Riding the wave

beanielou

What a fantastic cake.
Don’t worry about having a dip. We have all been there.

AntoMac

Just to echo what the others have said. You have nothing to be ashamed of. Life is very expensive, especially with a couple of kids. Fantastic job with the cake. What a great caring Dad and family man you are.

Keep_Buggering_On

Saturday was a very nice day out with the kids. We got the shoe shopping done- £95 for two pairs of school shoes and two pairs of trainers! With my bus fare, that was the whole money I had budgeted for the day gone, but we got what we needed for September so I can’t complain, especially as the school shoes were buy one get one half price and DD’s trainers were Sketchers in the sale at half price and are (and I quote) ‘the most comfortable shoes she’s ever worn’! We had lunch at McDonalds, which made a nice treat and OH paid for that before we went and did the Wizard mini-golf which was a lot of fun, even if DD was hopeless!

Yesterday I had to nip out for some bread, which I managed to pick up at 53p in the chuckout which was nice, but also found four 250g packs of butter reduced from £2.20 each to 20p each so those came home with me. I went out blackberrying after lunch as we finally had a nice cool day. I was out twenty minutes and filled a 2L ice cream tub with the biggest, sweetest and juiciest blackberries I have ever seen. I am guessing the long hot summer has led to a bumper crop. They are in the freezer now and will keep us supplied for pies and crumbles for a while.

Its back to work today, which is always a come down, however as everyone else is on leave and I just have a pile of emails to work through, I am not anticipating a particularly stressful start to the week!

ellenvan

Well done on keeping to the footwear budget.

That butter find was an absolute good bargain.

Keep_Buggering_On

The end of my first week back at work after my holiday and any hopes of a quiet week went out the window on Monday with the first of several big jobs coming my way, then had a meeting on campus yesterday and came out of it with a massive set up job (apparently I am the only one on the team who understands how to set things up on SharePoint/Teams- on the plus side I find it to be a really quick and easy job but they all think I am some sort of savant because I can do it!). Really looking forward to the weekend now though. Me and DD have a nice cheap day out planned on Sunday with my best mate at the local bus museum who are having a free open day. We will go and look at the buses and maybe have a few rides on some of the 1930s machines. I always find it odd that my daughter is as into these things as she is, but she is almost certainly autistic like me and OH, so that might just be a factor! I put £10 aside in an envelope back on payday to cover this day out, so with the added bonus of free children’s bus fare until the end of the month, after my £6 ticket to get there, I will have £4 left for spending money! Gosh I’m rolling in it 😊- they usually have a selection of transport books at £1 or £2 each so I will get myself a little treat and DD has £10 left from her birthday money so if she sees anything she wants on the craft stalls she can pick it up. Lunch will be taken with us, but as DD loves a picnic, this is no hardship.

Little cat has had a poorly eye this week, all red and bloodshot. I’m not sure if she caught it with her claw play fighting with big cat, or its some dust from her cat litter but it didn’t look good. Before a trip to the vets (and accompanying bill) we decided to try bathing it in cooled boiled water and adding some animal eye drops we had in the cupboard to see if it would get better. It wasn’t making much difference, but then OH found a tube of eye gel we had for the guinea pig that was for all small animals including cats and was still in date. A couple of days of applying that and its cleaning up nicely and saved us a massive vet’s bill. The only down side is that little cat hates it so I have to hold her while OH adds the gel, and this morning she really didn’t like it and I got scratched to pieces. If she carries on like this, we might have to wrap her in a towel to do it, but hopefully its nearly healed so we won’t have to do it too many more times!

OH got her UC through today so we got the last of the school stuff sorted for the kids going back. Unfortunately DS managed to break his calculator just before the end of term, so we needed two of them at £13 each with DD starting secondary school. That plus football boots for two and PE trainers and the money disappeared quite quickly. Luckily though DS’s actual PE kit was still in good condition and he has had a growth spurt, so DD will be using her brother’s old kit whist he gets a new set. As they are all branded with the school logo, plus have sweatshirts and the rest it adds up fast. She doesn’t seem bothered about having her brother’s hand-me-downs (she’s not that sort of child, plus even if she were bothered, she still wouldn’t be getting new PE kit!). At least they do get used, I remember my school telling my parents I needed cricket whites in the kit list which they diligently bought- we never wore cricket whites once in five years!

Keep_Buggering_On

A fun weekend- got a big batch of baking done on Saturday and made good use of some of my 20p to make real butter shortbread. Tastes fantastic, but healthy it is not! Yesterday’s trip to the bus museum was a lot of fun, although in the end it was jut me and DD who went as my mate went out the night before so texted me on Sunday morning to say he had a massive hangover and had woken up at someone else’s house! He is 43 and should know better, but he clearly doesn’t!

We left the house a little early for the bus and popped into the village charity shop to kill five minutes- big mistake as DD found two absolutely enormous squishmallows she wanted at £3.50 each, so the last of her birthday money went on those and as we didn’t have time to take them home before the bus arrived, muggins ended up carrying them round for her as the bag was too big for her! I have come to the conclusion that all daughters have to do is smile sweetly, flutter their eyelashes and Dads will give in nine times out of ten!

Whilst I was in town, I picked up the anniversary card for OH as I don’t think I will be leaving the village again this month. WFH means you do have to plan these things carefully as you can’t just pop into town on a lunch hour t pick something up, but not having to deal with the commute every day more than compensates! I get paid on Friday, but its disappearing as fast as its arriving. The rounded out figures are:

Wage- £2240

Joint Account (bills)- £750

Paying off Overdraft- £230

Help To Save- £50

OH- £218 (she subbed me some money so I am paying that back as well as the usual £200 for the shopping/kids etc)

PayPal Credit Card- £250

Capital One Credit Card- £300

Insurance- £18

Holiday- £305 (We have booked for next year and OH covered the deposit out of her money so I need to pay her back so we have some money to live off this month)

Anniversary Meal- £70 (twenty years together this year so we have a babysitter and a table booked at the Italian in the village)

DS’s Pocket Money- £15

Mobile Phone top up- £5

Dentist- £30

So by my calculations, I have around 88p left for the whole month! It might be a little more, but only a pound or two! After the excess of August, it definitely needs to be a cheaper month, especially on the impulse buys and treats, which will effectively be none in September. I had to ditch my usual grocery shop this month to get the figures to even add up slightly, but having gone through the freezer and cupboards we have 75% of what I would have ordered in there anyway and the rest can be added to the weekly shop. Hopefully once the overdraft is gone, it will ease slightly in September’s pay packet and I will actually have a little bit of cash left over.

I am planning to concentrate on things at home this month- I have a few kits in the stash to build, plenty of things to read and DVDs to watch and the garden to work on, so not going out won’t be much of a hardship and getting back on track really needs to be the priority at the moment.

beanielou

Shortbread is good for you! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Blackcats

you've paid off over £1000 from your debt which is a great achievement.

Hopefully you can eek out your wages for September and that you have some underspends to supplement your 88p.

beanielou

Oh & meant to say I found my OD the hardest debt to shift so well done.