Onwards to freedom!

SuperSecretSquirrel

Thank you all for posting 🙂

That's the one trix 👍

OH agreed to have a new account opened in her name, for me to do all the legwork, and for her to keep the free £205. Pretty hard to resist when I framed it like that! I'll be doing all the legwork for my account anyway, so sorting a second one for her at the same time is no bother. I’ve started running through the tasks involved in qualifying for the rewards but nowhere near done yet.

Another 2.5k moved into PBs this month, which takes the balance back up to 40k from January's draw 🤞 I'll be back in a few days to let you know if I won big in December or not 😁

Cashed out surveys for November, £77.80, none too shabby!

I've stopped tracking gift card cashback. I'll keep on using them, but the cashback amounts are small, and I don't track similar small wins like (Mr A / Mr M / Mr T) rewards vouchers. The few pennies appearing every now and then will just be a welcome surprise 🙂

Even though I had “finished” Christmas shopping in October, I've spent the survey money (plus a little more) on extra little gifts for OH and the children. Made it feel like they were almost free 😁 I might pick up a few more stocking fillers in Dec, but I like knowing that all the main things are taken care of well ahead of time.

Central heating kicked in for the first time this winter on the 9th Nov, pretty happy with that. All radiators bled, boiler and thermostat set to winter mode, LPG topup ordered, we're all set. The heating hasn't been needed all that much so far, but I'm sure that'll soon change!

Looking forward to receiving my next tranche of fixed rate bonds interest, any day now 😎

I mentioned in my last post that the value of my S&S ISA had dropped quite heavily, making a mockery of my six figures by 2024 aim/target/goal/wish/dream… The rebound this month has been insane. For the first time ever I've seen a balance over 100k 🤑 Who knows what the value might be come 1st Jan but it was very nice seeing that extra digit for the first time ever 😁

Health and fitness still going well. I'm still eating sensibly, most of the time, and still exercising a little, but nowhere near as much as I did in the spring/summer. After losing weight quite consistently week on week for a few months my weight has remained stable this past month. This was inevitable, and probably a good thing. I'm pretty much exactly where I should be now, just need to maintain from now on. Fully expect a few steps back over Christmas 😋 Fully intend on rectifying in January 🙂

savingholmes

Well done on the weight loss.

Great rewards from switching too. I daren't while I await my mortgage port

SuperSecretSquirrel

Thanks SH, and others for reading/thanking 🙂

7% regular saver has matured, and I’ve just opened a new issue.

No big win (or any win whatsoever) on the PBs in December… Fate must be saving up for the big one in January 😀

I’ve jumped through all the hoops required to net the 2x£205 bank rewards. First 2x£125 received, remaining 2x£80 expected in April. Was very pleased when OH suggested that since she didn’t have anything in mind to spend it on, we just leave it all in the joint account and put it towards future home improvement spends.

Finished work for the year yesterday 🙂 Two weeks off with not an awful lot planned ahead of me now - just how I like it at this time of year 😀

I’ll be back in January with a summary of 2023. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all! 🎅 🍻

edinburgher

Merry Christmas SSS 🎅🎄

savingholmes

Happy New Year! How lovely on the bank account switches and the RS maturing. It all helps. Two weeks off work sounds like bliss too. Do you still work part time?

SuperSecretSquirrel

Thank you both 🙂

I've enjoyed a wonderful couple of weeks off work. Holiday almost over now... I could quite happily hibernate for the whole of January, but sadly we're not quite there yet 😄

I do still enjoy a 4 day week SH 🙂 I sometimes work the extra day and take it back when needed/wanted - the flexibility is great.

I'll spend a little time finalising the accounts for the year today, then get back to posting about it here later in the week.

Happy New Year to anyone reading this! 🥳

SuperSecretSquirrel

January 1st 2024 Update

             01/01/2024  01/01/2023  01/01/2022  01/01/2021  01/01/2020  01/01/2019  01/01/2018  01/01/2017  01/01/2016  01/01/2015  01/01/2014
Pensions      187787.05   149152.25   132122.78   111794.17   108995.12    81848.33    78458.66    61324.05    41170.41    31113.46    23737.91
House         165000.00   165000.00   165000.00   125000.00   125000.00   125000.00   125000.00   125000.00   125000.00   125000.00   125000.00
S&S           105979.60    82315.62    77690.97    60168.60    56018.64    36823.05    26607.27    13313.37     6488.53     3052.50      510.96
Cash           74234.42    67161.64    58676.96    48913.53    26906.74    24858.94    39576.36    47225.02    49581.61    59482.43    44326.80
Cars           16924.00    10980.00    13172.50    12485.00    13137.50    17015.00    14715.00     8900.00    10700.00     9000.00    10000.00
SLC                0.00        0.00        0.00        0.00        0.00        0.00     -314.95    -2138.37    -3116.23    -6905.75    -7455.96
HMRC               0.00        0.00        0.00        0.00        0.00     -152.15     -513.23     -380.26    -2483.20   -14088.23    -6374.55
Mortgage           0.00        0.00        0.00        0.00        0.00        0.00   -14140.28   -25662.72   -37716.04   -50546.60   -63931.64
Total         549925.07   474609.51   446663.21   358361.30   330058.00   285393.17   269388.83   227581.09   189625.08   156107.81   125813.52

Top three lines now in 6 figures 🥳 🥳 🥳

That could have quite easily not happened - the market surge over the past few weeks really has been something! 

• My DC pensions are up over 15% year on year 😮
• S&S ISA up over 28% year on year 😲
• OH’s “early days” DB pension up over 47% year on year 🤯

Big numbers this year very much making up for disappointing results last year!

Reviewing last year’s first post we hoped to go on a nice summer holiday and replace one of the cars, both of which we did. This year we’d like a similar kind of holiday, maybe replace the other car, and get another professional home improvement job done.

We are all still happy and healthy. School is still going great for the children. Work has lost some of its shine for both us adults, but is still pretty good overall. We really can’t complain 😀

SuperSecretSquirrel

2023 Summary / 2024 Plans

This is going to be a long boring post that will mostly be of interest to myself when reading back over history. You're welcome to read on if you like, but nobody has a gun to your head 🤣

I track my own spending (3 separate pots - monthly necessities, monthly fun, annual lumps), and the joint account. I don’t have detailed visibility of OH’s spending, and as she has absolutely no interest in budgeting, tracking, or forecasting, I probably never will.

My monthly necessities came in under budget in 2023 at a total of £2984/£3600 (83%).

My monthly fun came in under budget in 2023 at a total of £1162/£1380 (84%).

There isn’t really a budget for annual lumps, but I fund the account with £300pm and ideally end the year with more than I started (though that won’t always be the case as some years are costlier than others). Annual lumps came in under the funding level in 2023 at £2731/£3600 (76%).

The joint account is managed similarly - no budget as such, but we feed in £500pm and ideally end the year with more than we started. Joint account spends came in under the funding level in 2023 at £4139/£6000 (69%).

A pretty comfortable margin on all lines, I don’t see any reason to make any changes for 2024.

Groceries

I had the luxury of time in 2023, and I spent some of that time shopping around, hunting out the best deals, grabbing gift voucher cashback, earning members rewards, etc. It has been fun, of a sort, but the savings over simply buying everything from A**i were fairly minimal. I can probably find better things to do with my time so I will ease off on this in 2024.

LPG

It's hard to get a firm grip on usage as it is impossible to say how much is left in the current bottle at the start and end of each year. If nearer to empty/full in January, and the opposite in December, it throws things out a bit. That said, we finished 8 bottles this year, so used about 376kg/5256kwh, at a cost of £729.27. My own estimate was 564kg/7885kwh, so I seem to have overestimated by about half...

We pay on delivery, and there's not a lot we can do to reduce usage comfortably, so the cost is what it is. It's nice to have a handle on it, but each winter is different, and the price is variable (and uncapped), so it is impossible to reliably predict cost from one year to the next. I keep track of the account anyway, so no harm keeping an eye on annual consumption.

For future reference - the grand central heating switching on ceremony was held on the 9th November 2023.

Electricity

We can be far more precise here. We used 2631kwh in 2023, pretty close to my own estimate of 2600kwh! We could probably reduce overall electricity use a little further, we've not been militant about it. This is a pretty comfortable level for us, and the only real variables affecting consumption are the number of outdoor drying days, and how much we use the dehumidifier. Of course unit and daily standing charge prices are another variable affecting actual cost. Not a lot we can do about that other than switch/fix as necessary. The knowledge of approx 2600kwh per year will serve us well when running through comparisons at least.

The energy monitor plug has been on the dryer for a full year, it used up 545kwh all by itself. Not sure what use I'll put the monitor plug to in 2024, might just leave it on the dryer.

We were billed £1,066.60 in 2023, paid £813.54 (£412.54 us / £401 ess). The shortfall was covered by an intentional reduction of credit balance. Not much credit left now, so the DD will shoot up to a more realistic level soon (probably £100ish, up from £20pm).

S&S

Paid in £13,400, value increased by £23,663.98 🤑

All in VLS80. The regular monthly investment amount was £1000. I boosted to £1350 from September in an effort to improve my chances of crossing 100k by the end of the year (safe to say “mission accomplished” on that!). Original plan was to drop back down to £1000pm from January 2024, but I’ve decided to go with £1100 instead.

Pension

Only about £2,100 added to mine in contributions. I’m going to keep contributing the minimum as I don’t really need any more money tied up in pensions. My private sector DC pension is extremely poor compared to OH’s public  DB one. It has performed well, but the employer contribution is verging on insulting by comparison. Rather than tie any more money up in my pension I’ll keep feeding the ISA instead. I’ll also be giving some serious thought to a move to the public sector purely for the pension benefit at some point. Even if the money would only be available in later years, a guaranteed amount each month over and above the state pension would give some welcome extra breathing room.

Other money in

Savings interest in my name: £553.85
Premium bond wins: £1,650 (average balance £47,708.33)
Bank account opening bribes: £125 (plus £125 for OH, a further £80 each expected in April)
S&S switch delay compensation: £75
Surveys: £234.68 (since September)
Joint account cashback minus fees: £22.09
TCB: £89.08
Mini secret side hustle: £272.43

I’ll try to keep all of the above up in 2024, and remain open to other options. Will remain mindful of time vs money trade off, unless a side hustle is fun or extremely lucrative it’s probably not worth the effort compared to simply increasing my work hours.

Health and well being

Dropped from overweight to ideal bmi in 2023. Pinch and mirror tests say there's nothing much left to lose unless going for the Mr Universe look, which I certainly am not 😂

I have very little stress to deal with, sleep well, eat sensibly most of the time, exercise a bit, make space for a bit of outdoor time pretty much daily (when the weather is agreeable), live in good clean air, have an easy pace of life, and enjoy plenty of downtime both with family and my solitary interests. Well being pretty much off the chart. That's what really matters most to me, so I'm very happy with my lot.

No specific aims or targets for 2024 - just maintaining at current levels would be great.

Decluttering

We made huge progress early in the year - we were almost “done”. Things started to slip in Autumn/Winter, and there's been another huge influx of “stuff” thanks to Christmas. Looking forward to getting the Christmas decorations down, straightening everything up, and going on another declutter and spring clean mission over the coming months. I can see this becoming an annual cycle.

Home improvements

A decent amount of DIY progress, and one of the “get a professional in” jobs got done in 2023. Plenty left to do. Nothing particularly urgent, though there is one job we’d like to get someone in to sort this spring/summer (expected cost in the 2-3k range). I’ll try to get most of the remaining outdoor jobs done myself during the sunny months.

One sentence sum up

A million pound lottery/pb win would be most welcome, but we can live without it if we must 😆

South_coast

SuperSecretSquirrel said:
One sentence sum up

A million pound lottery/pb win would be most welcome, but we can live without it if we must 😆

And that is it right there - "Yeah, it'd be nice, but I'm already sorted thanks 😀"

Wonderful summary SSS 👍👍👍

edinburgher

Fab year SSS, we added IRO low £££,£££ from very different places, which was funny as we felt skint the entire time!

By OH's pension being "up", I assume this is the effect of being a relatively new entrant to a DB scheme and not because of any wildly generous indexation? To think, I was overjoyed with my 10.1% increase at the end of the financial year