Only freedom will do

Watty1

Enjoy hols

Karmacat

Ach, you're probably on the road by now! But have a great time, the Western Isles are so beautiful.

edinburgher

Slinks back in....

All righty folks, what did I miss? :beer:

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

Hope you all had a good time.

X x

newgirly

Hope you had a good break Ed

AlexLK

Hope you had a good time. Any news on the mortgage / new house yet? Seems to move so fast in Scotland I thought I'd ask.

Karmacat

What did you miss? Gally won the million pound premium bond, I found the gold at the end of the rainbow, and Martin Lewis has allied with the UN to announce a coup to take over the UK

Dobbibill

Ed - you've missed the rugby........holidays are nice but while the RWC is on is shocking :eek: lol

Hope you had a nice time

edinburgher

Dobbibill wrote: »

Ed - you've missed the rugby........holidays are nice but while the RWC is on is shocking :eek: lol

Hope you had a nice time

We had a lovely time, thanks all

Also, we never miss the rugby Dobbibill, watched loads of matches while we were away, including the nailbiting England vs. Wales match!

edinburgher

So, back to reality!

Time away was wonderful and I felt that I got to know my daughter again. It is incredible (but scary) that children change so much between one month and four that I felt that it took me a full week to get used to her routine and her new and improved repetoire of cuteness. She is currently fascinated by music and getting very frustrated that she hasn't *quite* mastered rolling over.

I have returned to the office and am now working slightly longer days to allow for a bit of flexibility at the tail end of the week. It's definitely autumn now, isn't it? I find that it takes a few weeks to get used to rising when the sun isn't up. I'm trying a few 'hacks' to make the transition easier (make packed lunches (or take things like beans with a ringpull)/set alarm earlier/don't go online in the morning/make breakfast in advance (suspect I'll get used to toast with miso and hard boiled eggs quickly!))

Mortgage stuff rumbles on and I had a mammoth session of drawing together the supporting paperwork for our mortgage application yesterday. I was furious after coming into the office to scan everything, only to discover one missing document when I got home! :mad: Fixed now and another reminder that I need to double check stuff before sending it off. All's well that ends well, however, and Mrs E will be mailing out half an inch of documents today

I was off yesterday and the day disappeared in a blur of grocery shopping, buying petrol (off to Newcastle for Scotland vs. South Africa game next week), housework and mortgage stuff.

Now that it looks like the new house has been secured on our terms (moving in a month tomorrow!), I have started to consider investments again and growing our nest egg for the extension that we think will be necessary by the time DD goes to primary school. I have had a bit of a reality check of late as regards how to approach investing timelines and while I still think that low cost index investing will still do the bulk of the heavy lifting for our retirement, we need to be careful not to allocate too much money to investments that will be needed in the medium term.

To this end, we will predominantly be using cash, P2P lending and fixed income products over the next 4-5 years for our shorter term needs, with our pension plans left unchanged. These come with their own risks, but it is easier to plan a margin of error over a short timeframe.

Long story short, one size doesn't fit all unless you are able to invest huge amounts very quickly, which we are not!

£30 to Funding C1rcle and £300 to Saving Str3am, taking our new total to £2,500 or so. We're largely sitting on a pile of cash at the moment, keeping back £25-30k to potentially renovate the house. Have also looked at Abler@te, but they appear to be victims of their own success, with next to no fresh investments. Have a few £££ sitting with them, but considering withdrawing it as it is going nowhere.