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

Sarahwithlove

Great spreadsheets, really interesting to see your pension and mortgage overpayment predictions. 

Bluegreen143

Just been working out how much we’ve spent on Christmas and the kids’ birthdays.

These figures don’t include the presents Red & I get for each other, as we pay for these from our own personal spending pots (so they are a surprise rather than coming out of the joint account!). 

Total joint spend - £1,775

This works out very roughly to £550 on the children’s birthdays and parties (about £90-£100 each on gifts and the rest on their parties and going climbing on Bambi’s birthda). 

And £1,225 on Christmas, not including food which we’ve not bought yet but I think all gifts are pretty much bought except a few stocking fillers for MIL. 

I’ve spent £151 from my personal pot on Red but have a few stocking filler type bits to get too. 

Bluegreen143

Afternoon all!

Red gets paid early tomorrow. It’s a bumper pay due to his Christmas bonus - £2,996 rather than his usual £2400 or so. 

We’ve agreed that he will keep back £650 for his own account rather than his usual £400. The rest will go into the joint account which gives me £314 more than usual to play with. 

That £314 is going into this current’s month’s budget to pay for Christmas groceries and any last gifts. All the rest (ie the usual monthly amount) will be put into January in YNAB as Red won’t be paid again until the 31st Jan, which will feel a very long time away if we spend the money now! 

I checked our clubcard account and as well as having a £30 Tesco voucher, I’ve got £90 in clubcard vouchers from throughout the year which together will pay for our turkey and other Christmas goodies. 

Bluegreen143

Meant to update you yesterday on the Christmas PJs! I’d started sewing them so late, like this week 🤦‍♀️. Then, having only done the first couple of seams, I went back to it two nights ago and my sewing machine had mysteriously broken since the night before?!

Yesterday I borrowed my sister’s super fancy sewing machine and it’s loads better. I got a good bit done last night and planning to do some in my lunch break today and tonight. I should get both sets of bottoms fully done at least by the end of tonight. The tops are short sleeve rather than long which are easier as no cuffs to sew on. So still hoping to be done in time, but slightly rushed 🤣. The kids do know fine and well they’ll be getting them so if I need to I’ll sew during the day at the weekend rather than only when they’re in bed. 

I’m going to take a two week break from my phone (except for calling and google maps etc) from today. I do have three working days during the break so I’ll pop on once a week or so in my lunch break on my work laptop to update on how the PJs and financial meetings and other money matters are going. Normal service to resume after Fri 3rd Jan! 

I just really want to not default to scrolling on my phone while the kids are off school. Even if I’m not actively spending time with them, I know I’ll feel more rested if I reach for a book in my downtime rather than my phone! 

joedenise

sorry to hear you sewing machine has mysteriously broken - it's a good job you were able to borrow your sisters.  Will you be replacing yours or trying to get it repaired?  

Sounds like you're on track to get the PJs done in time even if you do have to do some when the kids are around which probably isn't the best though.  Much nicer to be able to be able to do in your own time.

Bluegreen143

They’re being really good at entertaining themselves just now tbh, yesterday they sat for over an hour quietly while I was cooking and cleaning - Bambi was doing a Lego set she got for her birthday and Monkey did a super elaborate Christmas craft with paints which he ended up turning into a Christmas card for his teacher! 

They are always very good at playing together but more often it involves chasing each other round the house, dragging out pillows to make forts with and just generally making a giant mess so it was very welcome that they sat so long in one place and the mess was confined to the coffee table they were working at. 

So I’m not too worried about it being stressful to sew with them around, just that I would rather they didn’t see the jammies as I usually wrap them up to give them on Christmas Eve. 

Baileys_Babe

Wishing you and your family a lovely Christmas @Bluegreen143

I hope you manage to keep the PJs a surprise.

I'm looking forward to catching up with you in the New Year.

fionaandphil

Have a great Christmas. Enjoy the time with the family

Bluegreen143

Morning all - this is a working day for me, so as I'm on my work laptop I thought I'd pop by. I'm off for six days after today but will update you all on spending etc on Tues 31st when I'm working again.

Sorry in advance as this is a long one!

I think we've finally bought everything we need for Christmas, from food to gifts! My poor purse can do with a rest! We've only got a couple of bits left to wrap too and I have a couple of things to print off (tickets I've bought for people, to pop in their cards). I do need to post my papa's gift, which he will get after Christmas, but that can't be helped and he's away from home just now over the festive period anyway visiting my aunt.

I've NEARLY finished the pyjamas. All I need to do tonight is sew on the collars, which I've already pinned in place, and then sew the elastic waistbands (sew up the channel for the elastic, thread the elastic through and close it up). Definitely completely doable tonight so I will be done in time, and have avoided daytime sewing so it'll still be a surprise to the kids.

I think I said that my sewing machine comedically broke last week after one night of sewing, but my sister lent me hers which is much fancier. It's a lot nicer to use. I'm not sure there's much economic point in getting my machine repaired, as it's a 'middle of Lidl' bargain which I've had for about 10 years and has never been amazing. I don't sew a lot so I can just borrow my sister's in the interim while I save up to buy a better one myself at some point.

Red and I had the first part of our end of year financial meetings over the weekend, and we've agreed to reconvene tonight.

Part one was focused on dreaming and brainstorming things we want. After the meeting I looked over our notes and have tidied it up into the following main wants that came out of that meeting:

1. KITCHEN

Red would like to replace our kitchen within three years (it wasn't new when we bought the house 9.5 years ago and had obviously been a cheap kitchen to start with). We already painted the units and walls a few years ago to cheer it up but that only goes so far. He would love to have this done in a year, but at the stage of life we're in I want to divert as much money as possible to doing things with the kids and holidays and he's agreed it can wait a bit longer. We have our whole lives to have a nice kitchen but only a few years with our children at home after all!

Red is up for building units and fitting it all himself, however we did discuss that with the price of materials and the fact it would be weeks of work for him, it might be more sensible to get something like an Ikea kitchen. We've both agreed we're not looking for anything high end and cheap and cheerful is fine, but equally we don't want to just bodge something together.

Next steps - try to come up with a price estimate - we are working loosely on a £10k assumption but need to check if that is realistic. Then set up a savings plan. 

2. CAR

Red is keen to boost our car maintenance pot in the short term, and we both agreed that while we want to run the car into the ground, we need to start saving for a replacement in the next 3-4 years. If it dies and we haven't got the full amount saved at least we can reduce how much we'd potentially need to borrow! Our car cost £8k and I suspect we'd need to save £8-10k for a replacement.

3. HOLIDAYS

My top priority! We have discussed the following:

- A foreign holiday in late June/early July, in Italy, Portugal or Spain - we are pretty set on this.
- A week in our favourite Scottish holiday destination (we've booked our cabin already) in early August - we would have gone for five nights, but they charge the same for five nights as seven, and it doesn't cost much while you're there, so it seemed silly to cut it short.
- Our MIL wants to go on a long weekend with us in April. She paid for almost all of this this year, and has offered to do similar, though Red feels we should contribute at least half. She's not exactly flush, so I see his point, but as she's had several health scares lately, I think she's just keen to use what money she has making memories with the children. So not sure how much this will cost us - Red will have a chat with his mum to come up with a figure she'd like us to contribute.
- We'd love to go away for a couple of nights as a couple, just in Scotland, but really not sure we will be able to make that happen this year!
- I'm going away with my mum and sister for two nights in March, but will pay for that from my personal allowance rather than our joint budget.

4. WEDDING RINGS

Both Red and I need to replace our (lost) wedding rings. Red's will only cost about £120, but I want the same one again to match my engagement ring (the shop still sells the exact style), which costs about £800 to replace. It's diamond and platinum and comes from a shop in the US where Red originally bought the engagement ring, so the price might vary depending on the exchange rate. There will be a customs charge as well. However, similar rings are about twice as expensive here so still worth ordering from the original shop, plus we know that way it will fit my engagement ring exactly.

NEXT STEPS

Next steps are that we are going to look at my projections for retirement, the mortgage and emergency fund progress so we can decide if we'd like to overpay any of these in the next year.

Then finally I have a printout of the suggested budget we have right now, and our actual average spend in each category in 2024, so we can review these together and decide where we want to cut back to fund the wants we've identified or put extra into our pensions etc.

I'd like Red to take charge of monitoring and reporting monthly on at least one or two categories so it's not always me saying we're out of money - I'd like to give him a sense of ownership. I think I'd love him to 'own' tracking the grocery budget if possible but we will agree together which categories he will take.

MY BUDGET

I have had a little think about my own personal pot too (by myself), which is currently £300p/m, and decided that my priorities for this are:

1. Clothes & makeup - not spending a fortune, but making sure that I love what I do buy and that I always have enough on hand to feel confident in how I look. Too many years of underspending on my clothing budget when a SAHM means this is important to me now.

2. Friends - again, I don't overspend here and am happy to visit people's houses, host, have cheap pub nights or go for walks, but I do want to make sure I keep money aside so I don't have to say no to going for lunch or my annual weekend away with my mum & sister. I also buy any gifts for my friends or their kids from this pot - we don't exchange birthday or Christmas gifts, but ad hoc things like new baby gifts and the like.

3. Book & craft materials - I do use the library but I like to spend some of my personal pot on books and ebooks too. I have a rule about not stashing craft materials and only keeping a max of two projects on hand, which limits the costs here, but I like to splash out on nice yarn/fabric if I am doing a project.

Since these are the areas which make me the happiest, I want to limit using my personal budget on other things, like lazily getting taxis if I don't need to (obviously it's fine if it's after midnight!), subscriptions or buying from the roll van at work. I have a  monthly subscription of £25 for a parenting membership which I'll stop paying after April (I'll have earned 'free' lifetime membership to the community at that point as a long term member) and I'm going to finally switch my Audible account to an annual subscription, so personal monthly subscriptions will be very minimal after that - £8 for my phone, £3 for cloud storage, plus saving for the annual Audible fee.

I think I'm therefore going to allocate my personal budget as follows:

- £50 per month for clothes
- £50 per month for books/hobby materials (letting both of these build up if unused),
- £100 to socialising/gifts and misc spends (which I'll add to my savings if unused)
- with the other £100 I'll pay any monthly subscriptions and then save the rest for bigger expenses like my weekend away and gifts for Red. 

Bluegreen143

Here's my round up on 2024 average spends too. From Jan-Jul I only had my bank account to work with, which means the figures are a bit inaccurate and 'misc' looks very high, as I couldn't identify all the purchases. From Aug-Dec I was back using YNAB so it's much more accurate.

	Average monthly spend	Notes
FIXED	£3,100
Home	£802	Mortgage, council tax, maintenance.
Utilities	£261	Now £201 due to new energy deal.
Insurance	£85	Life & home.
Car	£803	Includes paying parental loan - £612 without loan repayments. Repairs, tax/insurance, petrol & parking included.
Groceries	£749	May include some kids' clothes or household items.
Kids’ clothes	£63
Subscriptions	£107	Entertainment subs (TV, music) and kids' regular activities.
Misc	£140	Poor accounting in first half of 2025 - averages £30 since August.
WANTS	£1,825
Bluegreen	£366	Varied through year; now set at £300. Includes my clothes, subscriptions, gifts for DH and friends and personal spending.
Red	£460	Varied through year, now set at £400.Includes his clothes, subscriptions, gifts for me and friends and personal spending.
Family	£128	Eating out/takeaways, kids' pocket money small things for house, family outings, 2 days of summer club for Monkey, Cub camp fee etc. Possibly some of the 'misc' spend should be in here.
Gifts & celebrations	£173	Likely higher due to poor accounting in first half of 2025. Includes Christmas, kids' parties, family birthdays.
Holidays	£441	Two week-long UK holidays, a long weekend in Paris as a couple for our 10 year anniversary and some costs towards weekend away with MIL.
Big purchases	£257	Some pizza oven costs (as most paid by DH), garden supplies, tent & camping kit, redecorating kids’ rooms, a new mattress.

I must say I am quite surprised to learn that our car cost us more to run in 2024 than our house! However, we did have well over £4k in repair costs. Hopefully 2025 will see fewer car breakdowns. And of course, I was paying £400 p/m to my mum at the start of the year to pay her back for lending us money for the car, which I'm not doing any more as it's paid off.

Oh, and our average monthly spend was pretty much identical to our average monthly income (actually, the income was a shade lower, but there were a couple of sources of additional income in 2024, like Red selling some copper and gifts, which balanced it out). So that explains the lack of savings progress in 2024. Big changes need to happen in 2025! Watch this space!