Getting shot of the mortgage sooner than 2049!

Bluegreen143

Busy office day today - I left early to drop Bambi at nursery at 8 instead of 8.30, and tried out dropping Monkey at his school instead of using the school bus (as I basically pass his school going to the office), so was a slightly frantic early start 😂

List for today

1. Actual paid work 

2. Do a washing  

3. Put away the (now 3) loads of clean washing in baskets 🙈

4. Get another ball of yarn from local yarn shop for current project I want to take on holiday

5. Do Gaelic Duolingo practise 

6. Start packing

7. Make sure budget is fully up to date before holiday and take out cash 

8. Make a lemon drizzle cake to use up lemon and eggs

9. Go through fridge and find a way to use up anything I’ve not yet made a plan for, before going away 

10. Coordinate with friend which day she is coming to visit us on holiday 

11. Turn off divert from work phone to personal phone, so I don’t get work calls on holiday 

12. Go to gym

List for later

1. Actually pack!

2. Change bedsheets before we go away, so they are nice to come back to 🙂

3. Finish Morrisons food shop by Thursday ✔️ Red still to add stuff though 

4. Order new school jumpers for Monkey, as the branded schoolwear shop has a sale 

5. Check about booking swimming on holiday ✔️ you can’t book in advance  

6. Look up things to do on holiday; we are mainly planning to potter about on the beach or the forest walk, and eat lunches in the local cafe, but may try a day trip too.

Bluegreen143

Bluegreen143 said:

List for today

1. Actual paid work ✔️ 

2. Do a washing  ✔️ 

3. Put away the (now 3) loads of clean washing in baskets 🙈 ✔️ YAY!!

4. Get another ball of yarn from local yarn shop for current project I want to take on holiday - forgot, will pop in tomorrow maybe, but actually I probably won’t get that far in my knitting til I’m back anyway 😏

5. Do Gaelic Duolingo practise ✔️ 

6. Start packing ✔️ 

7. Make sure budget is fully up to date before holiday and take out cash - budget up to date but forgot cash! Will take out tomorrow 

8. Make a lemon drizzle cake to use up lemon and eggs - scrapping this, no time 😜

9. Go through fridge and find a way to use up anything I’ve not yet made a plan for, before going away - ✔️ mostly taking stuff with us if we didn’t eat it today 😂

10. Coordinate with friend which day she is coming to visit us on holiday ✔️ 

11. Turn off divert from work phone to personal phone, so I don’t get work calls on holiday ✔️ 

12. Go to gym ✔️ 

List for later

1. Actually pack!

2. Change bedsheets before we go away, so they are nice to come back to 🙂

3. Finish Morrisons food shop by Thursday ✔️ Totally done now

4. Order new school jumpers for Monkey, as the branded schoolwear shop has a sale - going to leave this til we are back 

5. Check about booking swimming on holiday ✔️ you can’t book in advance  

6. Look up things to do on holiday; we are mainly planning to potter about on the beach or the forest walk, and eat lunches in the local cafe, but may try a day trip too.

Busy busy day today. Work was full on, as I tried to tie up loose ends before going on annual leave. Had to keep working for 45 mins or so once I got home with the kids. Then a mix of tidying, starting to pack, dinner and then the gym! Followed by more tidying and packing. Knackered now 😂

Did nip to Tesco and spent £28. £1 on milk and the rest on clothes as I realised we don’t have enough of everything to last a week due to my minimal capsule wardrobes 😂 but only got the bare minimum - 3x joggers for Monkey (ALL of his are stained?!), 10x trainer socks for me as seem to have very few, 7x pants for Bambi, and 2 summery vest type tops for me. 

Had a good chat with Red and have taken £200 from our buffer (ie my pay, which I don’t touch til the 1st) to bolster the holiday fund as he was feeling unhappy we didn’t have much spending money. Tbh I think he’s got a point and better to be realistic and put it in now than overspend and have to find it later. Does mean we will probably put £200 less in savings next month unless I shave some money from other places. 

Bluegreen143

Yay, it’s day one of 17 on annual leave 🥳 and today, once the kids are out of school and nursery at lunchtime, we are going on our “big” holiday!

Bambi hasn’t usually got nursery on Fridays but they said to bring her in so she doesn’t miss the end of year party, which suits us as we can now finish packing in peace 😜

Really got that festive feeling and the kids are buzzing too. When we pick them up, we’ll have an hour or so to kill before we need to go (our holiday location is only a 90 minute drive away) but handily a bunch of the primary 1s are meeting in the park after school to celebrate the end of their first year 🥰

Can’t believe my baby has finished his first year of school! He’s done so well - great reports on his behaviour, his maths/reading/writing is good, his Gaelic is better than average at this point (he’s well on his way to being bilingual and is now better than me) and most importantly he’s happy and settled with a lovely group of friends, both boys and girls. I’ve managed to build a little network of mums at the school too, and one really good friend (the one who is meeting us on holiday) as well as the existing good friend I have whose child is the year above Monkey. Building a network really helps as when I need him picked up from school or something, I have no family to do it. It’s reassuring to have people you can ask (and I’d do the same for them).

Short list now, as if it doesn’t get done today, it’s not getting done before our holiday! 

As mentioned, we’ll have no internet on holiday and I’m going to try to avoid checking my phone much, even when out of the lodge, as I found it really restful last year to disconnect. But I’ll be back in a week to work out my spending and set goals for July!

List for today 

1. Finish packing

2. Empty out fridge

3. Leave the house tidy & change bedding

4. Feed & clean out pets (we have a friend coming by a few times during the week too)

5. Get cash out

6. Do Gaelic Duolingo (no internet/phone signal at the holiday lodge, so will need to take a week off!)

Baileys_Babe

Enjoy your holiday, a week away from the Internet sounds wonderful.

Four_Seasons

Have a wonderful relaxing fun holiday with your lovely family x

Bluegreen143

Thanks both! We had a wonderful time 😍 and have agreed that holidays are worth prioritising in our budget. 

We don’t see ourselves going abroad any time soon. We think for next year we will book the same lodge we stayed in this year again for a few days at Easter (this was the second time we’ve stayed here and we love it) and then go for a week in the summer to a caravan park in Argyll where Red used to spend his childhood summers - he’s really keen to take the kids there 🥰 if we can save up enough, Red and I would also like to go away for a couple of nights alone, but we’ll see if it’s possible. In spring 2024 it’s our 10 year anniversary and Red turns 40 a week before it, so we may just save for going away then instead.

Going to save this then post my June/holiday spending in a new post so I don’t lose it!

Four_Seasons

so pleased you had such a good time, must confess I did wonder how you were doing x

Bluegreen143

JUNE INCOME £3,420.29

JUNE TOTAL SPENDING £3,402.52

JOINT SPENDING £3,118.05

NEEDS £1,804.93

mortgage & council tax £687.86

insurances £145.60 annual home ins paid

utilities £225.19

car bills & repairs £220 service and tyres

diesel £121

parking & public transport £23.20

food £264.14 low as we were away 10 nights!

cleaning & toiletries £13.41

household misc £32.19

kids (clothes & nursery fund) £72.37

WANTS £1,313.12

kids (activities & pocket money) £89 

TV & subscriptions £116.35 annual Prime sub 

home & garden £56.59

fun £76.50

misc £6.70

gifts & celebrations £72.50

holidays £895.48 two holidays this month 

MY SPENDING £284.47

Bills £127.66***

Clothes £86.25

Fun £70.56

*** ARGH! I go to my friend’s gym and she offered me 6 months half price as mates rates and I went back and checked her text yesterday to be sure. But she must not have put it through right as I’ve only had three months half price and now it’s gone up. Feels far too awkward to say to her as she was doing a favour by giving the discount, but it’s gone up to £80 from £40 so that’s £120 extra over the three months 🤦‍♀️ if it wasn’t a friend’s gym I’d definitely say if the price was wrong though. Will think it over.

Holiday 

Just to break down the holiday spends a bit - we went on a three night caravan break in the very north of Scotland at the start of June and a seven night break in a lodge in Argyll (west of Scotland) at the end of the month. Here’s the breakdown (not including accommodation costs, which we obviously paid in advance ages ago):

caravan break £282.14

week away - food & drink £235

week away - diesel £56

week away - eating out £73

week away - activities £146

week away - misc £112.34

We spent more than we would usually in the second holiday because the weather was rainy a lot of the week, so we did quite a few indoor activities (swimming, badminton, soft play, spending money on the amusements and a lunch out) which we wouldn’t have bothered with if it was nice weather, as our kids are still young and normally quite happy pottering in the beach/forest. But we actually stuck within what we had budgeted which I’m pleased with 🥳. 

Edit - if anyone is concerned our income is less than our spending, it’s cos of our holiday. We did save up the money for the holiday in advance so when you take that away you can see we haven’t in reality spent more than we’ve earned! But we have depleted savings to that amount, which is fine as that’s what they were for. We did also have a couple of annual bills and a car service this month too.

Debsnewbudget

All sounds very planned
well done 

Bluegreen143

Sat down with Red to discuss TV/music subscriptions.

Currently we have the following:

Netflix £11 

Prime £6.60 (actually paid annually, £79)

Spotify £10

TV license £13.40

HP printer £3

Disney+ £8 (Red pays for this)

£52 and we don’t think of ourselves as a TV family!!

Talked to Red and we’ve agreed we will:

- cancel Disney + (save £8p/m)

- downgrade Netflix to the cheaper version (saving £4p/m) - ours allows you to watch on two screens - we only have one TV 🤦‍♀️ 🤣

- change Spotify to Amazon Music which is free for the first four months, saving £10p/m in that time. At the end we can switch back to Spotify if we still prefer it, otherwise Amazon Music is £9 so saves £1p/m

I also think the TV license is overpriced but I do encourage the kids to watch CBeebies (more educational content) when they are up for it, so we’ll keep for now, that said the BBC or live TV is probably only used a couple of times a week as we almost always watch Netflix or Prime so if times got hard I would stop using and get rid of the license.

The above changes mean we will only pay £30p/m for the next four months then £39/40p/m after (unless we get offered a Spotify deal then), so saving £22p/m to start then £12/13.