Stopping the backsliding… a family of four no longer living beyond their means

Bluegreen143

Some of you may know me from my last diary, which was on Mortgage Free Wannabe.

The truth is, I’ve not paid anything extra off my mortgage for years, I’ve not saved like I meant to, and I currently have £1,000 on my credit card 🤦‍♀️ 🤦‍♀️ 🤦‍♀️ 

I plan to have this paid off in under 3 months, so I could have stayed on my old diary. But the reason the balance is there is that we have been spending too much for ages. I really need a bit more accountability to revamp my budget, pay off my card and save a good-sized emergency fund before I go back to trying to be a mortgage free wannabe! 

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A bit about me (I’ll do a separate post later with the budget and financial breakdown). 

I’m just about to turn 36 and live in Scotland with my lovely husband Red, my 8.5yo son Monkey and my 5.5yo daughter Bambi. 

I was a SAHM when the kids were tiny and was used to a correspondingly tiny budget, but for the past few years I’ve worked a corporate job, mainly from home. I now work 32 hours a week over 5 days, which allows me to do the school runs everyday so while I earn a little less, we have no childcare costs. My part time salary is just under £37k.

My husband is a meter engineer and earns around £41k. 

As a family, the things which are important to us shouldn’t cost a lot, yet we consistently seem to spend a lot 🤷‍♀️

I.e. we like getting outdoors, reading, cooking at home, growing a bit of fruit & veg, woodworking (Red) and knitting (me). 

I do like seeing friends often but we generally do things like meet in the park with our kids or have drinks at home nowadays. 

Our available budget has more than doubled since my SAHM days. And yet I seem LESS able to save now than I was then! 

I used YNAB (You Need A Budget) with success for most of the last decade, but in the last year or so I’ve been experimenting with doing without it to save the fee, using spreadsheets or paper budgets instead. This has got me into an enormous muddle and I really regret it! I’ve signed up for a month’s free trial of YNAB on a different email address and started using it again but I’ve already decided to get the year’s subscription when the trial ends. 

Anyway that’s enough about us for now - I’ll be back later with a more detailed budget. 

Bluegreen143

Ok, time for figures. 

INCOME

My salary: £2,275
Red’s salary: £2,400 (but it’s slightly variable)
Child benefit: £170
Total monthly income: £4,845

DEBT
Mortgage ~ £130k owed
- current interest rate 1.9%
- monthly payment £530 p/m
- 25 years to go and the deal ends this December 

Credit card £1,070.60
- interest free as long as I pay each purchase in no more than 3 installments 
- due to pay £740 in mid-August and the rest in mid-September (but it’s likely I will need to put 1-2 more purchases on it before I’ve dug out of this)

ASSETS

Pensions

Red has about £12k, I have about £30k, so we are both really behind for our ages, especially Red who is 40. We both have LISAs too, mine has approx £2k and Red’s about £250.

Savings £4,800 joint, £936.78 personal 

Help to Save accounts £4,200
These were opened before I went back to work and mature in December. I won’t take from these as you lose the substantial bonus if you do.

Emergency savings: £400

My cash ISA: £483.41
My S&S ISA: £458.37
This has been squirrelled away out of my personal allowance. Red generally spends all of his so has no personal savings. I’m currently saving for a replacement wedding ring as I lost mine about 3 years ago and have never been able to replace it yet. 

Bluegreen143

Budget

Total monthly income: £4,845

Bills £1,109
Mortgage £530
Council tax £170
Life insurance £75
Energy £240
Internet £24
Home insurance £140 annually
Car insurance £500 annually
Car tax £200 annually
Car maintenance and MOT ?? (How long is a bit of string?!) 
Home maintenance, boiler service etc (?!)

Other essentials £800-£1,000
Groceries & household £650-700
Petrol & parking £125-200
Kids’ clothes & uniform £70 (built up in a pot until we need it)

Subscriptions & other monthly costs £128.50
Karate club (Monkey) £20
Cubs dues £100 annually plus £70 for camp (Monkey)
Kids’ pocket money £35
Bike club £24 (kids thing)
Netflix £5
TV license £15
Amazon prime £95 annually
Spotify £99 annually (but I’m considering cancelling when up for renewal)

Personal spending £1,000
We also put a large chunk of money into our personal accounts each month. This amount has varied a lot lately and has been really high (we were experimenting with only having “needs” money in our joint account). We’ve just been discussing making it £500 a month from now on - this is for our own clothes, phone bills and personal subscriptions, socialising, hobbies, bad habits etc…

This should leave around £1,600-1,750 free each month for savings (long term plus Christmas & holidays) plus monthly spending like taking the kids out or getting gifts. It sounds like loads but clearly not tracking it hasn’t worked as I have no idea where it goes. 

I’ve set up YNAB now so this will get more accurate with time. 

joedenise

Have found your new diary and have subscribed.  Have always enjoyed reading your diaries.  Looking at how much you're spending on food makes me think you could probably cut this back quite a bit!  Might be worth having a look at the Grocery Challenge on the Old Style board to help you cut back a bit.

I know that when I used to post on there I managed to cut our shopping down quite a lot.  There are only 2 of us and have managed to cut down to about £250 a month including our bulk fund (for pantry stockups - mainly tinned stuff).

Bluegreen143

Thanks @joedenise. I think you’re definitely right yet I really struggle with this! I need to keep a much closer eye on it and I always find posting regularly on here helps me see patterns. 

One last post before I log off (I try to do a tech free Friday night and Saturday and I’m normally offline by now - but I want to get in the habit of daily posting). 

Got my child benefit in today - £170. I put some in the grocery budget, which didn’t have enough for the month, and split the rest between our MOT fund (due in August) and our holiday fund (also in August).

Today I worked from home. Red was off work with the kids, but as it was the first anniversary of his brother’s death he was pretty busy visiting late BIL’s fiancée and his mum so they didn’t do anything expensive.

After I finished work at 2.30pm I went for a walk in the local park by myself. Always such a lovely way to recharge and totally free. 

We had HM pizza for dinner in the pizza oven Red has just finished making - MIL came back with Red for some pizza too. It’s sooooo good! This is only our second time using it. 

Today’s spending 

£21.99 - chicken feed 
£5.15 - Red picked up olives, kitchen roll and jalapeños in Tesco 
£18.60 - a taxi for MIL to get home after dinner. Not sure what to categorise this in YNAB. We do pay for taxis for her quite a bit, because she no longer drives and isn’t fit/well enough to use public transport, so I should maybe make a category for it 🤔

joedenise

Definitely sounds like you need a new category for MILs taxis if you regularly pay for them.

You've used YNAB before so you know you can have as many categories as you want/need.

I think it's well worth the subscription.  When I started with the online version at the beginning of this year I was just about managing to use this month's money for next month but I'm now at nearly 2 months ahead - I think it's saying 173 days of age at the moment!  No idea how that's happened but it's certainly working for me!

Debsnewbudget

I changed from monthly audible subscription to an annual one and its saved money as well as allowing me to download multiple books at holiday times etc.
its £69.99 pa instead of £7.99 pm 

beanielou

Happy shiny new diary 

A good idea to keep a spending diary & see where the extra money goes.

Bluegreen143

Just been making a mealplan for the next week, which will hopefully not be too pricey!

We’re going to my mum’s for dinner tomorrow and I have the stuff for Sunday night’s dinner already. 

Mealplan

Breakfasts
Me - fruit, nuts & yoghurt, fruit milkshake or porridge 
Kids - cereal, peanut butter toast or porridge 
Red - tends to skip breakfast when off work and have a bacon or ham sandwich in the late morning

Snacks
Our rule is that the kids generally only have fruit/veg for snacks on weekdays, I’ll also buy some crisps (mainly for Red) and make some hummus. Annoyingly Red drinks (own brand) cola as his main drink so need to get that too. 

Lunch options
Beans or egg on toast
Leftovers or soup
Sandwiches or toasties with salad veg 
Tuna mayo pasta

Sun - brisket with roast veg
Mon - lentil soup and HM bread
Tues - black bean & sweet potato enchiladas, salad
Wed - chicken & vegetable curry, rice 
Thurs - salmon, HM chips, veg 
Fri - hot dogs, salad, corn on the cob
Sat - chicken pasta and salad

Shopping list

fruit (especially bananas, probably grapes, some kind of berries, apple and melon)
celery
lettuce & rocket 
cucumber
cherry tomatoes 
cauliflower
broccoli
sweet potato 
corn on the cob
pepper
mushrooms
potatoes
lemons 

milk
chicken breast 
salmon fillets
bacon
sandwich ham
hot dog sausages 
greek yoghurt
butter
cheddar

bread
hot dog rolls

tinned tomatoes 
tinned chickpeas
tinned black beans
decaf coffee
cola
crisps
frozen berries 

Going to put it into an online shop to check how much it comes to. I’m not going until Sunday so have time to edit it. 

Bluegreen143

So I’ve signed up to the cheapest delivery saver plan and am going to go back to online deliveries. Yes it means not shopping in Lidl, but it’s so much easier to keep a handle on the cost of the full shop when you order online. I’m going to try really hard to go back to one weekly shop (I normally do at least two shops a week), albeit we may need to pop into a shop for fresh fruit later in the week, but I’ll see. 

My trolley cost for the week is £75.87 which is normally what I spend for a half week shop 😳 I won’t get it this low every week because I’ve not had to get much cupboard stuff or household items. But it’s a good start! Red may add an item or two but hopefully not much - I’ve made sure to add some treat crisps for the weekend etc so he doesn’t feel the need to. 

In my order is:

FRUIT/VEG
Lemons x4 £1.20
Strawberries £1.90
Melon £2
6x apples £1.49
8x bananas £1.28
Sweet gem lettuce £1
Cherry tomatoes £1
2x red peppers £1.18
Celery 75p
Rocket £1
Cucumber 89p
2kg potatoes £1.35
Red onion 21p
White cabbage 80p
Chestnut mushrooms 89p
Sweet potato 42p
Cauliflower £1.19
Broccoli 82p
Corn cobettes £1.39

PROTEIN/DAIRY
Extra mature cheddar 400g £3
4x salmon fillets £8
6x bratwurst sausages £3.50
Bacon £1.45
950g chicken breast £5.50
Salted butter x2 £3.38
Whole milk 4 pint x2 £2.90
Greek yoghurt 500g x2 £1.70

BREAD
Hot dog buns 89p
Seeded bread £1.05

STORECUPBOARD
Pasta 1kg £1.29
Black beans 49p
Chickpeas 49p
Tinned tomatoes x3 £1.17
Frozen blueberries £2.25

TREATS/SNACKS/DRINKS
Caffeine free cola x6 £4.20
85% dark chocolate £2
Pringles £1.75
Pretzels £1.50
Party mix crisps £1
6pk crisps x2 £2

HOUSEHOLD
Cotton wool pads £1.50
Kids’ toothpaste £2.20

I’ve posted the mealplan in my previous post above. 

TODAY’S PLAN

Today we’re going to my mum & stepdad’s for dinner for my stepdad’s birthday. Before that it’s a quiet day at home - we’ve had a very lazy morning so far. 

My goals for today:

- rip out our pea plants, which are done, and sow some lettuce, carrots and beetroot

- pick anything ripe in the garden (I think we have blueberries and raspberries)

- start a sourdough loaf

- make wraps to freeze for enchiladas this week

- clean the bathrooms

- cuddle up with the kids for a good long reading session and get them to do some reading/writing practice

- do two washings

We’ll see if I manage all that! 

Baileys_Babe

Lovely to see you posting again @Bluegreen143 and to hear your renewed focus.

For the categories where you appear not to be putting anything aside, Car maintenance and MOT and Home maintenance, boiler service, what I do is look back at what I have spent in previous years and add 15% to give me an amount to work towards. I adjust this if for instance miraculously my car sailed through the MOT so it's a more realistic figure. I roll over any unspent money to the following year so as to reduce the impact the amount I need to put aside each month.

Are you putting anything aside for a replacement car, when the time comes?