Onwards to freedom!

Thanks for posting everyone, love reading your congratulatory messages

A couple of good questions raised - what do the next twelve months hold for us, and are we holding too much in cash... I've not replied until now as I wanted to have decent answers for both of these questions first. I'm still mulling them over, but it seems rude not to reply, so here's a bit of a half baked one for now

Escapar2000, the next 12 months, don't really know yet. The eventual aim is financial independence, and we've a long way to go, so I mainly hope to avoid going off the rails! We're planning on a couple of weeks holiday, but with what will by then be a one year old and four year old in tow we're not talking anything exotic. Almost certainly UK based, and most likely split into two one week breaks, or maybe three five day breaks. We have some small home improvements in mind, and we may reduce our work hours a little further, but nothing has been decided yet. Apologies that it's not very exciting, but I guess mortgage freedom, although very nice indeed, is just a big fat milestone on our journey, far from being the end game.

Are we holding too much cash? Maybe. Of course a good chunk was earmarked for the mortgage, always was. We're now holding about 25k, not 40k. From memory, the annual spending diary (currently a work in progress) suggests we may spend around 16-18k a year now the mortgage is gone (I don't have access to the diary at the moment so can't be more specific than that). So a one year buffer in cash, with about 7-9k left over. That's an amount that could be swallowed up by a car replacement, some home improvements, and an emergency boiler replacement if we were hit by the perfect storm. There's also the fact that I am quietly keeping my eyes open to potential investment opportunities that would benefit from having cash on hand to take advantage. Nothing specific in mind, but knowing that the cash is there if we need to swoop in quickly is reassuring. Finally, OH is very tied to cash, the fact that we are ploughing almost 2k per month into the stock market and she is ok with that is some kind of miracle. OH has always maintained that we should hold an absolute minimum of 10k in cash so she can sleep well at night. Now we have two dependents, boosting that a little seems reasonable.

Having said all that, maybe shifting 10k or so from cash to stocks and shares would be sensible. The perfect storm isn't something that strikes often. The chances of double redundancy while not scaling back our spending and neither of us finding alternative employment for a whole year seems vanishingly small. If an investment opportunity were to present itself, I could cash in some shares if needed and still get involved. Like I say nothing is decided yet, but thanks for raising the question NM, sometimes an outside view helps you challenge what you're doing, and surely weighing up the options and considering alternatives can only be a good thing