Hope is not an Effective Financial Strategy

shangaijimmy

try_harder wrote: »

Wow .All brilliant numbers as always , you are doing so well.

Thank you tryharder. To coin your name we are trying really hard!

As most know on here its tough going with young children, and getting the balance between responsible financing and making memories enjoying life is difficult. We have lots of close family and friends who are so loose with money and quick to complain about having none and inadequate retirement planning, that it really helps us to stay focussed.

Just at the weekend Mrs SJ's brother told her how he just bought his sons (17 & 15) a £1,300 mobile phone and £1,000 ipad. Then in the same breath comments that they wont be able to help them at all with university costs :mad: Mrs SJ came straight home and emptied her purse change into the 1p savings jar!

Suffolk_lass

You just wait until they start streaming Spotify 16 hours a day. Deep joy! - for me, this is only the second year I have not paid for my DS's phone bill - I bought the handsets for him and me a year ago but he took on the running costs - previous years for him as a grown-up I gifted this for his birthday. He has had a phone since he was 11 - partly because of our complicated domestic arrangements (DH was working abroad) - I was relying on other people to collect him from activities and to build independence he was travelling to and from school unaccompanied and just texted to confirm he was home or at school

shangaijimmy

30p TT and £2.51 OP from interest on a current account for today. I'm also hoping to have one of the £3 somethings square ticked off on my 1p challenge as change from buying milk this morning.

I keep checking Natwest bank to see if the switch bonus has landed. This one has taken longer to credit than all the others so I'm starting to doubt whether it will emerge or not.

shangaijimmy

Just attacked the bushes at our front. They had started to grow onto the path so i've given them a hair cut and a tidy up. Quite pleased with myself as i usually avoid gardening/manual labour at all costs! Am just gonna grab a couple bags of bark now to try and reduce the little weeds that grow underneath the bushes. And whilst I'm there I'll get a few bags of new stones for underneath our bay window as the level has dropped and the old stones have completed lost their colour now. It means spending though, which I don't like!!

Next weekend I'm attacking DS2's bedroom. Decorating, new bed (so will need building) and new furnishings.

All budgeted for naturally. And then In August I'll attack DS1's pit, I mean bedroom...

Suffolk_lass

One of the people on the old-style boards refers to her son as HT - stands for Human Troll. You just know...

shangaijimmy

Suffolk_lass wrote: »

One of the people on the old-style boards refers to her son as HT - stands for Human Troll. You just know...

I can totally see that!

Well quite a successful evening. Mrs SJ and the boys are out at a show so me a DD finished off the front gardenning/labouring. A couple of bags of bark down on the borders to try and stop the small weeds and hopefully reduce the amount of dog poo that accumulates. Plus I've but a few bags of stone down. Followed up with 40mins out with dog and DD on her scooter. Then i had the big TV to myself to watch whatever sport my little heart desired!!

Am now showered and on the bed with the fan on, trawling through diaries and playing with calculators (mortgage, OP, compound interest and pension ones)!

27p TT as well today.

debtfreeoneday

shangaijimmy wrote: »

Am now showered and on the bed with the fan on, trawling through diaries and playing with calculators (mortgage, OP, compound interest and pension ones)!

27p TT as well today.

Living the dream SJ, living the dream...:rotfl:

shangaijimmy

Predictably I fell asleep propped up! And then Mrs SJ came in and woke me up at 11.30, and then to add insult wanted to tell me all about it!! And I reckon that was going to be the best night sleep I would have ever had... The clock hits 1am and I'm still awake, whilst Mrs SJ is happily snoring away. To add insult the dog was even snoring on the landing!!

shangaijimmy

Well up and at it this morning. I've OP's my weekly TT pot which stood at £5.01. So as usual there will never be any interest to pay on that £5.01 again!

Well there's been some major financial thinking and discussions going on in SJ towers over the last few days and weeks. And it seems like a decision may have been made. A lot has changed financially in the last 3 or 4 months, in that Mrs SJ has gone back to full time money following 10yrs of baby growing (our 3rd and final is ready for nursery in Sept), we have just gone for a 5yr fix (March) and we have assigned some of our spare cash to pre-retirement (all planned for when we had the mortgage balance at an acceptable level below £100k).

In doing all this I have been reading...reading and researching about pensions and retirement planning. Now I'm not confessing to being all knowing on such matters, and up until 3 months ago my understanding was limited to knowing that we both had a pension. One a good one, and one that needed some TLC.

So fast forward a few months and we have crunched lots of numbers/scenarios, and I'm now realising that we need to accelerate a lot more on my pension. Therefore to make our money work more efficiently we will be slowing out MF quest from June 2026 to Feb 2031, and put some of our cash towards my pension. We will then utilise the tax uplift and direct that towards the mortgage. 2/3rds will now go into my pension and 1/3 to OP. We will still be finished around 6yrs earlier that our initial drawdown. Still be MF before the eldest heads to Uni, still be MF before I access my pot at 55.

So there it is. Decision revealed! Just gonna sleep on it for a few days before putting the wheels in motion which is essentially 1 e-mail and 1 adjustment to a standing order.

Suffolk_lass

Just make sure you also do the what if calculations too.

You might want to consider the financial implications for your stop work early plans if the draw-down of pension pots age were to move in line with the uplift to state pension age - it is highly possible that it will move to be ten years away - so I would suggest that you need some tax free savings available to draw on in that gap if it were to move from 55 to 58, for instance. I know you have a relatively new S&S ISA and that may be the ideal vehicle - still looking at tax free but not tax relieved.

You will already have looked at your tax relief (they might change this from your prevailing tax rate to basic tax rate at some point)

Also plan for the scenario where your lifetime allowance (relatively recent limit, since increased) may change. - This may well change once the new PM is installed - especially if they begin to follow through on all the spending commitments they have been making.

You will also want to save a bit in case you need to make additional voluntary NI Contributions should they either change the number of qualifying years or make a new rule (as they have for me, just 7 years before my state pension was due, the goalposts moved out another 6 years - I had planned for 3).

All good SJ - you know the saying, "Fail to plan, plan to fail!" - I wish I had heard this ten or fifteen years earlier