Our attempt at being MF!!

CathT · 13 August 2018 at 8:45AM

Good morning. We had a lovely day at the zoo and escaped the rain. Zero spends for me as I provided the picnic then mum bought drinks, chips and ice creams.

Have checked the accounts this morning and we have £159 left in food/fuel account to last us 10 days. This should be more than achievable with funds to spare. We do however need more than a 'top up' shop.

Haven't bought Netfl1x yet as dh and I are so far behind on the tv we watch together it doesn't seem worth it at this point. However. If we don't add something to the hally account we will lose the ever decreasing reward.

Have done a quick calculation of wages/expenses going forward. It always works out so much better on paper doesn't it. Basically, on dh basic wage (figures based on his wage per pay rise and bonuses so far too low an estimation) we are able to........
Overpay the mortgage by £300
Save £50 in ISA
Save £300 (but generally used for holidays)
and have £309 left after all food/fuel is paid for.

So why am I now counting down until payday and really low on 'spare' funds!!

Planning to
Take the children on their bikes today
Maybe visit local NT for a play and campfire cooking
Declutter (preferably sell) old car seats as dd way above legal height restriction. Ds still needs one as he's only 132cm (he is only 6 though, just super tall). Also have ds old bike to maybe sell for a few pounds.

Oh I do love not being in work on a Monday!!

CathT · 14 August 2018 at 6:41AM

Morning all. Just a quick post from me with a couple of updates.

August food spends now at £100.42 (not too bad for this point in the month). I am also encouraging my mum with my frugal ways. I served her left over pizza (she would have binned), jacket potato and cheese and out of date coleslaw for a meal a few days ago (she was fully aware!) really enjoyed it and suffered no harm. Planning to have her on tcb next.

Sold a couple of car seats yesterday and checking the children's' height so we now have a booster in each car. £8 made and promptly overpaid. Have someone coming for a bike this week so that's another £5 that will be overpaid. Listed a fancy brand cooking item on 3bay for my mum and already received an offer. They want more photos so will do that before work.

Right, need to move. Spent an hour doing an upper body workout last night and currently on 95 steps which feels very counter productive.

CathT · 14 August 2018 at 9:12PM

Good evening.

Very quick update from me as behind on so many diaries and want to catch up.

Bike sold and £5 promptly overpaid, I can't wait until the spreadsheet suddenly tells me we have shaved another month off the end date. 110 points on y0ugov today. DH did another 1.5hours overtime today so that's adding up nicely, he is shattered though so am hoping his hours and workload stabilises soon.

Can't believe it's hump day tomorrow, having a Monday off really does make a huge difference.

Up to 12,606 so need to do another 15 minutes ish of stepping to hit my 15k target.

CathT · 15 August 2018 at 11:05PM

Hump day done and one working day to go!

£4.27 spent at supermarket on protein yoghurt and bottled water so added to £100.42 takes our monthly spend to a grand running total of £104.89. Am hopefull neither of us will need much more fuel in next 7 days so it is looking likely there will be spare funds in that account.

Dh has worked some more overtime but really is shattered now. Sold an item for my mum on 3bay so will get that packaged up and posted in the morning.

It's dh birthday in a couple of weeks and my mum has offered to have the children for the evening. I said dh would probably rather have good food and wine at home, I was right. We are such home birds and find it difficult to justify the expense of meals out etc when we can have delicious food at home.
Dh did check cinema listings but again couldn't find anything worth going out for! We do go on holiday a few days later so aren't completely depriving ourselves.

Still plodding to payday, 8 days to go!

pink_poppy · 16 August 2018 at 11:34AM

CathT wrote: »

£4.27 spent at supermarket on protein yoghurt and bottled water so added to £100.42 takes our monthly spend to a grand running total of £104.89.

You've diddled yourself out of 20p there

CathT · 17 August 2018 at 7:32AM

You're right! Total is £104.69
A 20p difference is crucial when playing with budgets that small!

6 days until payday. We need a good shop (currently running freezer down and literally buying what we need) but should manage without needing petrol for each car. I only have 2 'work' days before payday as have a wonderful stretch of 4 days off now. £86.49 left in food/fuel account. Earlier in the month we also spent about £50 on fuel visiting friends so really we should have more leftover at this point in a very frugal month.

Have a bit of a job list, some things needs doing today, others just over next 4 days.

Text builders again about smoke alarm and heat sensor required by planning following extension build.
Mow the lawns.
Declutter a bag of work resources out of utility room.
Sort out academic paperwork and find an area to store to make my dissertation year a bit easier.
Sort out what suitcases we have for holiday.
See if we can check in online/print boarding passes.
Hang remaining pictures.

Still keeping spends low, have made a rough budget for September but hopefully some of the living costs will be offset by being away for a week. Our energy usage has increased by about 1/3, are fans energy zappers? My mum has one on in her room a lot. She'll have a shock in the winter when it's cold and the heating doesn't get turned on....the dressing gown goes on!! On another note, so glad never to need to move house again. My mum exchanged weeks ago and was meant to complete 2 weeks ago. It's all delayed for some reason and nothing seems to be happening. That would cause me a huge amount of stress.

Right, one more coffee and I am cracking on.....

CathT · 18 August 2018 at 7:49AM

Hmmmm, only did the first two jobs off my list but did also cut back some of the bushes by the decking as they had gone a bit wild. Was so cold yesterday and was threatening rain so glad I got it done.

Did a food shop at m*s for some top up items, we were having leftover Chinese takeaway that we had frozen for dinner and it needed bulking out. Bought myself a chow mien ready meal (so I could track in mfp but it was actually really disappointing for m*s) and bulked mine our with spring rolls. We ended up with a lovely meal for 5 with minimal spends. I used a £10 gift card so actually only spent £7.20.
Then did a normal shop at @ldi which included two bottles of wine.

August food spends now £140.63.

We had a minor leak last evening. I was having a relaxing bath complete with candle, glass of fizzy water, relaxing music and my book and was alerted to water coming through one of the kitchen spotlights. It doesn't fit in location wise with anything upstairs so we think it can only be related to my mum breaking the overflow on the bath the other day thinking it operated the plug! She has a joiner coming to fit a cat flap soon and he fit her bathroom so she will ask him to look at it and will cover any expense.

Talking of spends, we are planning a day at Alt0n T0wers next week to meet friends. It's not my favourite place as I don't like rides but I'll brave some with the children and everyone else will have a fab time. Wow it's expensive though. Looked into using our £5 t3sxo points to double (treble) up and buy children's tickets in advance and then use a bogof on the day for dh and me. Still need to work out cheapest option of doing this. We will take a picnic and some money for drinks. It's also dh birthday that week so that can be his present/celebration.

Plan for this week is to declutter and streamline the house a bit. We're now overcrowded as such but things we used to store in the snug have now spilled out into the living area. I predict a charity shop run later. The children have a birthday party locally later so we just need to be effective with our time today.

CathT · 19 August 2018 at 1:29PM

Small top up shop taking spends up to £148.40.

Sent another £9.34 to mortgage from an 3bay sale.

Have been really busy at home this morning trying to organise the space better. Moving a bookcase really set the ball rolling to moving lots of furniture round to make better use of the space we have. We not have a study corner in the family area which will be ideal for housing laptop/printer, doing homework and dissertation writing.

Payday Thursday, would be good to have a run of 3 NSD's now.
Definitely feels like summer is over here today. Bit breezy, cool and cloudy. Just put a load of washing out and have another in the machine.

Right, despite not stopping this morning I'm on less than 5k steps so need to rectify that.

Hopefully have a catch up later, maybe with a hot chocolate since the weather is rubbish!

apple_muncher · 19 August 2018 at 1:37PM

What is your dissertation about?

CathT · 19 August 2018 at 6:19PM

I'm going to do it on Adverse Childhood Experiences. I may do a small scale research project relevant to my role but the ethics process is supposed to be quite daunting.

Had such a productive day today and really pleased with how the house is looking. Dh did 7.5 hours overtime today. I'm hoping for his tiredness levels he is able to just work his standard hours the rest of the week.

Going to finish off my steps (lost 1.3lb this week) which I am overjoyed with as an under the weight I thought I'd be happy with, plus I know I have also built some muscle.

The rest of the evening will be spent reading, catching up on mfw and prepping my new bujo. I am going to begin with 'streamline september' and hopefully keep the bujo going effectively this time. I find Sept-Dec to be such a busy time with lots of plans and events and the time goes really fast.

Right, off to step!

Our attempt at being MF!!

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