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TAKE CARE
You’ve been thrust into Social Distancing, and I see all these tweets and posts and articles about the Viral Anxiety and Viral Stress that’s accompanying the CoronaVirus, and my first thought is: what’s new about Viral Stress and Anxiety? We live it everyday in the college admissions world. And that thought leads me to realize that your generation, you -- the amazing Gen Z, are absolutely equipped for this ordeal. You are resilient. You are experienced with handling your stress and many of you have been proactive in learning the mechanisms for dealing with stress and anxiety on a regular level. Nevertheless, this stress is -- no doubt -- leveling up.
You know that life can feel like it’s falling apart and that you will survive it. You know that we need a little wind in our lives to make us stronger. You know, that just like those baby trees in the biosphere that fell down when they didn’t have anything pushing on them -- we need some stress in our lives. If you aren’t familiar with my take on the trees in the biosphere, you can read my medium story about it here.
But let’s be real -- there’s stress and then there’s stress. So, I want you to be especially careful with yourselves now. It’s one thing to go through the college admissions decisions drama while in school surrounded by classmates, teachers, and friends, and a whole 'nother thing to go through it alone. But, as Brene Brown, one of my personal heroes said last week (look her up if you aren’t familiar with her), “Social distancing doesn’t have to mean social disconnection.” We can be alone in all this together. We know how to do exactly that here on A2C, and we’ve been doing it for years.
When you start to feel overwhelmed, take a minute and find stillness and just allow yourself to breathe. Ground yourself in the present moment by listing 5 things you can see, 4 things you can hear, 3 things you can feel, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste.
I always recommend yoga and mindfulness and meditation because they helped me during the most stressful times of my life, so I definitely recommend you look into some online yoga classes as a way to grow comfortable with connecting your body and brain while you have some extra time on your hands in the next few weeks.
I also recommend two apps for you to help with mindfulness and meditation.

1. Breathe by Dr. Jud: it’s available on google play and the app store. FREE. This is a great app that can help you with meditation and mindfulness and in general, just being still.
2. Koru Free Un-Class and App ($3.99 charge for app): That link has links to the app and class.

And lastly, before I move on to logistics and news and updates, I want to share this letter with you from a high school teacher in Louisiana, whose words moved me. He experienced Hurricane Katrina as a high school student and has some wise words to share with you.
​

• SAT, ACT, IB, AP, TRANSCRIPTS, AND INTERNET

So far, SAT and ACT have both pushed back their April and May dates. College Board notification is here. ACT is here. Here is the IB notification.
I honestly have no idea what is going to happen with testing for you juniors and seniors who need IB scores and A levels, or what’s going to happen with your transcripts if your teachers and counselors can’t easily access them. I’m hopeful that all this will be resolved before there’s a need to cause problems, but we really have no idea what’s going to happen. I do know that I follow over 500 colleges on social media and I’m seeing many of them make posts and tweets about how they will be trying to work with students however they can.
If you don’t have the Internet in your home, it can be really hard to get your school work done, not to mention your college applications. I’ve seen a few companies that are offering free intro services for students: Altice USA | Charter and Spectrum: 1-844-488-8395 | Comcast Covid Response: 855-846-8376 (English) or 855-765-6995 (Spanish). I’ve also seen that AT&T, Verizon, and T Mobile have Covid responses. You can google and see what they are offering.
​

• COLLEGES EXTENDING DEPOSIT DEADLINES

Here’s a great article about how colleges are making adjustments right now: The COVID College Choice: How To Pick A College During A Global Pandemic
ACCEPT List of colleges that are extending their Deposit deadline to June 1
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I6FRnbfPFmzNzKoPwYSFgLPB23XYdDTNk7bnpp5omjM/edit
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• NACAC COLLEGE ADMISSIONS STATUS: CORONAVIRUS IMPACT

“As a service to students and families, NACAC is providing this online tool as a central resource for information about changes in college admission events, deposit dates, and more as a result of the coronavirus outbreak.” NACAC is the National Association of College Admissions Counselors.
https://www.nacacnet.org/news--publications/newsroom/college-admission-status-coronavirus/?fbclid=IwAR34gw3CrfhUHVtzwdR1-TZf6BlYJJuT4jinCQNugr8BcQepv93KOsnM2Io
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• LEARNING MORE ABOUT COLLEGES

Pay attention to how colleges react to the virus. Are they helping their students with housing, airfare, and lost wages? Or are they leaving them high and dry? These are great questions and ones that I think y’all should be considering as you make your final decisions as seniors or your college lists as juniors.
This NPR article, Amid Coronavirus, Some College Students Have Nowhere To Go, might be interesting to you.

• VIRTUAL TOURS (AND OTHER WAYS TO LEARN MORE ABOUT A CAMPUS)

Seniors, as you begin to finalize your choices, I know you will have some tough decisions to make, and for many of you a college visit would have helped you with that decision. Juniors, as you begin to create your lists, it’s going to be tough this year with college visits and tours off the agenda more than likely at least through the spring, if not the summer.
The first place to start is the college’s own website. Many of them are working overtime to get virtual tours up for you. You can also see what kind of online programming the admissions offices are doing for you, like video chats and other online campus days. Make sure you follow their social media, especially Instagram and Twitter. I’m seeing lots of important info from many colleges everyday all day long. Many of them also have YouTube channels you can check out.
Here’s a list of some virtual tour websites.
https://www.youvisit.com/
https://www.campusreel.org/
https://www.youniversitytv.com/
These websites don’t have virtual tours necessarily, but they have lots of good info that you might find helpful.
www.niche.com
www.collegescoops.com
https://www.scoir.com/blog/youvisit-partnership
Cialfo College Fairs
https://www.zeemee.com/
Pinterest -- look for pics of colleges and see what others are saying
Reddit -- go to the individual college subreddits and ask questions of the students. There are no right or wrong answers to your questions because it’s all about what you’re interested in and what works best for you. Sample Questions: What do you like most? What do you like least? What do you do on a Saturday afternoon? What are your friends doing? What do you do on a Wednesday night? What might your friends be doing? What would you change?
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• TIRED OF BEING A COUCH POTATO YET?

Sure, you can play video games, catch up on movies, while away the hours on Twitch, or watch YouTube and TikTok for hours on end, but eventually you might find yourself getting a little bored. And juniors, this is primetime for you to take advantage of working on a personal project. I always suggest to my juniors that they use the summer before senior year to get a job and work on a personal project so this is a perfect opportunity for you to take the time to learn about and do some of the things that you just don’t have time to do during your busy year.
What to do now that we’re enmeshed in social distancing and we are working and schooling from home:
Read, Read, Read
Reread your favorite books (Harry Potter calling your name?)
Read books you haven’t had a chance to read before (Tess of the D'urbervilles, Rebecca, Fahrenheit 451, Anything by William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, John Steinbeck, Kurt Vonnegut, Ralph Ellison, or Jane Eyre or so many other amazing writers out here. I know my kids loved Robert Jordan when they were your age.
By the way, the best way to become a strong writer is to read -- a lot. Reading will improve your standardized test scores and help you in every class -- believe it or not.
Family Time
Family History Project -- Collect family stories, photos, and documents to create a scrapbook for your family to keep
Become a Chef -- Learn to follow recipes and create homemade meals
Chilling with Chores -- Do dishes and laundry without your parents asking you. These are the kind of tasks you can do with mindfulness by focusing on the task, or you can stick on some headphones or turn up the speakers and have a big ole Chore Dance Party.
Connecting with The Elderly -- Call and facetime with grandparents and the elderly in your life. They will be lonely and disconnected right now and will need you more than ever.
Family Game Night -- Bond your family and learn new games or bring out the old favorites
New Hobbies and Projects
Pursue a hobby you haven’t had time to explore before: Teach yourself Italian or another language that piques your interest, Learn an instrument like guitar and ukulele, Learn about Astronomy, Martial Arts, Gardening, or Chess. This is your chance to explore areas you haven’t given yourself time to explore or you can fine tune some skills you’ve been working on all along.
Take an Online Class: Ed X, YouTube tutorials, MOOCS, Coursera
Learn Marketable skills: Learn to code through Udacity, Learn Excel -- if you can help someone with an Excel Spreadsheet, you will forever be on their good side.
Get Creative
Find your artistic side: Draw, Sing, Cartoon, Dance, Paint, Collage, Write plays, Play and Write Music, Stories, or Operas
Be Outside (Sunshine and Green Bathing are both great ways to stay healthy!)
sit in the sun, take walks, bike rides, jogs (keep 6 feet spacing between you and others for social distancing)
Community Service and Volunteer
Childcare for people who must work
Errands for the Elderly -- make grocery store and pharmacy runs for those who shouldn’t be out and about
Help out at food banks for those who are newly unemployed and need back up food
Get a Job
Amazon and Grocery Stores are both hiring if your parents and you are comfortable with your being in that setting.
Journal/Diary
Write. Write. Write. And write some more. I encourage you to find your voice and practice with it while keeping a record of what’s happening in our world right now. These are truly historic times and your children and grandchildren will treasure your thoughts and reflections about what it was like to experience this event as a teen. Also, bonus for juniors -- these diaries and journals will help you find your voice and give you reflections and thoughts to turn to when you begin to write those essays.
LOOK FOR THE HELPERS
And of course, hang out here on A2C with us! Share your thoughts, concerns, excitement, questions, and advice. We are a community of people who are helpers. These are stressful times, and we are all worried about our futures, and we really have no idea what that will look like, but that’s really no more true today than it was last fall if you think about it. What I do know is this: We are going to be ok. You are going to be ok. And the reason I know that is because of this community of 170,000 badasses who are warriors in life. You give me hope because everyday, I see you all jumping in to help each other and it always makes me think of these wise words from Mr. Rogers: “Look for the helpers.”
You are not alone.

I’ve left everything in GBP. 1 GBP = 1.26 USD
H = Husband
S = Son (3 months old)
Section One: Assets and Debt
Retirement Balance ~ £65,000 in a workplace pension across 2 providers (I contribute 5%, my employer contributes 7%) H has approx £30,000 in a workplace pension. If the state pension exists by the time we retire (who knows!) we’ll claim this too.
Equity if you’re a homeowner - £140,000. House is valued at around £400,000 and we have approx £260,000 left on the mortgage. We currently overpay £700 a month to clear the balance quicker. Fingers crossed Brexit doesn’t cause the housing market to crash when we remortgage next year.
Savings account balance - £9000 in easy access savings account (maternity leave pot), £9500 in Cash ISA (emergency fund), £13,000 in Stocks & Shares ISA (investments), £1160 in a High Interest Savings Account.
I also have ~ £129,000 in stock grants and ESPP with my company, £23,000 of which has vested. The rest vests between now and April 2023….assuming I stay employed at the same company (hard not to with these golden handcuffs!)
£4200 in stock through H’s SAYE scheme at work. This vests in October 2020 and should be worth about £9000 by then.
Checking account balance - Approx £500 for me and £500 for H as it’s payday and we have this as our personal spending money per month.
Credit Card debt - £0. We did buy some furniture at Harvey’s on a 0% deal when we bought our house nearly 4 years ago. The balance outstanding is £300….we should really just pay this off but it is 0% so we’ve just left it.
Student Loan debt - £0 for me (I had £24,000 total paid off last year) £2500 for H (total debt was around £18,000) which will be paid off in the next few months. We both have Bachelor degrees only.
Anything else that’s applicable to you - I am currently on maternity leave with our first child so not working currently. I’m due to return to work at some point between April and July 2020. My employer provides 26 weeks of maternity leave at full pay so I am using this and then will drop to statutory maternity pay (£148 a week) for my last couple of months. I have £9000 saved to cover me during this period and also pay for anticipated nursery registration costs or upfront nanny search costs.
Taking 6-12 months of maternity leave is the norm in the UK, but even still, I am very lucky to have a great maternity package (ironic as I work for an American company!!)
Section Two: Income
Main Job Monthly Take Home: ~ £5400
(This is after Tax, National Insurance, Retirement, Private Healthcare for me, H and A, Dental plan and contribution to ESPP)
I get a £19,000 bonus annually but have not included this in Monthly Take Home as it’s only paid over 2 months on the year. In the past we've spent the bonus on home renovations but now that's all wrapped up we'll probably throw it at the mortgage.
H’s Main Job Monthly Take Home: ~ £2900
(After Tax, National Insurance, Retirement and SAYE Contribution)
H gets around £2000 bonus annually also.
Side Gig Monthly Take Home: Nope!
Any Other Monthly Income: Nope! H sometimes does out of hours work which pays on average an extra £300 or so per month, but it’s variable. He also gets free public transport which saves us about £200 a month in commuting costs.
Section Three: Expenses
Mortgage - £1927 (Monthly payment is £1227 but we pay £700 extra per month) for a 3.5 bedroom house in zone 6.
Retirement Contribution - Mine is £1060.93 pre tax, detailed above. 5% from me and 8% from my employer.
H is around £500 I think, not sure if he exact % split, but I think it’s 4% with a 6% match.
Savings Contribution - I save ~ £1500 to a high interest savings account, £250 to Holiday Fund, £125 to S’s Junior ISA. H saves ~ £500 per month to his general savings and £100 in a savings account for his family.
Investment Contribution - £750 to Stocks & Shares ISA, £410 to ESPP (taken pre tax), £200 to SAYE (taken pre tax)
Debt Payments - £50 Harvey’s 0% Loan
Donations - £50 to various charities. We do have some direct debits but I tend to just sponsor people for the various fundraising activities they’re doing as my primary form of giving. I volunteer a lot through work so currently I am not giving any of my time, but will get back to this when I return. H volunteers 20-40 hours per month.
Electric & Gas - From £70 - £160 depending on how much heating we’ve used. We just switched our tariff for a better deal.
Water - £31.10
WiFi and TV Package - £39
TV License - £12.83
Council Tax - £211 (10 months of the year. Nothing is paid in Feb & March)
Cellphone - Work pays for mine. H pays £30.
Subscriptions - £4 Medium, £0.79 iCloud storage, £5.99 Netflix, £9.99 Spotify
Life Insurance - £14.22 (we both have some cover through work so have a relatively small level of cover we pay for ourselves to “top up” the work provided cover)
Car Payment - £235 (This is a lease, on an 10000 mile per year 3 year term) We don’t drive much as we take public transportation for work so spend only £50-100 a month on petrol.
Cleaner - £60 (2x3 hour visits per month)
Annual Expenses - Home Insurance £380, Car Insurance £600, Amazon Prime £79, Costco £39
Day 1 (Wednesday)
06:00 - S is up bright and early so I nurse him and since H is working from home today I squeeze in a quick Yoga video on YouTube before getting ready for the day. I love YouTube for free workouts! Before S was born, I used ClassPass but it doesn’t cover classes in my hometown and I don’t commute into the city anymore so had to cancel.
I shower, eat cereal, drink coffee and put S down for his first nap while watching Suits on Netflix.
08:30 - Try on the contents of my ASOS parcel from yesterday. 2 sets of Jeggings, 2 Bras, 1 Blouse and a pair of Trainers. All wonderful apart from the trainers, so I package up to return. Will expect a £10 refund to come through next week.
10:00 - H places an Amazon order for a Wicker Basket and book for S (£20.98). We live off Amazon Prime deliveries and have at least 1 parcel a day arrive. If we need something and it’s available on Amazon, take our money!
13:00 - Meet with some other local mums for coffee at the nearest buggy friendly café we can find. Flat White and a Lemon Drizzle Muffin for me (£5.95). They say breastfeeding burns 500 calories a day right? S has a meltdown so I cut the visit short and have a little cry on the way home. S is quite a challenging baby and I normally cope ok but I have the odd moment still where I find it overwhelming. H thankfully takes him off me and settles him enough to nurse and subsequently conk out.
17:50 - Read the latest Money Diary. It’s the French lady in the abusive relationship doing a follow up! Feel very spoilt. Also place an Amazon order for a fascinating device - the “Baby Susher”, which basically just plays “ssshhh” sounds. S responds really well to “ssshhh” but it’s starting to hurt my teeth and make me feel lightheaded! A whopping £29.95 spent, but hopefully it’s worth it.
Daily Expenses £56.88
Day 2 (Thursday)
07:35 - Book myself a home massage for next week on Blow LTD (£60). It’s pricey, but I can’t get out easily with S and I am permanently sore and tense from holding him. My employer reimburses some health related costs so I will submit this as an expense.
10:45 - Now it’s S’s turn! We are attending “Baby Massage” class with S this morning - we try and do something every day to get out, but I think the massage does help him chill a bit too. I already paid for a set of 5 classes (around £50-60 I think) and today, my friend buys me a coffee so I can go and nurse S before class.
13:00 - We have a wonderful cleaner come biweekly to clean and iron for us, which is honestly a marriage saver for us. I used to feel super indulgent and embarrassed to admit we had a cleaner but I’m over it! She charges £10 an hour (no agency, so cash in hand) and does a fantastic job. We’re considering upping her to weekly now that we have S to look after too. 3hour clean today so £30 paid.
14:00 - H calls to say our private health insurance company has declined to pay for his treatment since I accidentally removed him from my plan when I added S. Whoops! Promise to sort it out ASAP, although it’ll require me to log onto my work laptop which I hate doing on maternity leave, even though I really miss work!
16:00 - Take S to see my parents. They feed me tea and biscuits and play with S. Result.
18:45 - Unpack the “Baby Shusher” and give it a little go. Impressive….
Also unpack a letter from British Gas about our new tariff. Less impressive…..
20:10 - It’s the release of the new term of Baby Sensory classes and if you don’t act quick, you don’t get a spot! S loves sensory and I love a happy S so I sign him up for the winter term. Oh how life has changed…..£65
Daily Expenses £95 (not including Massage as it will be reimbursed)
Day 3 (Friday)
06:20 - Up for the day and do the normal morning routine with S. Run around doing some laundry and other chores while he is occupied in his swing. It’s truly amazing how much laundry a baby generates, especially a refluxy baby like S. 3 outfits a day, muslins, sheets, bibs, blankets, it’s insane. We’re getting a tumble dryer now because we can’t cope.
09:20 - I’m trying to construct a new bouncer but the screws provided are impossible to get into the hole! Give up and finish our online Tesco Shop instead.
11:30 - Finally get upstairs to shower and get dressed but S has other ideas. I manage a bit of deodorant, some brow pencil, mascara, hair in a messy bun and yesterday’s clothes.
13:00 - A friend comes over to visit us and recounts the time her daughter called her teacher a Dickhead. It made my day. We drink coffee, pass S back and forth and catchup on our lives. A lot of my friends either don’t have kids yet or do but are not local, so I’ve had to acquire a full new set of mum friends recently. We all know making friends as an adult is hard but having babies all at the same time really is something to easily bond over.
18:30 - H is home and we’re both starving, so we order a Dominoes (£24.90). I eat most of mine (half Hawaiian, half Double Pepperoni) one handed while nursing, (a skill I’m getting really good at recently) and drink a cocktail H made for us. We get takeaway around once a week and between us probably eat 2-3 out of 14 lunches out and 1-2 dinners. Everything else we bulk cook at home. H takes over S Duty while I have a hot bath and listen to the “Headspace” episode of the “How I Built This” podcast. H also successfully builds the bouncer!
Daily Expenses £24.90
Day 4 (Saturday)
06:15 - Wakeup, settle S in his bouncy chair and have some Museli and Coffee. Nurse S and read the new money diary.
08:00 - Hot Yoga Class! I love this class and this studio, and had to give it up when I got pregnant so I only started back last week. I don’t get much “me time” nowadays so this class is a lifesaver. I paid £160 for 24 classes last week so don’t pay today. I get home and quickly shower while H stays with S and watches the Rugby. He has dressed S in his England Rugby onesie for the occasion!
10:30 - Our online grocery shop is delivered. We order weekly from Tesco and normally spend around £50 (excluding some meat, which we buy separately) but this week we’re doing a huge bulk cook so we stock up. We get spinach, limes, pasta sauce, milk, parmesan cheese, onions, hummus, beef brisket, pork loin, lazy garlic, peppers, grapes, wraps, eggs, pasta, chilli, peanut butter, freezer bags, carrot sticks, sundried tomatoes, coke, frozen veg and loads more. £86.41
11:00 - Our Musclefood meat delivery has also just been charged. We got 7.5KG of Chicken Breasts, 6 packs of meatballs, 4 packs of Sausages, 8 Burgers and a few other bits. £63.99
12:00 - The bulk cooking marathon commences.We cook around 60 meals for the freezer, comprised of 8 different dishes. This is the third time we’ve done a huge bulk cook after doing it before our son arrived and finding that we could not survive without our freezer meals - the days are just too chaotic with a newborn and we would have resorted to ordering takeaways much more if we didn’t always have prepared meals ready to go. Now it’s a monthly event for us. It takes 3-4 hours including clean-up and probably another hour planning and ordering the shop with all the right ingredients but if we needed to cook every night we’d spend much longer doing it.
16:00 - And we’re done! During the bulk prep I’ve done 2 nursing sessions, 3 nappy changes, 1 full outfit change, lots of entertaining and settled S for 2 naps also, so I’m feeling pretty triumphant! Now we can relax a bit and enjoy our evening. H heads to the shed to do manly shed related things and I sit down for another nursing session and reply to some WhatsApps.
18:30 - We have one of our prepared meals (Tuscan Chicken Pasta Bake) for dinner and watch some Netflix, then it’s bath and bed for S . I go to sleep shortly after, as I get up in the night to nurse / express so need to sleep when I can.
Daily Expenses £150.40
Day 5 (Sunday)
06:05 - S wakes himself up by throwing up his last feed all over his crib. No Sunday sleeping in for me. Usual routine of breakfast, nursing and playing with S before his first nap.
08:45 - We’re meant to go to church this morning (we’re trying to take S now, as he’ll be Baptised in the new year) but it’s pissing down and H has the car. I make an executive decision to skip it, stay warm and dry and we spend the rest of the morning hanging out while H goes to a gym class.
12:00 - H’s mum arrives for babysitting duty. It’s the first time we’ve left S with her (and only the second time we’ve left him at all) but it’ll be good for them both to spend some time together and good for me and H too. I fret a bit, making sure she knows where everything is and when he should eat/sleep then we head out. Pay £3.50 for 3 hours parking in a high street, which is quite frankly…daylight robbery!
12:30 - Our planned lunch restaurant is only serving Afternoon Tea till 4pm (wtf!) so we leave and head to another place in town. They didn’t even have an Afternoon Tea menu on their website, let alone have anything written about not serving the regular menu. I love an Afternoon Tea, but I’m in the mood for a hot meal. Annoying! In the other restaurant we share Bruschetta and get Calzone and Cheesesteak for mains. It tastes good, but nothing special really. Service was ok so we add a small tip. £42.15
13:30 - We head over to a proper desert shop that’s recently opened to satisfy my sweet tooth. I get a Kinder Bueno Waffle and H gets a Crepe, both delicious. £13.05 We pop into a couple of shops and get bath toys for S and an iPhone cable at Poundland £2.
14:00 - H withdraws £400 to pay a deposit for a second hand motorbike he’s going to see later. It’s a 90minute ride away so it’ll just be me and S at home for a few hours.
H’s mum says she loved looking after S and would happily do it again (woohoo). S proceeds to resist sleep for the next 2.5 hours before crashing out in the baby sling. Netflix and chill for a while.
18:50 - H returns home with £400 as he didn’t like the bike. He also filled up the car with petrol (£59). H has been snoozing in the sling for nearly 2hours so I wake him and we eat, clean up the house a bit and I buy a new book on Kindle to get started on £9.99.
Daily Expenses £129.69
Day 6 (Monday)
06:05 - S has been thrashing around in his sleep since 04:00 so I wake up feeling sleepy. I get coffee immediately and do the normal routine.
07:30 - S is sleeping so I tidy up the kitchen, throw some laundry in and empty the bins. I know….it’s a dull existence. I have nothing but respect for SAHM’s. They are heroes! I am very excited to return to my job next year.
09:10 - Another nap, more chores. This time I hang out laundry and make a big Egg Frittata to feed me for some lunches this week. Our freezer stash goes a bit further if I don’t eat leftovers for lunch so I try and make something different, although I pretty much graze all day since breastfeeding makes me so hungry.
I’d planned for us to go on a walk with a parents group this morning, but the time isn’t great for when feeds and naps are due so I skip it and plan to go for a walk later.
15:30 - Plans are scuppered by the rain. Argh!!
18:30 - H is home from work and asks if I want to go to the gym while he watches S. I’m too tired from last night so decline, but instead take myself up to bed for 30mins to journal. I’ve been keeping a diary since I was 11years old and write 1-2 times a week still. I also call the healthcare company to try and sort out the insurance issue (partially resolved) and they tell me that I get a £150 cash benefit for having a child. Free money! I’ll file the claim another day.
19:00 - Dish up Parmesan Honey Chicken from the Slow Cooker, add Rice & Broccolini and we eat. This was one of our freezer meals and tastes delicious, we make it every time.
Daily Expenses - £0
Day 7 (Tuesday)
07:00 - The gift of an extra hour in bed. Thank you S. I feel like a new woman.
08:30 - Get an email notification that our joint account is overdrawn so I quickly transfer £200 in from my current account. We always go overdrawn at some point every month (we rectify it quick so don’t get charged a fee) but really must start just putting more in to start with. The joint account started at a place to pay all our bills and mortgage from but has evolved as so many of our expenses are joint now. Any groceries, or anything for the house or S for example, comes from this account.
10:45 - £15 discount code comes through from Blow LTD so I immediately book a Gel Manicure for next week. (£25) I had to cancel my massage, so get refunded £60. I may be covered in baby puke most days, but at least my nails will look nice! Unsurprisingly Gel Manicures are not eligible to be claimed through work so I pay this.
12:00 - Baby Sensory Time! Today’s session features lots of singing, rattles and a puppet show. S is fairly mesmerised and I chit chat with some other mums for a bit. We already paid for class so no charge and parking is free.
13:30 - Order a “Cuski” comforter from Amazon for S. He has started holding onto his muslins and rubbing them on his face / chewing them when he’s tired so I decide it’s time for an official comfort blanket for him. These are supposed to be NHS approved so I accept the rather extortionate cost of £15.99. However, cost ends up being £0 since we have loads of gift certificate money on the account (don’t know why, but probably related to our amazon addiction).
15:00 - Visit to my parents house again with S. More tea and biscuits. I actually don’t drink tea at home, but when someone says “do you want a cuppa” I just automatically say yes. Don’t know why.
My sister is home so we catch up on what’s happening in her life. It’s nice to see her more often now she’s graduated and moved back from uni.
18:30 - I didn’t manage to put tonight’s dinner in the slow cooker on time so we have nothing to eat. H suggests we get a Chicken Shish and Chips to share so I walk down to the local chippy to collect it (£9.30). I purposely leave my phone home so I can have a bit of thinking time. I do a mixture of pining over my former life and thinking about what I can do tomorrow.
Daily Expenses £50.29
Weekly Totals
Food + Drink £245.75
Fun / Entertainment £74.99
Home + Health £98.92
Clothes + Beauty £25
Transport £62.50
Other £0
Reflection
I hesitated writing this, as I know my day to day is pretty dull now I have S, but since I love reading money diaries, I wanted to give something back to the community.
This weeks diary was fairly reflective of our spending, and we now spend less that I am at home with S, as I don’t spend anything on commuting, drinks/dinners after work etc.
We are so incredibly fortunate to have high salaries and both try and live well below our means so we can save a lot and also not ever be tied to our jobs.
Neither of us come from money and earn a lot more than we ever expected to in our lives but we're really not extravagant people, so our frugal habits (like bulk cooking for example) have always remained.
I hope you've enjoyed reading!