Getting shot of the mortgage sooner than 2049!

QueenJess

That holiday system would terrify me! I have a spreadsheet for my own holiday as the number of days left in the system is a bit confusing at our work.

I can understand his frustration.. how organised are people getting their holidays in that early?! I can’t think 6 weeks ahead.

KajiKita

QueenJess said:

That holiday system would terrify me! I have a spreadsheet for my own holiday as the number of days left in the system is a bit confusing at our work.

I can understand his frustration.. how organised are people getting their holidays in that early?! I can’t think 6 weeks ahead.

Hahaha …. Sorry! 😉

I have team members booking their last week off before Christmas in the first week of January! 😊

KK 

Cheery_Daff

I haven't booked my Christmas holidays yet either 🤭

joedenise

When I was working I always tried to get my holidays in early as my DH did shift work and was allocated his dates at the end of the previous year and if he got August he always changed with one of the guys who had school kids and had been allocated September as we much prefer September to August for our holidays and we still do even now we're retired.

Bluegreen143

It’s just because the engineers’ work is scheduled 6 weeks in advance so booking before scheduling is done means no customers are let down. 

It is irritating though sometimes - eg my mum only let me know about a week in advance that she could no longer do the October break as had a business trip she’d mixed up the dates for. I had to cover it all because Red couldn’t book such short notice leave. 

Though I do find I can work OK for a day or two with the children at home now (I don’t do it for longer as not fair on the kids not getting to go out in their holidays), home based working is such a godsend and makes life a million times easier! 

Frugal wins

1. Another day of chilling at home beckons (perhaps with a short walk to the local park) - so I can’t see us spending money as long as we stay away from internet shopping!

2. Had a lovely night in with friends yesterday which was very frugal - bought a bottle of baileys and bag of crisps for it but otherwise drank alcohol we had it, served leftover goodies from Christmas (cheeseboard, chocolates) and incurred no costs. Played a fun board game I borrowed off my mum which she’d received as a Christmas present. 

3. Celebrating Hogmanay tonight at home with my sister and her husband. Again will serve up alcohol, soft drinks, crisps and sweet treats which we have in. May break out the same board game though my sister has played it on Boxing Day with us already 😂 she will probably bring a couple of games over too.

4. Completed a puzzle yesterday which I’d been working on over the Christmas break. It was missing about four pieces, but on the other hand counts as a frugal win as my friend passed it on to me for free 😂

Thirty day list

This is a list of “stuff” we may want, kept here for me to refer back to in 30 days as I won’t be buying it til then (exception may be if I see the item cheap on eBay and want to pounce before it ends, but I will try to wait the full 30 days before even looking).

New trainers (for me) - 31/12
Shower screen - 31/12
More glass tupperwares - 31/12
Travel booster car seat for Bambi - 31/12

New mattress for Bambi 

One thing I will be buying soon and am not going to wait the 30 days for is a mattress for Bambi. In fairness it’s been on the cards for ages 😂

I’ve been dithering for about a year on getting the children a new bed. Right now they are in a “bodge job” bunk bed - Monkey’s mid sleeper has been raised on wood blocks (safely!) and Bambi’s cot (with two sides removed) has been chopped to slide under it. The issue is now at four she is really getting too big to only have a cot sized bed (it’s not even a larger cot bed/toddler bed size, it’s the smallest cot mattress you can get!). Poor Bambi, Monkey moved to a full single bed on his 2nd birthday! 

The issue is I don’t want to invest in bunk beds in case they don’t want to share a room long term. I’m conscious that at 7, Monkey may have limited years of wanting to share with his little sister. We have three bedrooms so won’t be forcing them to share if they want their own space; we use the other (bigger) room as their playroom so it is still a room for them currently, it’s just more efficient at their young ages to share sleeping and playing space because they always play together. 

While I know you can get bunk beds which come apart into two singles, we would need to get rid of Monkey’s mid sleeper as have nowhere to store it. But I think once they do split up into their own rooms, the mid sleeper will be ideal for whoever is in the small room as it really is tiny. So I’m reluctant to change it.

Our current solution is therefore to remove Bambi’s cot and put a single mattress on the floor under Monkey’s bed. I know some people don’t like the idea of them sleeping on the floor, but her cot mattress is honestly only a couple of inches raised at the moment. I have done extensive research and the recommendation is that if the mattress isn’t raised we should pull it out and prop it against a wall once a week to air it, so I will do that.

This seems the most sensible cost-effective solution as once they stop sharing a room, the mid sleeper will just remain in the small room and we can pick up a single bedroom to put Bambi’s mattress in in the other room. I think if I try to replace it with a new bed now, I’ll end up buying again in a year or two. 

Whew that was long winded!!!!

Energy bills

I’ve decided to switch to variable DD (so just paying what you use each month). We’re fed up of the average monthly DD because they never get the estimating right and end up keeping our money for ages! Better that it earns interest for us than them. Yes I appreciate that in the winter we will be paying much more than the summer, but as we have some savings to smooth it out I think it’ll work fine. 

Bluegreen143

This month’s joint spending £3,576

An outrageously spendy month! 

Featuring both children’s birthdays, BIL’s birthday, Christmas, finishing the conservatory/garden and a myriad of car-related woes.

Personal spending round up to follow.

Mortgage & council tax £687.86

Life insurance £26.79

Gas & electricity £193

Internet £25.19

Car loan £160
Interest-free loan from my mum; we now owe £5,020

Car maintenance £276.95
A plethora of car-related faults 🙄

Nursery school fund £25.80

TV & music £39.22
Includes both Spotify and Amazon Music as we slightly overlapped when switching

Groceries £542.67
We also used £95 of clubcard vouchers, but it includes party food for the children’s birthday parties and Christmas food. Also some household items as I only started separating them out last week

Household goods £27.09
Includes printer ink subscription, toiletries, cleaning supplies, de-icer etc

Chicken feed £22.50

Petrol £131.23

Parking £8.20

Taxis/Uber £83.10
Incurred due to the excessive amount of car-related mishaps we’ve had this month…

Kids parties £190.21

Birthday gifts £96.48
Not including kids as we bought their presents in November. BIL’s gift, three kids’ party gifts plus I bought three duplicate Lego sets from Monkey and will give those at the next three parties we go to

Eating out for BIL’s birthday £52.10
It was nice to see them but the food was not worth it…

Christmas £642.53
Mainly the tree, gifts and crafting stuff

Conservatory/garden project £336.60
Stones for the garden, paint etc

New hoover £119
Much needed! 

Air fryer £10
Bargain - my mum picked it up for me off a bartering site 

Kids’ books £28.96
Got seduced by the Gaelic bookshop stand at the school fayre and also paid extra when we used book tokens ordering from Waterstones

Kids’ activities £33
Monkey’s football plus taking Bambi to Playgym once

Kids’ movies £19.98
Allowed the kids a Disney movie each to watch on their birthdays and add to our collection (bought digitally on Amazon) 

Kids’ pocket money £24
Monkey gets £4 a week and Bambi £2

Kids’ clothes £46.98
Including a Christmas jumper each, which I now regret 🙄

Charity £13.48

Unknown £49.68 
Mainly unidentified Tesco transactions plus correction for reconciliation. Oops! 

Bluegreen143

Personal spending round-up £330.74

Similarly spendy!!

Bills £127.49
Includes gym membership, phone bill, online subscription, photo back up service. Will be much lower ongoing due to cancelling the gym

Dinner out with mum & sister £55.40
Pricey but extremely tasty Thai food!

Alcohol & crisps for hosting £24.24

Justeat delivery £31.44
I’ve already ranted about this 🙄

Christmas gifts £47.99
We agreed certain gifts weren’t to come from the joint budget; this is mainly for my sister and also a small token for a family friend.

Misc frittering £44.18
Mainly on convenience food and very mediocre cafe hot chocolates…

Cheery_Daff

Thanks for sharing all that in such detail. Things do get rather spendy sometimes, don't they??

KajiKita

The Christmas spend in the first breakdown looks high if it doesn’t include any food? Will some of the stuff bought be reusable next year?

As for the rest, December is a tough month, especially for you with two significant birthdays in there. If you were to work out the total for extra in December spend, could you save that from now to the end of November 2023?

KK

Bluegreen143

EDIT - oh, on your second point. We do save in pots for birthdays & Christmas and the like. So no worries there. The excess this month came from savings not a credit card or overdraft. It’s just when I do my monthly round ups I include expenses in the month they actually happened even if they came out of a pot. But don’t worry, the money was mainly there for it though we hadn’t quite saved enough for Christmas as it had been eaten by the birthdays - but we had enough in monthly cash flow to cover the rest. Just meant contributing much less to savings this month than normal.

@KajiKita apart from the (real, so not reusable) tree it was all presents, so no, not reusable next year 😂.

Gifts are a tricky part of our budget as Red is very much a gift giving love language person so he point blank refuses to economise.

So our Christmas gifts budget is something like:

Each other: £100 each - so £200 overall (however we both overspent, I spent about £120 on Red not including stocking fillers… what can I say, the man loves a gift yet is difficult to buy for 😂)

Kids: £100 each inc stocking fillers (think we actually came in a bit lower on this as it mainly came from charity shops)

MIL: £100 (Red refuses to lower this)

My folks: £75 (on two people)

Red’s nephew’s: £20 each so £60 total (he actually gave them £25 but as he’d said £20 when we budgeted I held firm and asked him to pay the rest from his spends which he did)

As you can see that’s £635 already but I also spend a bit on photo calendars of the kids for the grandparents and relatives (about £60 I think for six calendars) and a little bit of craft supplies for making cards and painted mugs. £5 for the whip-round for the school bus driver (teachers got mugs).

Then the tree was £50. 

So when you add it all up the total Christmas budget would be more like £750 but obviously we bought a few of the gifts in November. 

This isn’t including gifts for siblings & friends which we agreed to fund ourselves - Red only bought for his childless siblings as the others agreed we would just buy for the “kids” (his nephews are all in their 20s). I bought for my sister. We both opted out of friend and workplace gift exchanges.

So it’s not that we buy for so many people - but admittedly our budget is high for each other and the kids. Though I don’t actually know anyone in real life who spends less than £100 on each child - toys are expensive!