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

Bluegreen143

I’m not feeling that this time off has been that restful yet, or that I’ve had much bonding time with the kids!

I think where I’ve gone wrong is making lists for each day without considering what I want to achieve with the week as a whole. 

So my aims for the rest of the week are:

1. Prioritise rest and playing with my children! 

- read together every day 
- get outdoors
- have a nice family meal together daily
- have some fun and chill out! 

2. Prepare for our holiday next week
- pack
- do mealplan and online shop
- roughly plan when our day out and boat hire data are to be (and remind Red to book the boat)

3. MSE stuff
- keep doing the cooking stuff to keep to the grocery budget
- update on YNAB and here every day 
- be resourceful when it comes to avoiding disposable/single use things like food bags or wrapping paper 

4. Get better on top of daily chores
- make sure everything is clean and tidy before bed 
- do a housework half hour first thing
- prioritise laundry 
- prep breakfast/lunches the day before where appropriate 

5. Make life easier when we get back from holiday, as we’ll have just one day before I’m back to work and two til the kids are back to school
- buy Monkey joggers and a thin sharpie for labelling
- do online grocery order for when we come back, before going away 

No decluttering, organising etc unless I suddenly find myself with oceans of time! 

Bluegreen143

Just had a small spend of £5.05 in the corner shop. My sourdough didn’t turn out well so I got bread, and, ahem, succumbed to the temptation of chocolate for Red and I too (in my defence, I am Very Tired today!). 

That’s the second week I’ve needed to top up bread, so I’ll start getting two and freezing one. Though I won’t be using so much once the kids are back at school, because they will be having school lunches. But definitely keeping one backup loaf in the freezer is sensible - realistically I’m not going to be able to make all my own bread, and Red and the kids prefer sliced shop bought for toast and sandwiches. I’ll focus my efforts on making nice loaves for soup/stew, and the various flatbreads. 

The plus thing about buying the bread was it allowed me to make a picnic lunch for tomorrow - peanut butter sandwiches for the kids for the second day in a row but I suppose that’s not the worst thing! 

Today’s meals

B - I had chocolate porridge and banana, see above re my energy levels! Erm, think the kids had cereal and banana 

S - made a plate up for kids and babysat kids with carrot, apple, strawberry and satsuma 

L - I’d made Red a hummus salad pot, I had leftover salmon with HM coleslaw, kids had a picnic of peanut butter sandwiches with cucumber/strawberries/grapes and crisps.

S - nabbed a handful of crisps before dinner, kids finished off their packed lunches 

D - spaghetti bolognaise - couldn’t be bothered making meatballs 

S - munched chocolate from corner shop. Feel a bit sick now 😳

Today’s spending 

£5.05 - groceries

zcrat41

Sometimes those chocolate evenings are needed! I can’t keep it in the house as otherwise it gets eaten. The amount of bread and crackers my two get through in the holidays is astounding 

BadBookkeeper

It’s great that you’ve done something, thought how can you do it better & have come up with a solution though.  Brilliant 🤩 

tiddles

I think you are showing determination and doing really well, Bluegreen143! 

Bluegreen143

You are all so kind! 

I AM feeling determined, because I realised that I was on the cusp of putting on the upcoming expenses on a CC. If I’d done that, I would have been in debt til Christmas - and of course would have put Christmas on the CC - I feel like this is a crossroads where I’ve had a lucky escape with only a small amount of debt to repay rather than getting into a cycle of it! 

Today I’m taking the kids to the beach to meet a friend, it’s glorious weather finally! No real plans for today apart from that, except daily chores, reading and making dinner. 

foxgloves

@Bluegreen143 - Re credit cards, try looking at that as somebody else's money (which of course, it is). Back when we were debt-busting, this really worked for us. It became a bit of a mantra......"If we have to put it on a credit card, extend an overdraft or take out a loan to pay for it, then we obviously can't afford it because that is somebody else's money, not ours". 
We had previously used credit a lot because with 2 full-time professional salaries coming in each month (before I took VR), there seemed to be no limit to what we could borrow. The downside, of course, being that those monthly debt payments become a millstone, taking money for past fun & purchases from plans for the present. 
Once we stopped viewing credit cards simply as 'more of our money', re-framing them as 'money belonging to somebody else', we did make good inroads into getting rid of our debts. We do both have a credit card & they are used regularly, but we haven't paid a penny of interest on them for years. They pay us now, as we collect loyalty points for vouchers.
A lot of the process around issues of overspending is about re-framing the narrative.
F

QueenJess

Just a couple of random ideas for presents:

For my DS’s birthday (he is obsessed with maps), I got him an ordnance survey kids adventure book and a compass. Basically it goes through what everything means on a map and then there are questions you can answer to see if you’ve understood it. Meant to be ages 8-12, but my 7 year old loved it. If Monkey likes the outside then maybe he’ll like that too. https://shop.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/the-ordnance-survey-kids-adventure-book/

I was just in a National Trust shop and you can get some fun things in there. The old style flower presses, 50 things to do before you are 11 and 3/4 book, and some cool sun print paper that you use in the sun and then just put water on to develop a picture (they are in lots of places online).

Bluegreen143

Thank you Foxgloves, really good thoughts.

The stupid thing is I KNOW all this, I’ve always been anti debt. I joined MSE at 25 because I wanted to save up to pay for our wedding with no debt (which we achieved). When I had about £4K of credit card debt before it was because we were a one income family with two little ones and the money really didn’t stretch enough (and it didn’t help that at the time I had many mat leave friends who were well off!!). 

After we paid that off I never thought we’d use a CC again. I’m pleased I’ve caught it early this time - £1K debt on a £75k+ joint income is very much quicker and easier to deal with than £4K debt on a £27k income was! But I am really annoyed with myself to have so little savings at this point given our income has pretty much tripled in the last three years (yes, there’s been a lot of inflation, but not THAT much!). We’ve definitely been guilty of a lot of lifestyle inflation and convenience spending. 

Had a lovely and inexpensive day at the beach today, except whatever the petrol cost was (it was an hour’s drive each way). I did stop at Tesco en route and pick up sunglasses for myself and Monkey as I’ve lost mine and Monkey’s were broken. £12 for mine and £7 for his. I have quite sensitive eyes and find it torturous not to have sunglasses available in sunny weather! 

Our only other cost was £12.50 on ice creams, which seems quite a lot for what it was (it was a very expensive van IMO and I had one as well as the kids) but isn’t a lot for a day out in the scheme of things. We took a picnic lunch so no other spends.

It was a properly hot/sunny day and we lots of opportunity to swim/wade in the sea, Monkey caught a crab and a little shrimp thing (let them go after of course), we built a sandcastle, I chatted to the other mum and her baby got her first little paddle in the sea. Really magical time had by all! 

For dinner we had shawarma chicken with hummus, salad, olives and pittas. Really pleased as I was fairly tired after driving home in rush hour traffic but I resisted Red offering a takeaway again and made dinner. 

Before we went out I made the pitta dough and put in the fridge to slow rise all day. I’m definitely doing that from now on - the pittas all puffed up beautifully and had a really lovely texture. 

AND in exciting news Red got paid! Woohoo! £1,653 in the joint account ready to budget in YNAB tonight. Don’t let anyone tell you I’m not cool 😉 

Today’s meals

B - yoghurt, nuts etc for me, cereal for kids 

L - peanut butter sandwiches with carrot sticks/strawberry/grapes and crisps for kids; I had a ham and HM coleslaw sandwich 

S - ice creams all round

D - very nice HM pittas, shawarma chicken, salad, hummus, olives. One of our favourite meals as a family (we also like it with the chicken swapped for falafel, and sometimes add feta and/or roasted veg)

Today’s spending 

£19 - sunglasses at Tesco (£12 my spends, £7 kids’ clothes)

£12.50 ice creams (leisure & entertainment)

£1 - Red picked up blu tack in Morrison’s (groceries?)

Bluegreen143

@QueenJess thank you so much - I think Monkey would LOVE that book!