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

Bluegreen143

Just budgeted Red’s pay minus his personal pot (£1,630.10 - lower than usual due to him taking one week of unpaid parental leave this month) as follows. 

As a reminder, I get paid on the 14th so the rest of the month will be budgeted out then.

Regular expenses 
Mortgage £529
Energy £241
Life insurance £46
Internet £26
TV license £15
Netflix £5
Groceries £200 **
Chicken feed/bedding £10
Petrol & parking £75

Pots/goals

August holiday £279.10 This is in less than a week so an obvious priority. Already had £75ish in.

My birthday party £50 Shouldn’t be too expensive but we are making pizza and will need to buy in drinks/snacks too. I’ll add a bit more when I get paid. 

Road tax £50 Due Sept

Leisure & entertainment £30

Kids’ clothing £30 Will need to build up a bit so I can buy necessary winter clothes around October time.

Car maintenance £30 Has £287 in already - MOT is in mid-August just after I get paid though.

** £100 of this will be moved to the holiday pot to cover groceries for the week we’re on holiday. 

FlorayG

I hope your MOT goes better than mine - it cost me just over £1,800! This is the trouble with budgets, sometimes you get a kick in the teeth just when you least expect it. I usually allow about £300 for MOT as well, and was scrabbling for money to pay off the huge bill now I'm flat broke this month

Bluegreen143

Eeek FlorayG! Hope that doesn’t happen to me! 

Today the weather is a bit cooler and cloudier. Seems we were only getting one nice day, not a streak of them 😅

I’ve planned a quieter at-home morning and we have a drop off playdate coming this afternoon - one of Monkey’s best friends. I meant to invite his other best friend too but forgot. Luckily I hadn’t mentioned this to Monkey! I hope the wee boy isn’t bored, I’ve noticed the past year or so that he just wants to game, which they do together at his house, but we haven’t any means for them to do so here and he seemed a little bored at a couple of points last time he was here. I think I’ll set them a couple of Lego challenges to do if they’re interested. 

I will use today to get back in control of the laundry and start packing for/mealplanning for our holiday. I’d like to nip to Tesco at some point too, to buy PE joggers for Monkey and a couple of top up bits. I’d like to get a thin permanent marker too and maybe start on the dull job that is labelling everything! 

I also have a guilty conscience over how little Gaelic I’ve done with the kids in the holidays (their school is a Gaelic medium language immersion type school). Must do some today!! Might let them watch extra TV but it has to be BBC Alba the next few days. 

Finally, I’ve started thinking about our routine for next school year. Because I’ll no longer be dropping off at nursery things will be a little different and more efficient - excitingly I think we’ll be able to cycle most days when I’m not in the office (unless the weather is awful). I’d like to have a set routine each day for the kids doing their homework as it always feels stressful fitting it in and now I’ll have two to supervise doing it so I think doing it ad hoc will work even less well than it did last year. 

Today’s list:

1. Catch up on laundry and daily chores. 

2. Start packing kids’ clothes.

3. Go to Tesco, take charity shop bag to the charity shop under it at the same time.

4. Mealplan for holiday & update Morrisons order. 

5. Make bread & soup for dinner. 

6. Do reading and Gaelic with kids. 

Bluegreen143

Did a 30 minute housework timer this morning and got the children to help too during the time. What a difference! I’ve decided I’ll do similar in the late afternoon too, which means I’m now sitting relaxing rather than stressing about anything else needing done, because I know I’ll do it then. 

Because the children tidied their playroom during the 30 mins, they are now quietly sitting doing puzzles together - it’s amazing just how much better they play when they’re in a tidy space! When the playroom is already messy, they just make more mess - and all over the house because they don’t want to play in the messy playroom!

I don’t want to disturb them, but when they are done with their puzzles I’m going to sit them down for 30 mins homework time and do some phonics/reading/writing/Gaelic - they are at totally different levels obviously so I can’t do one activity for both, but I can set one child to writing practice independently while the other reads or does phonics with me and then switch and then we could sing some Gaelic songs together or read a story. I can manage the little baby board books independently or can find audio tracks online to accompany the harder ones. Or perhaps Monkey might consent to read to us - his Gaelic reading being better than mine!

Ironically Monkey’s other best friend’s mum has now texted me asking if he’s free for a short notice play date, so I’ve suggested she drops her son off here as I’d originally planned, but forgotten to organise. Hope this works for her, Monkey will be delighted if so.

Bluegreen143

Urgh. Forgot about a three month free trial of Kindle Unlimited being due to end, and got charged £9.49. Of course, this is EXACTLY why subscription services are so generous with “free” trials. I did at least read a few books on it during the three months, so not a total waste. Have cancelled the renewal now.

First of the month DDs are now paid so the joint account looks a little sad for the day after payday! 

In better news, I have a pot of minestrone soup currently in the instant pot, and am about to start making some bread, so I’m feeling nice and organised for dinner.

Still need to nip out to Tesco/charity shop - Red is often home fairly early, so I might be able to do it this afternoon, otherwise will go tomorrow morning. 

Also need to buy/make food contributions for the friend event on Saturday. Thinking (in the interests of not giving myself a massive to do list) that I may just go to Lidl and buy some hummus, olives, falafel etc. I’ve been tasked with making two cakes/baked things already and one needs to be dairy free, so I’ll need ingredients for baking too. All of the above to come from my socialising budget, not my grocery budget thank goodness! 

A complication is that my kitchenaid mixer is currently broken which limits some of the things I can bake (namely that I can’t make my usual fabulously fluffy icing recipe). Thinking I’ll do a dairy free lemon drizzle which is easy and maybe a chocolate traybake with a less-fabulous icing recipe which I can do by hand. 

Bluegreen143

I think I need a stock of ideas for entertaining 7-8yo boys on a play date as it seems to be quite a trying age! 

We never have an issue with girls on playdates - they always seem to play perfectly well together and entertain themselves whether with toys, in the garden or sitting drawing. Monkey also plays well with his sister and other girls. But when we have boys over they are always a nightmare to entertain and either want to do silly/dangerous bets or moan about being bored because they want a screen…

Just suggested I take them all to the park (it’s across a main road so I can’t send them solo) and three of four kids wanted to go, but one friend (the more screen-oriented one) went into a massive sulk about doing the (short) walk and literally stood with his face in the corner not talking to me so I ended up backing down... I wouldn’t have if it was my son but it’s tough when it’s someone else’s kid 🤣 Now sat out in the front garden while they play out the front with my kids’ bikes and scooters and that seems to have restored peace for a while! 

Bluegreen143

Playdate turned better in the end, and they’ve all gone home now, thank goodness as I’m quite tired after all that! Going to brainstorm ideas for playdate activities with Monkey to try to avoid the whining, can’t-decide-what-to-do bit which was driving me up the wall. Think I need to prepare better and eg round up water pistols in a bucket or set out some board games or whatever in advance. 

Quite looking forward to a quiet day tomorrow I have to say! 

I’ve chatted with Red and we have decided that it’s 100% a financial priority to save for an abroad family holiday next year - likely October rather than summer. This should motivate me to keep up progress as I will only book it once we have the money saved. My children will be 9 and 6 on their birthdays, and it’ll be our first family holiday abroad - we were meant to have one in May 2020, but it got cancelled because of Covid, and we just got in the habit of domestic holidays after that. 

I’ve also been reflecting and I think instead of taking two fortnights off work next summer I might try to spread out my leave and do three day weeks all summer instead (with a full week off too to coincide with Red). It’s felt a bit feast/famine for days off this summer and what I’d really like is to feel a slower pace the entire time! 

Bluegreen143

Round up of yesterday’s spending

Mortgage £528.86
Energy £241
Life insurance £45.07
TV license £15
Stupid Amazon auto-renew £9.49

Plans for today

1. Go to Tesco & charity shop 
- Hand in stuff to donate
- Get: Monkey joggers for PE; thin sharpie for labelling; bananas, food waste bags & bread; check if metal lunchboxes and snack boxes are still on offer as we only have three of each atm
- food & cake ingredients for event tomorrow

2. Visit friend with kids for catch up/play date - 3pm

3. Play a game with the kids - have some bonding time 

4. Do mealplan & online shop for holiday 

5. Dinner - chicken pie - prep before going out this afternoon 

6. Make cake for tomorrow

Daily list:
- laundry (very important so I can start packing)
- dishes & kitchen 
- make beds
- general tidy up (morning & evening) inc kids
- hoover downstairs 
- read to/with kids
- update YNAB
- do Duolingo

Bluegreen143

Urgh, spent £59.70 in Tesco. How things add up! Breakdown as follows:

Groceries £4.14
Bananas, food waste bags, a loaf of bread. All reasonable. 

Socialising £16.55
Stuff to make & bring to an event tomorrow. 2x falafel, pittas, caster sugar, 2x stork (the guest list includes a vegan and a dairy free person), chocolate chips, 2x olives. Annoyingly one friend then mentioned she’d picked up olives too (even though I’d called dibs on olives yesterday!) so I may reassign one pack to groceries and keep Red happy 😅 

Back to school £39.01
2x boy’s jogging bottoms for PE (he’ll wear them outside of school too) £18
Lunch box, 2x snack tubs, 2x small water bottles £15.05
Permanent markers, pencils, biros and a pencil case £5.96

I probably could have slightly cut down the food to take to tomorrow’s party, and maybe didn’t *need* the tubs/lunch box, but they will be handy and were reduced to half price. 

The lunch box actually isn’t for school, as they get school meals, but we use them for picnics and only have three so now we have one each. And during the week I also often use them for Red or my lunches, so now I can prep two day’s worth at a time and make sure I’m not using foil or cling film on sandwiches. 

zcrat41

Hi Bluegreen, would you be able to share your homemade pitta recipe please? Sounds delicious and I get so fed up with shop bought ones not fluffing up!