Money, money, money...

Well, there has been an awful lot of talking about money in this house recently. Personally, I hate the stuff, and wish that we could live without it, or at least mostly without it. We were listening to Doctor Dolittle going to the HE group the other day, and I was reminded of the fact that he hated it too!
There has been the selling of secondhand goods on Ebay....mainly the trailer tent, which required a fair amount of effort on mine and the two bigger boys part. Wehad to pitch it up on the grass outside the house and take photos of all the different parts of it....it is very big!! Then I had to list it, as acuurately and eloquently as possible. It is quite old so we had to be honest but still make it sound as good as it actually is. Then there was listing fees to be discussed and of course at the end if the auction the selling fees and paypal fees, having decided to accept her payment befor ethey come to collect it next weekend. So was it actually worth the effort? A fair percentage is swallowed by Ebay, but I don't think it would have been that easy to sell it locally for any more, so probably.
Then we have been trying to do a household budget. We have an awful lot of out goings here, which seem to increase disproportionately to the income. It has been time to look at all of that and make some decisions and possibly some cuts (don't know where though!). The question of the viability of keeping a horse has been raised. But it isn't just a horse, it is Bob, from which we all get pleasure, even if from time to time it causes stress. But the monthly insurance for him has just been increased by over 50%!!! How can they justify that? Well, they couldn't, justthat everyones is going up. Good job my car insurance isn't being increased atthe same rate....and why no discount for no claims? Hmmm. Will need to think about that one, carefully.
Then there has been money in terms of maths. David has always been very interested in money. He has quite a collection of coins, both foreign and old English ones. He uses them in games as treasure or currency. He also likes to look at them and find out what countries they are from, or what date it was made. Now he has started doing maths with money. I printed off a load of worksheets from Mathsphere when we first started HE and laminated them. Time and symmetry were among them. They have satthere untouched until now. We have been using the money ones for the last three days and he has filled 4 pages in a maths book full of the answers!!!! It seems as though he is the opposite of most of the children from school thatI used to help. Most of those were fine with numbers until you added a £ or p sign next to them, then they would go to pieces and not be able to do it! David it seems is the opposite. He is not good with numbers. He struggles in most ways and hates trying to maths worksheets. Yet give him coins and worksheets and I struggle to get him to stop!! He is interested and really wants to work it out. Hetries hard and is counting in 2's, 5's and 10's, even 20's on occaision. It has been good to see him working on something because he wants to rather than me persuading him to.
We also printed some notes for him to add to his play money. He likes things to be as real as possible!
All this talk of money, yet still I dream of ways to make us less reliant upon it all.
The veggies are going well. We have had numerous meals with produce from the garden....broad beans, courgettes, potatoes, garlic, rosemary, strawberries and soon there will be onions and carrots too. The green beans will be getting a thorough combing later on to see if there are enough for dinner tonight. Cabbages and Brussels sprouts are coming along well too.
We eat a lot of homemade food...bread, cakes, pizza, quiche, biscuits, jam, chutney and more recently butter, sausage rolls and mayonnaise. We rarely eat any processed meals at all. Well, the bigger boys and Rob all have a pasty fetish which I am trying to curb, and get them to make their own. Not going too well at the moment! Our eggs are obviously home grown!!! And the tomatoes are doing well....I do hope I will get some red ones this year.
So we don't do badly. In fact pretty well, I guess. But it doesn't feel enough for me! I want to do more! The veg patch, although MUCH bigger than last year isn't very big for a family of six...mostly men. We need that allotment...fingers crossed for next year, eh.