Hi lovely people.
I've got the kettle on. Come and have a seat at my farmhouse kitchen table and get a warm next to the Aga whilst I introduce myself and my family.
I'm Tracy, wife to Steven and mother to Grace (13) and Jack (10). Both Steven and I work full time and run a smallholding which is our beautiful family home too. We are born and raised in the North East of England and have lived here on the smallholding since January 2016 and love absolutely everything about it. We are also lucky enough to have extended family who live close by and (covid/lockdown allowing) we see frequently.
As I'm sure is the same for you, we are always busy with something or other. If we are not dashing around to school, work or days out with the kids, we are firmly planted on the smallholding (pun intended) raising our livestock and growing our own food. Oh not to mention doing everything else that us humans do, cooking, cleaning, washing.....this is making me tired just typing!
In my years of experience, one thing I have learnt for us to be successful is that life needs organising. By successful I don't mean anything other than have a smooth running of this place, food on the table and a comfortable home with happy and healthy inhabitants. Being organised also doesn't mean take the fun out of things or running an inflexible military operation. It does mean we have to be organised or things slip and don't get done, which can have negative outcomes depending on what it is. Not having matching socks doesn't matter as much as having no food prepped/available for the evening meal, which may lead to eating out ruining our budget etc etc. Forgetting to feed the animals is not acceptable where as forgetting to write 'bleach' on the shopping list is. You see where I'm coming from?
As we move in to 2021 we will be making our usual plans and dreams for the coming year, one of which is already decided upon. That leads me to this new blog. Meal planning our way to financial freedom. Crazy woman? Bear with me.
Steve and I don't want to work for someone else for the rest of our working lives. Many people don't. Why do we have to work? To bring in an income. Why? We have chosen a lifestyle choice and to have a mortgage. To pay the mortgage we need to work and continue to earn at least one of our wages just to settle the bills every month. So why doesn't one of us quit and the other just work? Well then what would we do if hard times hit, we would have no plan b. Right now, we have a plan b, one of us goes down, the other steps up and we adapt.
However ideally, we don't want to be tied to that for the remainder of our mortgage term.
Without dwelling too much and boring you all senseless, we have given ourselves 10 years to pay our 27 year mortgage off. There's that crazy word again.
Well we don't HAVE to, we WANT to. Financial freedom in one respect. Security in another? There's many varying reasons as to why people would want to pay their mortgage off early. Maybe you can relate this, maybe it's not a mortgage for you, maybe you want to save money for one reason or another, or simply you just need to figure out how to meet your current mortgage/rent demands. One thing is for sure, times are really hard for many right now.
In the 4 years or so we have lived here, one thing we have managed to do, which is helping us save towards overpaying the mortgage, is reduce our grocery budget significantly. From around £600 a month (I'm aware this is spending stupid money from not being organised, buying on a whim and eating out!) to what I think is a reasonable £300 a month. The only way I have found to do this is planning. Meal planning, freezer planning and planning your grocery shop. Meal planning can be reverse planning, which I'll talk about in another post or standard planning (ie planning ahead). Without sitting down and planning my family's meals out, I wouldn't be able to have a grocery budget of £300. I refer to this sitting down time as one of my "Kitchen Tasks". So this blog isn't just (or even mostly) about paying the mortgage off, it's about what we are doing with the grocery and grocery related bills to reduce them and to use those savings to over pay on the mortgage.
Other people will want to reduce their grocery budget for another reason or maybe you don't want to reduce your budget, maybe you struggle with meal ideas and would like to start planning. Thinking of ideas to cook each day or for the freezer can be overwhelming.
Maybe my blog can help. What you can expect in the coming posts is to join me at our Farmhouse Kitchen Table and I'll share how I manage all of these activities and my other Kitchen Tasks! Including weekly menu plans, shopping lists, grocery hauls and related budgets. Get insight in to our lives and follow our journey to financial freedom with regular updates on everything I hope you find some useful or inspiring information here and even if not, I'd love for your support as we take on this next chapter in our lives. Transparent, real life going on here! Now, final comment for today, remember I said I live on a smallholding (homestead)? My Aga is my favourite part of the kitchen and in the spirit of the transparency I mentioned, here's me working around a poorly duck at my Aga.
Isn't she beautiful :)
Please leave me a comment below if you're new here (everyone is, it's a new blog!) as I would love to get to know you.
Bye for now, Tracy x
