Hope is not an Effective Financial Strategy

shangaijimmy

Very quick post. £1TT to start the week off and a small £1.48 payment from £co received. Long and busy day today so won't really come up for air until 9pm!!

Have a great start to the week everyone.

michelle09

Sounds like a good start of the week, hope you manage to breathe before 9pm!

edinburgher

Re. S&S ISA - I'd heartily recommend Vanguard if you want low cost index tracking investments with a basic (but fnctional website). I've moved my ISA and DD's JISA to them and will be moving my pensions once they open their SIPP accounts to the public.

shangaijimmy

Thanks Edin. Vanguard is on my list for the future! There £100 minimum amount doesn't quite work for me at the moment as i only have £30 a month to throw in and the thought of waiting for 4 months to throw money in just didn't allow me time to get any momentum into it all. Hopefully this time next year i'll be able to throw £50 a month alongside drip feeding in £800 from some funds (which will make up the £100 a month). So far now i'll dip my toe in the water and get a feel for things with the money we can afford. Thats why investor worked for me. To be fair its been an easy functional website to start with.

The overall plan is to know what i am doing with things for when the mortgage is gone. Our pensions are in good health (Mrs SJ has an excellent one). We need to think about the income to bridge the gap before retirement age, and when mortgage is gone it gives us 15-20yrs of investing for this (alongside increase in pensions and saving for university), and we will effectively have £1,200 per month to "play with".

Best laid plans and all that....!

And on all that talk of mortgages...I've TT'd a whopping 66p this morning. Payday tomorrow, paying out day on Thursday, 6 days to account posting and 6 days to net worth calc!

edinburgher

I'm a firm believer that you're better off doing something not completely optimal (say using a S&S ISA provider with slightly higher fees) than doing nothing at all :beer:

Vanguard's slightly higher monthly minimums are a little offputting, but retiring early will likely require hundred(s) of thousands, so that's perfectly realistic.

You have inspired me to go back to updating my spreadsheet on the first of the month, looking forward to the simplification

I take it Mrs SJ has a DB pension?

shangaijimmy

She does have a DB pension. As I said we are doing ok pensions wise. Our mortgage debt is the biggest threat to our family. So first phase of plan is to get it down to a level where we can manage with job losses, reduced wages etc..., keep ticking along with pensions nicely and then we should have 15-20 years of acceleration.

shangaijimmy

Hump day today which always makes the boys smile on the way to school! So i started with an 89p TT and a transfer of £7.60 £co payment to mortgage.

I also have the joy of payday today and i now know the impact of auto enrolment increases and pay rise on my pay. Auto enrolment has gone up from 1% from me and work to 3% me and 2% work. Happy to say that the extra 2% needed from my salary sacrifice was mainly from my payrise. Overall my paypacket is £11 down but pension contribution have gone up £60. A good trade off i'd say. (I also have a private pension that i have paid for 18yrs and currently pay in £200 a month to that). The trade off to payday is that its paying out day tomorrow... but the great part is that its accounts posting day in 5 days, and i have net worth to post as well!

In terms of work. This afternoon sees the end of a 3yr project and this evening sees the beginning of a replacement 3yr project... It would have been nice to have a few weeks with space in between, however i am fortunate that this time i don't have a 5 month overlap (as happened in 2017).

edinburgher

Happy hump day SJ

shangaijimmy

Motivation for work is severely lacking! Empty office and really need to close the MFW tab...but all these updates to read on diaries!

Karmacat

You've really got the finances under control, SJ, well done. Sorry there's no gap between projects - although it sounds like you might have *just* today, if you're very lucky !