Only freedom will do

gallygirl

Karmacat wrote: »

That's a good point, Gally

Erm ... erm .... they're such good quality, being glass and all, I'm about to retire and I might well want to do some sort of project with them next year, even if its not alcoholic.

I agree with your reasoning but I'm going to give myself another year or so before I ditch them. Shoot me now :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Don't need to. The mould will do the job for me :rotfl:.

Karmacat

:rotfl:

:T


Its gone from that wall, honest and even the bathroom is better - I just need to do a bit of a freshen up of the window sealant in the living room and bedroom before autumn :eek: It's under control, I promise, but the brambles in the garden *aren't* :eek:

:kisses3:

gallygirl

Karmacat wrote: »

I just need to do a bit of a freshen up of the window sealant in the living room and bedroom before autumn :eek:

Yuk yuk, hate having to set mould off sealant :eek::eek::eek:.

Good luck with the brambles x

edinburgher

Back from a lovely day spent in the NE, sister's firstborn a hale and hearty 1 year old. Probably the best 'baby orientated' first birthday party we've been to, she could host them for a living! Absolute 'mare getting DD to sleep in the hotel, think I got 2 hours or less

Back home for DIY today and we were trimming doors to fit the new carpet in DD's room. FIL (aka calamity James) managed to cut from the wrong sodding end of the door :mad: :eek: :rotfl:

In my absence, it would appear that the thread has grown arms and legs and is now entirely self sustaining. Perhaps my consciousness has now fully merged with the interweb?

A few spends here and there on service station coffees, but nothing too horrific. Sister pointed out that they'd got a small paddling pool for 75p so we went to Asd@ on the way back. Not quite that good, but £3 for 2 paddling pools (our house and inlaws) is an amazing deal :j

Declaring a spend of £16.99 on whisky as I have literally none left. A far cry more affordable than the £70-80 I've been spending over the last couple of years, a wee Am@zon bargain. Also got a cracking secondhand CD for less than £3.

Right, off to make dinner.

edinburgher

Dinner was good, leftover HM corned beef, sautee potatoes and peas with HM beef gravy (om nom nom).

Is it normal for babies to poo in the bath at least once during their childhood? :eek:

Karmacat

edinburgher wrote: »

Back from a lovely day spent in the NE, sister's firstborn a hale and hearty 1 year old. Probably the best 'baby orientated' first birthday party we've been to, she could host them for a living! Absolute 'mare getting DD to sleep in the hotel, think I got 2 hours or less

Back home for DIY today and we were trimming doors to fit the new carpet in DD's room. FIL (aka calamity James) managed to cut from the wrong sodding end of the door :mad: :eek: :rotfl:

Ouch! I think is the reaction to a lot of that, but a baby-oriented first birthday party sounds lovely :T

In my absence, it would appear that the thread has grown arms and legs and is now entirely self sustaining. Perhaps my consciousness has now fully merged with the interweb?

Thats how you know your thread is a complete success, Ed, that people carry on conversations without you actually *being* here

edinburgher wrote: »

Dinner was good, leftover HM corned beef, sautee potatoes and peas with HM beef gravy (om nom nom).

Is it normal for babies to poo in the bath at least once during their childhood? :eek:

HM corned beef!!! I remember corned beef ... lurved it!

Of course its normal for babies to poo in the bath :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: why would they not :rotfl:

Have a lovely evening, and catchup on your sleep if you can

Save

edinburgher

Updated NW spreadsheet for the month, pleased to see that it has gone up by ££££ for the 2nd month running, a nice change from the swings/lows of last October when we moved house (up £24,000 in October, down £17,000 in November!)

Our increased pension payments are definitely making a difference in that they're magnifying the effects of stock market volatility in a good way (for now). Still, we're not doing nearly enough for FI. In savings ratio parlance, we're paying 14% into pensions, 3% into S&S ISAs and ad hoc top ups worth maybe another 1-2% (call it 1.5%). So our savings rate is approximately 18.5%, plus another few % going into the emergency fund (which resides off the books for accounting purposes).

The current plan is to put pensions up by 3%/year and S&S ISA up by 1%/year. It doesn't sound like much in the grand scheme of things, but even a 1% change means finding £40/month.

Despite S&S tearing away over the last couple of months (70% ex-UK), I'm still pleased that I decided to front load our ISA with all of the bond money at the start of the year, it brings a little less volatility to the party I might pay in all our ISA money for next year at the end of November when our regular savers mature, chances are savings rates will be cut again by then.

Wee payments into the EF, small OPs etc., all that jazz.

Edit: still getting the odd referral from P2P sites through the Referrers board, added a post for TopCashBack referrals (who knows, there might be someone left on MSE *not* using them!) :rotfl:

Karmacat

I've still got to do all that referral stuff, Ed, sorting out the finances I already have is proving challenging enough, so you've one more referral to come, eventually

Interesting about the saving rate, and not being high enough for FI. 18.5% isn't to be sneezed at, but more needs to happen for FI, of course. Though think about it - all the money you're spending right now on upgrading the house from those years of neglect - those sorts of amounts are going to be diverted to savings eventually, surely? You can get there

Kahra

Hi Ed! I've had a read through your diary and WOW, you've been through a lot of changes in the last couple of years! Your DD sounds just adorable, and you've sure put a lot of work into the new house.

Do you count the increased value of your house due to the extensive renovations in your NW calculations? Some of the £££££s you've spent surely count as 'savings' as they increase your equity - I know it's harder to measure than liquid accounts, but increases the value of your assets nonetheless. I would bet your savings rate is far above 18.5%!

edinburgher

That was a rough and ready calculation (i.e. savings rate) because I was going for 'clean' savings (i.e. straight into a pot, not things that make us wealthier, but are hard to measure). Savings ratio including home equity is 27.41% for the month.

I prefer to keep home equity 'lumpy' (i.e. I ignore increases until we either get a new valuation, or sell the property). This basically ignores things like home improvements and rising values and we get a nice upside surprise when we come to sell or remortgage. For example, I maintained the assumption that our old flat was worth £135k, but we got £152k when we sold, instant spreadsheet value explosion

I'd estimate that we'll get increased equity of approximately 40% of what we're spending on home improvements, because very few things add significant equity beyond creating more space. We're modernising the 'infrastructure' of the house as well as making the existing space appear larger and more attractive.

Not that I think we will, but we have adequate room to convert the attic and add a 2 storey wrap round extension if we were so minded. I doubt anyone would want a 5 bedroom house on a 3 bedroom plot