MeandO's money-shuffling

MeandO

Morning all, hopefully everyone had an enjoyable bank holiday weekend.

Grocery shopping was undertaken at the weekend, first at Ald! which came to £29 ish, but funds I had left on a gift card got it down to just over £20.
Next I popped to M&S as their blueberries & raspberries are a cut above everywhere else and are not much more expensive than other supermarkets, so I buy them from there if I can. I started shopping with a basket but had to go back for a trolley as I found lots of YS reductions and ended up with around £75 worth of food for £35. The meat and fish has gone in the freezer for use at a later date, DS has some treats and I'm eating blueberries like they're going out of fashion at the moment as I bought two huge trays of them for half price and they look as fresh as if they've just been picked, they're lovely! If they look like they're starting to turn I'll freeze some of those too. Spending £55 on groceries in one hit has made the grocery pot a bit low though so I am determined to buy nothing but milk and possibly eggs this week and make the most of all the lovely ingredients we have in.

I made another FB sale yesterday for £15 so I've paid that off the CC. DS's new sports boots were also paid for on it but I sent the money straight to the card to pay those off. He found a pair he was happy with for £65 rather than the £100 I was expecting so they've cost a bit less than I anticipated. The pot for uniform/kit etc now only has £9 left in it though. I think I'm going to have to look at the budget and possibly take £50 off the ISA savings every month to put £100 into the uniform/kit pot instead as £50 per month just isn't enough.

I also bought some blackout curtains for DS's room yesterday which have gone on the CC. I slept in his room Sunday night (DS was at his Dad's and OH was snoring and keeping me awake so I moved into DS's room halfway through the night) and I realised why DS is always awake so early and can't sleep in. The sun in the morning was so bright it was impossible to sleep. I'd previously bought some blackout liners but they were forever falling off and the rings were breaking so were pretty useless, I should have just bought blackouts from the start but the curtains we had in DS's room were lovely so didn't want to get rid of them. I popped to d unelm and they wanted £70 for a pair of the correct size.  I had resigned myself to paying it but thought I'd just walk to therange which was close by and see if they had any cheaper. I'm glad I did as I saved myself £45 by doing so and picked some up for £25!  They're now hung and the old ones were washed and dried on the line yesterday and I'm planning on using them for the sitting room to insulate the window are a bit more in the winter, I just need to find a curtain pole to put up as there isn't currently one there, we just have blinds. The new curtains are much better in DS's room now but sunlight is still quite bright around the 'edges' of the curtains. I'm not sure if I can do much about that though.

Today I've had to send £12 over to DS's sports club for specialist 'kit' and tonight DS and I are going to buy swim shorts as he tried his on last night and they don't fit and he needs them for the weekend. I'll have to take the money for that out of a different pot as there won't be enough to cover it in the school/kit pot. There seems to be something else to pay for every day at the moment.

foxandflowers

re: Curtains - Mini Fox has the same problem in her room - I dug out some from 3 houses ago (!!!) from the storage unit, they're currently on the floor in her bedroom as I need a different curtain pole to put them up with! Thanks for the reminder. 

Well done on the sales. It never fails to astound me how expensive kids are. Yesterday I bought the leavers hoody for Mini Fox - £27  

MeandO

foxandflowers said:

re: Curtains - Mini Fox has the same problem in her room - I dug out some from 3 houses ago (!!!) from the storage unit, they're currently on the floor in her bedroom as I need a different curtain pole to put them up with! Thanks for the reminder. 

Well done on the sales. It never fails to astound me how expensive kids are. Yesterday I bought the leavers hoody for Mini Fox - £27  

Good luck with the curtains, Fox. I'm going to try and extend DS's curtain poles a bit to spread longer across the window and see if that helps. We could both do with more lie ins!
£27 for a child's hoody is ridiculous, I'm not sure how people are supposed to afford all of this extra stuff now or when the leavers hoody thing started. When I was at school we wrote on school shirts on the last day, not that I kept that either! Uniform alone is expensive enough.

MeandO

A bit of a win on my home insurance today. My renewal was £215.68, slightly down from the cheapest quote I could get last year of £222.65. A few comparison sites only came up with one cheaper at £188 but the company was not the best reviewed, so a quick online chat with my present company and they got the renewal price down to £182.35 with the same levels of cover as last year. Pleased with a saving of £33.33! I've moved the funds from the car/house pot to cover it.

The second load of washing is on the line, making the most of the sunny/breezy weather. 

WinterWeather

Blackout curtains are amazing, I used to get woken by the early morning sunshine/brightness but no more. Miraculous invention. I bought mine from Amazon and they were very reasonable.

Have you tried Campfire stew? Look it up, there are plenty of recipes out there. I do gammon joints regularly (I buy the smoked though) and in the Instant Pot I make it for slicing for sandwiches and to chop into a risotto etc. but in the slow cooker I throw in all the ingredients for Campfire stew - it’s lush and does several meals (you can freeze it)

You’ve been through a lot lately and a theme I see throughout all the recent (and past) posts is your dedication to looking after and providing for everyone else. Admirable, truly and you sound a truly wonderful mother, your son is very lucky (wish my mum had been like you 🥰)  but what about you? To be able to look after everyone else, you need to look after yourself. Stress & pressure can lead to health issues and depressive thoughts over time. How about a little self-care or a treat for you … you matter too lovely. Take some time for you xxx

MeandO

Thank you for your kind comments, WinterWeather, your post floored me a little to be honest and made my quite emotional, I'm so grateful for your kindness.
I would walk barefoot to the ends of the Earth for my son, but I don't consider myself to be the best at 'Mumming.' Motherhood didn't come naturally to me and it took me a long time time find my feet (and now I realise, several years of undiagnosed PND and no support from the ex made things a lot harder). I also feel sad and guilty about the fractured family he has grown up with and how I handled the narcissistic abuse from the ex for years which is ongoing but I largely ignore it these days. I constantly try to make things better for DS but I will always feel like I failed him in lots of ways.  

Oh yes, Campfire Stew, I have made that before but forgot all about it! Thank you for the reminder. OH has a joint of ham in his freezer from Christmas so perhaps we'll make that in the slow cooker. 

It's funny you mention about the stress and pressure as OH and I were talking about this last night. He is currently monitoring his blood pressure daily after coming off some medication due to adverse side effects. OH is fit for his age, eats very little and has cycled a lot all his life yet his BP is high. I used to have high blood pressure when stressed and was monitored several times in the past for this, but in the last year or two my body seems to have developed a weird 'chilled' response to stress as my bp is consistently the best it's been all of my life! You can thrown anything at me and my bp is always 'optimal!'  I think with all the stress I deal with, I've just developed this calmness response from within somehow... I certainly let things bother me a whole lot less. OH is puzzled by my bp and wants to know my secret!  As for depression, I was definitely there for some parts of my life and I do feel down at times, but I always seem able to tell myself it will pass and the feeling is only temporary. I have definitely developed coping mechanisms such as keeping busy and spending time outside. The gym session really help me with that too, I look forward to them and they are always lots of fun. It's a gym for women over 40, so being around a like-minded bunch of resilient women always helps too.  I hope I can continue to be able to afford the gym when my membership is due for renewal at the end of the year as it is expensive. I will have to try my utmost to find the money for that.

MeandO

Two loads of washing are drying nicely on the line, including DS's white school shirts from which I've managed to get the pasta sauce stain out of after a 60 degree wash with some stain remover. I'm thankful for that as didn't want to have to buy any more yet. 

The sports boots didn't fit  so have been sent back for a refund minus £3.99 postage. I've order the next size up, unfortunately they are £22 more expensive as I found a good deal on the size down. Ex paid half for the smaller size, I'm not even going to bother asking for extra, I'll just cover it. They've gone on the CC alongside more swim shorts as the first two pairs didn't fit and I didn't realise a certain sports shop we'll called 'SD' no longer refunds on items bought in store. Looks like I'll be buying some bits for DS for Christmas with the £38 credit note for the two pairs I'd bought.

DS needed more new pants too so I bought basic black trunks in primarni which still cost me £18! I swear they were nowhere near that much last time I bought them. I've also bought more type II collagen powder (£14.99) as I stopped taking it a month ago to save money but can feel the difference in my joints since stopping. Everything hurts more, basically. So the CC has had a beating this week and I am feeling rubbish about now finding more funds to pay it off.  I did have another vinted sale of £7.50 this morning so that will go towards it along with the rest of the ebay/vinted money when it clears.

This month has confirmed that I'm going to have to cut the savings to the ISA from next payday though.  I have been sending £350 a month to it but it will have to drop to £250 with the £100 most likely going towards increasing the contribution to DS's sports/school/clothes pot monthly and perhaps the Christmas pot as I'm lagging behind what I wanted to achieve on that. It's demoralising as I was putting £500 a month away to the ISA last year. I have to keep reminding myself that I'm also paying £287 a month into AVCs now, so that's a long term savings pot. It's tough trying to do everything solo though. I'm already getting panicky about how I'm going to cover everything once I'm no longer eligible for UC & child benefit when DS is older.

MeandO

Another £50 gone this morning on sports 'events' the ex has enrolled DS on and then only later tells me there is a cost involved. He's paid half, apparently, but I've yet to see any proof of costs as I always send him.  I've had to take money out of the ISA to cover this, pay off the CC and cover another birthday I'd forgotten about so the ISA is now lower than it was at the start of this month. I'm feeling so deflated about money and the constant battle in trying to save any. 
There's only £27 left in the groceries account which I need to make last for 2 weeks so it's going to be a case of eating whatever we can find in the freezer. There's under £50 in the fuel account and I need to drive 'home' and back next week so I'm not sure how I'm going to cover that yet. 
I'm so tired of living like this every month. I know I'm luckier than a lot of people so I shouldn't moan, but the struggle to make things balance is definitely getting so much harder.  

foxgloves

It must be very frustrating when you are trying hard to keep the budget balanced suddenly to hear that there are costs to which you've been committed without being told. We have also decided to have an 'eat out of the freezer' week next week. I think so much stuff in there which doesn't look that inspiring at first glance can be used creatively to make meals. Mr F made a nice rice recipe last week, which didn't use a single ingredient we hadn't already got in stock. We are also both back onto healthy eating & it is also (embarrassingly!) surprising how much longer things are lasting, so that will be a help. Mr F's downfall is portion size, whereas mine is mindless picking....that saying 'Little pickers wear big knickers' could have been made for me! So I thought I'd just pop on to say that you defo won't be the only one doing some creative freezer-diving over the next week. 
If there is one thing which consistently comes across from your diary posts, @MeandO, it is that you do put lots of effort in & do all you can for your son. I used to work with someone who described her financial situation as "just managing to keep her head above water, but never getting her shoulders out" & I could feel the frustration of that in your post.
Try to stay positive, but accept too, that we all have days where we feel things are rather weighing on top of us. That's not failing, it's being human.
F x

MeandO

Thank you foxgloves, your post was exactly what I needed to read today. You summed the financial situation up perfectly too. Sometimes it feels like I’m treading water in quicksand! 

I hope your freezer diving and healthy eating is successful this week I’m planning on going through my freezer this week and making a list of everything I have in as I always find that helpful in saving money. 

A vinted sale was made over the weekend and will bring me in £6.50. I’m still waiting on a further £10 to clear on there but, annoyingly, it looks like one of the parcels may have been lost in transit. It says both myself and the buyer have to wait another 3 weeks to see if it turns up. The other package also seems to be taking its time so I hope that isn’t lost too.

I’ve had a text reminder appointment for a hospital appointment that I think must be the MRI I have been waiting for, It has told me to follow the special instructions in the letter but I haven’t received a letter! I will need to phone the hospital if I don’t receive a letter within the next couple of days. 

DS has been fed, the kitchen has been cleaned, recycling’s put out and so I’m going to have a shower and hopefully get an early night I’m feeling beyond shattered today.