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

zcrat41

Worth checking the Easter holiday and May half term dates. My children’s godmother is a Scottish teacher and is often slightly different dates at Easter to my kids English holidays. 

Bluegreen143

It’s a possibility, but if we go abroad at Easter we can select our location to get definite sun. Yes it may not be hot hot, but we’re ok with that if it’s warm and sunny! We aren’t necessarily sunbathers! 

If we go on a Scotland holiday in April the water will be VERY cold (possibly too cold) for outdoor swimming and watersports, even if we luck out with the weather (which is by no means guaranteed, sometimes it’s cold and wet in April - even if it’s sunny it won’t be shorts & tshirts weather). 

While it’s been a little disappointing weather wise this week, we’ve still been able to swim/paddle and kayak because the water is at its warmest at this time of year. 

In Scotland the May holiday is only a long weekend, not a week, because we finish up at the end of June, so it’s unlikely to work for us going away. It is 5 days rather than the usual 4 this year but it would mean only going abroad for 4 nights. I’m not keen on taking the kids out of school to extend it. We did do this Scotland holiday we’re on in May last year (drove up after school and stayed for 5 nights) - the weather was lovely, the water was still really cold but that is an option. 

I’m definitely a fair weather outdoor swimmer and not one of these crazy people who swim at new years! The kids understandably won’t go in if it’s freezing.

Red prefers coming here in August because mackerel are in season, but given they never catch anything I’m not so fussed about planning the entire holiday around it 🤣 they did catch a small cod last year in May though!

fionaandphil

As someone who loves Portugal, I would go for October. Weather is still warm and lots still open, prices are slightly cheaper than summer and its less busy all round.  Flights are normally released late November/early December so if you book ahead it can save, but it may also be worth looking at some of the packages.  The rentals can be as cheap or as pricey as you want, they are clamping down on airbnb though. Lots of recommendations on FB on Albufeira Holiday Goers for rental companies.  Resort wise I would say NOT Albufeira as it is very much a party town this year, we went February, but the Strip had started overspilling into the old town and you could definitely tell.

Given your love of sporty water things I would say maybe Lagos.  Lots of local beaches, caves and walks to do and if you hire a car you can go further west and explore a bit.  They also have a mini science museum which is great if it rains, castle and a vibrant town with marina. 

July is melting hot and busy. We went late May one year and spent the middle of the day indoors as it was too hot to be out 30+, we got up early, went ot the beach and came back and went to indoor pool and activies from 11 - 3, but we haven't been back at that time again.

Gale has a great beach for learning to surf and just pootling round on the beach but its mostly rentals so not a lot else to do there.  Alvor also seems nice and gets lots of recommendations. DM me if you want recommendations for anything, we use a lot of local Portuguese companies for things like hire car, hotels etc

fionaandphil

Another thing to consider about Easter is that for some countries Easter is quite religious and there can be quite a lot closed. We went to Cyprus at Easter once and everything was shut for 4 days

Bluegreen143

Great tips, thank you so much @fionaandphil! Really helpful and I love the sound of Lagos. It was Albufeira where we always went in my childhood. 

Red said today he thought the idea about “new rooms of your own” as the birthday presents was a great ideas. (I think the suggestion was for Christmas, but as my DC have birthdays only a week apart, birthdays will work just as well). 

The smaller room, likely to become Bambi’s room, is a small L shape with one of those awkward cupboard-over-the-stairs in it, which is a massive waste of space (it looks like a full size cupboard but when you open it it’s only the top half as the bottom part is boxed off for accommodating the stairs). 

We have seen some good ideas online where people remove the cupboard built around this and build a loft bed over this space with storage in the part that’s not boxed off. I’m keen to do this as it would really maximise space in this small room. Red would do the work himself, so it hopefully wouldn’t be expensive, though he’d need wood to build the bed and would need to plaster and paint that section of the wall after removing the cupboard walls. If we don’t do this we need to buy her a new bed anyway so the cost would be fairly equivalent I think. 

fionaandphil

Albufeira is still lovely in winter but far too busy and boozy for us the rest of the time. Lots of hen and stag do's April to September.

debtfreewannabe321

My nephew has a room shaped like the one you mentioned with the stair box in. He has had his bed built over it too and it makes it look much bigger. He has a small chest of drawers underneath it too for clothing.

I think asking family and friends for gifts to decorate the bedrooms is a brilliant idea and no unwanted clutter then. If it's not going to be a surprise for them perhaps you could ask them to do a little wish list that people could tick off once bought (my DS & I always have one on Amazon and I let the other two kids do one in the run up to Christmas then when presents are bought they don't show any more?)

I separated my two youngest when the eldest was about to go to secondary school - there's a year between her and her brother- and their eldest brother had just moved out so great timing. They were both super excited to choose bedroom colours and curtains and bedding etc so I'm sure your kids will love to have a say in how their new rooms are decorated 😍

Cheery_Daff

My sister used to have the box room when we were kids, she had a (homemade) box bed over it too, and I'm sure had either a cupboard or desk or something under the bit that wasn't the box, although for the life of me I can't picture it at all now! Weird, especially as it became my room once I'd gone to university and was only home in the holidays 😂

Bluegreen143

Have had a nice day out today - went to a town to browse in the shops (I bought myself two books), then did a challenging walk with the kids. It was only a couple of miles but you climbed very steeply uphill for the first half, then the reward was returning downhill  by a beautiful path beside a stream and many tumbling waterfalls. The kids did really well and even Bambi hardly complained.

Afterwards we went to a large botanic gardens but unfortunately after we paid for entry it became obvious that Bambi was far too tired and grumpy and we didn’t end up staying that long. The bit we saw was beautiful though! 

I’ve been using some time while away to sit down with a notebook and plan out the next academic year (it often makes sense to me to plan at this time of year since the kids started at nursery/school). 

As part of this I’d like to set some financial goals:

1. Repay our credit card debt within two months

2. Build an emergency fund - aim for the first £1k by Christmas and eventually save £5k

3. Save to pay for the kids’ birthdays, Christmas, next year’s holidays and the mini project of swapping the kids’ rooms without touching any credit cards again

4. Stick to our grocery budget each month without compromising the quality of what we eat - continuing to buy plenty fresh fruit, veg, fish, nuts, seeds etc

5. Allocate money for the things which are important to us (time together as a family, books, seeds in springtime) but not frittering away money on unimportant things - making sure we stick to discretionary budget pots and buy less overall 

I think that’s everything for now. I’ve been busy looking at how our days should look now both kids will be at the same school - it should make it possible for us to walk/cycle more, which is both healthier but also cheaper. 

Bluegreen143

Really just posting this planninghere as I find it helpful to be able to look back. It’s not that MSE related!

New daily routine:

MORNING
My goal for the new year is to get up earlier and not spend half the morning snoozing my alarm! 🤦‍♀️ it starts my day off so badly when I don’t have time to do breakfast dishes and get a washing on before work. 

I’ve set multiple alarms on my phone as per below:

6.45 get up & get dressed/ready (Red gives the kids breakfast at this time then they dress themselves then they have some playtime)
7.10 work - check emails/calendar and plan my day 
7.30 chores - make bed, breakfast dishes, quick tidy up, laundry on etc 
7.50 - everyone get outdoor clothes on and bags ready to go 

We need to leave at 8 for walking/cycling I think (must test the route to the new bus stop but I think that’s right as it’s 5 mins closer than the old one) and 8.15 if driving. 

AFTER SCHOOL
I’d like to get in a more efficient routine of helping the children with homework so it all gets done and not left to pile up. More important to sort this now I’ll have two kids to help! I want to continue to take the kids outdoors after school (to the park, or walking home) at least sometimes and obviously need time in the afternoon myself to cook and do chores. 

My friend recently recommended to me an approach where you use a kitchen timer and they work for say 10/15/20 minute blocks (depending on their age - she recommended no more than 2x minutes per year of their age) with a break for fun then you can do a second block of the same number of minutes if needed. She said to set a goal at the start of what will be worked on and anything not got to becomes priority next day (eg if they did their maths one day, you start with reading the next or whatever). 

I really like this and have been using it with the summer work we’ve been doing - mainly reading/phonics and writing, with the odd bit of maths mainly for Monkey. I think they do seem much more focused and it is helping get the work done in an acceptable timeframe instead of it dragging out for ages which is nice. 

What I need to do is set a consistent time for it each day - Red has suggested it should be as soon as we get in - if we come straight home this might be 3.45, if we go to the park it could be 5 - his argument is that, as every day is different, it’s more useful to tie it to the trigger of “walking through the door” than a specific clock time. And that it just relies on me ensuring we have a hard limit on how long we’ll stay out at the park! I think he’s right and will try out this approach for at least the next while. 

WEEKLY
We’re trying out an approach of, wherever possible, having one weekend day for adventures and/or social events, and keeping one quiet day for at home play, doing projects together (maybe a quiet walk to the swings or going swimming as a family, but being home except for this). I’ll update my list of adventures we want to try for the autumn as having a running list has worked well this summer.

We’re also aiming to have one weekend day as “camp fire” day where we do a fire in the garden and cook outdoors, at least until the weather gets cold. 

As discussed on here, I’m also moving to a weekly cadence for grocery shopping (rather than shopping 2-3x a week) which I think will help, both in terms of budget and managing our time better. Red has asked if we can change our shopping day to Thursday rather than Sunday, as he likes having new fresh food for the weekend, and I’ve agreed, though it means we’ll have two shops next week to get on the new schedule. 

We’ve also discussed alternating who takes Monkey to karate on Thursdays as I find it’s a bit wearing doing it every week. It takes 2hrs out of my evening as it’s not close enough to come home in between. Hoping it’ll feel like less of a chore than doing it every week! Taking him to Cubs on Mondays isn’t an issue as it’s local. I’m aware too that Bambi is starting to get old enough for clubs - either Rainbows or Beavers is a must IMO, and she’s expressed an interest in gymnastics - we’ll see though. No more than one thing to start, and no more than two things at a time as she gets bigger.

Final “weekly thing” is that I’ll need to be in the office twice most weeks (which is what I’m meant to do now anyway). I’m going to try to rigidly do this on Tuesdays and Thursdays as it throws my weekly routine out changing it around.