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

Bluegreen143

Had a nice day today. We walked the morning school run - Bambi was thrilled as her nursery best friend was walking to her own school at the same time and could walk with us for 10 minutes or so. 

After school Bambi asked again to drop by the front of nursery to say hi to her old teachers and show off her uniform so we did that, then went to a playpark where she met her other nursery best friend and had a play. So basically her best day ever 🙈 in general I’m trying not to remind her of nursery as she’s still a bit hesitant about school, but it just kind of worked out that way by accident. 

Red and I did the Tesco order for the party. Parties are expensive! We’ve spent around £150 on food/soft drinks and £70 on alcohol. There are around 15/16 adults and 14/15 kids coming (aged from baby to 9) though so it’s not really that much per head. I’ve only got 3 bottles of Prosecco and 2 red wines but I know some guest will bring wine 🤞🏼 and I got a case of bottled beer and one of fruit cider. Some people will be driving so got a bunch of soft drinks cans. And we’re going to do big jugs of diluting juice for the kids - so much cheaper than fruit shoots (and doesn’t generate millions of little plastic bottles). 

I have ordered two plastic juice jugs at £5 each and 12 reusable plastic cups for £9 but they will get used again fairly soon for the kids’ birthday parties, and we’d obviously hope to keep them and continue to use them for future parties so it seemed much better and more green than paper cups. Adults will likely be drinking beer/cider/soft drinks from the can or bottle and we have a few wine glasses. I’ve ordered an extra four prosecco glasses for £6 which should be enough as we have about six already. 

Red has ordered a piñata for the kids (the sweets to go in it are included in the food cost).

The menu is:

HM pizza - aiming to do six big ones, at 10-12 slices each that’s at least a couple slices per person, will need to do a small vegan pizza too

Pesto pasta - a vegan/free from one and a normal one

Garlic bread

Sausage rolls, sausage-less rolls & good quality chicken nugget type things, 

HM coleslaw, tomato/coriander salad, fruit salad 

Hummus & dips, crisps, breadsticks, cocktail sausages 

Red is making some antipasti cheese & salami things 

Haribo 

Bluegreen143

Today was an office day, I took lunch but did spend £1.20 from my personal budget on vending machine chocolate. 

Feel like the minor back-to-school bugs have already started, just keep feeling on the edge of a cold but without it going anywhere 😕 hoping it continues to not go anywhere rather than ruin my weekend though. 

Need to get back into daily spending round ups so here’s today’s:

Tesco £249.67 😨 roughly broken down to £50 groceries, £199.67 birthdays & celebrations pot (ie party food and drink)

Amazon £45.36 - Red ordered this so need to find out from him. I know it includes a piñata but hopefully that’s not all or else it’s the most expensive piñata known to man 😂

Car insurance £120.29 - extending the insurance on BIL’s car as we are borrowing this for two further weeks, until our car is hopefully fixed 🤞🏼 we are giving the car back then regardless so it’ll be taxis after that if the car is still in. 

Vending machine at work £1.20 - a moment of weakness…

So, erm yes, a spendy 24 hours!

Time2count

Try steaming your face and having a hot toddy, that should hopefully ward off any bugs before they can emerge - can't be ruining the party!

MFWannabe

Bluegreen143 said:

Today was an office day, I took lunch but did spend £1.20 from my personal budget on vending machine chocolate. 

Feel like the minor back-to-school bugs have already started, just keep feeling on the edge of a cold but without it going anywhere 😕 hoping it continues to not go anywhere rather than ruin my weekend though. 

Need to get back into daily spending round ups so here’s today’s:

Tesco £249.67 😨 roughly broken down to £50 groceries, £199.67 birthdays & celebrations pot (ie party food and drink)

Amazon £45.36 - Red ordered this so need to find out from him. I know it includes a piñata but hopefully that’s not all or else it’s the most expensive piñata known to man 😂

Car insurance £120.29 - extending the insurance on BIL’s car as we are borrowing this for two further weeks, until our car is hopefully fixed 🤞🏼 we are giving the car back then regardless so it’ll be taxis after that if the car is still in. 

Vending machine at work £1.20 - a moment of weakness…

So, erm yes, a spendy 24 hours!

The insurance on BILs car; would it not be cheaper to add you as a named driver on his policy? 

Bluegreen143

I thought it might be too MFWannabe, but it was DH who organised to borrow the car and he told BIL we’d sort the insurance. So I then felt too awkward to subsequently text BIL to ask him to call his insurance company when he’s doing us a big favour. Especially as I wasn’t sure if it actually would be cheaper or not. Obviously I originally didn’t know we’d be extending it by two weeks either. 

Had a productive evening - got quite a bit of cleaning done while Red took Monkey to karate (and Bambi watched 1/2 a movie), slowly getting the place ready for partying on Saturday. Also gave Red a haircut so that’s another thing off the list. Going to trim my own hair just now.

Bluegreen143

Red’s getting paid today - alas only £1,952 as he had six days off unpaid this month. That was one week unpaid parental leave, for spending time with the children in the school holiday, and one day when he took his mum to the hospital for her mastectomy (she’s recovering well btw, and it looks like they got all the cancer out - she’ll have radiotherapy now for a few weeks). 

We’ve agreed we’ll cut our monthly personal budgets to £450 (from £500) this month, and that we will cut further in future months, especially once we know what our new mortgage deal will be. Didn’t want to shock Red’s system with too big a cut all at once, but he was very receptive and agreed at once it was needed. 

Red’s pay budgeted as follows:

Savings (15%)
LISAs £100 (£50 each)
Emergency fund £100
Car maintenance £100

Needs (62%)
Mortgage £528.86
Gas & electric £241
Life ins £45.07
Internet £25.90
TV license £15
Groceries £250
Petrol & parking £80
Misc £16.25

Wants (23%)
His personal pot £450

(Not quite the magic 50/30/20 budget but I do find it helpful to check my budgeting against these %s)

I get paid on the 13th, so will budget out the rest of the month then. 

I haven’t allowed for the leisure & entertainment category, because this weekend is busy with the party and a women’s football match on Sunday (which we got free tickets for) and we will need/want a quiet weekend next weekend, with just walks and time at home. If we take the kids swimming at any point I’ll take it from that misc category, but otherwise I do not plan to spend on “stuff” or activities til I get paid mid-month! 

Bluegreen143

Current balances

SAVINGS £4,825
Emergency fund £325
Help to Save £4,500

POTS £582.67
Home maintenance £0
Car maintenance £360.55
Dental/medical £0
Holidays & adventures £0
Christmas £170
Gifts & celebrations £0
Home & garden £0
Kids - clothing £52.12
Kids - education & fun £0

DEBT £329.90
Monzo card £329.90

Just realised I haven’t budgeted for the kids’ pocket money, which we give them on the first of the month, or the karate subscription. I’ll move it over from the kids’ clothing pot which is just about the right amount. 

Will check when the child benefit comes in, as I’d like to use it to refill the kids’ clothing pot a bit. At some point in the next few weeks, Bambi at least needs some winter clothing, as all her dresses are getting indecent (and are mainly sleeveless and summery). Monkey hasn’t grown much so his tops from last winter are fine, but he needs a couple of pairs jeans/cargo trousers. Thankfully their winter coats from last year fit fine and their walking boots, wellies and waterproof trousers still seem OK. 

Floss

Good call on the reshuffle while you wait for your new mortgage figures. Enjoy your busy weekend!

Bluegreen143

Aaaand my August round up. If we have to get any wee bits for the party, I’ll come back and edit this post.

AUGUST FINANCIAL ROUND UP

Income
My salary £2,272.20
Red’s salary £1,952
Child benefit £170.20
Gifts £290
Reconciliation £13.53 (this the corrections made when reconciliating the accounts - it’s mainly caused by either accounting errors or interest being added to savings accounts) 
Refunds £16.20 (I don’t count refunds within the same month, I just zero the expense, but this spending happened last month)

Total £4,714.13

Needs £2,313
Mortgage £528.86
Gas & electricity £241
Life insurance £73.46
Internet £25.90
Council tax £170
Car insurance £242.67
YNAB £77.36
Car maintenance £208.21

Groceries £417.17 (Looks low but doesn’t count holiday food - it’s 3 full shops and a few top ups so not actually as much progress as it looks like!)
Chickens £22.49
Petrol £232.88 (This includes a round trip to Aberdeen and the petrol we used getting to/while on holiday, so is actually not too bad)
Parking £30.20

Kids - clothes £42.80

Wants £1,755.71
Holidays & adventures £511.52
Gifts & celebrations £289.50
Leisure & entertainment £102.53 (includes Netflix as well as days out/eating out/swimming entry)
Kids - education & fun £83.96
Home & garden £45.63

Misc £30.57

TV license £15

Red spending £450

My spending £227
- phone & subscriptions £55.23
- gifts £15
- clothing £12.84
- socialising & dates £88.25
- books & hobby supplies £32.48
- misc £23.20

TOTAL £4,068.71

So we spent £645.42 less than we got in on “life”. 

BUT we paid £740.70 off the credit card and added £240 to off-budget long term savings (so not a bad thing, but removing it from our budget and it’s no longer available to play with).

This means that on-budget, we spent £334.98 more than we earned, which came from pots/emergency savings. (Or another way to look at it is, we overspent by £94.98 if we exclude money added to long-term savings).

Of course this is what happens at those times of year you spend more from pots than you put in (for holidays and car repairs and birthdays) but as our savings are so low right now it’s definitely not good to see them dip further. 

I would say “roll on a less spendy September” if it wasn’t for the car repairs!!

***edited all totals to account for small groceries, petrol & parking spends today 

Spendless

Feel the pain with the reduced income. I have same issue workplace forgot to take my pension and their contribution last month so have taken 2 lots out of this month instead. 

Like the idea of the % of income. We are due to do a new budget soon so may steal that.

Enjoy your party.