Only freedom will do

gallygirl

edinburgher wrote: »

That is rotten. Our place are masters at that particular trick (and they wonder why our turnover is relatively high!)

Where I worked they were great at bringing outsiders in on 5-10k more than internal staff. Which worked well - not :rotfl:.

AlexLK

edinburgher wrote: »

Yes Alex, that had been the plan when we moved house, I very quickly came to realise how much effort goes into renovating (even when contractors are doing at least 50% of the work). I could realistically start down that path in a year or so.

Career average pensions are quite powerful actually (even for short spells). I transferred in a tiny defined contribution to the central government pension scheme where I worked for 2 years. This little pot is worth 6-7 years of contributions in my current (better remunerated) post.

I am off next week to finish all of our gloss painting. Planning on getting carpets fitted next weekend and having a skip turn up midweek so that I can empty the garage and secure a tarp over the leaking asbestos cement tile roof. Oh the fun I have :rotfl:

:rotfl: Yes, renovating is a lot of effort when you're doing it at such a pace. Dealing with contractors is something I do not envy at all; the whole of the construction industry are a law unto themselves.

Career average pension sounds interesting; Mrs K currently pays enough into a work pension to save paying the higher rate tax but I don't think it gives her a pension of her career average earnings (that's how I presume such a scheme works). Should everything go to plan over the next two years, I'm going to move into teaching for a school for probably 3 days per week. Need something other than managing some properties to keep me occupied as Mrs K is unwilling to let me become a father again and I am not returning to my old profession. Whilst the salary is woeful, I'm told the pension scheme is very good. Still, not really sure whether it's something worth me paying into?

Sounds like you're making excellent progress on the house. As for the garage, get the junk out and a nice little old sports car in.

edinburgher

Ooh - a sports car - new style Jag for me please

£0.62 OPed :j

Though the amounts might be tiny, it really does add up. Every few days I log in and every time the balance has gone down by a few quid. We'll get there :coffee:

Grabbing some computer time while DD naps, not expecting much of a snooze as she has the lurgy.

FI Anthem

Kahra

Sorry to hear that you didn't get the job and that your employer is so short-sighted! Ah well, it's not like you don't have enough going on in life to focus on

"All we buy is time before we die" - great song.

AlexLK

edinburgher wrote: »

Ooh - a sports car - new style Jag for me please

F type? Must say I too rather like those and I'm not usually a fan of modern cars.

If you fancy something older to put in that garage of yours, I happen to know where you could find a nice TR6.

edinburgher wrote: »

£0.62 OPed :j

Though the amounts might be tiny, it really does add up. Every few days I log in and every time the balance has gone down by a few quid. We'll get there :coffee:

Grabbing some computer time while DD naps, not expecting much of a snooze as she has the lurgy.

FI Anthem

If I were disciplined I'd do the daily tiny OPs too as I think it can be good for motivation.

edinburgher

AlexLK wrote: »

If I were disciplined I'd do the daily tiny OPs too as I think it can be good for motivation.

That's the joy of them Alex, absolutely no discipline required, ad hoc payments as and when remembered

Mrs E spent £800 at the dentist yesterday, she now has a shiny new implant to replace her cracked tooth :eek:

Now the £2200 costs of that were terrifying and I dread similar happening in future (she has at least one other tooth at risk). How would my fellow MFWers approach it? Save £2200/x a month for dental work specifically, or just keep building the emergency fund?

CathT

Hi Ed, if you don't feel comfortable answering that's OK. Have been reading that you have money for dd invested within your funds.I don't want to invest all children's savings into junior ISA.

Do you think now is a bad time to invest? Our funds are doing quite well at the moment but expect them to come down a little. What do I look out for to know when to make that deposit?

You are doing such a lot of work on your house,how long have you been there now?

hiddenshadow

edinburgher wrote: »

How would my fellow MFWers approach it? Save £2200/x a month for dental work specifically, or just keep building the emergency fund?

We do a bit of both - we have an emergency fund that's roughly one month's income, plus we have various savings pots for things we don't need to spend on regularly but will definitely need at some point (car repairs, vet bills, etc). If it were me I'd do £2,200/x per month in our Medical category until it was funded to £2,300 (we keep £100 in there currently), and then top up as needed to keep it at that level.

I view the emergency fund as "the sh*t has hit the fan" fund - anything I can reliably predict I'd rather save for that separately so that I can track it better. I'd rather know that our car repairs fund really needs to be £100/mo instead of £75 because then I could argue that we should replace our car or be more proactive on its maintenance. If it were all lumped in as "well, my EF is now at £2k instead of £5k" it feels more discouraging and vague to me. YMMV.

edinburgher

CathT wrote: »

Do you think now is a bad time to invest? Our funds are doing quite well at the moment but expect them to come down a little. What do I look out for to know when to make that deposit?

You are doing such a lot of work on your house,how long have you been there now?

If by 'is now a bad time to invest?' you have been reading a few media headlines about indices reaching their all time highs, I wouldn't be too worried. There will always be another all time high!

If I were starting out investing, I might not consider now a great time to invest a large lump sum. But if you are talking more conservative lump sums (say a few £k), I see no reason why you wouldn't invest now and drip feed it as usual.

As SSS recently reminded me on this forum, it's time in the market, not timing the market that is important. We just don't know.

I will continue to provide a fixed sum for DD every month until she turns 18. When she was born, I took a leaf out of Tim Hale's 'Smarter Investing' and projected out to a sum that we thought she could usefully use for either 4 years of university or a deposit on a decent flat. Rather than try to project growth rates etc., I just divided that sum by 12*17 and that's her direct debit.

It is also tied to her pocket money. Basically she gets £2/week/age in years between pocket money and nest egg. As she has no need for money now, it all goes into investments. As she gets older, the amount invested will drop slightly because she'll spend some of it. This will hopefully be offset by the time in the market referred to above In addition to that, family gifts are all currently saved in a 4% cash ISA.

Ps. I probably made it overly complicated.

hiddenshadow wrote: »

We do a bit of both - we have an emergency fund that's roughly one month's income, plus we have various savings pots for things we don't need to spend on regularly but will definitely need at some point (car repairs, vet bills, etc). If it were me I'd do £2,200/x per month in our Medical category until it was funded to £2,300 (we keep £100 in there currently), and then top up as needed to keep it at that level.

I view the emergency fund as "the sh*t has hit the fan" fund - anything I can reliably predict I'd rather save for that separately so that I can track it better. I'd rather know that our car repairs fund really needs to be £100/mo instead of £75 because then I could argue that we should replace our car or be more proactive on its maintenance. If it were all lumped in as "well, my EF is now at £2k instead of £5k" it feels more discouraging and vague to me. YMMV.

Your approach sounds good HS, but how would you estimate monthly payments. Mrs E is 31 and the tooth broke when she was 30. Obviously it's not realistic to assume 30 years to save up for break #2, but what is? It's the first medical bill she's had in the 10 years that I have known her. Perhaps 10 years/2 for the sake of pessimism, so 60 payments/£38.34/month?

hiddenshadow

edinburgher wrote: »

Your approach sounds good HS, but how would you estimate monthly payments. Mrs E is 31 and the tooth broke when she was 30. Obviously it's not realistic to assume 30 years to save up for break #2, but what is? It's the first medical bill she's had in the 10 years that I have known her. Perhaps 10 years/2 for the sake of pessimism, so 60 payments/£38.34/month?

I'd go with pessimism mixed with realism. e.g. if you assume the next bill will be £2,200 in a year then you need to lump £183.33/mo which sounds very high. So maybe you drop that down to £100 and assume that it'll be 2 years away. Or, if there's nothing immediately concerning, you stretch it out to 5 years and bump the total amount up a bit to give a bit of safety net/hedge against inflation and save £50/mo.

Of course you have to balance all the other need-to-save-up-for things...if you think car repairs are more urgent perhaps they're a bigger priority now. Or house repairs/improvements, or vet bills, etc. Obviously there's only so much money you have every month to save, so it's a bit of a juggling act.

I reassure myself with the fact that the chances of needing all those pots simultaneously are pretty slim. This month we've drained almost all of our home improvements pots doing two projects at once. We'll slow down on that spending/saving for the next 6 months and can focus on replenishing vet/electronics pots.