The Ultimate Incentive muddles along

Birdie85 · 22 May 2017 at 10:16AM

Hi all! :wave:

Back from my holiday but not at all feeling refreshed from it, just exhausted! It was awesome though, Zach loved it and he's got major holiday blues now and keeps saying that it's too cold here and he wants to go on rides! :rotfl:

Glad you've got a guesstimate for being back in the house Dinah, bad news about the quote mix-up though! Hope you can get the extension completed!

With the 1 kid vs a brood decision, we were only ever thinking about having 2 max but it turns out that neither of us find the whole parenting thing comes totally naturally to us and we've struggled with one very easy child (controversial thing to admit perhaps that I don't simply adore every second of motherhood??) so we'd be pushing it if we had another, especially if the second was a bad sleeper etc. We know when we've got it good and we don't want to push it! We struggle to keep up with just him, I have no idea how people manage to wrangle 2 or 3 kids when they're out and about, not to mention that once you add more to the mix I can imagine that friends and family are a lot less keen to offer babysitting services! This also means that there's no immediate need to move house and we can afford to treat him more, and to actually live a nice enough life ourselves. We're strict with him so he's not, and never will be, a spoilt, bratty, only child and he's got 2 cousins already and there'll be more soon enough I reckon so he's got a decent family circle.

And I really don't want to go through pregnancy and childbirth again!!!! :eek:

Kavics, you have always had my total admiration for having Mini Kavics on your own. Even though it was far from your decision to do that, you've done so amazingly well and she's an awesome little girl. You must be so proud of both her and yourself. :heartpuls

wendz86 · 22 May 2017 at 1:48PM

That good potential news about the gym Dinah, fingers crossed.

Glad you had a good holiday Birdie!

I'm definitely not as motherly as I thought I would be. I love the books/blogs like Hurrah for Gin. 3 days with the two girls on my own with a cold was not particularly enjoyable this weekend. They do have their very cute moments though which makes it worthwhile.

Dinah93 · 23 May 2017 at 9:20PM

No one enjoys parenting when they're ill. It's just not possible, we just yearn for when we could spend a few days in bed with a boxset and the Vicks.

Gym signed me up for two long sessions a week at £30 each, and then when I start on the 8th we're arranging a time to start a 3rd session for another £20 Which not only is a family session which I love to teach, but also the session is free to the community not just members which I think is a brilliant offer

..... Then today I called another gym I know specalise in yoga, they're looking for a Friday morning class, so I'll either speak to him later in the week or go over after half term. They're also interested in another type of class I'm training in, so that might get going in September. Ben was set to start afternoon nursery in September, but I've moved him to mornings as 3/5 mornings are now taken up with classes compared to 1/5 afternoons, and I'm fairly sure I can fill the other two mornings once September rolls around. Thrilled it's all taking off so well.

Aaaannd.... I was accepted onto pregnancy yoga teacher training. I should have had to wait at least another year, but my tutor gave an amazing recommendation and I got a place. Very very happy. So hopefully be adding that to my rosta from early 2018.

Cinny91 · 24 May 2017 at 8:48AM

I think we're pretty much on the same page as to why we're sticking with one, Birdie. There's also the financial side for us, we do alright and as is we can afford to save a decent amount per month for his future and we're hoping to have enough for him that he'll have a good leg up into the adult world - to go to university, start a business or buy his first home. We definitely wouldn't be able to do that on the same scale for a second child, and I think especially for Rich it's very important for him to be able to do this for Oscar.

Sounds like you had a good holiday! We've been looking at 4 nights at Disneyland Paris over Oscar's 2nd birthday but I can't quite twist Rich's arm on it. It's "only" working out around the £500 mark, which I think is a good deal!

That's great about the classes, Dinah! Sounds like it's really taking off for you, you must be so glad you took to leap with it all

Dinah93 · 26 May 2017 at 12:59PM

I am. The easier option obviously would have been to get a job somewhere, but this is something that gives me a massive sense of fulfillment, and I can fit it around the kids, so I feel it gives our family as a whole the best balance of seeing one another and happy me because I love my job.

NIM has £150 of mystery shops lined up yesterday, today and tomorrow, so that's a good chunk of change, then he has a couple of handyman jobs in the coming week or so.

My new Monday night yoga class is completely full, 3 places in the gentler Monday night one, and I think 4 places in the Friday, currently 7 on the Monday morning which is a problem, but if it doesn't fill up a bit then it will be cancelled.

Update spreadsheet about house
Tidy bedroom
Upload birthday party photos
Complete assignment 3
Do any alterations from weekends coursework
Email George from congress
Email Yoga leggs
Update website
Add mailing list function to website
Add online booking function to website
Design NIM logo
Order NIM flyers
NIM uniform tax claim
Email gyms, try to get more work
Reply to recent emails that are starred
DLA renewal form
Draft letter to schools
Get knee x-ray
Send receipts to BWY
Reply to email from Julie
Email to K & L&G
Invoice to studio
Try to reclaim yoga ticket money on insurance
Call Polygon

Cinny91 · 30 May 2017 at 9:11AM

I think that is a massive bonus, the flexibility. I'm lucky I've been able to split my hours between 3 days instead of the 5 I was working before Oscar.

Hope everyone had a nice bank holiday weekend, and that you worked through your list Dinah

I can't wait for June to begin. I've been tracking our spending through the month on everydollar and we've put a June budget together based on that. We can overpay 10% on our mortgage each year so we'd like to start working towards saving that, we're ready to go hell-for-leather at getting it paid off asap. I keep on having small-to-medium sized panics over our repayment amount

wendz86 · 30 May 2017 at 9:51AM

I think there is a lot to be said for a job you actually enjoy and the flexibility is good too.

I hope the mystery shops went ok too.

Weekend was good but pretty expensive so think I need to rein back the spending for a few weeks. Took the girls swimming yesterday to the pool where poppy does her lessons and was told i don't have to pay for her to swim in a normal session because she does lessons there. Will take them more now I know that as only have to pay £5 for me. Heidi is getting more confident in the water too which is lovely.

Cinny91 · 1 June 2017 at 3:11PM

Good luck with your spending this month, Wendz. We've purposely sent all our money out for bills/extra debt payments this morning rather than waiting until the end of the month and accidentally spending it through the month. So I hope this method works! We've also opened an easy access saver so any "spare" money can be put away in there where we can't impulse buy things

Filled my diary for the month today. We've moved £1100 to one side in various saving pots (to mac on some good interest rates, who have I become?!) for when we're ready to pay our loan off. Our debts are under 14k again now (£1000 of car repairs last month really messed us up

) Enjoying using everydollar though as it has a neat little graph that shows all different % of where our money is at.

Hope all is well, Dinah!

ETA: Should say we're not counting our savings against our debt yet until we've got enough saved up to pay it off in one go. Which is annoying for the number-nerd within!

Dinah93 · 3 June 2017 at 11:38AM

Hi all, we're back (mum paid for us to go to Disney, I only had to pay for one meal, I figured e50 is probably less than I'd have spent feeding the three of us at home for the 5 days?!). Had a great time although a bit of a scary journey back where we were held up at the train station for an hour as there was a suspicious package at the next stop on the line, line finally reopened, mum and Grace went to get tickets, most people went straight down to the tracks as had already bought them, then dogs going mad, people screaming, bomb threat on our station everyone running out, Ben and I outside and can't find mum and Grace, then I saw them inside the station looking confused as to why it's completely empty - no one had evacuated the ticket hall! Thankfully all okay and it was just a scare but terrifying to be in the middle of.

List still long. Need to work out where I'm at with it.

Head down saving money now. Friends even offered us some tickets to go on a steam train today as their little one is ill, and we've politely declined, as it's an hour away and we'll end up getting ice creams, drinks etc as well as fuel. With doing the extension we really want to pay off what we've borrowed for it asap.

I wish we could use something like every dollar, I used to have a UK one, but NIM doesn't do it so then I have gaping confusing holes.

Got quite a few more classes in gyms now, taking my earnings to £301.50 a week (this is the net figure but after room hire, so before all training costs etc). This year training is pretty high, so unlikely to have more than £100 a week profit, but next year I should have done most of what I want to do so will only need 50 hours as cpd.

Extension starting on Thursday, very exciting, house refit coming along, I *think* the kitchen might be fitted this week coming too.

Dinah93 · 4 June 2017 at 5:34PM

Dinah93 wrote: »

[STRIKE]
Update spreadsheet about house[/STRIKE]

Tidy bedroom
[STRIKE]

Upload birthday party photos[/STRIKE]

Complete assignment 3

Do any alterations from weekends coursework

Email George from congress

Email Yoga leggs

Update website

Add mailing list function to website

Add online booking function to website

Design NIM logo

Order NIM flyers

NIM uniform tax claim
[STRIKE]

Email gyms, try to get more work [/STRIKE] Can't really fit any more in until tiny terror starts nursery in September

Reply to recent emails that are starred

DLA renewal form

Draft letter to schools

Get knee x-ray
[STRIKE]

Send receipts to BWY[/STRIKE]
[STRIKE]

Reply to email from Julie [/STRIKE]
[STRIKE]

Email to K & L&G[/STRIKE]
[STRIKE]

Invoice to studio[/STRIKE]
[STRIKE]

Try to reclaim yoga ticket money on insurance[/STRIKE]
[STRIKE]

Call Polygon[/STRIKE]

Send list of all charges to L&G

Serve buildings notice

Refund monday morning customers

Slow and steady. Need to plan my classes for this week too (beginners, mixed, core - handy I can use these 3 lesson plans to cover all classes this week

).

The Ultimate Incentive muddles along

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