursery she goes to now is very nice too and I’ve been impressed with them (if I persuade Red to have another baby I will use them again 😆) but there will certainly be no drop in standards by switching her to the free of charge setting.

Baileys_Babe

Moving to the council nursery is a no brainer, saving you thousands of pounds per year without compromising the quality of care.

Bluegreen143

Been YNABing today and we have massively overspent this month 🙊 it’s been my birthday, my mum’s and my sister’s, plus my sister’s wedding is today so we all needed new outfits (second hand for the kids but added up as wanted shoes, Bambi hair band etc too). I didn’t have a suitable dress and ended up spending £90 on one from ASOS and Red got a new suit as his existing doesn’t fit him currently 😆 plus for a wedding present Red made them a garden bench which is lovely and personal but did cost £200+ in wood. And because of back to school season I’ve had quite a lot to buy eg uniform, backpack, little Tupperwares for sending snack in etc. Then just being so busy we got a takeaway last week and just haven’t been very budget conscious in general. And in July my mum and I took my sister to an outrageously expensive “foodie” tasting menu type place with wine pairings and cocktails so that blew my budget in July too…

I nearly buried my head in the sand and didn’t post because I feel bad we’ve blown the budget, but that’s just silly and won’t help. I’ve balanced the books now, had to take some cash from car savings and emergency fund but we still have £1700 in there which is good. 

Will be tightening the belt in Sept, as I do feel we’ve really slacked lately on budget-friendly living. We have some things we want to do in the house in the next few months - paint the hallway, work needs done in our bathroom and replacing the floor in our downstairs toilet as the cat keeps peeing on it and it’s wrecked the wood 😡 AND because I have one savings pot for birthdays, other gifts and Christmas it’s been totally raided lately meaning that we don’t have much aside for Christmas yet - I think next year I will have two separate accounts - “christmas” and “birthdays & other celebrations”. Both kids have their birthdays in December too so I’d ideally liked to have more set aside by now. I have been putting £150 in each month but August has just wiped it all out 🤦‍♀️ 

joedenise

I have separate pots for birthdays and Christmas.  I don't put as much as you away but then we don't have small kids or grandkids so everyone just gets a token present for Christmas.  I put more into birthday savings as we tend to take our DDs and family out for a birthday meal which is probably more expensive than a present!  Think we may have to rethink that.  I still our DD2 a birthday meal as restaurants weren't open when it was her birthday and we just haven't been able to arrange anything yet!

As you still have £1700 in the Emergency Fund things aren't too bad for you.  When our kids were small we didn't have an emergency fund at all and we ended up using credit a lot so I think you are doing far better than we did at your age!  We're OK now as no debt, including no mortgage but we do have to be a bit frugal as only on state pensions plus small work pensions.

Baileys_Babe

I hope you enjoyed all the celebrating you have been doing lately.

Are you planning on reselling the children's wedding outfits to recoup some of your costs?

If my OH went to an event requiring a suit he would need to invest in a new one as he has outgrown his existing suits. Whilst having a sort out the other day he came upon a suit he regularly wore when we first knew each other the children at first didn't believe it was his as he has grown in the intervening quarter of a century 🤣 Luckily they didn't find anything of mine.

Please don't beat yourself up, it doesn't sound like you have wasted the money on rubbish. You are aware of what you have spent the money on, you have adjusted your budget accordingly. By being aware you have prevented a blip from turning into a catastrophe.

Remember to praise yourself for what you are achieving not just beating yourself up when you deviate from the plan.

Bluegreen143

@Baileys_Babe tbh with Bambi’s dresses (we got two because my mum bought one as well) one was £3 in the charity shop and one £5 on eBay so I think we will keep them for party dresses over Christmas and birthday season and same with her shoes (which I did buy new at £15). I will here make a resolution to sell monkey’s suit (£10 on eBay, wonder if I can get that back!) and his shoes which Red got two pairs off (first didn’t fit), both similar eBay bargains 😆

Productive day yesterday both at work and used gaps between calls etc wisely to get little bits down round the house. And same today. So feeling smug!

Yesterday’s dinner was tomato & sweet potato soup with home made bread (felt great about this as not baked much in ages) and raspberry ripple ice cream for pudding.

Today doing sausages with mixed potato/sweet potato mash and veg.

Been organised and batch making Monkey’s school snacks so haven’t bought packet stuff yet which is quite MSE 😁

Finally, it’s lovely weather here so we’ve come to the children’s wood after pick ups for a bit of playtime. It’s so nice finishing work in time to do things like this - I am grateful I’m able to do so 😊

Baileys_Babe

Makes sense to have had two dresses for Bambi to save your sanity and allowed you to relax and enjoy the day, bonus that you can reuse them for Christmas and the Birthday season. You might get lucky if they fair well you can sell them in the future.

Fingers crossed you can recoup the cost of ds outfit 🤞

As usual, your meals sound fantastic and your children won't even realise how lucky they are.

Well done on being organised with the school snacks, out of curiosity what sort of things does he have?

Honeysucklelou2

What a lovely idea for a wedding present! 
Just caught up on your diary. Hope Monkey has enjoyed his first few days at school. This time of year is expensive with all the school prep items.

The after school wood outings sound great!