Getting shot of the mortgage sooner than 2049!

Bluegreen143

Today (as well as general tidying) I’ve:

✔️ put away four loads of clean washing
✔️ sorted out the cupboard in the kids’ room and pulled out anything for Bambi in the next size from the hand-me-down bag
✔️ we all gave the ivy in the front garden a big haircut, the kids were very helpful!
✔️ Red, Monkey and I moved the compost bin & compost to its new home in the garden 
✔️ took two bags to the charity shop (stuff from the kids’ cupboard)
✔️ went to the yarn shop & bought myself the set of needle tips I need (£5.75).

Also had a frugal success at the charity shop - a DVD storage case for £1 and five Disney movies (Frozen, Beauty & the Beast, Tangled, The Little Mermaid and The Lion King so all good ones 😆) for £5. 

Really, really pleased with this. We don’t have a DVD player at home so have always invested in digital movies for the kids, and we have a growing collection of our favourites now in our Amazon account (I’m a huge Disney fan girl so except for the Paw Patrol movie it’s all literally all Disney classics they watch 🤣). But we’ve found DVDs helpful for going on holiday (the place we’ve stayed the last two years has no TV signal) so we had picked up about a small collection of 4-5 Disney movies in charity shops already. 

Then when we got the new car, it’s got the screens built into the headrests and Red picked up a DVD player for the kids to watch DVDs on them 😆 they’ve been warned it’s only going on for long journeys - we’ve agreed only for journeys of 45 mins or more. But we decided getting a storage case (and looking out for a few more charity shop movies) wouldn’t be a bad idea as we don’t want the bulky cases when we are only keeping them for the car or holidays. I was prepared to buy a storage case new so I’m delighted with getting it for £1 😁

In less frugal news I also spent £2.90 in greggs buying Red and I a pastie each (damn greggs right next to the charity shop 🤣).

savingholmes

Sounds pretty frugal to me 

Bluegreen143

Unfrugal but extremely fun night out with my best friends last night. Feeling somewhat rough today! All worth it. One of our group is moving a 2hr drive away, so it was a sort of leaving do for her. 

We find routine works for us and tend to meet at the pub every second Thursday (unless we are going out at the weekend instead, like last night). So we were talking about meeting up routines when she moves and we’ve agreed on every few weeks picking a weekend day and meeting at the mid point on the train line as a group so we can have a boozy lunch. Means both us Glasgow ladies and the one who is moving will only have an hour to travel each way. Something to keep my personal spending budget for which should help focus me on buying less tat and ebooks with it! In spring/summer we could also potentially meet at different spots on the route to do some walking too which would be a nice change.

Spent last night 🙈

£46 on my share of the restaurant bill (errr, this was mainly prosecco as we only had one course and shared a couple of starters between the group 🤣)
£21 on my round at the bar after
£4.50 on *whispers* chips and cheese for the walk home (I was walking with my friend who lives round the corner not solo at 3am! We did save on taxis last night as walked there, between all locations and then home) 

Been a LONG time since I was out til 3am and even longer since I frequented a chippy on the way home! But it was such a fantastic night with some of my favourite ladies in the world and well worth it. I went to uni in this area with most of these ladies so the merry walk home eating chips was very reminiscent and the particular chippy was in fact one we used as students. Good memories!

Bluegreen143

Work today, not a gym day but we did walk the morning school run so I’ve had a bit of exercise. 

Today’s list:

1. Do all the washings (three loads I think)
2. Bung soup for dinner into the instant pot when I get a free minute
3. Take kids to the park after school 
4. Usual daily housework, also try to do the downstairs bathroom 
5. Reconcile budget 

After flagging last month that I’d been overpaid (they paid me for unpaid parental leave I took) and payroll telling me it would be taken from this month’s pay, it hasn’t 🤦‍♀️ irritating to have to chase them on it plus it mucks up my budget again as need to keep an extra buffer category in there for whenever I do get the low pay month (at least whenever it happens it’s not a huge issue as I’ve got the money set aside). Somewhat tempted not to bother chasing and just wait see if they realise themselves, because I do feel like in being proactive in informing them last month I’ve done my bit now 🙄🙈 

Bluegreen143

Allocating my pay (which I’ll get later this week) as follows:

£1,637.26 (inc pension contributions)

NEEDS 45% - £736.76
Groceries £500
Petrol/parking £150
Car bills pot £80
Misc (leftover) £6.76
*I take most of the bills eg mortgage, energy etc from Red’s pay)

SAVINGS 25% - £409
Pension £116.67
Help to Save £100
Emergency Fund £192.94

WANTS 30% - £491
My personal budget £303
(My bills £128)
(My clothes £30)
(My spending £145)

TV/music £37
Gifts & celebrations £50
Holidays £50
Home & garden £50

Bluegreen143

Current pot/savings balances (before my pay):

Emergency fund: £1,000.42
Help to Save: £2,000 (not accessible)

Holidays: £0*
Gifts & celebrations: £405.75
Home & garden: £158.71
Kids: £491.93

Me: £175

*Did I say we booked a holiday? A week in the Highlands in a four bedroom house next summer, sharing with Red’s best friend and his family (they have a nearly 3yo). Very excited! We’ve paid the full accommodation cost for this already so that’s why the pot is empty currently. Because we are only paying half the cost due to sharing the house, it was a bargain £450 for the week. 

Bluegreen143

Did the washings, made very nice carrot/lentil/coriander soup, put away Tesco shop, worked. Playpark after school. 

Took Monkey along to his first Beavers session tonight. My friend said I could just drop by and sort it out when I was there, but the group leader looked a bit horrified and said I needed to email in first. Took Monkey home, sent an email in and the other guy emailed back to say “you can just bring them along on the day” 🤣🤦‍♀️ When I explained I’d already tried that he did take all our details etc so we will be good to go next time. 

Monkey is particularly excited about it as a little girl he’s very good friends with goes (I’m friends with her mum so they’ve known each other their whole lives and they do go to the same school though not in the same class, as I deferred his school entry he’s a year below her) - he’s currently determined he will marry her when they are older 🤣

Speaking of deferral, I talked Red into agreeing to defer Bambi last week - he wasn’t so sure this time even though it was a brilliant decision for Monkey. They are now trialling automatically giving all Sept-Dec born children the extra nursery funding if parents want to defer, which makes it even easier - when we deferred Monkey the funding wasn’t automatic so it was a bit stressful in case we didn’t get it (which we did in the end). Turns out we had the conversation just in time as one of the nursery ladies asked me this week if we’d had any thoughts on deferral so it was good to be able to give an answer right away. 

So Bambi will now start school Aug 2024 😃 pleased I’ll get another two years of our Fridays together. 

Bluegreen143

Been reading about the time blocking method of time management used by the organised mum blogger so I’m trying it out (you schedule your day in 30 min chunks). Definitely found it helped a lot today at work. Instead of just writing a list then later wondering where the day had gone and why I’ve not found time for my biggest projects 😆 I wrote out a plan somewhat like the below:

9am - emails & planning
9.30am - team meeting
10am - basic operational tasks 
10.30am - operational tasks 
11am - focus time project A
11.30am - focus time project A
12 - lunch 
12.30 - emails & messages 
1pm - focus time project B 
etc etc. 

I did get distracted later in the day from my second focus block (mainly due to an unscheduled 45 min call with some teammates on a new thing we need to work one) but I definitely got more high priority stuff done because I had scheduled in exactly when to do it. 

Also felt that I was more productive with getting housework/cleaning done this afternoon as I realised that I’m not doing myself any favours by not doing it when I’ve allotted time for it. Better to get it done and then I can properly relax in the evenings.

On an annoying non MSE note, my papa had given me his older laptop which he doesn’t use (he has an iPad he uses for everything) as he overheard me saying that I need a laptop or tablet for Monkey’s homework and so I don’t need to always do admin/shopping on my phone. But I’ve discovered one of the keyboard keys doesn’t work and it’s one that’s in the password so I can’t log in. I did try taking the key off and cleaning it but no luck. I’m fairly sure it will be more cost effective to buy a new cheap laptop than to get it repairs as it is quite old anyway. But irritating as we were thinking that was one thing we don’t need to save up for. 

savingholmes

Well done on the time blocking. 

Shame about the computer. What about getting usb keyboard for it - would that get around the problem?

Bluegreen143

@savingholmes good idea!! I could use my work keyboard which plugs in via USB!