Getting shot of the mortgage sooner than 2049!

fionaandphil

Bluegreen143 said:

Talked to Red and we’ve agreed we will:

- cancel Disney + (save £8p/m)

Not sure if you're a Tesco shopper but if you are then you can exchange clubcard points for Disney memberships

themadvix

We managed to tart around for music for at least 18 months, switching for offers from anyone and everyone in both our names. It was well worth it - saved quite a bit! It was a while ago, so not sure how many offers/services are still out there but worth a try.

Bluegreen143

@themadvix something to aspire to!

Nice chilled out day today and we didn’t do much, Red worked on the slabbed area of the garden most of the day. I took Monkey to football midmorning and used the time he was there well - nipped to Tesco to buy myself a new pair of trainers (£14 - mine had holes in the bottom) and took some bags to the charity shop which had been languishing in my room for ages. 

Then had a nice bath and pottered about all day tidying up, doing a washing, doing some reading with Monkey etc.

One success in the kitchen - chocolate syrup for making chocolate milk. Monkey won’t drink plain milk and never has since he stopped breastfeeding at 1.5. But he does like chocolate milk which I’m ok with him having as an occasional treat and to get more calcium in. I tried out getting a pint a week from the milkman but it was expensive, he couldn’t drink it all before it went off and tbh it was incredibly, overly sickly and artificial tasting. 

I was considering buying a powder or syrup to make chocolate milk for him when I googled it to discover you can make the syrup yourself! I have made homemade chocolate milk before, but my usual recipe involves ice and a blender so is too faffy. This recipe is brilliant, you just make up a jar of syrup to keep in the fridge and stir a large spoonful into a cup of milk when needed so no faff. 

Even better, it is SO tasty, worlds apart from the horrible artificial taste as it’s only got cocoa powder, sugar, water, vanilla and salt - it’s got sweetness but also tastes rich and slightly bitter from the cocoa. And you can moderate how much you use to taste - I don’t want Monkey developing a taste for such horribly oversweetened and artificial tasting stuff.

Happily, he absolutely loved the homemade one 🙌🏼 Thinking too, it MUST surely be cheaper than buying a bottle of the syrup?! 

Bambi is a strange one and doesn’t like chocolate milk but she loves plain milk anyway, if anything I need to limit how much she’s allowed so she eats her meals 😂

Ingredients:

1 cup cocoa powder
1 cup water
1/4 cup sugar (according to the recipe, but I doubled it then added a bit more as didn’t want it to taste too much like dark chocolate - so I used between 1/2 and 2/3 cup sugar)
1.5tsp vanilla
1/8tsp salt

Briefly simmer til combined and apparently it keeps for 12 weeks in the fridge. Use 1-2tbsp per cup/glass of milk, to taste. Apparently the syrup also replaces the kind of sauce you put on ice cream too 🙂

Baileys_Babe

Thanks for sharing the chocolate syrup. recipe, I plan to try some on hm ice cream 😋

Bluegreen143

Nice day today visiting my folks, free roast beef dinner! 

Next week I’m off with the kids all week 😁 Red is back to work though. Only for a week though, then he has two weeks parental leave while I work. 

Going back to doing my lists as found it really helpful before the holiday:

To do tomorrow

▪️do Lidl shop with the kids in tow first thing (they were SO helpful when I took them on Friday, it was a joy - fingers crossed it’s the same again tomorrow!)

▪️then take car to the garage as there’s a recall on a part and they are replacing it for free

▪️get outdoors with the kids - thinking I’ll take them on the underground back from the garage, as they’ve not been on it before, and go to the Botanic Gardens, which we live near and can easily get a bus home from. Must remember to take sandwiches and fruit in case this all takes us ages and we’re out over lunch!

▪️ text various friends to arrange for this week: a playdate with Monkey’s schoolfriends; a playdate with Bambi’s nursery friends; pub night with my friends 😆 

▪️do some cooking or baking with the kids, especially Monkey (I want to teach him to cook a bit more this summer as he’s really interested)

▪️usual merry-go-round of daily tidying and with an emphasis on laundry

EDIT - the garage for tomorrow isn’t where I thought it was; it’s nowhere near either the underground or a park. So think I’ll just get a taxi home with the kids then we can go for a walk to our local park instead.

Bluegreen143

Decided to do my Lidl shop tonight instead to avoid such an early start tomorrow. Thought I’d itemise and categorise the spending below, apologies if it makes dull reading but hoping that looking at my spending more in-depth again will help me keep it under control! 

£43.54 spent on the following:

Main meals/breakfasts/lunches £28.04
YS whole chicken £2.55
YS cooked chicken drumsticks £1.53
YS jumbo outdoor bred sausages x4 90p
1kg onions 98p
Ketchup 53p
Courgette 76p
Frozen raspberries £2.29
Frozen sweetcorn £1.09
Garlic x4 79p
Baby avocados x3 £1.29
Ham slices x2 £3.18
Grana padano £1.99
Passata x2 78p
Coriander 55p
Tinned tomatoes x2 56p
Wholewheat spaghetti 65p
Baked beans 22p
Peanut butter 99p
Baking potatoes x3 45p
Cherry tomatoes 99p
Peppers x2 90p
Swede 69p
Green olives 59p
Broccoli 75p
Seeded bread £1.19
Seeded wraps 85p

Baking supplies 65p
Vanilla extract 65p

Snacks, fruit & treats £12.09
Crisps 6pk 79p
Caramel biscuit bars 69p
Cola x3 £1.41
Instant coffee £2.29
Satsumas 95p
Bananas x6 73p
Grapes £1.75
Almonds £1.79
Roasted salted cashews £1.69

Cleaning £2.76
Kitchen roll 3pk £1.25
Antibac spray 79p
Scourers 72p

MEALPLAN

M - tomato & lentil soup, some kind of homemade pudding

T - chicken pasta & salad

W - baked potatoes with various toppings (cheese, beans, tuna etc)

Th - shredded chicken tacos 

Breakfasts:
Cereal
Peanut butter toast
Porridge
Milkshakes

Lunches:
HM soup
Chicken drumsticks & salad
Tuna avocado boats/tuna sandwiches 
Beans on toast

I’ll do another shop on Friday, so this isn’t for a full week, but I’m really happy with the spend. My Friday shop was £33 so that’s £76 for the week plus £10 for the milk bill. Sounds a lot, but it means I’m currently on track to stick to budget this month 🤞🏼

Bluegreen143

So Red got the date wrong for the car service, it’s next week 😂 oh well, at least it got us up and out! And next week he’s the one off with the kids so it’ll be him that needs to go.

Lovely morning so far, tidying the garden with Monkey, both kids helped me make lunch too and I’ve got a loaf of bread in the oven which they helped me mix. So pleased that we’ve managed to take the time off ourselves with the kids, it’s so nice to have the time to do things we’re normally too rushed to fit in.

Bluegreen143

Well I’ve been busily redoing my YNAB budget (does anyone else just love tinkering with their budget or just me?!). 

Just before I get into it - also wanted to note I had a productive conversation with Red about our monthly “allowance”. Up til now we’ve kept 20% of our salaries. I’ve agreed with him, given all the price rises etc, to keep it at a fixed £400p/m for him (down from usually £450) and £250 for me (down from nearly £300 but I usually put £50 into my LISA anyway which I’ll continue to do from joint savings as also want to start topping up Red’s pension). 

Appreciate that to many these are really large figures for fun money but it is what it is. I think I would struggle with less (from my £250 I’ll be paying £80 gym membership and £20 phone bill and a £25 subscription so it’s actually £125 for general spending). And I know there’s no point giving Red less as he’ll just overspend and get resentful. It’s not like we are struggling to get by or need to pay off debt - I just want to save money each month to finally start mortgage OPs! 

So onto the new budget!

Trialling a slightly complex arrangement where I split my spending budget into a weekly allowance and then when I record the spending I move it to the actual category. This way I can get the benefits of weekly budgeting while not messing up my recording 😅

So the budget currently looks as follows (including all savings pots):

(£amount left/£amount at start of month)

BILLS
Mortgage & council tax: £159/£687.86
Utilities: £225
Insurance: £10.29/£37.08
Car bills: £75
TV & music: £10.53/£34

MY SPENDING

My bills: £125
My savings: £25

Week 1: £5/20
……….£15 on clothes
Weeks 2-5: £20 each

FAMILY SPENDING
Week 1: £82.46/£188
……….£71.33 on food
……….£5.51 on non-food groceries
……….£29 on kids’ activities
Weeks 2-5: £188 each

The weekly figure is to include groceries, diesel, public transport, kids’ spending, fun and stuff for the house/garden. Plan is to roll over unspent amounts to the next week and then anything unspent at the end of week 5 can move to savings. In four week months we can put the whole extra weekly budget into savings. Same principle with my own £20p/w (which is for my clothes and fun money) but I’ll roll leftovers to my own saving fund.

POTS
Gifts & celebrations: £459.01
Holidays: £100
Car repair/replacement: £0 😬

SAVINGS
Emergencies: £1,233.99
Help to Save: £2,000
LISA/pension: £57.23 (waiting to transfer over)
Conservatory/garden remodel: £866.37 (not counting the £21k still put aside for the build)
Kids: £440

Bluegreen143

Update to spending (forgot we had a takeaway the night we came back from holiday as it hadn’t come out the account yet):

FAMILY SPENDING
Week 1: £45.96/£188
……….£71.33 on Food
……….£5.51 on Non-food groceries
……….£29 on Kids’ activities
……….£36.50 on Fun (a takeaway)
Weeks 2-5: £188 each

MY SPENDING

Week 1: £5/20
……….£15 on Clothes (pair of trainers)
Weeks 2-5: £20 each

Bluegreen143

Had a really lovely day as had friends for a play date yesterday. 

Quiet morning pottering about tidying & cleaning the bathroom, the kids very helpfully tidied the playroom and their bedroom. Baked a half batch of twinks hob nobs. Unfortunately I didn’t have any margarine - I never do, I always use butter and prefer it - so I felt bad that my friend, who is vegan, couldn’t have them, but I still made them as thought her girls & my kids would enjoy them (which they did). It’s a recipe which is easily veganised as has no eggs, so I must start keeping a tub of vegan baking fat in for these situations - this is a friend who comes over a lot. 

Anyway, my friend came over at 1, and I think we both thought she’d be here a couple of hours, but it was a glorious sunny afternoon and the kids played brilliantly making mud and puddles with the hose (they did all get very wet and muddy but it was worth it!) and we ended up opening a cider each (just one!) and she wasn’t gone til 6! The kids just kept playing nicely and we just sat in our garden chairs and chatted, Red got home from work super early too and was laying slabs in the garden so it was just lovely to all be together in the sun! 

The ciders were left at my house by another friend about a year ago so it was a very frugal afternoon 😉 and at 6pm I ignored the whispering voice in my head suggesting a takeaway, and quickly made some pasta with leftover roast chicken while the kids had a bath and watched some TV. So ever since we had the kids, we normally are quite rigid at eating dinner at 6, but it turns out eating at 7 instead won’t kill any of us 😂 (I’m normally quite routine bound as I like the kids to eat at set times rather than grazing and be in bed pretty early). 

Today’s plan

Another day of annual leave, yay! We don’t have any expensive entertainment plans this week. I know a lot of people save for the summer holidays but we generally hang out at parks or have at-home play dates so I haven’t massively increased our entertainment budget.

Monkey has asked if we can go to a specific park, not ridiculously far away but not one of our usuals (and it’s free to park there so no costs) so think we’ll go quite soon and aim to be back by lunch. 

Then I want to do a little bit of cooking and should probably change the bedding and clean the floors. Maybe play a game with the kids or get out the paints.

We are going to pick up 2x Silkie pullets this afternoon once Red gets home which is exciting! We’re currently down to two chickens so will have four altogether. Then hoping we get home in time for me to go to the gym - I was going to go yesterday but sacked it off for the drink in the garden instead 🙈 #noregrets