Onwards to freedom!

SuperSecretSquirrel

Awesome ed, hope you have a great time and no stress Is this her first trip abroad? If it were still just 4 year old LO1, I'm pretty sure we'd be jetting away this summer, but now we've added LO2 to the family we're just not really feeling up to the challenge

edinburgher

Yes, this will be her first trip abroad. We're just planning realistic levels of excursions, the expectation that she will pretty much want to live at the sandy beach and are planning to bribe her with small lollipops and the odd shot of the tablet to get her to sit in her pram so that we can actually walk places without the usual drunken toddler zigzags down the street!

greent

SuperSecretSquirrel wrote: »

I sometimes hear people say they need a holiday to recover from their holiday. That's exactly how I think we'd feel after a foreign holiday with our tiny children. Not a thought to savour!

South of France is actually one of the few options we'd consider right now. Not too far, and a fairly laid-back camping and enjoying the weather and the pool type affair sounds ok. The fact we could load the car(s) with all bar the kitchen sink and hop over on a ferry would also be a huge bonus. If I'm honest though, I think I we'll give it a miss this year, and pencil it in as an option for next year

If you do decide to do South of France, see if you can still pop the car (and all of you ) on the overnight train - get on, go to your cabin (read/ eat etc) sleep - and wake up the next morning in the South. We've done that a couple of times and driven far more (with and without small children) - the money for the train is worth the no- toilet stops/ getting decent sleep/ no tolls any time!!

SuperSecretSquirrel

edinburgher wrote: »

Yes, this will be her first trip abroad. We're just planning realistic levels of excursions, the expectation that she will pretty much want to live at the sandy beach and are planning to bribe her with small lollipops and the odd shot of the tablet to get her to sit in her pram so that we can actually walk places without the usual drunken toddler zigzags down the street!

Sounds like a realistic plan, I'm sure you'll all have a great time!

I figure our two will have to make do with the sandy beach at Newquay or the like. Don't suppose they care provided (and this is a huge assumption here) we get to enjoy some half decent weather this year!

greent wrote: »

If you do decide to do South of France, see if you can still pop the car (and all of you ) on the overnight train - get on, go to your cabin (read/ eat etc) sleep - and wake up the next morning in the South. We've done that a couple of times and driven far more (with and without small children) - the money for the train is worth the no- toilet stops/ getting decent sleep/ no tolls any time!!

Thanks for the tip greent, that definitely sounds like it's perfect for us. Low to no stress all the way please!

NorthernMonkey1

Thanks SSS.

It's nice to see how people approach the same problem differently. All of my pension savings are in a conventional SIPP pension. I'm hoping that the government doesnt change the earliest date I can withdraw from these from 55 to later. Anything I have in an ISA is emergency funds only.

Now the mortgage is gone, I've bumped up my contributions a little. Ill probably bump them up a little more once I'm comfortable living on the reduced income.

VDOT47

Hi SSS,


Have recently stumbled across your diary and have now read it in full.


Firstly, congratulations on being mortgage free! And for having made such fantastic progress over the life of this diary!


When reading through, I felt like a lot of the things you wrote, or your justifications/rationale behind decisions and planning, could have been written by me. I am a similar age to you and have similar ambitions for early (semi) retirement, retirement pot etc.


Sadly for me, I have two major obstacles that are preventing me from even getting close to your achievements:
1) A mortgage of £270,000 rather than £87,000 (I'm assuming you live somewhere very far away from the south east!), meaning monthly repayments of £1169 to deal with before even contemplating other overpayments/savings/pensions/investments!


2) We (well, more me than OH, although she does share some of my reservations) are not entirely happy with where we have moved to (only a year ago) for various reasons. The OP of my diary goes into a bit more detail. So we are looking to move again within 5 years, meaning that saving loads into pensions would be foolhardy, although long-term financially the best thing to do, as it would simply delay us moving.


Having said all that, I have taken some inspiration and ideas from you and will be implementing some of these over the next few years (stoozing, multiple current accounts and regular savers), so thank you for clarifying some ideas and concepts in my mind.

SuperSecretSquirrel

Thank you both for posting

That's a hefty mortgage VDOT47, but you're in the right place to smash it right down! I've read and subscribed to your diary too. You're off to a great start

SuperSecretSquirrel

The credit club was very slow to update my score this month, but it has finally landed...

742, up 81 from last month's 661. Not bad considering they aren't yet aware of the mortgage payoff! This increase is as a result of another month of making minimum repayments on the stooze cards, and not making any applications.

I'm no longer a "poor" credit risk apparently... I've edged into the "fair" bracket :rotfl:

edinburgher

I think they pull these out of a hat Squirrel - 909 here - but all reds for affordability! :rotfl:

SuperSecretSquirrel

Hi Ed, I hear ya

I, too, am presented with a page of red, but my chance of securing a top card has rocketed from 5% to 10% this month :rotfl:

Credit scores can appear to defy logic at times, and I know that they are pretty meaningless when all is said and done. Mine did drop like a stone when I first started stoozing though, and they have trended upwards ever since, so I guess it is not quite as random as a raffle

Then again, there's nothing to say that you can't get a run of 100 heads in a row when flipping a coin, it's just not very likely - maybe my puny human brain is trying to see a pattern in truly random data