Only freedom will do

patanne

Definitely agree with greent on the dressing of babies in lemon. My DS landed up being treated for jaundice when we were moved to a newly decorated ward. He didn't have jaundice, it was just a reflection of the new paintwork. Thanks Wycombe that is yet another year off my life!

edinburgher

Happy New Year everyone! :wave:

We had a lovely Hogmany watching the RSNO, with wonderful music, some opera singers, a piper and a heck of a lot of balloons. Then home for a couple of glasses of shampoo and staying up for the bells.

New Year's Day saw us relaxing with family, Mrs E's Dad made his near-legendary steak pie. Near legendary as apparently Mrs E's Gran made an even better one as the only dish she could cook :rotfl:

I have been thinking a lot (even for me) and have some sense of where I want us to go in the new year, but quite a few of the ideas were already works in progress. Most interestingly for me, imminent parenthood has got me thinking about how much I *deserve* to be a role model for future little ones and working to improve my soul/ethics for once :A

Just little things:

1) Stop being so damn apologetic for things! Mistakes are made, feelings are hurt, as long as I try to live live as a kind and loving person, the mistakes will resolve themselves in time

2) I no longer download content from erm... less than reputable sources (MFW is a very morally correct board, some of you will probably be shocked that someone ever did this, some of you probably do it yourselves !) I have deleted all content that I don't currently have sitting physically in the cupboard/can find to download again through Am@zon or iTun3s

3) I want to start supporting charities again, this is something that I did solidly for the period 2008-2011, but haven't done regularly since. Sure, I still send the x appeal £20 when I see a tragic TV advert, but charities need regular income to plan for the future and my chosen gifting model probably doesn't work for them. In suitably financial nerd style, I'll probably establish a perpetuity to allow for the cost. For example, a £5/mth donation = £4/mth if I use GAYE *12 = £48 * 25 = £1,200 pot required to support this forever.

4) Other than that? Continue to seek our Fair Trade products and come to terms with the fact that some products aren't available in an ethical 'flavour'. Consider doing without these where practicable.

5) We definitely want to move to a house at some point (well, I'd like a boat, but as Mrs E has already agreed to that once future kids go to Uni, I'll not push my luck)! As well as space and a lawn for future kids to play on, you miss out on some of the little nice to haves/metaphysical 'fun' things in a flat. For example, I'd like to have a space to develop some practical hobbies in that wouldn't require taking over one of our (few) rooms for a sustained period. Hardly essential, but ultimately we pay our own bills and living (or the lofty goal of FI) is not enough satisfaction for the average human being.

In the interim, we have been saving and investing as usual, although I have sickened myself of MBing just a little.

No idea what we're up to today, although the fluff piles under the pulley for the laundry are suggesting to me that we may need to return to 'real life' and start things such as house work again?

Have a lovely day all, may 2015 be kind to you.

in_need_of_direction

Seems like a good list of guiding principles. Have you thought about opting for low environmental impact / locally sourced where you can't get fair trade?

edinburgher

Have you thought about opting for low environmental impact / locally sourced where you can't get fair trade?

Good question, I always try and opt for locally sourced/lower environmental impact where possible. The problem with so many of the Fair Trade 'nice to haves' is that they're either relatively high impact, or difficult to produce in this country. For example, chocolate, tea/coffee, sugar, bananas.

Won £1xx on a free slots offer :beer:

Goldiegirl

edinburgher wrote: »

Most interestingly for me, imminent parenthood has got me thinking about how much I *deserve* to be a role model for future little ones and working to improve my soul/ethics for once :A

.

I would say that the fact that you're thinking about it at all implies you'll be great role model.:)


Have a lovely 2015

pavlovs_dog

Can I pick your brains ed?

when searching the forums for wisdom regarding lengthen your mortgage term, yours was one of the few threads I came across. The general feeling on the few threads I could find was that extending the term is something lenders would view with suspicion.

My motivation for lengthening the term would be to lower the contractual monthly payment. We intend to keep our payment the same as it is now. In the short to medium term, this would increase out ability to OP without it feeling like it has cost us more IYSWIM. Longer term, when we decide to start a family, it would make a substantial difference to how much maternity leave I could afford to take (maternity pay is horrific and would barely cover the mortgage).

I was just wondering whether you did any further research into this beyond your thread on the forum? I plan on fully researching our options for the mortgage this month, and don't want to frighten our lender by mentioning it if it really is viewed with affordability suspicion by them.

edinburgher

Do you mean my thread from the olden days? Don't remember posting about it lately.

Our current LTV is 75.x%, our current mortgage was calculated at 80%. I assume we will be moving provider when we re-mortgage, so I don't think taking a longer term will be an issue. I don't believe (and I could be wrong), that a new lender would have any visibility of your old mortgage deal.

I haven't done any proper research, no. Either I'd tell current lender that I want to lower my monthly payment to fund the deposit on a larger property, or I'll move lender, it's a free country after all.

I can sympathise re. mat leave, Mrs E gets 6 weeks at 90%, then statutory for another 25 weeks or so.

Alchemilla

Downloading content to help with er...downloading content?;-)

edinburgher

Yerrr, that sort of thing

pavlovs_dog

edinburgher wrote: »

I assume we will be moving provider when we re-mortgage, so I don't think taking a longer term will be an issue. I don't believe (and I could be wrong), that a new lender would have any visibility of your old mortgage deal.

a fair point, I hadn't thought about that.

The retention deals offered by our existing provider seem pretty competitive if we were to fix for another 3 or 5 years. We've always OP'd so have a good record with them. We have nothing to hide if they did decide to underwrite the loan. I do wonder sometimes if I overthink things so much that I create problems that never existed in the first place

Back of an envelope calculations suggest that we'd stand to save £100 a month at best. Under our current situation, 100/month is neither here nor there in the grand scheme of things. On maternity leave, it is a month's supply of groceries, or several months worth of nappies.