Getting shot of the mortgage sooner than 2049!

Baileys_Babe

Pleased to hear Bambi enjoyed nursery. Good luck tomorrow.

Sorry to hear about the lack of support Red had in his previous job. It must have been a very scary situation for both of you.

If I was in his shoes I would not be going for the management job as the job he is doing now has the opportunity to earn overtime but without the stress. It must be flattering to be encouraged though 🙂 No doubt you will spend the weekend discussing it.

Bluegreen143

@Baileys_Babe I agree, and I don’t think he will go for it. Plus now I’m working there’s less financial pressure on him to earn as much as possible.

Its a shame, my sister’s fiancé/my brother in law is in the same line of work (he got Red his first job/training position actually) for another company and is really keen to progress. Red was going to tell him to apply & put in a good work for him, he’s very good at his job so no doubt would have got it. But he found out last night who the new client is (ie why they are taking on more guys) and it’s actually subcontracting for the company BIL is currently working for, so there will be clauses in place about not poaching their guys as part of that, that’s standard practise. 

Bluegreen143

Five nice things about today 🙂

1. Bambi did amazing at her 2hr at nursery solo today - the keyworker said “one of the best settling sessions I’ve ever seen” and she was “very impressed” by her 😍😍😍 #proudmama

2. We went to a local playpark after Monkey finished nursery, to meet a friend & her two, and also by chance bumped into a little girl who used to go to nursery with our big kids so they all played together really happily and had lots of fun.

3. Gaelic class is still very hard but did feel like I was slightly getting the hang of some sentence construction today... also think I won the prize for coming up with the coolest sentence of the night “Tha trì cearcan agam” - I have three chickens 😆

4. We had two hours today where all four of us were separated (kids at their separate nurseries, Red in the garden and me working upstairs), the first time this has actually happened since Bambi was born, and I feel like we all benefited from some space SO much - both kids were in a great mood after nursery and Red and I have been in a good mood too 🙂

5. Tomorrow is Red’s payday, yay!

Bluegreen143

Oh, and I think Red is making progress. He had an extra £8 left in his account (many many times in the past it’s been a small overdraft at this point so that £8 is a big deal!) so he transferred it to me to add to the conservatory fund so it’s a clean slate in his account tomorrow. I just about fell over when he told me! First time he has EVER thought to do this at month end 🙌🏼

Baileys_Babe

It is not so much about the amount Red transferred it is about the change of mindset 🤗

Bluegreen143

Definitely @Baileys_Babe! 

My friend was telling me that the school uniform supplier sold out of ties by May last year so to get ordering soon- totally hadn’t thought about this at all! I won’t order yet and probably not this month but I had a good look on the site to work out what I need to budget. It’s not too bad - they wear a shirt & tie every day which seems awfully formal for such wee people, but the benefit is the shirts are cheap from the supermarket as are the navy trousers required. I do need branded v neck jumpers to go over but I think two would be ok. So 2x jumpers plus 1x tie from the supplier is £40 so not too expensive (I will hang on a bit and see if I can get second hand jumpers first!). And as for the supermarket stuff of shirts, trousers & shoes I can get those much closer to the time and they are cheap anyway.

One bad thing is the girls seem to wear a branded cardigan rather than the jumper which means not handing them down to his sister 😬 I guess he may wreck them anyway to be fair! And the girls can wear either navy trousers or navy skirt - or a school tartan skirt which is gorgeous but at £32 I’m only getting that for her if I find it second hand at the time 😂 obviously don’t need to worry about that for now as the boy’s uniform is nice and simple!

Bluegreen143

Well Bambi can’t go to her third settling session because both kids are throwing up this morning 😷🤢 it’s quite lucky though as I don’t work on Fridays and Red is furloughed today. Just a shame as she was meant to be doing 9-12 at nursery and I was going to take Monkey for a walk just us and to Tesco to spend his pocket money.

Red got paid £2,025 today - he transferred his limit of £1,000 today and will send over £750 tomorrow.

Being a good little YNABer and avoiding forecasting I have just budgeted the £1k received so far 😇 

Mortgage £421
Life ins: £36
Lifetime ISA: £50
Internet & TV license: £37

The rest of the bills are due the second half of the month after my payday so I budgeting the rest of the £1,000 to:

SPENDING:
Food: £150
Household supplies: £60
Petrol: £60
Misc: £10

FUN:
Me: £40
Kids: £20

FUTURE:
Clothes: £25 ( I want to buy socks this weekend!)
Annual insurances: £40

That was all in my March budget but I also put £40 into our Feb budget for a takeaway & wine this weekend and £4 for Monkey’s pocket money. Actually, I’ll need to move the sock money into Feb too 🤔 my aim is to eventually build a one-month buffer so that I have a whole month budgeted in upfront at the start of the month, but this will take a while along with my other goals!

Once I get the £750 tomorrow (and child benefit next week) I’ll probably fill in the rest of the bills except childcare (that will come out of my pay later) and as many of the “future” sinking funds eg holidays & gifts as possible.

We do have two subscriptions to pay this month which annoyingly I haven’t really saved up for because of fresh starting my budget so recently & forgetting to take them into account. One of them is YNAB (£75) and that is 100% necessary. The other is £60 for Disney+ which we’ve discussed and agreed we want to keep for now. We do movie nights on Saturdays with the kids and they are totally in the Disney phase. I’ll budget for both these subscriptions out of the £750 Red is sending over.

This means that after childcare most of my salary on the 15th should be able to go to savings/goals 🙌🏼

Baileys_Babe

We often have family film night, we have a subscription to Netflix and Amazon and it is so much cheaper than going to the cinema (when we are allowed) or renting the films individually or buying DVDs. By watching through our subscriptions we are more adventurous because if we start a film and don't like it we can stop and choose something different.
Both subscriptions are used a lot by all of us in various combinations of viewers. 
We do buy DVDs mainly from charity shops or new as presents, dd usually has many titles on her wishlist.

I wish you could get a months subscription to Disney+ if you could we would probably get a few months a year instead of Netflix.

Sorry to hear both the children are unwell, wishing them a speedy recovery. I hope neither you nor Red succumb. 

OH payday today, ooh what fun 😀

Bluegreen143

Going to go back to talking more about meal plans etc now I’m settling into the working routine.

Spent £75.88 in Tesco yesterday. This was £65.75 on food and £10.13 on household. 

We got:

Fruit & veg £16.58 (apples x6, lettuce, red grapes, strawberries, spring onions, mangetout, plums, broccoli, lemons x2, bananas x9, cucumber, bag of 3 peppers + 1 extra red pepper, garlic x4, cherry tomatoes, onions 1kg, potatoes 2.5kg, swede, carrots 1kg)

Meat £8.68 (sausages 8pk, bacon 8pk, gammon joint 1kg, sandwich ham x2) 

Dairy £11.67 (butter x2, whole milk 4pt x3, soft cheese, cheddar x2, Greek yog 500g x3) 

Other fresh/frozen £3.83 (frozen sausage rolls, mini tortilla wraps 8pk x2, wholemeal bread + white bread) 

Storecupboard & treats £24.99 (wheat biscuits breakfast cereal, basmati rice 1kg, bottled lemon juice, oatcakes, tinned tomato soup x4, chicken stock cubes, vegetable stock cubes, red lentils, queen olives, 30pk crisps, wholewheat spaghetti, baked beans x3, chopped tomatoes x4, cream crackers, peanut butter, cola x5, passata x2, tinned tuna, instant coffee x2, ketchup, tinned mackerel)

Household £10.13 (extra strong large garden bin sacks x2, dishwasher tabs, kitchen roll x3, bag charge) 

MEAL PLAN

F - tapas takeaway for grown ups (so excited!) and whatever is easy on the kids’ poorly tummies for them tonight

S - mac & cheese with veg in, salad

Su - roast gammon, potato/sweet potato/swede mash, veg, may make a sponge pudding or similar as MIL is coming and she has a sweet tooth

M - soup (probably lentil & ham), HM bread, some sort of easy pudding for the kids like banana + custard 

T - veggie bean burritos & salad 

W - sausage, mash, veggies, may do a starter salad or cup of soup 

Th - using up leftover ham and any bits of veg, eggs from the chickens etc in fried rice, may do a starter salad or cup of soup 

Have been really successful in increasing kids’ veg intake (and ours!) by serving more soup and salad/veg crudités so will be continuing with that this week. The fried rice and roast gammon will be unpopular with Monkey but he’s getting better at trying stuff. 

On nursery days the kids both get a morning snack/second breakfast, a two course lunch and a generous afternoon snack provided at nursery - that’s three days a week for Bambi and four for Monkey. So I’ve cut down how much fruit we have ordered and won’t be doing too much baking. 

Thinking we may see our budget decrease a bit for the moment with so many less meals to provide. I’d be happy to keep within £65 a week as we’ve been up at around £75 lately.

Baileys_Babe

I like seeing your shopping breakdowns, it makes me a little more focused on ours. Your meal plans are also help bring fresh ideas or resurrect old favourites.