Learning to walk before I run

edinburgher

@Karmacat, cheese isn't always my friend, but I'll occasionally split a tub of cottage cheese across a couple of lunches as it's cheap and cheerful. I'm never sure of a lower carb way to eat PB, maybe on celery? I do have a jar lurking, but I should try and get one of those bargain 1kg 100% nuts tubs next time

themadvix

Peanut butter - with a spoon! Or carrot sticks, but a spoon works for me 😂

Karmacat

Yeah, what madvix said  Oh, and those bargain 1k tubs?  If you do go that route, be a bit careful.  I twice put some in my delivery order from Asda, and both times the bottom of the tub was just a little bit cracked - the first time it just leaked a bit of peanut oil, but the second time it leaked proper peanut butter.  I got a refund, so all was well, but it wasn't good.  The 720g jars are almost as mse.

powerspowers

Kids’ stuff second hand is brilliant! People get rid of so much that is good quality and hardly worn/used. We regularly do clothing bundles from eBay and FB and get good stuff. They’ll be summer bits appearing now. We do bikes second hand as well as would rather have a high quality kids bike that’s been used than a cheap (heavy!) one new. They hold value as well- bought a beat up Islabike a few years ago for £100 (500 new) and just sold for £130 today. 

edinburgher

I am almost free of lurgy, DD and Mrs E still fighting it. DD even had a couple of days off school and I was pleased and proud to see that she was distraught about this

I don't have a lot of financial news to report. £93 of cashback from London is now Confirmed on TCB, so wending its way closer. I also finally managed to speak with an insurance broker today and we're getting quotes sent over for sickness and accident insurance that should offered indexed income protection until we're 68 While it definitely isn't cheap, it looks like will come in at under £100/month for both policies and I suppose it could be worse. Oddly enough, my policy might actually be cheaper than Mrs E's because although it's for c. 60% more, I have a generous sickness absence policy that offers full pay for 6 months and half pay for 6 months. This brought down my premium, whereas Mrs E is more expensive to insure as she has crap work cover for sickness absence. Finally, I sold a pair of rugby tickets as pregnant Mrs E will not have the energy for 3 home matches this November. I didn't take the ****, just a slight increase on the face value to cover my costs and fees for selling.

In terms of the house, we're expecting outline costs from one builder by the end of the week (a shortlisted firm who our architect has worked with quite a few times). This will be the litmus test to determine whether or not our plans are affordable and if not, for the architect to come up with more restrained plans and then for us to go out to tender. In real terms, quite a lot has happened in a short space of time, but I'm an impatient sod. I also spoke with the firm that fitted our solar panels about arranging a quote for an air source heat pump (we're considering ditching our gas boiler and hob so that we'd be effectively decarbonised (as we buy 100% renewable electricity)). They're going to come back to us with further info and possibly an indicative quote by next week. It's all very exciting on paper, but can't get too carried away until we have some actual builder costings.

Outline costs were dreadful - £125,000-150,000. Erm, no 

earthgirl2

Wonderful news on the pregnancy - congratulations! I would also agree 2nd hand for children and living cheaply is the way forward when they are young. We had gifted/freecycled/facebook page/second hand for everything except car seats and a relative bought us the cot matress. They don't know any different!
Looking forward to following your journey.

powerspowers

Ouch that’s massive!! Are you getting more builder costs or is it back to drawing board? 

edinburgher

powerspowers said:

Ouch that’s massive!! Are you getting more builder costs or is it back to drawing board? 

We're hoping to get more outline costs before going back to the drawing board. We can comfortably afford to do at least the loft conversion using the additional borrowing agreed (even with an expensive builder), so that's something

A very spendy evening of grocery shopping (back on my diet, so more meat etc.), cat litter and food, a few wee bits and bobs for Halloween, a couple of on offer Christmas presents and a small bag of food for DD's food bank collection at school. On the plus side, the fridge and freezer are groaning. We have spent in the region of £420 on groceries this month, but that's actually an improvement! Aiming to spend less next month as it's a short month (4 shops).

Suffolk_lass

Hello Ed, good to see you back with a diary. And congratulations! 

I was wondering if you had considered asking one of your near neighbours who has an extension of their own if you could take a look? Their plans will be there to see on the planning portal for the local authority so a bit of preliminary research could identify similar original house and a layout you like. Rather than assuming your architect "heard" the budget you are looking at. Rehashing plans that have previously been approved is not unknown and both architects and clients have been known to do this. We are fortunate in that DH was an industrial designer and can do technical drawings that meet the planners' needs. You might find someone willing to let you use their plans with a few small modifications. My experience was that the very pleasant person we commissioned had no real commitment to us as clients so I probably have a jaundiced view.

With regard to your diet-facing grocery shopping, there are many cheaper (than meat) sources of protein and padding out your recipes with things like lentils and chick-peas are tried and tested cost-saving techniques without sacrificing flavour of texture - over on the Old-Style Grocery Challenge there are many, many recipes. Though chicken is the highest scoring protein source, almonds in particular, are a good source of protein. Here's a chart for comparison. I often add a handful of red lentils to spot-the-meat recipes like chilli or ragu.

I found that writing down everything I spent in a single month (and I mean everything) was really illuminating. I don't know if you are like me but I was managing by mentally allocating and pot-looting as I went, but the main task was not really being addressed. Even after more than ten years of challenges on this forum, I still "cheat" myself sometimes. In the gap years (between stopping work and state pension) this has the potential to get out of control. 

I just wanted to echo that second-hand baby stuff is brilliant (old cot, new mattress, old pram, new tyres) with our old Silver Cross, coach-built pram (£50) selling to a film prop company for £350, when we finally tidied the garage). All the newborn stuff people bought us went straight on eBay as DS went straight into 0-3 month size too

edinburgher

@Suffolk_lass - hello my friend 

I think the architect did already loot public domain plans. We haven't heard back from him yet and while it has only been 3 working days, he did state "early this week".

The diet front is a wee bit more complicated as it's essentially keto at the moment, with lentils and legumes having high net carbs. I can, however, draw on cheaper animal meats and fatty cuts that some diets might forbid. I do already use almonds and peanut butter as they're fairly affordable, fatty and relatively low in net carbs vs. How much fills you up.

There is still a bit of pot looting going on, but we've definitely made progress, looting pots that are in surplus (as opposed to slashing and burning the entire pot rainforest) 😀 in fact, almost every budget line will end the month with something left in it, I'm proud of that.

We have bought absolutely nothing for the baby yet, still doesn't seem entirely real. 12 week scan today