Getting shot of the mortgage sooner than 2049!

Bluegreen143

Current spending round-up

(Amount left/amount in budget)

ME

Week two personal spending £0/£6.95
£13.40 budgeted in weeks 3-5

Whole month breakdown:
………£9.70 Fun - ciders from Lidl & a soft drink in the pub
………£15 Clothes

FAMILY
Week two family spending £75.76/£179
£179 budgeted in weeks 3-5

Whole month breakdown 
………£133.40 Food
………£12.98 Non Food Groceries
………£49.60 Diesel
………£36.50 Fun a takeaway 
………£31 Kids Education/Activities - includes pocket money and football subs
………£86 Misc 2x new hens and a new driving license for Red, who lost his 

From savings/pots
………£130 Holiday as discussed 

savingholmes

Sounds like things are going well.

Cheery_Daff

Hi bluegreen 😊Just been reading back through your diary, lots of cheerful stuff in here, gorgeous new chicken ladies 😊😊 And as you may know, I am a fellow YNAB enthusiast so always good to read lots of detail about budget tinkering 😂

Bluegreen143

Ah nice of you to visit @Cheery_Daff!! Our new chicken babies ARE gorgeous and so funny with their fluffy poms. They’ve been having some supervised playtime with our two older ladies, but are most definitely not ready for unsupervised yet, as there is quite a bit of pecking from our top chicken Dottie and we have to keep chasing her away 🙈

Happily the elder chooks roost on top of their house and not in it, so we are shutting the babies in at night before we let the elder ladies back into the run. And keeping the babies confined to the run (it’s pretty big luckily) while the others free range in the daytime in the garden.

Bluegreen143

Pic of our older two ladies Dottie and Penny for any chicken lovers 😅 not QUITE as adorable as the baby Silkies, but still lovely.

Bluegreen143

Have had a lovely weekend with this unexpected heatwave!

Yesterday

Had a quiet Saturday at home - DH, rather madly, chose to spend one of the hottest days of the year laying slabs rather than resting 😆 I mainly knitted, read MSE threads and finished my book. Got sunburnt 🙈. Sent the children indoors for a movie then a bath during the hottest bit of the afternoon but neglected to come in myself!

We had hot dogs on the BBQ then I had a long bath once we eventually got the kids to bed and it was all just LOVELY. Zero spends.

Today 

My dad wanted to come and visit today, so I suggested instead of meeting here, we could meet at the Kelpies park. It cuts nearly an hour off his journey each way (he lives in Aberdeen) and was a lovely change for us. We took a picnic and Dad got us all ice creams so very frugal.

Lidl shop done - £51.97 on food and 65p. Plus went to Tesco and spent £2.60 on tahini and £2.50 on a water jug (ours broke - the one I bought was actually £4 but I had a £1.50 Clubcard voucher). More than I’d intended to spend but DH is off this week so added more snacks/lunch stuff, and I got seduced by nice ice cream 🙈

savingholmes

Sounds a lovely day

Bluegreen143

First day back at work yesterday! It was alright, though I would certainly take another week off if it was on offer 🤣

DH put the car in (for a recalled part, so thankfully free!). He did spend £2.80 on a bus home and he got a taxi back, but I’m not sure how much that was - will ask him. He also paid £22 on a taxi for his mum to visit for the day (he took her home in the car) - annoyingly when she moved to a “sheltered” flat recently she chose one miles away instead of the one a 10 min drive from us! He said he was going to pay that from his own spending money though so I didn’t question it.

I will be a bit over this week’s spending budget again as DH is taking the children to an inflatable thing in a local park which I think will be £20. A bit of a rip off, but we do rarely do things like this. And even better, I escaped having to take them as he’s doing it 😂

Having just said that we don’t spend much on entertainment 😂 on Friday we are also going to the zoo, but this is from the kids’ savings pots. I’ve been saving money they get from relatives (not the odd £1-2, I let them keep that! But larger amounts) to be the seed fund for a pot for bigger days out, school trips etc when they are bigger. 

My dad in particular massively overcompensates for not being around when I was a child, and gives them £20 each every time he sees them and gave them £100 each at Christmas 😳 - he was also giving big toys but I (nicely) asked him to stop due to playroom clutter and suggested that if he really felt the need to give something, we could use his money to contribute to zoo annual passes. We’ve decided though just to pay for each trip as we go instead of passes, as you need to go five times a year to make it worthwhile and as it’s an hour’s drive, I don’t see that happening. But we have just shy of £500 in their savings now so we will make sure we go a couple of times over the summer. Not getting the annual pass means we could go to the safari park next time instead of the zoo, too.

What else do I need to update you on? Oh yes, the new baby chooks are doing well! Still getting pecked a bit by the big girls, so we are keeping them separate unless supervised, but they are getting more supervised playtime together. And Elsa chicken is particularly friendly and sweet with us now 🥰

And finally, the car is going into the garage again on Wed for an oil leak. This new car has I think almost had as much work as our old one did in five years! However, hoping there won’t be any expense after that for ages as it’s now been serviced, got new tyres etc.

List for today

Usual daily stuff 

1. Work
2. Keep on top of tidying and dishes
3. Dinner - chicken pasta 
4. Do Duolingo practise 

Other
1. Rip out knitting enough to fix mistake 🙄

2. Keep working on 2020 family photo book - I’ve gotten up to April; today I’d like to get May and June done (aspiration is to get this finished this month and start on 2021 as once that’s done the backlog is cleared!)

3. Go to the gym (7pm class)

4. Meet one of Bambi’s nursery friends in the playpark after work (3pm)

5. Text friend about potential playdate later this week 

Bluegreen143

Meant to do a quick spending update:

We have a grand total of 37p left in week two’s budget (which already got boosted by £4, as dad gave me money for ice creams and didn’t want the change back). 

£179 currently in weeks 3-5 budgets, but that will go down if we spend again before Friday. As well as the inflatable thing entry, I also owe Monkey two week’s worth of pocket money (£8) as haven’t had enough change 🙄 

Family spending this month to date:

Food - £189.17
Non Food Groceries - £22.50
Diesel - £49.60
Travel - Other - £11.60
Fun - £36.50
Home - £2.50
Kids - Education/Activities - £31
Misc - £86

Nothing to report on personal spending as haven’t spent any more since last report, and won’t this week. Then I have £13.40 a week for weeks 3-5.

savingholmes

Kids entertainment plans sounds good. Well done for saving the £