Back to basics with pavlovs_dog: the £6k sprint

Alchemilla

I was asleep at seven, all of us in one room.
So I had some awake time in the small hours.

I find text messages a real potential source of conflict.

in_need_of_direction

Happily my mother doesn't know how to read or send texts. She sounds a bit like yours in that to quote one of my nieces, she might love you all but she doesn't really behave like she likes you. She's the best in the world when she's needed, otherwise she meddles and stirs things up. While I can accept it a lot of time, sometimes in just have to put distance between us as I know I can't always be sufficiently detached not to explode.

pavlovs_dog

INOD, you're not too far off of the mark at all there. You have my sympathies. Unless you have experienced it first hand, people often struggle to understand how your own mother of all people can be so cruel. Glad to read that your mancub is on the mend x

Turns out mother doesn't like the taste of her own medicine. Distance is now needed for both of us to think things through. Her sister (the one we visited in London) is coming down to visit for the next bank holiday. I feel for her arriving amidst this chaos, but she is well versed in my mother's ways.

pavlovs_dog

I've decided that I quite like this four day week business. Very glad that tomorrow is Friday. I can almost smell freedom!

More YS bargains as A4da tonight. Freezer is full to bursting! OH has some very late finishes next week so some batch cooking will be in order this weekend to create HM ready meals to see us through.

mothership reached a whole new level of despicable behaviour on Tuesday. I have not dignified her message with a response, which I'm sure is p*ssing her off a treat

Will be early to bed tonight and early to rise on the morrow to do some marking. Is it sad that I'm quite looking forward to watching the election results trickle in as I toil away?

pavlovs_dog

Glad to see Saturday. Lots to do this weekend. As a minimum I have 2 sets of GCSE mocks to mark and yr12 coursework bits to sort. Gained time is phasing in over the next 3 weeks as the exam classes leave. I'm writing a list of miracles to achieve in this time in the hope of making next year marginally more tolerable.

OH's replacement p60 has come through so we can finally sort out the mortgage paperwork. Our car insurance renewal quote has also come in at £287 which seems quite fair at first glance. Need to check what we paid last year and shop around before committing to anything.

Also need to batch cook some 'ready meals' for the week, as OH working much later shifts than normal.

Who else is is disappointed by the election result? Whilst, on balance, it was probably the best result for the economy, I'm quietly terrified about what the Tories will do to Britain socially without another party mitigating their powers.

Alchemilla

Dressed in black yesterday. Everyone at work miserable. Such bad news for education.

edinburgher

I am wondering how long it will take them to undo some of the more touchy feely policies that had 'Lib Dem' stamped on them...

Alchemilla

About as long as it takes to say "cabinet full of multimillionaire old Etonians".

in_need_of_direction

Plus a token female!

pavlovs_dog

money shuffled and TillyTidied. 2015 MFW thread updated. The newly recalculated payment on the current mortgage means our built in OP is now £154.96.

As a diversionary tactic from the marking mountain, I've been running some snowball calculations. They new mortgage will see us comfortably double our built in OPs. That alone will allow us to clear £7k/year from the mortgage debt. However I'm due to go through threshold this year and move on to the upper pay spine, meaning my take home pay from September should increase by about £200 a month. What to do with this money? The principle of paying ourselves first is working well for us, so I plan to continue with that. We need to sit down and chat about what we'd like to do with this money.

I also need time to sit down and do the money diet. Is every penny working as hard as it could? Finding just £83.33 a month to overpay the mortgage is an extra £1k over the course of a year. A tenner off the food budget here, a fiver off the petrol budget there, turning things off at the socket... it all adds up, but they're things we let slide because we are time poor and financially comfortable from month to month.

There has been a lot of very thought provoking discussion about FIRE on numerous diaries recently. Research and battle planning is the order of the hour.