It's kind of fun to do the impossible

Sholly

Oh gosh, what have I started 😂 no, it doesn't have wheels!

Sholly

South_coast said:

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 🤣

I love biscuits! This is a conversation I can get involved in!

Sholly

May update

With restrictions lifting, my son and I have had some much needed time with our friends - I had a friend over for drinks and went out for a meal with another, and my son has been paintballing. We also went to the cinema for the first time since Christmas Eve 2019 – cinema is one of our favourite things to do together so we’ve really missed that. As a result, NSDs have suffered again (14/31). Although I am still being cautious and limiting who I see and what I do, I do want to have a bit of normality and see my friends and do these things guilt-free, so I’m going to stop tracking NSDs for a while as I feel like I’m beating myself up about it every month which doesn’t feel great. Maybe it can be every other month, or just an annual January challenge. I’ll think about that some more.

I’m ready to tell you what I’ve done though! I’m in the process of buying a little patch of woodland. It’s something that I’ve looked at on and off over the years, but I’ve never seen the right one, but the one I saw recently is really lovely – it’s so peaceful. There are a few plots within a larger woodland and has a really lovely community feel. It’s only a 35 minute drive from home and it will be lovely to go there after work if I need a bit of downtime. There are also a few good financial reasons for buying it (maybe it does fit in with MSE after all!): it’s inheritance tax free, my only ongoing costs will be insurance (around £160 p/a currently) and it is likely to increase in value. It’s also far less stressful than buying a property as it’s a fixed price, and once you confirm that you want to buy it, it’s taken off the market and there is no chance of being gazumped. The peacefulness of it is something that I really need at the moment as I have been struggling a little bit recently – I had to isolate for 10 days as my cousin attended my grandma’s funeral with symptoms and then tested positive 2 days later so the whole family had to isolate, but her dad/my uncle continued to go to the pub and socialise. I felt really frustrated being stuck at home again but more frustrated that my cousin put us all in that position and my uncle was potentially spreading the virus around the pub. I’m also very aware of so many people just sending symptomatic kids to school, or breaking isolation. I really don’t want to be in the position of being in and out of lockdown forever so I’m just finding things difficult. Being stuck at home also meant that I’ve spent far more time on social media than I would normally, and I realised how much of a horrible place it is! I’ve deleted both of my Facebook and Instagram apps now. I had to turn the TV over this morning too because of people arguing on TV. It just seems like there’s conflict everywhere. See, I really need a peaceful woodland, don’t I!?

I hope I’ll be less grumpy next month…I might even have completed on the woods and then I’ll be totally zen!

South_coast

Ooh, the woodland sounds wonderful 😀! Lots of memory-making potential there

Sholly

Thank you South_coast. I'm nervous about telling anyone because I'm aware that it's a bit out there! But you're right about the memories - my son has been planning the mountain bike track that he wants to build, and my sister has made a Pinterest board with lots of ideas of rope bridges and stuff for all the kids (she may be overestimating my DIY skills 🙈) so I think it will be lovely

ladysummerisle

You could also rent out the space for forest school events!

Sholly

@ladysummerisle I like your thinking! There's a forum on one of the woodland sale websites with people looking for woodland to rent so I'm going to look into it when I've been in and tidied and worked out what I want to do with it. There are definitely lots of possibilities 🙂

Sholly

June update

June means bonus! We’re never guaranteed our bonus and, with the pandemic, I didn’t think we’d get one this year but I prayed to the Money Gods and thankfully they answered! I also got an ‘excellent’ performance review which means I get a bit more than normal. I still can’t even really believe that I get a bonus (hello imposter syndrome!) so I’m really grateful. This year I’m getting £3,672 after tax. I’ve also got my pay coming in from working at the recent elections so that will be £240 after tax. I’m due to complete on the woods in the first couple of days of July so I will put some of the money towards that and I’ll have around £2,400 leftover - some will go towards my credit card bill (we’ll get to that in a second – I’m definitely not excited to discuss this!) and the rest (around £1,300) will go into my savings account – I’ve just been told that one of my flats may need a full rewire so I need to prepare for that. This is the flat that had a new boiler and roof last year, both out of necessity – it kills all of my profits every year! I must repeat “long term gain…long term gain…long term gain”!

I don’t really want to admit about my credit card bill this month, but I was brave enough to admit the woods so the CC bill should be a breeze…right!? It’s my son’s 13th birthday this month, and as he didn’t get a birthday party last year and his summer camp has been cancelled, I’ve let him have a much more expensive birthday party than he normally would have (£326) and I’ve got him a new phone and some smaller gifts (£200) – normally I budget £300  in total for presents and party so this has been a shock to the credit card! I also completely ran out of trousers to wear after I split my last pair of jeans (the dreaded lockdown pounds strike again!) and I had a date on Saturday so had to spend some money on new clothes (£216) – I actually feel much better and more confident having nice things to wear rather than just wearing all of my old, tatty, holey stuff that doesn’t really fit anymore – also not great for dates! I tried to buy things that will last and that could be worn in a variety of combinations so hopefully I won’t need to buy more for a while. I also took my son out for lunch on Father’s Day (£45) last weekend – his dad isn’t around so it’s a hard day for him.  On top of this, I’ve got the usual groceries, fuel, and a couple of mystery visits which I’ll get the money back for next month, so my CC bill this month is £1,098. It’s usually around £300, but it’s a one off and I’m lucky that it’s all come in bonus month. It’s Amex too so I’ll get 1% back in cashback.

My regular savings account is due to mature in July so I need to decide what to do with that (£3,653.63) but some will hopefully go towards mortgage overpayments depending on what happens with the rewire. I think this is how my savings and investment accounts will look once everything has settled in July and the regular savings account has matured but not including deductions for the rewire:

Easy access savings £1,000

Premium Bonds £5,014

Work shares account £1,920

Stocks and shares ISA £508

I recently opened the Premium Bonds account as my Easy Access rate (0.85%) is due to reduce to 0.3% in September. Once I know how things definitely look in July, I’m going to transfer my savings minus £1,000 into Premium Bonds. I’ll keep the £1,000 in my Easy Access account as Premium Bonds take a few days to transfer if I request a withdrawal - I was almost caught out by that once when I paid my car insurance, transferred the money from PB to my current account and it almost wasn’t there in time to cover the payment. I do keep an eye out on MSE for a decent rate on an easy access account but there still don’t seem to be any at the moment. I think that this way will be the best option, although I know I am sacrificing guaranteed interest for possible prize money, but I looked on the MSE PB prize calculator and hopefully it’ll work out. Any better suggestions of what I could do here though?

This isn’t relevant right now, but I am excited about my work shares accounts. It’s essentially a savings account until maturity when you can buy shares at a discounted rate. Currently, I have 3 accounts in the scheme which are due to mature in 2023, 2024 and 2025. I could close the accounts early if I needed to, but I’d just get out what I’ve put in and I’d miss out on the following:

Based on today’s share price, the potential value of each scheme is:

2023: £846

2024: £717

2025: £20,621

The share price was low when the 2025 scheme was announced so I put in as much as I was allowed (£140 per month). I’ve calculated this into my mortgage free plans so I’ll pray to those Money Gods again that the share price works in my favour! If it stays like this, and everything else stays on track, I may be able to pay off my mortgage by the time I’m 40, 5 and a half years from now – and even if I don’t manage it, I will still have made a big dent in it. This is all dependant on nothing else going wrong with that bloody flat though!

I hope everyone has a lovely July!

South_coast

OK, so I read all of the above and it's all fantastic stuff - but what I really want to know is how did the date go??? 🤣

Sholly

🤣🤣 I did skip past that a bit, didn't I? 😂
I had a nice time - we went for drinks in the sunshine and chatted for a few hours. There were no awkward silences and I felt relaxed...But, we are very different people with very different life plans. He really wants children, and I don't want any more, and he doesn't really have any plans aside from that - I don't think he'd have any idea what FIRE was. He's at a settling down stage as I'm preparing to spread my wings! I think he was almost irritated that I insisted on paying for every other round of drinks too - the follow up text was just focussed on that - just "thanks for the drinks today x" 🤔 what about me being amazing company? 😂 so unfortunately, as pleasant as the day was, he's not for me. I haven't heard much from him since so I assume he feels the same. I downloaded a dating app after that but it's a very strange place 😂