Millionaire Challenge

Hello DT!

I'm back on here - aiming for exactly the same as you, a comfortable pension pot. I don't have littlies to take care of as well, like you do, but I *do* have lots of mistakes to make up for, yep!

Welcome aboard!

ETA - ooh, since I've only just got back, I possibly shouldn't be the one to welcome you - still, I'll let it stand

KC - how lovely to "see" you back - we were worried.

Sorry to hear that you have been so poorly but glad to hear that you are on the mend. Do take care not to overdo things. You are absolutely right to take a step back and rest. You can't become a millionaire if you burn yourself out.

Thanks for your kind thoughts and your lovely PM. I will PM you back later myself but in the meantime thanks. I'm doing ok, very tired and a few "woozy spells" when I just have to stop and have a rest but otherwise generally ok. As you say the boys have been wonderful, I would have been lost without them

I have a lot of stuff whirling around in my brain but for now I'm not going to make any decisions. I'm just working my way through the most urgent of the paperwork and preparing for the funeral which is on Thursday.

I've concentrated mainly on the paperwork which is either mandatory, i.e. registering his death etc or which is related to money issues i.e. life insurance claim, pensions etc.

I do have some money to pay the funeral and live off but I'm pretty certain a lot of the money type issues will take some time so it probably is better to tackle those sooner rather than later. Might sound a bit mercenary but the nettle has to be grasped. I don't want to get into debt through lack of diligence.

Right now I would just prefer to curl up on the sofa with stray cat and let everything wash over me but unfortunately being an ostrich is not an option. So I just do a couple of things each day.

How do you eat an elephant - one bite at a time;)

DT - welcome to our gang. Don't worry about making mistakes, we've all done that. Why do you think my nom de plume is "Lessonlearned". I've made hundreds. The trick is to learn from them, pick yourself up, dust yourself down and move on. Start again if your have to, however many times it takes.

Don't worry about your age, it's never too late to make a fresh start.

It's not over, until it's over…...

Kayalana99 wrote: »

KC I'm so glad you've popped on :-) I honestly had thought the worse considering how long you've been gone. Glad you are feeling better.

Oh my! At my very worst, I did wonder if I was going to be an invalid for the rest of my life but it was a viral thing after all, just a very long attack. It has taught me that no matter how well I feel, it can come up if I overdo it regularly for even a little while. I was pushing on the garden planting, and I could feel it - I just can't push that hard any more without severe consequences. But thats okay - I've had days out recently, out of the house for 8 hours, and I'm fine, as long as i don't do anything the next day.

lessonlearned wrote: »

KC - how lovely to "see" you back - we were worried.

Sorry to hear that you have been so poorly but glad to hear that you are on the mend. Do take care not to overdo things. You are absolutely right to take a step back and rest. You can't become a millionaire if you burn yourself out.

So true! And I must start taking supplements soon - vit c, at least.

Thanks for your kind thoughts and your lovely PM. I will PM you back later myself but in the meantime thanks.

Only when its right for you, LL. I, of all people, know that you have to take your time about this.

DT - Don't worry about your age, it's never too late to make a fresh start.

It's not over, until it's over…...

:D:D Oh yeah :j

Daniel - I have very little clue about what you're asking about, but I think food licences are for your local council to issue.

Onward delivery of Chinese goods from a British port ... oh boy! Not a clue. But presumably a private delivery company would quote you? Are you sure you can't travel there and pick them up yourself? Or find another supplier?

I have now managed to read all of the thread I am impressed how a core group have managed to keep going despite life's inevitable curved balls and for that very reason I believe you will succeed and reach that place that gives you the financial freedom you desire.

Can I just sound a note of caution please please diversify your income streams as much as possible or else you could do all this hard work and then it could all vanish overnight.

We had that passive income life was good, OH retired from a very physically demanding job that meant he spent weeks away from home in 1996 aged 48, I was working part time 2 years later I gave up work because OH didn't like the idea of me working and not him. We did a lot of charity work, had a good life, bought a holiday home but sadly MSE was not in our lives so we overspent not a problem good income could easily pay back our credit cards if needed, had 2 more children and then started to realise CCs were getting out of hand found MSE and in 2005 started repaying didn't radically change our lifestyle but cut back a bit and all was going well but the recession happened passive income halved over night and if we had not already started repaying our debt we would have gone under in a big way so tightened our belts considerably. I tried to go back to my career sadly I had left it too late but bit by bit managed to repay an eye watering amount of CC debt and was then planning to tackle the mortgage fast forward to this year took a further cut in our passive income of over 10% my lovely Mom died who had lived with us for 17 years which meant she was no longer contributing to our expenses and an interest free loan she had given us to help buy the house we live in needed to be repaid and hence we are presently putting our holiday home up for sale having tried to hang on as long as possible for the markets to recover but it is not possible to wait any more and wanting to rebuild our income but this time in a diversified way. We had always regarded this passive income as our pension and never dreamt it would dwindle away. With what has happened the biggest fear is that it could dwindle to nothing hopefully it wont and it will start to recover but it is not going to get back to where it was and the fear is there hence the need to diversify.

So yes we have made some huge mistakes but we are still together still fighting and we will get through this

DTxx

Yes KC the dfw board have seen us through a lot and without the support on there things would probably be very different now but it has been such a long time and its a hard slog which is why I have taken a bit of a break from coming on here but inevitably things start to slip when the focus goes hence why I am back.

Read a bit of the rule of money/wealth thanks for the recommendation LL very interesting but the MSE in me is too mean to buy it so trying to find a cheap or free e version but it did make me get pencil and paper out and look at want I want to achieve so here goes

1. Clear outstanding debt built up because of repaying interest free loan back to my mom's estate

2. Be mortgage free if we sell the holiday home this will happen in Sep 2018 but depending on when the house sells I would like to bring this forward to Sep 2016 when the little twins start senior school

3. Have enough set outside so that when my car dies I can replace it with a decent one (not new) as my car is 14 years old and over 210K miles on the clock that is an ever present threat

4. Have enough money to comfortably pay for my children's education (yes I am paying school fees, long story, schools very poor round here too expensive to move to a better school area due to property price differential, my little girl is dyslexic and dyscalculic and was suffering terribly at school being punished for things she couldn't help :mad: )

5. Increase and diversify our income streams to a level that gives us financial freedom and security that's the harder bit to quantify I hope we will know when we get there but certainly nowhere near yet I would like to double present income but triple would feel safer to allow for the curved balls

Now I just have to find the means to do it but that is for another post so as to not send you all to sleep

Thinking of you LL in these difficult days

DTxx