Only freedom will do

Alchemilla

Crikey if you have Shelob at your winders get 'em cleaned!

edinburgher

Alchemilla wrote: »

Crikey if you have Shelob at your winders get 'em cleaned!

They're coming out tomorrow with telescopic poles with swords on the end

earthgirl

edinburgher wrote: »

At the risk of sounding too cool/like a Monopoly fan, I'm probably far too happy about discovering a spreadsheet bank error in my favour. I have been over egging the pudding as regards home contents insurance and have now updated the spreadsheet accordingly. Now £48 richer, with £29 to go into our Eemergency Fund and £2.xx a month saved from now on.

The FI nerd in me is also thinking 'that's £600 off my number'

Thats great, love it when that happens, I think its cool too!

edinburgher

:dance: :dance: :dance: I'm shuffling! :dance: :dance: :dance:

We have reached the end of another working month and it's time to make the spreadsheets dance.

Today is Mrs E's last day for over a year

I have discovered another budget hack as our commuting line no longer needs to be as high as it is with only one of us working. I have cut it in half and have deducted £145 to pay into our S&S ISA. The 'free' half will be getting added to our investments for the time that Mrs E is off and should amount to another £500 or so over the course of the year.

£640 paid into the Emergency Fund as well, meaning at least £1,065 to savings and investments this month.

***Stop reading at this point unless you are interested in dull investing chat and behavioural investing***

The S&S ISA money will be going into our bond fund. I am a little bit torn at the minute to be honest. The monkey part of my brain is telling me 'Stocks are going through the roof, buy stocks!', but the robot part of my brain is telling me 'Warning! Warning! Stocks are going up too quickly and your bond allocation is too low!'

I am also torn because the bonds that we hold in our ISA represent part of general retirement planning and are tied to our need to reduce volatility in our pension funds. While my robot brain tells me that paying more money to pension-like investments shouldn't be a negative thing as we're planning for potentially the next 55 years, my monkey brain is yelling mean comments about 'the man' and how I don't want to work until I'm 100

Long story short, it's boring decisions like this that remind me that I'm here for the long haul, no ERE for me

Luckyinlife

shuffl shuffl shuffl :]

what kind of Emergency Fund you aiming to hit ?

I kind wish i could invest a bit for long term but my interest is way to high on the mortgage boooo

I just keep my Emergency Fund in an isa to avoid tax on the interest

edinburgher

We have already passed our Emergency Fund target of £5,000. This is slightly over our complete expenses for 3 months, slightly over 5 months for our 'bare bones' expenses. We keep it in a mix of current accounts, something like 3% after tax. I didn't see the point of using an ISA unless it paid more.

Mrs E and I have both worked for over a decade without redundancy or unemployment, pretty stolid but reliable income. We'll probably up it a little once we move to a house.

What is your interest rate? When I started to become more interested in investments, our mortgage rate was/is 3.15% and all the commentators were talking about a 'new normal' of low growth. At the time, investing felt like a bit of a punt. Unless the BoE goes crazy, I would be disappointed to be paying more than 2% come next spring, at which point the prospect of OPs just seems barmy.

Karmacat

edinburgher wrote: »

:dance: :dance: :dance: I'm shuffling! :dance: :dance: :dance:

We have reached the end of another working month and it's time to make the spreadsheets dance.

Today is Mrs E's last day for over a year

I have discovered another budget hack as our commuting line no longer needs to be as high

All good stuff :j though I should warn you that some of that commuting money *might* be used up by MrsEd having the odd coffee with local new mums (unless she's also Mustachian, which she probably is, isn't she ...). My niece in law in London, who had a baby last year, spent quite a bit of her maternity leave pootling about with the buggy having teas and coffees with the local new mums she'd met at classes or at hospital.

The S&S ISA money will be going into our bond fund. I am a little bit torn at the minute to be honest. The monkey part of my brain is telling me 'Stocks are going through the roof, buy stocks!', but the robot part of my brain is telling me 'Warning! Warning! Stocks are going up too quickly and your bond allocation is too low!'

I'm with the robot

... my monkey brain is yelling mean comments about 'the man' and how I don't want to work until I'm 100

Long story short, it's boring decisions like this that remind me that I'm here for the long haul, no ERE for me

Ed, honestly, I think you're under-estimating yourself - if you retired in 20 years, it would still be ER/FIRE - not as extreme as Jacob or MMM, true, but still excellent :beer:

edinburgher

(unless she's also Mustachian, which she probably is, isn't she ...)

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha {ahem, excuse me} ahahahahahahahahahahaha :rotfl:

My darling wife neither has a moustache, nor could be considered 'Mustachian'. This is the woman who I have been working on for 7-8 years and she still finds saving £50/mth to be an imposition.

That aside, she has her own money to spend and I make her the odd ££ through partner friendly MB offers.

I'm with the robot

I know, I know, he's just such a boring wimp at times. I want him to be Arnie, but he's more like Mr Magoo.

Ed, honestly, I think you're under-estimating yourself - if you retired in 20 years, it would still be ER/FIRE - not as extreme as Jacob or MMM, true, but still excellent :beer:

3 month rolling average calculated yesterday suggests 17.86 years

Karmacat

edinburgher wrote: »

3 month rolling average calculated yesterday suggests 17.86 years

:j:j:j fantastic!

Watty1

Ed you have made me think. Quite thoughtful Watty here now.
When I started my own MF journey I couldn't actually make the mortgage payments every month. Some months I could easily make them of course (self employed volatile earnings pattern!). But now I can easily make them. And I was wondering this morning about going for a fix on the mortgage and starting to invest instead.