Cancer, cash and carrying on

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Thanks blackcats, beanie, Dakota and spendless

My older 2 are 22 and 20 and so are their partners. I guess I just expected them to offer to cover a takeaway or even a round of ice creams. Or offer to cook dinner one night even 😂

I’m not saying a thing, I want us all to enjoy the holiday. But next time, I’ll make it crystal clear that they need to pay their own entrance fees and maybe cook a meal each 🫠

I think because they know we’rd obviously paying for our younger 3 they just expect it. But I think if I was one of the partners I’d at least offer to cook 🤔 I guess I should take it as a compliment they feel so relaxed and at home with us 😁

Sun_Addict

Surely their consciences are telling them they ought to contribute? I wonder if they're embarrassed to bring it up? I remember years ago Mr SA's sister and family went on holiday with Mr SA's parents. They pooled the spending money but SIL was scrutinising every penny MIL wanted to spend.

I'm glad you're enjoying your holiday though, it's very well deserved.

ohdearhowdidthathappen

We’re having a chill day today, we’ve had a busy few days and it’s raining today. It’s been a lovely few days away, but pretty busy. We’ll have a takeaway tonight and then we head home tomorrow.
I’ve added up our spending (guesstimating tonight’s takeaway) and we’ve spent £980, scraping in under the £1k budget. I think in future I need to budget a little more, maybe £1200 and ask the working adults to pay their own entrance fees to big attractions. That would give us comfortably enough.

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Next week I’ve got another flurry of appointments, all being well it’s my last chemo and they’ll remove my PICC line too. Can’t wait 😁

I’ve got a surgery date in October so I’m hoping for a few weeks ‘off’ treatment in between. I’ll still have pre op etc, but I want to use those few weeks for a bit of a reset (after my normal few days of feeling 💩 after a treatment) and start healing after 6 months of pretty intense chemo.

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Payday 😁

I’ve filled our pots and transferred money to savings, I’ve left £1200 in our current account (£300 a week) to cover remaining budgeted spends with a generous buffer.

This is what we currently have in joint savings and joint pots:

• Christmas - £1200 - we put £150 a month in here to have £1800.
• Holidays/FU cancer - £1200. We put £300 a month in here, it’s been hammered this week 🫠
• Car - £800. We put £100 a month in here
• Pixie dust fund - £100
• FFEF - £20000
• Home renovations- £15000

The Christmas fund sounds generous, but we buy for each other, 5 kids, 2 of their partners and 4 of our parents/stepparents. It soon goes!

I need to work out how much extra to put in holiday/FU cancer fund, I’d like to put £800pm to get to £10k a year… this would cover one foreign family holiday, 1 uk family holiday and a couple of long weekends for DH and I. For now, I’ve kept to £300 and will put anything spare in here. DHs bonus will also go in here.

Car fund, not sure we’ll need this once we get our lease, but keeping for now. We have an MOT and service due before our lease is available.

Pixie Dust fund, we enjoyed having this this month ☺️ and had no trouble spending it.

We’ve decided to top the FFEF up to £25k as our fixed DDs and food bill is just over £4kpm, so £25k gives us 6 months

House renovations, I haven’t included this previously as it’ll be spent by the end of this year. I’ll do a separate post on what this is for ☺️

ohdearhowdidthathappen

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that all our income and expenditure flows through one account. We then get a personal spend amount that goes into our sole accounts. This amount fluctuates, when we were paying off debts it was £100 each and we’ve slowly increased it. We now get £350.

Out of mine, I have been saving £50 a month into a cash ISA and £50 into a S&S ISA. I’ve only been doing this for less than a year, but the current balances are:

• Savings - £500
• Investments - £647
• 1p challenge - £289

The savings are my own kind of emergency fund, so now I’ve got £500 I’m going to just put all the £100 into S&S ISA.

Investments are in a S&S ISA with m0nzo, returns have been 8% so far

I’m actually debating increasing 1p challenge to 2p as this would save £1040 ish for the 12 months

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Apart from one appointment on BH Monday, we have absolutely nothing planned for the entire long weekend. It’s actually very needed… much as I loved the holiday, it was busy with 9 of us all week. My social battery is empty 😁

No spending planned either, which my bank account will be pleased with.

I unpacked yesterday and started on the washing, I’ll finish the rest today. I’ve got some ironing to do and I need to make sure everything is ready for back to school too. I’ve meal planned easy and light meals for the week, my waist line will appreciate it 🫠

ohdearhowdidthathappen

House stuff…

So the £15k is for extremely boring external work on our house. The render is really old and cracking in places, some of the roof tiles are blown and then the whole outside needs repainting.
We had quotes, but it’s worked out much cheaper to hire each trade individually (like £25-20k cheaper 😮)…Such a faff to coordinate timings though!

• scaffolding £3k
• Render £5700
• Painting £5k
• Roof £1300

I find this kind of house maintenance quite annoying, it’s necessary but the house isn’t going to look £15k more expensive 😂. The money was saved monthly plus 2 of my DHs bonuses.

Blackcats

I hope your PICC line is removed next week and you get time to build up your energy and strength ahead of your op.

I completely agree about some house renovations being completely uninspiring. We just had our soffits and fascia's replaced and I have found that there is a limit to how many times I can look up at the roof and admire the white plastic 😉. I think that dealing with things like rendering and soffits must mean we are nearly grown up.

How did you sprinkle August's pixie dust?

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Thanks blackcats

Most of August’s went on more generous contributions to sponsorships ie £25 instead of £10 ☺️. I helped a lady out when she couldn’t pay for parking too.

For September, I should be finishing chemo this week. I’m going to buy cakes/biscuits for PICC nurses and chemo nurses… that’ll take a decent chunk of it