KMNs diary - curbing spending and maximising saving with a new baby

CRANKY40

Has the baby been checked for tongue tie? The latch problems and the milk spilling could be a pointer.

kiss_me_now9

CRANKY40 said:

Has the baby been checked for tongue tie? The latch problems and the milk spilling could be a pointer.

Yes, he had a 70% tie which was corrected at week 2. It’s improved in the last fortnight on that front but not that much unfortunately. Good spot though!

beanielou

I see you like ginger cats.
I have two 

kiss_me_now9

beanielou said:

I see you like ginger cats.
I have two 

Are they both as nutty as mine? He's a right headcase! 

Some changes have happened since I last wrote on here. I have completely stopped trying to breast feed, it wasn't working for either of us and was just stressing the two of us out. After a long and hard contemplation I decided I do still want to pump as much as I can so I bought a relatively inexpensive wearable pump which I can put on and still pick my LO up with - it's not very natural and a bit awkward still but I can grab him, change his nappy, feed him etc. much easier than with my other pump. I don't think it's a long term solution and when he gets more mobile I'll likely drop pumping all together but for now I'm working on getting enough to feed him during daytime and freezing what we have left over at the end of the day when we switch to formula so that we can still give him some breast milk even when I stop pumping. I hope I can go to 6 or so months with pumping but am aware that I might not get past 3 or 4 months, especially as I struggle with pumping over night which is apparently crucial to keeping your supply going. 

I've had very little time to get my sticker business going as expected but have had some really nice creative ideas that I want to start making. My OH has agreed that one evening a week and one day at the weekend (minimum) he'll take LO out or will look after him without bothering me for at least an hour/hour and a half so I can have some alone time as I'm feeling so suffocated a lot of the time. I have a mental health nurse coming round Wednesday to have a chat about bonding with my LO and getting some strategies in place to hopefully lift me out of this feeling of apathy, depression and anxiety that I get most days and almost all evenings. It's getting a bit better but when we have a bad day I just feel totally hopeless - I'm really hopeful that this will make all our lives easier and give me my spark back so I can enjoy my LO. 

Money wise I have had a couple of days of 'splurges' relative to my now much reduced income and so I have £50 to see me until Friday. I don't really have anything I must buy before then but am meeting a friend for coffee on Thursday and may take my LO into see my work colleagues towards the end of the week which will mean some expensive parking as I can't use the staff car park. I've also put a couple of things on our credit card that perhaps I shouldn't have, I can afford to pay that off no problem but it'll eat into Mays money somewhat. 

Pay day is Friday, I'll have £800 for the month (mat. pay and £100 that I was owed from January overtime - I still think this figure is wrong but I cba to fight it any more). I should be able to put £150 into various savings pots and will send my OH £150 for bills/mortgage - I don't have to do this but I hate the idea of living 'rent free' especially as prior to going on mat leave I was contributing £800 a month to the bills etc.! Obviously I can't do that now but I want to try and keep some contribution going. The key thing for me is remembering that a credit card isn't free money! 

We have LOs first jabs tomorrow and I am dreading it for a variety of reasons, all bar one are completely selfish ones as well

kiss_me_now9

Things are getting tight around here money wise, as I expected it to. I didn’t expect to be down to my last £1.04 (now £8.99 after a Vinted balance withdrawal) 9 days before pay day but there we go. OH kindly took me shopping on Saturday as I have been wearing my maternity jeans and tops since October and I can’t afford to buy anything new - none of my pre baby clothes fit me as I’m still 25lbs heavier than I was before I got pregnant (we’re trying to ignore that). In an effort to try and understand what’s going on with my money I’ve printed off my bank statements from the start of the year and am going through them with a fine tooth comb trying to figure out where I can drop some payments out or trim the fat. I’ve discovered that my contact lenses are costing me £104.80 for 2 x 2 boxes (60 pairs) which is insane especially when I don’t wear them that often, so that’ll will be going. I’m sure when I was in the shop she told me it was £34.80. 

I’m still pumping but have dropped to 4 pumps a day with a view to being weaned off completely by the end of June or whenever I have ‘enough’ in the freezer to give him a bottle of breast milk a day until he’s over 6 months old (he’s 3 months today). It’s starting to get really hard to go out and live life when I need to stop and pump everything three to four hours. We’ve got his three month jabs tomorrow - can’t believe he’s old enough for those already! 

MissRikkiC

You’re doing a great job, keep it up Mamma! 3 months has gone fast, I hope they go okay. Calpol at the ready and plenty of skin to skin I found helped. 

kiss_me_now9

Well life has certainly galloped away with us - LO is 6 months old this weekend! I stopped pumping at 4 months and my god, what a difference that was. The day after I finished for good I turned to my husband and asked why the hell I'd carried it on so long And the funny thing is, we've got all this milk in the freezer that half the time I forget to get out... 

Financially I am really starting to struggle, it's so tricky when you don't know what you're getting each month. Every pay cheque seems to be a different amount despite me asking them to spread the payments equally over 12 months! I've had £600, £800, £1300, £2500 (that one including our COVID 'bonus' and ended up with me paying a substantial amount of tax on it)... who knows what I'll get this month. Vinted stuff isn't shifting at all. 

I am starting to get really worried about my return to work. I don't go back until Spring but it really sounds awful there and it sounds like my job has fundamentally changed to the point where I'm not really sure what the point of my job is now. The whole thing about my job was I was a specialist in an area, that secured funding that my colleagues couldn't do and I would advise based on need and complete the forms for that. That funding apparently has now been pared back to the point where I can't think of a single person who I secured it for before I left would qualify for it now. The circumstances that they've set out now just don't happen and if they do they're not going to be going for that funding anyway most of the time. Feel very guilty about it too as I always, always, always fought for my patients and for this funding to not be changed before I left and it feels very much like they've just shoved it through with no opposition. But then equally we know we want another baby around late 2024/early 2025 so quitting the NHS and losing the benefits of that (good mat and sick pay, good pension) feels very "cutting my nose off to spite my face". 

It might all be a bit moot anyway, as I've decided to go back on reduced hours and there's debate as to whether my role can be taken down to 3 days a week. If it can't then I'll go back to a generic role and I really don't want to do that, because 1) it's boring and 2) it's very poorly managed. 

kiss_me_now9

Had a good chat with my OH about finances the other day. 

At present we are very lucky, that due to his good salary and my savings, we haven't struggled too much over this past year. However I am now finding that I am running out of money by the middle of the month if not earlier. Part of this is some less than savvy spending (going for coffee and paying for parking twice a week adds up) but part of it is that my income is no longer higher than my outgoings. 

At the moment we have a fairly decent mortgage rate as we fixed for 5 years in 2020, however that expires in January 2025 and my OH is already starting to get stressed out about it. Currently we're able to overpay £700 but we're wondering if it'd be better off putting this £700 along with the remainder of our wedding/honeymoon savings (we saved about £25k but only spent just under £15k on both our wedding and honeymoon as we were married during lockdown) to a good joint savings account until the mortgage deal expires. Currently the over payment comes from my OHs wages but our savings are languishing in a terrible Starling joint account that generates about 28p interest a month. At that point we will re-evaluate where we are in terms of work, a potential second baby and our house. By then our savings hopefully will have grown and we can seriously think about whether we try and extend this place or buy somewhere else. I've always said I wanted to move closer to our parents (they live on the outskirts of London, we live in the West Country) but honestly I don't know how we'd ever afford it. We currently have a 3 bed semi with a large front drive and a massive back garden, in a nice village with views of the local AONB. Good nurseries/schools in walking distance and both our jobs within a 25 minute drive commute. On paper it's perfect but it's a 2 hour drive back to either of our parents, who aren't getting any younger or healthier, and due to the layout if we have a second kid there's nowhere to put visitors up. Our living room is too narrow for a blow up bed or pull out sofa and there's nowhere else to put one. Because of the garden we could - if we ever won the lottery! - extend out the back of the house twice over and still have garden to spare but you'd need to completely redo the layout of the whole inside including moving the stairs and kitchen. I think if you could pick the whole village we're in up and move it to the other side of Oxford we'd stay here forever!

kiss_me_now9

Disappointing morning here. £60 left in my bank account until next Friday and I've got a few ways to make that stretch. I'm going out with friends on Saturday night - just for a meal, and I haven't seen them since before I had my baby, in fact I haven't had a night out without him since having him - and next week I'm meeting some mum friends for coffee. Need to put diesel in the car to get to these places. I always have a coffee after swimming when I'm feeding my baby (though the cafe was shut this week, so I saved a few quid there!). And we'll need some more bread/milk/veg at some point too. 

Confirmed with work on my KIT day earlier this week that I won't be going back to my old role, but will take on a different one which suits my childcare hours better. I'm quite sad about it but I need to be there for my family more than I want to do that job and besides, it's still in the same team, it's just a different area so if I want to aim for a higher band or move to a different hospital at some point it gives me more skills and experience. I'm mainly upset that they seem to be dissolving my previous role as it was unique in the county and it will be a huge detriment to the people who use the service. My predecessor put 4 hard years of work into setting up and advocating for the role, she was challenged at every quarter as to why she was still needed just like I was and it feels like they've seen a good opportunity to get rid of it and taken it with both hands. Feels a lot like they're saying "Well, all that hard work and effort you've both put in wasn't actually at all useful, thanks". 

I'll give it the number of months I need to to avoid paying any maternity pay back to see whether I like it enough to stay for a year or so (just in case we have a second and I need the maternity pay..).

kiss_me_now9

I am struggling this end of the month! I've had to dip into our savings four times now to make sure I can cover standing orders and DDs. Not ideal. It's my fault for putting some large purchases on the CC in July though as I had to pay those out of my August wage slip (I should have taken the money from the savings there and then). Hopefully that'll be the last time I make this mistake! 

I'm trying hard to get something uploaded to Etsy to see if I can get some passive income coming in but it's finding the time to fit it around baby groups, naps, KIT days, work outs, meal prep now we're weaning and maintaining the house - oh, and I'm in a village panto too so learning lines and going to rehearsal weekly! Though I do like to be busy