Money Monday - small steps

~ Every journey starts with a single step ~

so despite our little blip when Owen was in hospital our spending this month hasnt been to over the top, although this went awol when we had to pay for tunnel fees, hospital food, petrol, but trust me this was a small price to pay, but we have dusted ourselves off and onwards and upwards, small changes we are going to implement this month.

1. Try and meet all direct debit payments, saving bank charges @ £20 per item

2. Stopped our bank account with an overdraft/debit card and changed to bank account with no overdraft facility and one of the new O2 money manager visa cards, a visa card that you load up as and when and can only use what is available, no cross over transactions and text notifications when money is added or debited.

3. Keeping our spending to a limit, our proposed spend on food for October is £200 which averages out at about £50 per month, £50 will be loaded onto the O2 money manager card and kept specifically for food shopping, if we use less then this is carried over to the following week, and any overspend will be saved up for Christmas, which I have always started buying little bits for in September when the kids go back to school

4. Cook properly, I always try to whenever possible cook from scratch, but sometimes I find that it isn't always the most economical way with all the supermarkets competing at the moment, especially when the recipies ask for 1 of and you have to buy a whole packet of, so what I have tried to do is to cook double the quantities of easily freezable stuff (like stews, sauces, cassaroles etc) which I find cheaper and also means that we still have home cooked food on the two days that I do work ( because bless him my hubby still thinks that his version of home cooked is to read the oven instructions !)

5. I am also going to try and eke out meat as much as I can, again working out to be more economical, for example yesterday I cooked a medium chicken for Sunday Lunch, instead of putting loads of meat on the plate I put a little less on and padded the meal out with Vegetables, I took the rest of the meat off the carcass and then boiled the carcass to make a good stock along with whatever meat came off the bones, I can then make a chicken and bacon stew out of the stock and then we can have a chicken omlette with the rest of the meat so out of 1 medium sized chicken we would have made 3 meals

Chicken £ 4.00

Sunday Roast Veg £ 2.00

Stew veg and Bacon £ 1.50

Eggs for omlette £ 1.00

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Total £8.50

For 3 meals for a family of 5 - not bad eh !!

see you next time x

Menu Planning

Before I start - can I again please appologise for my lack of posting - back up to speed now and am bursting with ideas for you. so for starters here is our menu for this week.

We are having a very cheap week this week not an awful lot of money to spare this week, so have had to draw on all of my budgeting and cooking skills, but seem to have pulled it off !

Sunday - Sausage Cassarole and Mashed Potato
Monday - Shepherds Pie
Tuesday - Chicken in White sauce with Rice
Wednesday - Spanish Omelette
Thusday - Spagetti Bolognase
Friday - Lasagne and Chips

All this including food for school lunches, milk, bread, dog food etc for a family of 5 cost £35.00 not bad eh!

The future plan is to continue in this fashion even on the weeks that money isnt as stretched (its always tight!) then even a couple of pound saved will gradually over time build so that we have a small buffer zone incase of any emergencies

Hope you are all keeping well and I promise I will be more forthcoming with the posts !!

Love to you all x

Budgeting

So we are coming up to the end of the financial year, tying up loose ends, filing all up to date, ready to be archived.

Right.... and then I woke up and smelt the coffee, unfortunately towards the latter end of the financial year things have gone a bit pear shaped, so another one of my mid-year resolutions is to get more organised, and to try and get straight financially.

I'll be honest with you this year has been a struggle, living from one pay day to the next, and for a family of five, with a mortgage and loan to pay off it really hits home.

The things that you do learn along the way are lessons that money cant buy such as:

1. who your friends are - your real friends are the ones who accept that things are tight at the moment and wont pressure you or treat you any differently

2. How to cook properly - I have always (as far as I can- and I do have the odd slip up !) made meals from scratch, even on junk food saturday we make our pizza, but I have learnt how to cook more creatively with leftovers, making stock and making up stews, bulking meals out with more vegetables and freezing leftovers and also turning the ratio to putting veg on plate first and adding meat as a side dish.

3. how to budget, although we are paying off loans, - if we stick to our budget plan (pear shaping taken into account ! we still aim to have these paid off by mid next year, I have also found a great web site that has great advice http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/ advice and tips for claiming back any money due to you and up to date money saving coupons, and much much more

4. that any family can adapt no matter how young or old each family member is, you may have to explain in simpler terms but we try and explain to the whole family that there wont be any luxuries for a while and they seem to accept the small changes.

5. the wide variety of free activities that are available it may take a while to find them by searching various sites but the rewards are amazing.

6. Love of my family, as dramatic as it sounds - with my husband and my children by my side we are a team against the world, in times of crisis, be it financial, emotional or physical we pull together no questions asked, we as parents lead by example and if we manage to keep the family buyant then the kids are great.

anyway going back to my organisation for budgeting, in advance of 6th April I have, 2 lever arch files, one for wage slips/bank statements and the other for bills, a diary to write down any upcoming direct debit /standing order dates, 2 small notebooks (one for menu planning and one for day to day spending records) so we are all cooking on gas ready for the start of the new year and together we will do this - debt free future here we come hopefully - Ill keep you updated as we travel along this rocky road - wish me luck - Im going in !! x