In May 2012 I had my baby son and started maternity leave for the second time, knocking my family income down by over £800 per month. Surviving on Statutory Maternity Pay taught me to budget, and how to feed a family of four on only £20 a week. Nowadays I'm back to working, but still juggling the demands of two school-aged children against the reality of self-employed income.
I’ve been up and down with my meal plans lately, trying to find a system that works for me. The most productive way I have found seems to be to plan from Sunday through to the following Saturday. That allows me to buy a piece… read full entry →
In my moan about selling on eBay I touched upon something important I’ve discovered about budgeting: the time spent planning and plotting a budget is not always outweighed by money saved. Things have been pretty hectic here lately. You know, the usual stuff: a 1… read full entry →
One of the ways I was hoping that we would pay off our mortgage (let’s pretend I’ve updated that page recently) was to sell the mounds of crap I have sitting around the house on ebay. Of course by crap I mean treasure … kids… read full entry →
There’s been a big gap between meal plan posts because discovering Oliver has issues with dairy left me feeling a bit lost and “what do I cook now?!”. I don’t know why, most of the foods I cook are either dairy-free or have ingredients that… read full entry →
I was thinking the other morning (in the shower, again) about how we save money in so many ways every day… stuff that Karl & I have been doing for that long that we don’t think about it; thus it never makes a budgeting blog… read full entry →
Before I even look at the figures, I’m feeling a little more confident about this month. There were a few ‘cheats’ but I’ve mostly stuck to a £100 cash budget for everything. Let’s see what that tallies up to… Joint account expenditure Non-negotiable outgoings Mortgage:… read full entry →
Apologies for another boring meal plan entry. Drowning in work and house chores and kids and general ARGH at the moment. As expected, I’m finding that breaking my meal plans down in to stages and basing what I serve off the veg box instead of… read full entry →
We had some sunshine here in jemjabella-land today, so despite the chill in the air, everyone was wrapped up warm and shoved into the garden (and as such both kids were asleep for 6:30pm despite Oliver having late nap!) I’ve re-potted my strawberry babies from… read full entry →
I figured that if we’re going to be serious about this mortgage free in 5 years thing, I should be looking at where our money is going before we look at how much we can start moving over in overpayments. This is made slightly more… read full entry →
Sorry about the cheaty back-dating of this one ;) I’ve got several posts in the works re: my new goal to pay off the mortgage etc but am poorly so not getting time / energy to finish them :( 01st: (Homemade) Pizza night 02nd: Frugal… read full entry →
One of the things I see other people fall into the trap of too often with this budgeting lark (no, not me, far too smart.. cough cough) is buying into false economies. In other words, investing in something that appears to be a bargain but… read full entry →
Last meal plan post of January, huzzah (and only slightly late). Not as tight on the veg this week because I wanted to use up leftovers and bought a cheap chicken to get February meals in for as little as possible (more on that at… read full entry →