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

Bluegreen143

Realised I’ve not done my end-of-month October spending breakdown yet. Fascinating stuff awaits you all 😂.

INCOME:
Red £2,305
Me £2,272.41 
Child benefit £170.20
Interest £2.44
Refund £7.99
TOTAL £4,758.04

RECONCILIATION ADJUSTMENT £32.86

SPENDING - NEEDS/FIXED COSTS
Mortgage £528.86
Energy £241
Life ins £73.46
Internet £25.90
Council tax £170
Groceries £664.40
Transport £183.59 (£106.49 petrol, £24 parking, £1.90 bus and £39 taxis)
Subscriptions - TV & kids activities £62.97
Medical £11.35
Car insurance £41.66
Road tax £255
Car maintenance £3,195

Total exc car repair £2,258.19
Total inc car repair £5,453.19

SPENDING - JOINT WANTS
Leisure & entertainment £15
Home & garden £23.99
Misc/unknown £21.34
Christmas £25.10
Kids’ birthdays £52.95
Other gifts/celebrations £73.69
Kids’ clothes £72.98
Kids’ fun/educational £57.20
TOTAL £342.25

SPENDING - PERSONAL
Red £400

Me

My phone/subscriptions £46.44
Weekend away £109.25
Clothes £101.95
Books & hobbies £85.27
Socialising & gifts £35.50
Misc £36.05 (half a takeaway and a couple of work lunches/vending machine visits mainly).

TOTAL £814.46

TOTAL SPENDING £6,642.76 😳 so a whopping £1,884.72 more than we earned. 

(But without the car repair it was £3,447.76 so £1,310.28 less than we earned which seems more reasonable!!).

Thoughts…

Groceries still high, perhaps this is just what we spend?!

Wants spending seems fine. I spent more from my personal pot this month for my weekend away, but had been saving up for it. Otherwise nothing striking me as unusual. 

MFWannabe

Personally I think your groceries is pretty good considering you buy healthy food mainly (which always cost more) and cook from scratch 

Moneywhizz

Your grocery spending is quite high and could be cut if you really wanted to, but if you can afford it and are happy with that amount then there is not really any pressing need to start cutting back. It is all about choices and priorities for each individual family and healthy food is important to you so that is a choice you have made for your family and is worth the extra cost. You are doing well with your budgeting. 

Sarahwithlove

I agree if ita affordable for you and you are teaching your kids good healthy food habits as well by sounds of your posts. It's one area I try not to be tight with as long as I'm buying sensible and healthy foods. 

Bluegreen143

It’s definitely an area I just really struggle to cut down. I do find it tricky now as I don’t have the time to constantly make my own bread, cook dried chickpeas up in the pressure cooker, make jam etc, as I did when I was a SAHM when money was very tight. 

Red and I were discussed today how I did really make the right decision going back to work several years ago. Some of you will remember that I was very conflicted for quite some time about it. Now my kids are at school though I think we have a nice balance, it’s great that I finish by 3pm every day and can buy extra annual leave to cover more of the school holidays. Work is going well just now too - I’ve been getting good feedback on my work and I’ve been trying different techniques for managing my time and productivity better, which has reduced my stress compared to last year (I can be prone to procrastination if I’m not careful which leads to me being very stressed as I end up with unnecessarily tight deadlines if I procrastinate!). 

We talked about what a different the extra money has made. While we should have done better at saving this past year, it’s still the case that a huge car bill is nowhere near as stressful as it’d have been a few years ago. Without getting into too many details, I have a friend (a single mum) going through some difficult times right now, which from the outside I think would be greatly reduced by abandoning creative self-employment in favour of extra income coming in through a regular job to gain extra security. Of course I realise it can feel like giving up on your dreams so there aren’t easy answers. And more money doesn’t guarantee more happiness. But it doesn’t hurt either. It also feels good to know I have the security that I could support myself on my own if I needed to, now I earn pretty much the same as Red (he’s on £41k, I’m on about £38k part time but would be about £40k if I was full time). I have no plans to have to support myself within him I hasten to add! But having grown up not well off I think you do really appreciate security later in life.

The goal for us now is to stick really firmly to the 50/30/20 budget framework and make sure that the 20% (as a minimum) is saved each month, which is on top of our pension contributions so it’s actually more than 20%.

Priority #1 is paying off the credit card over the three month interest-free period, while saving the rest of the 20% for future emergencies.

Priority #2 is to build first a £1k emergency fund and then a £5k one. Eventually I’d like the 3-6 month emergency fund as recommended by many financial gurus but I might start on to priority #3 before getting there. 

Priority #3 will be to split savings money between overpaying our mortgage and catching up our retirement savings. I have about £34k between my LISA and pension (still not great at age 36) but Red, aged 40, only has £15k so catching up his pension needs to be our first priority. 

Spendless

I think you did the right thing going back. I struggled with a return to work when mine were little, not really any WFH jobs back then , the local area not really offering p-time in my field (nothing special) which is still the case today and a husband who worked away with no set pattern. Consequently I spent years in and out of temp agency jobs instead trying to make it work. If you have the set up to both earn and be able to balance kids/family life then yes embrace it.

Have you looked to see if your grocery bill went up or down once you changed to twice weekly shops? A few weeks ago we did our s/sheet for every single cost we'd had (during August) and that identified if we didn't buy enough items during the weekly shop then consequently we topped up more frequently and bought more. 

Bluegreen143

Popped the following figures in my sig as I want to track them every month:

Debt (CC): £1,975
Mortgage: £128,367

Savings: £5,295
Help to Save: £4,600
Emergency Fund: £241
Pots (gifts/holidays/repairs & maintenance): £454.46

Total joint pension investments: £50,003

Spendless, honestly my grocery bill has been similar regardless of doing one or two shops a week. When we officially did one we were always topping up anyway so I guess it was still 2-3 shops a week in reality. I do actually need to nip to the shop today to get bananas and ginger but that won’t be expensive. For some unknown reason Tesco only sent me 1(!!) banana instead of the 6 I ordered. That won’t fly for a weekend in my household of small monkeys…

KajiKita

I’ve recently upped my groceries budget permanently for the two us plus the two cats, as it was just causing me stress each month that I was failing to meet budget …. It’s meant tweaking other savings categories down, but so be it 🤷‍♀️

Now I can start gaming any little savings I can extract from the groceries budget to send over to our joint (household emergencies) savings account, which has been battered lately …. It will feel good to start steadily topping that up again 😊

KK

Bluegreen143

Interesting KajiKita. I think you're right - it's very discouraging to be constantly overbudget. Having a more realistic budget makes you more motivated to hit it rather than just thinking 'sod it'!

At the moment, many of my budget categories roll over to build a balance (e.g. my car category is building up a balance for car maintenance or annual insurance etc). So the categories I can really target to reduce and shave off money every month are groceries, miscellaneous, the family 'wants' pot (what we use for entertainment, eating out and small items for the house and garden). Plus my own personal spends (though money I shave off from here is saved in my personal savings). I like the idea of gaming the system for extra motivation.

This weekend

MIL is paying for us (and her) to have two nights in a hotel by the seaside this weekend. She's sharing the family room with the kids and Red & I scored our own room! (Our kids sleep well and don't rise that early so not as brave as it sounds for her).

She's paid for the hotel and is getting us dinner on Saturday night so I don't think we will have much spending when there, though we said we'd get a chippy on Friday night to eat at the beach. Otherwise we'll be walking on the beach and using the hotel pool. 

Birthdays

Been chatting to the children about their birthdays. We've always done house parties for them, which we've loved - old-fashioned games, a treasure hunt and pinata etc - last year it was a joint party for them both, with siblings welcome and wine/beer for parents, and it honestly felt really magical and fun for all of us. There's something to celebrating in a way which feels more 'us' and this feels more 'us' than a whole-class soft play party even though it's more work!

Anyway I really wanted to do the joint party again because I loved it so much. But Monkey wanted to go to a climbing place he loves. I wasn't super keen because it would be expensive for a party package. We've been to parties there and the food isn't great, plus the bit after the climbing is done feels boring.

So I sat down and had a chat with him and the plan is now that he will choose 3-4 friends (this isn't mean as it sounds, he feels most comfortable with just a couple of best friends) and I will pay for them and Bambi to go climbing, but rather than the party package we will afterwards walk to a nearby restaurant we love which does great pizzas/burgers and lets the kids top their own pizza. I think I'll let his best friend come for a sleepover afterwards too.

I think this will actually work out a similar price or cheaper than if he had a party at home (after getting all the food, decor, stuff for games/prizes etc) - it's £12 per child for the climbing and will be £10-12 per child for dinner, including ice cream and a drink. So I'd estimate £150-200 all in, including dinner for Red and I. I will make the cake myself.

Obviously it won't actually save any money overall because Bambi will still be having a house party the following week for her birthday. Albeit a smaller, less expensive one if it's not joint - I'm not doing the typical primary 1 whole class thing as we haven't enough room!

But I feel good that we are planning something for each of them which they'll love, isn't outrageously expensive and still feels like 'us'.

Also, side note, how can my children be turning 9 and 6 soon?!

Kids' rooms

This weekend we prepped and painted the playroom (aka Monkey's new bedroom) and it looks great. We've gone for two shades of grey as I prefer to keep the wall decor more neutral and grown-up and add their interests with posters and accessories - I've learned my lesson with this!

The next step (early next week, as we're away for the weekend) will be to move the kids' bed into Monkey's new room, where they'll sleep for the next few weeks, while we work on the small room (Bambi's new room). It doesn't need painted, except that once we've demolished the cupboard that bit will need fixed and painted - we still have the tins of the current paint to do that though. After the cupboard is demolished Red can take accurate measurements and order the wood to custom-build a bed and storage for Bambi.

KajiKita

You are making great progress on the kids rooms 😊 And I totally agree with keeping the decor neutral … 😉

Liking the sound of the you-values birthday events. It’s a good example you are setting with not just copying what every other parent, does but making the effort to go for something more personal and memorable 😊 As for them being nearly 9 and 6 … I guess that’s just what happens … 😉🤷‍♀️😊

Hope the weekend away is fun. 

KK