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

Bluegreen143

Morning everyone. It's so dark and cold! I'm off to the office today - I've made overnight oats and some tuna pasta to take in, so no need to visit the roll van or vending machine. I will need to buy something at Lidl when I park there after school, but the kids have another non-uniform day this week and the school are asking for toiletry/pamper items as donations for the school fayre, so I will buy a couple of toiletries and then that job is done.

I don't think I posted the mealplan yet -

MON - chicken soup & sourdough
TUES - chicken caesar inspired salad (ie, I've added other things)
WED - falafel & hummus wraps
THURS - carbonara

I've been doing well at getting ahead with cooking during the week - on Sunday I made the soup, yesterday I cut up and seasoned the chicken and washed/cut up two tubs full of mixed salad for the next two days. Tonight I will make the hummus for tomorrow etc.

KajiKita

It sounds like you are getting into a new rhythm / routine with the meal prep. Well done 😊

KK

Baileys_Babe

Preparing for meals in advance seems to be working well for you.

Well done on swerving the takeaway and feeding guests on Saturday.

It will be doing BIL good to be able to come over, spend time with your family and help Red with the refurb.

Ouch to the costs of parking by the river and the soft play & lunch. 

Bluegreen143

Advance food prep is definitely helping me. Not just with dinner, but also with having my breakfast and/or lunch prepared for the next day too (particularly important for office days, as otherwise I’ll buy my lunch). 

Today was an office day, pretty productive as both my meetings got cancelled. 

Monkey went to play badminton with a friend after school (supervised by the friend’s mum, who kindly dropped him home after) - I always marvel at how quiet it is when you just have one child home!

Red was home early so I managed to get out for a brisk solo walk before the sun set which I’m pleased about. I can’t walk the school run on office days and so I find it hard to get enough steps in. I’ll have over my 10k today, but I only have 14 active zone minutes (ie moderate exercise). Should have a more active day tomorrow though. 

Had a gorgeous chicken Caesar salad for dinner. Slightly inauthentic as I added grated beetroot, cucumber and spring onions to the lettuce, and the kids and I had tomato with ours (Red gets an oral allergic reaction to raw tomatoes and quite a few other fruits). I did the croutons in one side of my air fryer and the chicken in the other. And it was the first time I tried making Caesar sauce (albeit using bought mayonnaise as a base) and it turned out really nice. 

The kids had cucumber and carrot sticks with theirs as their main veg but they did both eat the scoop of mixed leaf/beetroot salad I served them too so counting that as a win, and both enjoyed the chicken and croutons. Monkey liked the dressing too. 

There’s enough chicken, salad and caesar dressing that Red is making 2x sandwiches with the remainder - I’ve got soup for tomorrow so this will do him two days lunches.

Today’s spending:

£61 - petrol (will last 2-3 weeks)

£5 - today’s Lidl purchase for free parking - 2x Christmas candles to donate to the school Christmas fayre, the kids have to take them in for their non uniform day on Friday so at least that’s a job off my list

£4 - monthly Tesco delivery saver fee

KajiKita

Have you managed to get any further with the remortgage possibilities? Not meaning to nag or wanting to make you feel pressured as I know you are busy, it’s just I suspect that the weeks are going to fly by now, at this time of year, with wee ones …. 

KK

Bluegreen143

No, I assure you I welcome the nagging! 

I checked how much it would be to refix with current supplier (as they'd sent a letter) so now feel we have a good baseline for comparison. That would be £698 for both mortgages with a rate of 4.28%.

Chatted to DH last night. The best deal from the mortgage broker seems pretty good TBH (just over 4%) but for some reason Red agreed with him to look at 29 year term mortgages to reduce the monthly cost. We will never pay the damn thing off at that rate - in 29 years Red will be 69 and I will be 65! We've lived in the house for 9.5 years already, no way am I happy to go back to a 29 year mortgage and be paying for nearly 40 years in the end!

I've asked him to ask for 25 year deals (which is how long we currently have left to go) and also the mortgage broker had only looked at the main mortgage, which is £101kish, but we have a second mortgage for £27k, and the deal on that expires only one month after the main mortgage so I want him to sort out both. Red has committed to setting up another phone call this week.

EDIT - another course of action is of course to take the 29 year mortgage but overpay - which gives us extra flexibility if we lost a job or anything - but I don't trust that we will definitely overpay... I'm sure we'd start with good intentions but it would be easy to drop the overpayment if money is tight...

LadyWithAPlan

Your food sounds fantastic 

Going backwards in term sounds daunting - have you calculated the extra interest cost ? That way you both are aware of the costs of delaying.  The locoblade spreadsheet is v good 

Bluegreen143

Good idea to do that calculation. We did go backward in term once already as I was a SAHM and money was very tight on one income (though at that time I did make a ~£10-12k overpayment from an inheritance so it felt like that balanced off increasing the term!). I don't regret doing that then, it was needs must and bought us the extra flex in our budget we needed at the time, but I hadn't intended to do it again.

Bluegreen143

One extra spend to report from last night - £22.85 on 20 cloth napkins from Etsy. They are lovely, all mismatched with brightly coloured floral/Paisley patterns on them. I've been meaning to get cloth napkins for a while as we've been using paper napkins, so over time the cloth napkins will work out cheaper (as well as reducing waste in our bins). Twenty should be enough that there are always some clean, as long as we throw them in each day's washing once used.

My next zero waste step is to buy us all cloth hankies but that will wait til the new year. I thought the napkins would add a touch of class to Christmas so better to buy them now.

satchmo1

My DH uses cloth hankies as paper ones give him a rash. He also irons them, or they'd never get done. 

How would you feel about going for the longer term but setting the repayment at the most you are allowed to overpay within your budget? We cut 10 years off the term by doing that.