If you knock me down, I’m gonna get up again!

star24.7 · 16 March at 5:56PM

I’ve decided to start a diary, I’m not aiming to be mortgage free per se, but our life is possibly about to change unrecognisably.
Our family is me, Mr Star and Baby Star (14 months). Mr Star has just been told he may be made redundant, he is the main earner in our house and brings in £3,300 a month. He works 4 days a week from home (condensed hours) and has baby star on his day off (nursery don’t have space to take him the extra day 🫣). I’m self-employed and earn £2,900 a month working 4 days a week. We are nearing the end of renovating our house which is stressful in itself.

So as a family we need to see if we can live off just my income. Mr star will get redundancy, we don’t know how much but he’s worked there a long time and he was offered voluntary redundancy last year of c£40k before tax.
I guess I just need a space to collect my thoughts, as having got through a few tough years, life was settling down.
So to summarise our current situation: total income £6,200
Outgoings:
Mortgage - £1,250
gas/electric/CT/water/phones/internet/tv etc: £550
Dog insurance/pet plan: £70 (he’s old)
nursery (3 long days as we both work condensed hours) £790
cleaner £60 a week (essential cost until husband has no job)
Car tax £18

Savings:
holiday £600
isas/Lisa £600
christmas £85
child savings £100

all our insurance is paid annually, but this together with food, eating out/day trips, activities for baby star, petrol, clothes etc use up the rest of the money. TBH it’s mainly food and eating out 😵‍💫, we’ve haven’t had to worry too much about it so just spent what we wanted - but that is going to change.

We’ve got reasonable savings pots and no debt apart from the mortgage:
£14k premium bonds (but I want to lob a bit in my pension before 5/4)
£46k in ISAs (probably spend c£15k on finishing the renovations, the builder has 3 weeks left then we need carpets, decorator etc)
£15k in LISAs
£6k in baby star jisa.
holiday fund £1600
christmas £255

It is probably possible to survive on my income if we don’t pay the nursery or cleaner, but the first we need for mr star to work and the second our house wouldn’t function without. We are going to have a go at living off £2,900 plus nursery and our cleaner. I know some people reading this will think it’s simple, but we have had a lifestyle creep. I get lunch at work every day, we just donate baby stars old stuff not sell it, we get a lot of takeaways, we like taking baby star out for the weekend to farms and soft-play etc.

We’ve got our big holiday already booked, we are going to Miami in December, we were going to book a summer trip but won’t do that which should mean we won’t use all our holiday money this year.