Sunday Sunshine

Ah, the world looks like an all together nicer place when the sun shines.

We had a little mini family meeting yesterday to see if we could handle a few changes to the budget and still keep our heads above the water. There are changes a foot:

Eldest son works as delivery driver as he is still studying part time for his IT qualification. He ripped the muscles in his lower back in January and had to have three weeks off work for them to recover. Now there is definite weakness there. He needs a new, non lifting, job. He has been offered a part time and very badly paid job at a paint ball centre at the weekends. He is also a qualified swimming teacher and was offered some teaching lessons recently but they clashed with his delivery job. We have now decided we can afford for him to quit so that he can start with the weekend job and also see whether he can build up a few regular swimming lessons. It will be fine in a few months but in the short term a bit tight.

Update on Crete. We heard back from or German guy about the planning consent (after 4 months!! I cant help feeling he has been in Greece too long!). The quote we had from the Greek guy said pay 10k now and then 15k. No details, that was just it. Now we have this detailed quote from the German guy, goes into so much detail, it is down to the cent. And more to the point it is at least 5k cheaper. So we need to find 19 & a bit thousand euro instead of twenty five thousand. I am proposing that we pay him 500 per month. As we progress past the initial application then the house will actually be able to be legally let so we can maybe get some extra income there towards our costs. It's not a brilliant result but it's better than it could have been.

Last finance challenge. My car is dead. It is insured (very expensively) for both of my sons to drive at the moment. We have decided that myself and my eldest son will insure, MOT, tax etc his car for the time being. As his work picks up then he can take over payment of that insurance and I will buy another car for myself. We pretty much manage okay with one car now but as he gets more lessons and paintballing then it wont be possible.

We have plans, we can do it!