Getting shot of the mortgage sooner than 2049!

Baileys_Babe

Your dinner sounds lovely. My dd would approve of the meat being served with sauce on the side, that way she would hope to not have to have any or if we insisted, she would argue for the tiniest amount.

Marinading tomorrow's meat already needs applauding 👏

Bluegreen143

@Baileys_Babe my daughter seems to agree with your daughter, as a new phrase she’s begun saying at dinner (very emphatically and in SUCH a strong Glaswegian accent) is “I don’t like yucky bits on my chick’n” 😂 I did make her try a spoonful. It wasn’t spicy and I don’t see how a non spicy tomato & cream based curry sauce differs hugely from pasta sauce, which she will eat. I was really pleased that Monkey ate a good bit of it by dipping his naan bread in as he is fussier with a lot of dinners than Bambi is. 

Having a thought re food shopping. I read on another thread on here someone saying they get their Tesco deliveries every 3 days rather than meal planning for a full week, so they waste less and everything is fresh (obviously this only works for families and not smaller households). At the moment we are spending £70-100 in Tesco each week so I could do two shops a week and should still be over the £40 minimum spend. I think bring disorganised and wasteful is my biggest food spend issue right now and we keep deviating from the weekly mealplan towards the end of the week because I seem to have lost the ability to plan ahead properly! 

It’s worth a shot anyway - if I find we spend too much that way I’ll revert back.

Made flapjacks tonight, mainly for sending as school snacks but two may have crept into my mouth when they were still warm…

Baileys_Babe

One thing that would put me off more frequent deliveries is needing to put the shopping away more often as it is not a chore I enjoy.

How about 3 deliveries a fortnight? Approximately every 5 days.

If more frequent deliveries will help you feel in control give it a try.

We keep a list of previous successful meals which we refer to when inspiration  is lacking.

Bluegreen143

@Baileys_Babe you’re right that I don’t enjoy doing the order or putting it away but I’m thinking it will feel less onerous if it’s a smaller amount! Maybe?!

Current plan - get a shopping delivery each Monday to do us til Friday. If we need enough stuff to make the Friday shop up to £40 then do another order for Friday (we have the delivery saver anyway so it’s no extra cost), if we only need a few bits then I can pop to Lidl and the Zero Waste shop with Bambi instead for the weekend shop as I don’t work on Fridays. I don’t mind going shopping with Bambi in person if it’s a small shop, but hate doing a full weekly shop with her there as she gets bored and it feels like a race to get finished before she gets cross 🤣 which is one reason we get deliveries.

Our grocery budget is currently £400 a month including toiletries and cleaning stuff so taking off £80 for fruit & milk deliveries (milk is about £8 a week and fruit box from greengrocer will be £12) that’s £320 to spread over 8 deliveries/mini Lidl shops - which is £40 a time so fits with the minimum order. While I’d like to reduce this grocery budget, we often we order stuff from other pots in with our shopping (alcohol, pet supplies, misc office supplies like paper/stationery we all get from Tesco) so even if our actual grocery budget drops I think we’d still usually make the £40 minimum order twice a week (and I’d not, I’ll go to Lidl for the second one). 

I’ve been trying to pull together a list of basic meals too, a podcaster I listen to refers to these as brainless crowd pleasers - brainless for you so whatever you can cook without too much thought which varies from person to person, and crowdpleasing meaning that everyone in the family will just about eat it even if not their favourite 😅 need to actually just get the list written down and pinned up somewhere! She also has a good tip about using just one cookbook for new recipes for that week/month and working through it along with your crowd pleasers. 

joedenise

If you spend from other pots when you do your grocery shop do you remember to split your spending across the pots on YNAB or do you take it all from the grocery category.  I always split mine across the correct pots otherwise I can't see how much I'm actually spending in each area.

Hope that makes sense!

Bluegreen143

Today’s list

1. Clean upstairs bathroom

2. Hoover upstairs/the stairs (possibly excluding the playroom as it’s a tip and I want the kids to tidy it rather than me!)

3. Mend Monkey’s coat

4. Pull together brainless meal list & pick a cookbook to use this next fortnight 

5. Usual daily merry-go-round of laundry, dishes, tidying and seeing to pets

Plans for today 

- obviously work!

- looks dry after school so will take kids to children’s wood

- need to finish up last two homework tasks with Monkey as tomorrow is hand in date (I try to do just one task a weekday + practising his songs, but annoyingly the teacher send it out late Tuesday night instead of Monday last week so we lost two days there and the octopus costume took a while!)

- Gaelic evening class tonight. This is the last one and as our teacher isn’t taking the class on to the next level we need to decide if we want to put our names down for another class (next level or repeating a level) or take a break. I am tempted to take a break and reclaim my Thursday evenings but I suspect it’ll be even harder to get back into it if I do that! Think I may go back a level and repeat though as don’t feel ready to move on. 

Bluegreen143

@joedenise I used to break it down into food, household, alcohol, pets, misc. I now combine food & household just as “groceries” but I still break out the other stuff on YNAB. Usually alcohol is bought by Red so I’m pretty “on it” at reclaiming that from his personal bank account 😅 likewise if it’s my booze I pay for it from my personal account (which is on the YNAB budget - Red’s isn’t).

Bluegreen143

Have been pondering over the budget as I eat my lunch (instead of doing the planned-for meal planning list, oops).

Just wanted to make sure our budget is realistic going forward given the energy price hikes. We used to pay £100p/m DD but I’m expecting it to go up to at least £150p/m if not more as we are now on the price cap having moved supplier. And we are a bit in debit now too due to a payment not coming out over Christmas when our old supplier closed down.

This month we’ll both see what our new pay will be following pay rises for both of us. As a reminder, we each pay 80% of our salary into our joint budget, and I think this will now equate to just over £3,000p/m. 

Child benefit adds an extra £140 but I tend to pay this directly into our “Kids” budget catergory which covers the nursery school fund, pocket money, clothes/uniform, activities (not that they do any 🙈) and any misc child expenses). Previously I’ve raided this when it builds up but I’d like to start leaving it in there to build up a bigger amount to pay for school trips and activities as they get older.

In terms of the £3k joint budget, it breaks down as follows:

BILLS
Mortgage £419
Council tax £154
Gas & elec £160 (not set yet but estimating this for safety)
Life ins £26
Internet £24
TV license £13
Spotify £10
Netflix £8
HP printer sub £2 (these subscriptions seem more cost effective than buying ink cartridges nowadays)

THIS MONTH
Groceries £400
Petrol £100 (two tanks a month seems to work out for us just now so I basically just fill it each of our paydays. A tank used to cost us about £38 and is now over £50 of its totally drained!)
Pets £30
Misc £60
Fun £75

THIS YEAR
Christmas £75
Birthdays etc £75
Holidays £200 (not normally so high but we have recently booked a spontaneous caravan weekend with friends in June)  
Home & garden £75
New electronics £50
Annual bills £100 (car ins/tax, breakdown cover, MOT/service, home ins, YNAB, Amazon Prime)

This should leave about £950 spare from our joint budget each month. £100 will go into our Help to Save accounts and the balance will go to the conservatory fund (we are borrowing extra on our mortgage for the build, but will decorate/furnish it and pay for the wood burning stove from savings). Once the conservatory is paid for, any excess will get funnelled back to our emergency savings which are currently at £1k - I’d like £2k MINIMUM but ideally more. By the second half of this year I hope we’re at this stage and can look again at how we distribute excess income between mortgage OPs etc, but I do think it’s important to build cash savings first.

The extra borrowing on our mortgage will equate to about £120 extra each month so we should still be in a position to save £800+ each month after the build is done.

One area I’m conscious is missing us charity/giving so I’d like to investigate a family charity we can give to and the kids can find out more about the cause etc. This fell off the radar when I was a SAHM but we have the cash now.

Re personal budgets, Red manages his own, I should be able to continue putting £50p/m into my LISA and will look at what else I can do with any leftover personal budget (though the pricey gym membership may mean I don’t have much left each month!). Clothes, haircuts (though I cut my own), hobby stuff, social plans etc come from our personal budgets.

Bluegreen143

Today’s list update 

1. Clean upstairs bathroom - not done

2. Hoover upstairs/the stairs (possibly excluding the playroom as it’s a tip and I want the kids to tidy it rather than me!) - done, except the playroom

3. Mend Monkey’s coat - done (both underarm seams had ripped so I sewed it all up tonight. Not sure if the fix will last but hoping it will extend his coat’s life til warmer weather comes)

4. Pull together brainless meal list & pick a cookbook to use this next fortnight - not done 

5. Usual daily merry-go-round of laundry, dishes, tidying and seeing to pets - done 

Also finished off Monkey’s homework with him, took kids to children’s wood, did gaelic class and parent group zoom - busy day today!

Dinner was chicken fajitas and they were most excellent after marinading the chicken overnight, which I wouldn’t normally do.

Bluegreen143

Tomorrow is my day off with Bambi so plan as follows:

1. Clean upstairs bathroom

2. Bake muffins or other kid snacks 

3. Make easy meal planning list

4. Get kids to help tidy playroom 

5. Make Valentine’s Day card for Red (our celebrations for Valentine’s extend to a homemade card each and we are ordering a nice takeaway once the kids are in bed as we have budget in for it). Also make congratulations card for BIL who recently got engaged.

6. Usual daily round of laundry and chores

Plan is to meet a friend and her 3yo in the morning but not sure what we are doing yet; I think in the afternoon I’ll pick Monkey up direct from school so I can take him to the school playpark after. I usually organise a playdate on Fridays but MIL is coming to stay for the weekend (she’s currently between homes and mainly staying with BIL and his fiancé, but comes to us every so often so they get a break - hopefully her new flat will be ready soon!) and wouldn’t appreciate extra guests round, and I feel all our likely play date candidates have hosted us last. School playpark is usually a nice way to network with other parents I don’t tend to see because he gets the school bus home.