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

Bluegreen143

@KajiKita the main issue is MIL’s birthday as Red spends around £100 on her. We also have my sister’s husband’s birthday and Red’s sister’s birthday. 

The rest were kids’ party gifts (which are actually all in Feb, we just wanted to get organised and have them ready). It’s hard to know if the children will be invited to the same parties next year so hopefully they won’t 🤣. It’s just gifts for Bambi’s party invites as Monkey is buying his own from his pocket money now. 

Between the kids, they have been invited to six birthday parties and a Valentine’s party in Feb. The Valentine’s party and two birthday invites are for both kids, Monkey has one party just on his own, and Bambi has three parties just for her, one of which is a sleepover. Quite apart from the money, I feel like all we are doing in Feb is taxiing and accompanying kids to parties! To be fair, the Valentine’s party is an annual thing one of my friends does and is purely an excuse for a bunch of mama friends to hang out, but luckily our kids all seem to play well the 3-4 times a year we get together despite not going to school together. We now have 17 kids between 7 mums, aged between 18 months-10 years, so get togethers are busy! 

It’s also Red’s birthday in Feb - annoyingly Monkey’s school assembly is the day we have taken off together on leave. It is good as we can both go no problems (though my boss always allows me to go to these in working time as long as I make it back anyway), but it’s a bit irritating as we only have these six hours off together to have a date day and now most of the morning will be gone by the time we are done at the school. Of course Monkey is delighted, as Red has never been to an assembly before, so at least someone is happy 🤣. 

Thinking I will take Red for lunch near the school afterwards and there is an escape room nearby too, so I’m going to book into that for something different to do together as part of his gift. And we are going to take the kids bowling after school - our plan is to do one paid outing a month so that can be Feb’s. 

** Have just realised through typing this out that Monkey owes me £5 for one of the party gifts. Down to £400 spent! 🤣🤣🤣

Bluegreen143

And yes, the bedding and thermoses etc are all one offs. My rough rule of thumb is essential repairs or replacements come from the Home pot, things we just want come from Family. The packed lunch stuff could come from Home. The bedding was more of a want if I’m honest, to replace old stuff they’ve had for years with designs based on current interests. Something we meant to do when we redecorated their rooms but we held off as they got one set anyway from my mum, but need two to fit the washing cycle. 

satchmo1

Isn't the printer paper a business expense which can be claimed from your employer? 

Bluegreen143

No Satchmo. It’s for the children to draw on 🤣 and occasionally for me to print off a personal document. We aren’t allowed to print at home for security reasons actually (I never print in the office either, I’m pretty much paperless nowadays). 

Bluegreen143

Mormon hall. Pretty tired this morning, my own fault as I’ve been staying up too late this week 🙄. But it’s Friday, hooray! 

The kids are taking their first non-thermos meal today, falafel & hummus wraps. We had these for dinner last night and I bought an extra pack of falafel so there would be leftovers. 

Stayed the same for my weight in this morning which isn’t a surprise because I was away last weekend, ate out twice and had cocktails, chocolate and crisps 😆. Never mind, I have a quieter weekend this weekend so fingers crossed for a loss next time.

Red gets paid today so hoping to have a month end meeting with him. Thinking the same as our weekly meetings but adding on looking over the figures and having a look at whether we met our goals for the month/what we need to do differently next month. For instance, we only took the kids swimming once despite ‘teaching the kids to swim’ being one of our annual goals and us deciding to take them at least once a fortnight. 

We’ve had such busy weekends it’s been challenging to fit it all in! And February is, if anything, even busier 🙄. I’m not sure what we can do to slow down. Or rather, I know if we want to slow down I need to decline more social invitations, particularly for the kids, but in reality I don’t want to do that even if slowing down does sound really good! 

Tonight we’re doing a movie night with the newish Moana 2 movie, inviting a friend and her daughters. I didn’t want to do it as it’s a whopping £20 to buy which I think is outrageous (and £15 to rent, so no point renting as the kids will want to watch it more than once). So Red is paying some of the cost from his own money as he gets paid today 🤣 because he wanted to take the kids to see it in the cinema, which would have been over £40, so he reckons it’s still worth it.

Saturday the kids have a party, a fairly low-key one in the girl’s house with food put on for the parents too, and I’m friends with some of the parents there so that will be nice for all of us. If it’s dry after that I think I will try to take them out to a park for the afternoon as we’ve hardly done any walks or outdoor time in ages. 

Red has a big boys’ night on Saturday, which he does around twice a year. They are starting at 4pm, have various activities and dinner booked, and will no doubt all be falling over by 7pm as they forget they can’t drink like they used to 🤣. All paid for from his own pot so no budgetary impact. 

Sunday we actually haven’t anything booked in, so I got Red to agree we will take the kids swimming in the afternoon as long as I leave him to sleep in the morning 😆. Annoyingly going on a Sunday means we can’t combine with a library trip - that particular library branch is closed on a Sunday, and none of the open branches would make sense to combine with swimming as they are all the opposite direction and you need to pay to park. I still have one of my own books left to read anyway! 

Still got a couple of my actions to complete before our marital meeting, so noting these here to make sure I do them:

- order Monkey a new wallet (he is paying for it, as he carelessly lost his, but I need to actually order it for him)

- arrange free bus pass for Bambi (all over 5s get them here but we rarely use the bus so I haven’t got round to it yet!)

- sort out Bambi savings accounf (we will be putting £10 p/m aside for her to eventually match the £1,200 Monkey has in his junior ISA). 

- still got one kids’ party gift to order

- book activities for Red’s birthday (an escape room we will do on our afternoon off together, and also we will go bowling with the kids after school)

Also, not discussed on the marital meeting, but I must started getting Red’s birthday gifts! 

fionaandphil

Would it be worth signing up to Disney if you have to pay for Moana? Could possibly use t clubcard points to pay for 3 months? We've done this a few times especially over winter period as it means we can do movie night. There are some good movies for adults on there too - nearly typed adult movies and realised that is a whole different thing 😆

Busy weekend for you, enjoy!

Bluegreen143

It’s not on Disney+ yet annoyingly! Which is why I wanted to wait, as it eventually will be, but Red is keen to do this this weekend and has already invited our friend 😅.

fionaandphil

That's a shame,. I'm sure the kids and Red will love it though 

Floss

I understand that Red will want to buy his mum birthday presents, but maybe the adults in your family could agree to stop buying unless it's an 0 birthday? We've done that for years in my family, and it does save money.

Bluegreen143

Floss, I suggested to my mum and sister we cut our Christmas budget to £30 per person (or £60 per couple) and they said they’d agree to £100 per couple but I was to be aware they’d probably not stick to it 🤣. That’s a very sensible idea but it’s just not the kind of families either of us have.

Actually my mum and sister and I don’t buy birthday gifts for each other, but we go on a weekend away instead, which costs more than gifts used to 🤷‍♀️.

A couple of years ago I suggested that Red & I stop buying a gift for my brother-in-law, and my sister and BIL then wouldn’t buy a gift for Red. We did it for one year and both the men were unhappy, missed their presents and wanted to go back to buying for each other! The positive thing which came out of that was that Red took over choosing and buying BIL’s gift so it’s less admin for me 🤣.

Gifting is very much Red’s love language too so it brings him a lot of joy.