It's kind of fun to do the impossible

Sholly

bubblycrazy said:

Sholly said:
The £6.5k has come off my balance but no other reduction yet - does the interest take a bit longer to come off? 

I don't think it will come off the balance, it's more like the interest won't get added in the first place.

As soon as Amazon said they'd charge if it was a cash transaction, I knew that's what NatWest would say it was!

Always the way!

Thanks bubblycrazy, I think my brain had frazzled! It totally makes sense that it wouldn't be taken off the outstanding mortgage

Sholly

February review...

I had a pretty good NSD run in February - 23 NSDs out of 28 days.
I had an exam on the 26th so I had a takeaway the night before so I didn't have to stop studying, but used a Deliveroo code so it only cost £6.64 and did 3 meals 👍 I don't really have an excuse for the McDonald's on Saturday night though 😅 but I used foodforthoughts vouchers so 2x Big Mac and fries for £3.98.

So total February spends:

Groceries: £157.46

Takeaways: £14.60
Others (gifts for my sister): £22.65

I would like my grocery spends to be a little lower this month but the freezer has never looked so bare, so I'll have to top it up but I'll do so with the budget in mind. I should really stay away from the takeaways too! But on the whole, I'm okay with the spends for this month.

My standard mortgage payment came out yesterday with the new fixed overpayment of £38.65 which rounds it up to £620. I then made an overpayment of £600 after I'd worked out how much I had leftover after bills, but I couldn't leave it at £638.65 so paid another £11.35 to take my overpayments to £650. I can see rounding up becoming the new obsession! I've lowered my overpayment plans from £999.99 to 'as much as possible' whilst I top my savings back up. Once the 0% on my Tesco credit card ends in May and that's paid off, I'll increase the payments. I'll update my mortgage figure here later in the month when it's all cleared and worked itself out. At the start of February it was £170,336 so I'm excited to see what it'll look like in mid-March...all helped, I'm sure, by my lovely new graph in my spreadsheet!

Sholly

March update…(this is a long one so, if anyone is reading my ramblings, maybe get a cuppa and a snack! I feel like I should do a contents page so you can decide whether you want to spend your time here before you start!)

 

March No Spends weren’t as successful as Jan or Feb…Surely, when the only place you’re allowed to go is the supermarket, grocery spends are going to go up...right?? Anyway, I’m making excuses - March NSDs: 17/31 YIKES

 

My 14 spend days were:

- 9 for supermarket trips (the equivalent of TWICE A WEEK!) (£158.10)

- 2 for buying birthday gifts for my nephew and sister (£25.25)

- 2 for takeaways (with vouchers for both, of course!) (£24.45)

- 1 for the deposit of a trip my son is taking in the summer (paid on my Amazon credit card for the points)

 

The boredom has been real this month, and with my son being back at school, I’ve been going to Tesco for a meal deal at lunchtime just for something to do. That needs to stop! I think I’ve got a bit of a solution for that though…

 

I saw a recommendation on another diary for Mamafurfur’s YouTube channel and it’s amazing! I’ve wanted to invest in stocks and shares for a really long time but I’ve always felt too nervous to start – I had considered a Vanguard LifeStrategy ISA and almost went for it a few times but I had a moment of doubt every time and didn’t do it – I just thought it was for people with far more knowledge than me and I felt like I didn’t know what I was doing BUT I have always felt like I’m missing out too so seeing Mamafurfur show her portfolios gave me so much more confidence, and she had the same Vanguard options that I had considered going for, so I decided to stop being scared and I put £100 in with a recurring payment of £100 per month. She also has some Cryptocurrency, which is also something I’ve been interested in but didn’t know where to buy them (how do people know which platforms are trustworthy!?) but seeing which platform she used, I signed up for one too and now have a small amount of Bitcoin (£88 worth of Bitcoin bought me 0.002 of a Bitcoin!!) and a very small amount of Skale (£3.50 got me 5 Skales). I bought Bitcoin because it’s the only one I’d heard of(!) and Skale because it’s pretty new so it’s cheap now but has increased in value a lot recently (258.95% in the last month) so I thought it was worth a try. I decided that I’ll allocate a few £s a week to try and get a wide range of Crypto – the platform has 44 available and I’d love to have a little bit of each. I know it’s really uncertain, but when it’s the price of a Tesco meal deal a week, I’m not going to worry about it too much. She mentioned that if you’d bought 30 Bitcoin when it first came out in 2009, it would be worth £1 million now – that’s the kind of returns I’m looking for 😂 If I lose it all, I’d be disappointed, of course, but it’s not going to cause any real problems. I also signed up for a Freetrade account so I could have a bit a play around with stocks – it’s all happening here! I spent £15 there.

 

There is also a bit of a temporary change to my mortgage overpayments too – my son is going away this summer WITHOUT ME! It’s in the UK and all COVID dependant of course, but it is going to limit what I can overpay on the mortgage until July, but that’s okay – after the last year, it’s far more important to me than the mortgage. I’ll overpay as much as I can but I’m going to try and have a little solo trip away whilst he’s away so it’ll be an expensive few months, but all in the name of balance.

 

Jan mortgage £170,368

Feb mortgage £163,886

Mar mortgage £162,918

 

Thinking a bit ahead to my mortgage post-July though, I had wanted to pay off my mortgage by the time I was 40 (December 2026), but that would be a push – 9 years was looking more likely (age 43). However, since I opened my S&S ISA, I’ve been thinking about whether it would be better to split the overpayment money between my mortgage overpayment and my ISA. Looking at the MSE overpayment calculator, this would pay my mortgage off in 12 years, which I’m okay with, but maybe I could use the ISA money to pay it off sooner if it goes well. I’m frustrated at myself for feeling uncertain about all of this and changing my mind every 5 minutes! But I guess that changing my mind isn’t really a bad thing – it’s changing because I’ve learnt things this month and I’ve had time to look into things more in depth so I should probably just go with the flow. The option of splitting it between the mortgage and the ISA may give me the balance that I’m looking for and I can hopefully just settle in. I’ve also got a viewing at a really cheap flat next week – as soon as it came on the market, they were fully booked with viewings for almost a week so I’m certain it’ll sell before I even see it, but if I bought it, it would mean that if anything happened to my job, all of my expenses would be covered by rental income which would be amazing for peace of mind. I don’t have any concerns about my job at the moment, but you never know, and as a single parent, the thought of having no job is scary! I’d essentially pay for it outright, then refurbish it and then get a mortgage so it wouldn’t affect my finances too much. I’m not actively looking for another BTL, but at this price, it would be a great deal. It seems I just like to add extra uncertainty!

 

I think everything above also fits in with my FIRE goals. I haven’t put much thought into the specifics of FIRE before now, aside from knowing that I wanted to do it, but I’ve been looking at my pension and I think that’s looking healthy so I thought I’d look into what FIRE could look like for me (I’ve based all of these calculations on current figures, as I guess they’ll all go up relative to each other):

 

At the moment, the predictions show that I could officially retire at 57 (likely to be the new minimum age) with a lump sum of £82,100 and an annual income of just over £18,000, not including my rental income (currently £975 per month). I was okay with this – 57 seemed like a good aim, but I wondered whether I could retire sooner. My net worth hit £200k in March, but a lot of this is tied up in house equity, so I could free it up by moving if I needed or wanted to. I think I will downsize when my son flies the nest – maybe this is the key to retiring early. My son is almost 13 and has indicated that he wants to go to university which he would do in September 2026 if he follows the straight-from-college path. For his consistency, we’ll definitely stay in our current home until at least 2026 when he goes to uni and I’ll support him financially until he finishes in 2029. But assuming that I keep the house for another few years after that, until it’s paid off 12 years from now, and then sell it, this could be the date that I am financially independent and can ‘retire’; I could sell the house for £320,000 and use £150,000 to buy a new house outright, which would leave me with £170,000 in the pot. If I split this pot equally between 132 months (from age 46 when the mortgage is paid off to 57 when I can take my pension), I’d have £1,287 per month plus the rental income of £975 = £2,262. Without my residential mortgage, my current bills would be £796 including all direct debits, sinking funds, groceries and fuel, which leaves plenty for travel/fun/investing. I think this is probably lean FIRE but I’m not very good at spending money on non-essentials for myself so it’s highly unlikely that I’d spend the full amount every month. By this time, I would also have paid around £100,000 into my ISA and hopefully it will have grown. Nearer the time, I would need to understand what impact leaving work early would have on my pension and would look continue to pay into a pension in some form between 46 and 57 if necessary. So there is more to think about, but it feels really exciting to think that I could FIRE in 12 years.

 

Feel free to burst my bubble if I’ve missed something that means I will actually be working until I’m 110!

 

Finally, as a closing note, April means that next month my Tesco 0% will be paid off taking my debt down from £12,895.78 to £4,431.03 and leaving only one credit card! This will free up some money, but will also make my savings look a bit sad, so I’ll top it up with the Bitcoin millions that I expect to have made by the end of the summer 😉

South_coast

Whew, sounds good to me (and I love the idea of a contents page 🤣)! Don't know if you've seen the new FIRE thread that Ed has set up yet? Looks like it's going to be interesting x

Sholly

@South_coast I didn't do the contents in the end as the post was so long anyway and I didn't want to put anyone off any further than I had already 😂

Thank you, I hadn't seen that but I've found it and copied and pasted my FIRE ramblings there (just the one paragraph though, didn't want to get banned 🤣)

Sholly

April update

I originally started this by saying that I didn’t have much to report today, but apparently I am incapable of short updates!

Sadly there’s no chance of my NSD record being broken in April - NSDs were 14 of 30 (even worse than March!) but although the number isn’t great, the majority is groceries plus some little gifts for friends, a lunch out with my son and petrol for going to visit my grandma who is on end of life care and lives 90 miles away so I’m not going beat myself up about this – I’m having a LIFE IS FOR LIVING moment! May No Spends will be better….maybe!

Some positives for April:

- I’ve made my (small!) regular mortgage overpayment

- I paid off my Tesco 0% credit card

- I was given some Crypto for doing a “lesson” on my profile

- I pay for life insurance through work which I decided to decrease in favour of increasing critical illness cover – it seemed irresponsible to have it as it was before (I had £30k of critical illness insurance and my son was due to get almost £1m if I died whilst still at the company). I’ve changed it to £100k of critical illness and he’d now get almost £800,000 from my life insurance and estate if I died – it feels more sensible to have a higher amount of critical illness and £800k still isn’t a small amount of money!)

- I gave my son £5 and let him choose some shares to buy – he invested in Santander (random for a 12 year old! I have one of my BTLs through them so maybe that’s why) and EA Sports.

- I got top marks in my performance review at work. This means I’ll get a higher bonus this year (as long as the company does pay them this year – they are never guaranteed).

At the end of 2019, I set myself a “buy no clothes for a year” challenge, but in 'the year when no-one went anywhere', it feels only right that I extend it to this year too. I’m not a big shopper anyway, but I might need something new if we have a hot summer – I have very few summer clothes but I’m going to dig out the sewing machine and see what I can do with some old clothes – I’ll be pleased if I can get through 2 years without buying anything.

I went to look at the cheap flat that I’d mentioned last month but it was a repossession and subject to “public notice” offers and I didn’t want to get into that with such a high chance of being gazumped so I didn’t make an offer. I did see a lovely 2-bed house though which fit in with my FIRE plans as I thought I could rent it out for a few years and then live in it when my son has gone to uni/left home so I put an offer in and it was accepted!...until the next day when they accepted a higher offer from another buyer whilst I was waiting for my mortgage offer to come through. So I offered on my second choice but that went way above asking price. And then I saw a flat but couldn’t get a viewing as it was for sale at my budget and already had offers above asking price. So I have given up on buying another property for now – there is just too much demand and I also think people who want to buy to live in it should have priority over landlords (although I’m really not sure that is what’s happening!). I did, however, buy something else. But, as this is a money saving diary, I’m kinda scared to write it here! It’s an investment, and it is related to my FIRE plans and pension plans but it's also something that we can enjoy now...it just meant spending a bit of money!

I’ve been thinking a bit more about FIRE since my last update. Last month I’d talked about selling my house in 12ish years’ time and buying another cheaper house outright and living off the difference until I officially retire, but as I’d like to travel, it seems silly to have a house sitting empty whilst I’m away so I’ve been thinking about buying a 3 bed and renting the 2 spare rooms which could provide an income. This would also give me around £170,000 left over so I could also buy 2 flats outright which could provide an income of £500pcm each. This would be perfect for my travel plans and I could still work from the road if I wanted to, but I wouldn’t have to. Monthly, after tax, this plan would look like this…

Income from main job: £2,500

Income from room rentals: £730

Income from 2 new flats and 2 existing flats: £1,150

Total monthly income: £4,380

Minus fixed outgoings: £560

Leftover pcm: £3,820 for groceries, entertainment etc.

In terms of travel, I’d love to buy a campervan/convert a van and drive around the UK, Europe and America. I’ve always wondered what people do for an address when doing this, so the above would solve this problem for me.

I promise I’ll try not to update my FIRE plans here every month – but it is handy to have everything here so I can look back in 10 years when I’m close to being able to implement all of this and see what suits me then.

In the meantime, I’m going in search of travel inspiration…!

South_coast

Sholly said:

I did, however, buy something else. But, as this is a money saving diary, I’m kinda scared to write it here! It’s an investment, and it is related to my FIRE plans and pension plans but it's also something that we can enjoy now...it just meant spending a bit of money!

After reading that, I was thinking "I bet it's a motorhome" - especially after reading about your travel plans - then I got to the bit where you said that was a potential future plan and now I'm thinking "Damn, I'm wrong!" 🤣

All sounding very positive though, and you definitely had plenty to report!

Sholly

Haha that really made me laugh! I've spent so much time on YouTube looking at van conversions that you would've thought I'd bought one 😂 it's somewhere you could put a van! (Don't worry, I didn't buy a garage 😂)

It does feel lovely to have positive, viable plans that incorporate everything that I want to do.

P.S. is that a <£1k figure I see in your signature!? I always catch up with your diary on the days I write mine so I'll be along soon to see what's been going on, but this looks momentous!

South_coast

Well now I'm even more curious....🤔!

Yep, just dipped into 3 figures 😀! You can skip through my diary fairly quickly - there's at least two pages of people talking about biscuits 🤣

powerspowers

Oooh I guessed camper too!

does it have wheels?