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

fionaandphil

A small local building society in Lancashire. I think Skipton and  some other building societies offer them online so may be worth looking out for 

Bluegreen143

Monthly round up to date:

FIXED £2,460.65
Home £1.077.81
Car £243.77
Utilities £266.90
Insurance £73.46
Subscriptions £74.96
Kids’ clothing £113.01
Groceries £606.75
Misc £12.99

WANTS £553.93
Kids’ room revamp £179.71
Gifts & celebrations £46.79
Holidays £171.08
Family/home £156.35

MY SPENDS £251.78
My clothes £24
My subscriptions £23.96
My spending £203.82

TOTAL £3,820.29

debtfreewannabe321

YBS offer it too, 6% interest that matures 1st Nov. You can pay in £150 per month to it. I opened one for DP and myself - it's what my EF savings are formed from. So although it's labeled a Christmas savings fund you can use it for whatever 😄 i think it opens in Jan so maybe you can open one for next year. 

fionaandphil

I just checked and was going to mention the YBS one too, there used to be a few lenders who did it, mainly smaller building societies. Any regular saver which matures about now would probably do.

I started this a long time ago before kids. I got paid earlier in December as many people do, was in my early twenties, went out a lot with friends over Christmas and didn't think about it until my pay didn't go in on the 31st December. It was a very long and frugal January that year and I've probably saved for Christmas ever since. A hard lesson learned young!

Baileys_Babe

I think your budget for the children's birthday's and Christmas looks realistic. Do you really need party bags for the climbing and meal out celebration, perhaps Monkey will feel they are now too mature 😉

Today I have just opened an account that might be the type you are thinking of, Principality Building Society Christmas 2025 regular saver 7% fixed interest. You can pay in between £0 and £125 per calendar month, the account is for 12 months, no withdrawals but you can close the account early if needed and you will get the interest earned so far.
The Principality are very friendly & helpful and quick to answer the phone if you ever ring with a question. 
You could always open an account in your name and one in Reds 7% on up to £250 a month.
If you open the account and fund it in October you would be able to fund it again on the 1st of November which would gain you a little bit more interest - obviously this will only work if you have the money to do so.

Bluegreen143

Thanks for all the advice on regular savers all. Something to look at after payday.

The tumble dryer engineer had to order a part so still not tumble dryer 🙄. BIL is popping back to his house today so has taken a basket of wet washing to dry for us 🤣. 

Just about to take the kids to visit my mum (free entertainment, except for the petrol cost - they live a 50 minute drive away). And this afternoon we’re taking them swimming (cheap entertainment at £12 for all of us). We do have another expensive Tesco shop coming today, as it included all the Halloween sweets to give out to guisers on Thursday. 

The car sun roof is now replaced and cost £115 for the excess at Autoglass, which I’m happy with. BIL took the car over for us which was very kind of him as it saved one of us sitting there for two hours. I think he likes having jobs to do and keeping busy. Though it’s for a very sad reason, it’s been so lovely having him spend so much time with the kids - we can’t think when he has in years and years - SIL’s health was so poor and she disliked coming to social occasions, so despite not living too far away we’ve not seen as much of BIL in recent times. He actually flat shared with Red and I for the first 18 months that we lived together so I don’t mind him being around as we know each others’ ways! 

I think my cooking must have improved since we lived together before (I was only 21 then and I was a vegetarian then too) as he has been full of compliments for the daily home cooked food 😆. Him and SIL had gotten into some very bad health habits unfortunately and he says they usually had 4-5 takeaways every week! Something he’ll need to wean himself off as it’s not doing his waistline or wallet any good - he’s not on a particularly high wage, neither was SIL, so I can’t imagine how they afforded it! 

Speaking of food, we couldn’t use the pizza oven last night as there was very heavy rain, so I made today’s pot roast instead. We’d already made the pizza sauce and dough so these were popped in the fridge for today, which is dry and sunny. I’m a little dubious that the dough will have lost its rise by then though, I keep having to knock it back in the fridge as it attempts to escape the bowl it’s in…

birdsfoottrefoil

Hey, just catching up with your diary. Sorry you’ve had a rough time of things recently. Sounds like you’ve a good plan for Christmas!

Floss

Have you thought about Theatre Tokens for your parents? They can be used for any genre so opera / theatre / musical.. And they have no expiry date too. I used my last ones to watch Six!
https://www.theatretokens.com/

zcrat41

I think you might be a bit far north for it but ENO do an access to opera scheme with £10 tickets. They also do live screenings in cinemas - might be an option. 

Bluegreen143

Scraping by until the end of the month here 🤣. 

We have spent £720 on groceries this month. But we have fed an extra adult male for over a week now, and I had my friend over for dinner every week this month before that, once with her two kids.

Tomorrow we are feeding at least ten - my friend is coming guising with her two kids, my MIL is coming as she loves to hand out the sweets to visiting children while we are out, Red’s widowed sister in law is coming with MIL as she is doing the radiotherapy hospital run with MIL anyway, BIL who has been recently widowed is still here. Another child is joining us for guising and I should possibly offer food for him and his dad too - will wait to see what time he is coming over. 

Today I’m going to make a mac & cheese bake for the children and air fryer chicken breast, Red has offered to make an arrabiata sauce for pasta to go with the chicken. And the two different pastas will be dinner for the ten. Nice and simple and we have all the ingredients. My friend is bringing garlic bread and salad. 

Yesterday’s meals:

B - fruit salad with Greek yoghurt, chopped mixed nuts and maple syrup

L - leftover chicken & vegetable soup 

D - goats cheese, breadcrumb and asparagus spaghetti with a side salad 

On Monday we had chicken soup, and on Sunday HM pizza. Tonight I’m doing chicken fajitas.