Only freedom will do

AlexLK

That's great news re. the CC debts. I'm sure you'll build the money back quickly enough.

edinburgher

Meh! Tried to pay off the last £350.05 of our unsecured credit, but card got declined for some reason? Not sure why, still have £800 or so sitting in the current account :think: Hey ho, it will wait 'til Monday.

DD and Mrs E have the lurgy, Mrs E coming home from work shortly, so I will have 2 sickly babies to nurse

This week was somewhat of a downer. Not much on at work or financially and struggling to get my brain back into study mode. It has been such a long time I think I've forgotten how.

earthgirl

Sorry just catching up and wanted to say the contribution to NW figure is brilliant. Hope everybody feeling better too.

Secret_Saving_Squirrel

Hello,

It is hard to study when you are working full time. I used to find it easier to remove myself to a separate study place outside the house. Do you have somewhere, like a library, to go to?

Good luck with getting back into it.

edinburgher

Thanks Squirrel. Our local library is a 10 minute walk from the house, so that might work at the weekend. It's a different story during the week, because my late homecomings mean that going elsewhere isn't really an option. I will get bedroom 3 up and running as a study soon, but DD has been unwell and this cost me planned DIY time (think she's hopefully on the mend now).

The PO website has stopped playing silly beggars and I was able to pay off the dregs of the CC in full. I also called MBN@ and closed the first CC that was paid off. For a 'valued customers', they sure made me some crap offers. 36 month 0% BT for a 5% fee, anyone?

I have been updating our NW spreadsheet this morning (Mondays are always slow) and I realise that we've now pivoted completely away from P2P investing. While using 0% leverage to make a profit in this manner has been quite entertaining over the last year or so, rates were falling as more and more money entered the marketplace and I was getting concered about governance issues that had been uncovered with some of the 'junkier'/higher risk platforms.

So where does that leave the edinburgher household finances as we approach the end of the financial year? Surprisingly vanilla for a change - a slug of home equity, minimal 'spare' cash, a bit of savings and a healthy wodge of pensions. No whisky, no P2P and no matched betting, what will I waste my time on now? :rotfl:

Other than possibly picking up a load of Vanguard Life Strategy 100 using 0% leverage if we get a stockmarket crash, I'm not planning anything fancy anytime soon.

Suffolk_lass

edinburgher wrote: »

Other than possibly picking up a load of Vanguard Life Strategy 100 using 0% leverage if we get a stockmarket crash, I'm not planning anything fancy anytime soon.

Ooh! 100 - that's brave - I suppose that's an indicator of the difference in our ages - you have time for the higher risk. I do not

I think I remember you saying you had a frozen DB public sector pension. You could devise one of your spreadsheets to track its' index-linked growth to see how much it will contributes to FIRE... just trying to be helpful

edinburgher

The two topics are inextricably linked in my brain SL.

Much of the reason that I feel confident running with the super charged risk from VLS100 is the preserved DB pension. I do track this (no idea what the 'official' line is on valuation, I count its value as the value to me compared to my equity holdings (i.e. replaced income = £/year*25).

Based on this logic, I have a '£65k' slug of 'bonds' that will act as the water in my whisky

As regards calculating future value, it's actually easier to model DB than DC. I just assume a conservative inflation rate of 2% and then plug this in to a FV formula as the interest rate.

Karmacat

Risk is interesting I just checked the risk assessment of a fund where my mum had some funds - she chose the next to highest risk rating! You never can tell ...

edinburgher

Risk is definitely interesting, everyone responds very differently to it and our attitudes towards it are always in flux.

Without speaking ill of your Mum, do you reckon that she had actually read the risk information? I ask as I've spoken to a couple of work colleagues who were horrified when I pointed out that they were invested like 70 year olds despite having 50 years or so to go

I no longer have any unsecured credit cards bar the day-to-day expenses one, which is paid off in full via direct debit

Budget day tomorrow!

Karmacat

edinburgher wrote: »

Risk is definitely interesting, everyone responds very differently to it and our attitudes towards it are always in flux.

Without speaking ill of your Mum, do you reckon that she had actually read the risk information? I ask as I've spoken to a couple of work colleagues who were horrified when I pointed out that they were invested like 70 year olds despite having 50 years or so to go

No worries, Ed!

I think she'd *read* it, I don't think she understood what it meant, to be honest. She always looked at paperwork as it came in, and seemed to treat gains as though they were set in stone, and was disgusted when a quarterly loss showed up, like she was taking it personally. I was eventually her go-to person on finances, and I had no idea the risk category was so high, and I think she was about 70 when she **opened** the account I'm referring to :eek:

I no longer have any unsecured credit cards bar the day-to-day expenses one, which is paid off in full via direct debit

Budget day tomorrow!

Thats a :j for the first sentence, and a worried look for the second

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