Onwards to freedom!

SuperSecretSquirrel

A very nice surprise when running through the quarterly finance checks this week - our combined NW excluding SP passed a pretty big milestone and we are now "paper half millionaires" 😲

Of course 500k today isn't the same as 500k a year ago, and it probably won't be the same a year from now either. Still, it's nice to see that our pensions and ISAs have increased in value a bit to help offset the effect of inflation. This is definitely the highest nominal value high tide mark seen so far, and it did make me smile seeing the number 🙂

Overspent the boring pot a little last month, most likely due to increased grocery costs. Not great considering we've been running down the freezers. I think the monthly boring stuff budget might need revising upwards a little soon.

Remained within budget on the fun spends in June. We've had quite a few good days out, but only really paid for one big day out, the others were practically free thanks to newspaper offers.

The annual spends pot has taken a bit of a beating. Paid off the balance for our summer holiday, spent a little on home improvement/diy/gardening bits, and even bought a couple of clothing items for myself (a rare event indeed). Annual life assurance and home insurance payments are due any day now too.

Won £100 on PBs this month. As always I had been hoping for the big one, but am grateful for what I get 🤑

We've seen some nice options as a main family car replacement, so I think that might actually happen soon. Still not sure about replacing the old runabout/workhorse. I'll keep my eyes open for a too good to miss trade-in, but I don't really want to replace it with anything "too nice".

Karmacat

You made me check my own Net Worth, you made me, its not fair 🤣 To confess, I haven't checked how much the pension funds etc are worth at the moment, and all the ISAs are fixed, so not much to do there either 😎 but its not going badly, I'm very surprised.

I'm glad you've got a summer holiday booked in - always a good thing.

savingholmes

What a lovely milestone... I need to check mine at some point too...

SuperSecretSquirrel

Thanks for stopping by KC and SH 🙂

Won nothing on the PBs this month, first time that's happened since September 2022… I've been toying with the idea of cashing some out and stashing in a 4.5% savings account for a while (not too much as I want to keep my ISA S&S only and I don't want to get dragged into paying tax on savings interest). Holding off for now…

I remember thinking a while ago it would be nice to see our top three NW lines (house, pensions, S&S) in 6 figures. With a fair wind that might be possible by my January NW update. To help things along I've rejigged things a little and increased my monthly investment amount by £350.

A deal has been struck and a nearly new ex-demo family car will be parked on our drive by this time next week 🤩 We're just waiting on a few final checks and a valet etc before they deliver. Not really seen anything that we'd want to replace the old workhorse with. It's getting very long in the tooth, but the mileage is low, and we have no real complaints. Decided to get new brakes and tyres fitted to keep it safely on the road for now, and we'll just wait and see what the next (and maybe many more in the future, if we're lucky) MOT brings. I'm back to thinking that it can stick around for as long as it's not a money pit.

Spent a little more time and money on small diy jobs - an ongoing process making little improvements and fitting them in when time allows. We're going to have to bite the bullet soon and get one of the bigger jobs done. It's beyond our insourcing abilities, and needs doing. We have the money for it in the joint account (anticipating low to mid four figures) so just need to get on with it really, at least start getting some quotes in.

The terrible July weather has been, well, terrible… We're all hoping it picks up a bit in August. Feeling sorry for the children as the summer holidays have been really poor so far. Also feeling a little sorry for myself as I was hopeful for getting out and enjoying ourselves a bit more. We're doing what we can to make it as fun as possible, but playing on the beach would be so much better!

Karmacat

SuperSecretSquirrel said:

Thanks for stopping by KC and SH 🙂

You're welcome.  Here I am again though 😁

I remember thinking a while ago it would be nice to see our top three NW lines (house, pensions, S&S) in 6 figures. With a fair wind that might be possible by my January NW update. To help things along I've rejigged things a little and increased my monthly investment amount by £350.

Wow!  That's amazing, that's a serious amount of money.

A deal has been struck and a nearly new ex-demo family car will be parked on our drive by this time next week 🤩 We're just waiting on a few final checks and a valet etc before they deliver. Not really seen anything that we'd want to replace the old workhorse with. It's getting very long in the tooth, but the mileage is low, and we have no real complaints. Decided to get new brakes and tyres fitted to keep it safely on the road for now, and we'll just wait and see what the next (and maybe many more in the future, if we're lucky) MOT brings. I'm back to thinking that it can stick around for as long as it's not a money pit.

To be honest, I'm a bit confused - you've got two vehicles now?  The nearly new ex-demo family and the old workhouse that you don't want to replace?  I notice motoring stuff now 😁 I'm just about to pay for my 2nd lot of lessons, and then I need to start looking for the right car for me.

SuperSecretSquirrel

Hi KC, we've always had two cars. The better one is being replaced with a nicer newer one, the older one we're keeping hold of for a while longer 🙂 Might seem a bit backwards but it does make sense considering their respective uses.

I've been following your progress on your diary, good to see it's all been going well recently, and how exciting to be starting to shop around soon 😎

Karmacat

Hiya!  How nice to think you're keeping in touch with my stuff yes, I'm definitely going to be an active driver.  Your car stuff makes sense to me - I followed the ins and outs of those sorts of decisions with my business partner, who had an old camper van that broke down, and a really reliable Beemer.  As well as his wife's car, which she let him drive sometimes 🤣  He got rid of the Beemer!  He loved it, but he loved the camper more  

savingholmes

Hope the car replacement behaves itself.

SuperSecretSquirrel

Hello all 👋 Thanks for posting KC and SH 🙂

I’ve not posted for a little while so I’ll have a lot of short little updates in this post.

PBs won £200 in September, and £125 in October 🙂 I’ve since moved 15k into a one year fixed bond at 6.2%. I might just about scrape under 1k in interest this tax year. If not, the tax I'll have to pay will be literal pennies (unless I decide to move more into taxable accounts…). Still have 35k in PBs and still hoping for that big win 😁

The new car is great 😁 Although we've decided to try keeping hold of the older car for a little while longer I'm still keeping my eyes peeled for a potential replacement, just not actively hunting.

We all had a fantastic holiday and are already looking at options for next year 🙂 Ideally we'd like to do something similar to this year again - a few days UK break and a week short haul.

Probably a bit early to mention, but I bought my first few little Christmas presents in September. OH started in May, so I'm not actually the crazy person in this house 😝 I like to be finished with it all by the end of November if I can.

A little while ago I posted about dropping two belt notches. I’ve since dropped the remaining two. I’ve also had to add a new hole to drop an extra notch that didn’t exist... I suppose I might need to buy some smaller clothes now 😂 I’m feeling as fit and healthy as I have in years. I don’t think I was in particularly bad shape before, I ate reasonably, walked quite a few miles each week, swam a bit, would go for the occasional run, had been known to lift some reasonably heavy weights, etc. I've not been doing anything revolutionary - eating a little cleaner, and a little less, exercising a little more. Hoping to keep it up. Winter can be tough when it comes to motivation and willpower though…

Inspired by others here (mainly Ed) I decided to try playing the cashback gift card game when grocery shopping. I've done a small test of £10 at MrM and £5 at MrA so far. That earned me a whopping great 33p cashback 😂 Will work nicely when they have the £2 bonus days that I've always ignored in the past, and I guess every little helps so I may try to make a regular habit of it.

Also inspired by many of you on here I've returned to the survey site of choice. £15.54 withdrawn in September, and £29.70 withdrawn in October so far. Will try to keep this up.

Work got a bit hectic back in August, and it all started to get a bit stressy and overwhelming. While out for a long walk to unwind I played with some spreadsheets on my phone and that settled me immensely. We're in a good place financially and work isn't something worth getting worked up about. The feeling of zen soon returned and I'm back to enjoying myself again 😎

Part of the spreadsheet exercise above means I have a clearer picture of my outgoings for the year so far now. I've been recording everything with enough detail throughout the year, but the useful information was buried. I have everything split into clearly visible categories on a summary page now, so may include some of that in my end of year summary here.

The weather has remained reasonable so far, and temperatures comfortable. No need for the central heating to be on just yet. I doubt it'll stay off as late as it did last year (nearing the end of November), but getting past halloween would be nice 🙂

I've refreshed my "just in case" winter pepper kit - just some long life foods, a camp stove, some bottled water, a 3 day menu plan, emergency lights, and a power bank - enough to keep us ticking over for a few days if we're snowed in without power. Probably won't be needed, but nice to know it's there.

I think that covers everything, life keeps bobbing along…

savingholmes

Love the mini prepper kit.

Sounds like you are doing well overall. Nice that you managed to recapture your 'zen' in relation to work.

And now I've got the 'bobbing along on the beautiful briney sea' song in my head