Hoping that my short contract with the NHS is going to be lengthened - it sounded like it today, they're just waiting to hear on funding.
I'm an ex-Secondary school teacher and set up my own business as a private tutor 4 years ago and am now at the point where working a 10 hour week earns the same as being a full time NQT did when I first started! I'm very pleased with this turn of events (naturally) but something about being self-employed has turned a switch on and I have, over time, become more ambitious to be really really successful (which also includes being wealthy) than I ever thought I would be!
New challenges await though. My middle child will be starting school this autumn and as most of my teaching time currently falls out of the school day and at weekends I won't be able to work so many hours. I need to expand into the adult learner market as adults are available for lessons during the day and in the evenings after the children are in bed. I also intend to actively develop passive income streams and I have some ideas bubbling away for this.
I got a book out from the library called, er, something to do with 90 minutes. It's a business book and its basic premise is that in order to be really successful in business you need to spend a 90 minute chunk most days working ON rather than IN your business, ie spend regular time planning, coming up with ideas for growth etc rather than the tasks themselves. The author states that this must be an uninterrupted 90 minutes at a time you work best. When I work best is when the children are unconscious so I'm planning on a 5.30 start tomorrow so I can do my time before breakfast. The only problem I can see is how I wake myself up without waking the rest of the house!
Anyway, we'll see how this goes!
"What we're talking about here is money and the freedom it gives you... freedom from worry and freedom from most forms of BS" MMM
Mortgage 1: [STRIKE]£95,000[/STRIKE] £83,848.23 at 3.1%
Mortgage 2 (BTL): £83, 489.15 at 4.8% (I.O.)
Family loan: [STRIKE]£15,000[/STRIKE] £6,000
Long term savings/investments: FundCirc £100 7.1%, Saver account at 5% £500
Another self employed person working towards FIRE here Another idea is to take a 2 weeks holiday and spend the first week working "on" the business, making details plans etc, then have the holiday and then on with the work.
Never done that either but I get the principle
Made it to mortgage free but what a muddle that became In the event the proverbial hits the fan then co-habitees are better stashing their cash than being mortgage free !!
re date nights, those places where they have pub meals and soft play areas are not the most romantic of settings, but they do allow mum and dad some time to chat!
Paid off mortgage nine years early in 2013. Now picking and choosing our work to fit in with the rest of our lives!
Still thrifty though, after all these years:D
Well the 5.30 starts worked reasonably well. I've written up questionnaires for students who are finishing with me currently and have had loads of really lovely replies and will be able to update my website. Unfortunately haven't had any responses from students who never rebooked after their first session. Would be very interested to hear their reasons for not continuing.
What worked less well with the early starts was the children, despite never normally getting up that early, sensed that they might be missing out on something and got up to join me.
It's been half term here and we've managed lots of lovely family days out as well as extra tuition. We managed a 25 mile bike ride on Thursday and today we've been out to the countryside. Feeling very rested and very motivated to knuckle down again next week.
Our reasoning behind wanting to get rid of the mortgage in 5 years are to do with schools. We live in a perfectly nice area with lots going for it but the local secondary schools are really dire. Being mf will enable us to move to an area where the educational opportunities will be far better.
"What we're talking about here is money and the freedom it gives you... freedom from worry and freedom from most forms of BS" MMM
Mortgage 1: [STRIKE]£95,000[/STRIKE] £83,848.23 at 3.1%
Mortgage 2 (BTL): £83, 489.15 at 4.8% (I.O.)
Family loan: [STRIKE]£15,000[/STRIKE] £6,000
Long term savings/investments: FundCirc £100 7.1%, Saver account at 5% £500
Of course, in five years, the local schools, or at least one of them, could have improved. A new head can turn a school round in a couple of years. Bike rides sound lovely.
Paid off mortgage nine years early in 2013. Now picking and choosing our work to fit in with the rest of our lives!
Still thrifty though, after all these years:D
Have you been thinking about how to get more adult learners? Any nearby colleges with adult learners? There are always tutors with adults in my local library. Not sure who they are - community learning teachers maybe?
I've found tutoring for the local authority great, and they actually prefer day time tutors. Its for children who are not in school for medical reasons. Maybe your council has it?
15/5/12 Paid off Mortgage 1 (£220k) Bought Dream House:www: Dec 13 - Mortage 2 -£116,508. 15/7/18 Mortgage Free Again :j
Sorry hadn't meant to leave such a huge gap between posts.
You're quite right, Squirrel, in that a good head can turn a school round but my issue with schools is a bit more deep-seated than that. My oldest son is 17 and I am an ex-Secondary teacher and my overwhelming issue with the schools I have had links to is that they are boring and only really cater to students who are remarkable in some way. My DS for example is introverted but not so much he got noticed for it, he's bright but not so bright as to really stand out, behaviour was fine, attendance fine etc and his experience of Secondary school was all a bit beige. He couldn't quite push himself to join groups and obviously it would have been mortifyingly embarrasing had I got involved in any way so really he floundered through and spent a good deal of his teenaged years in a state of boredom. As an ex-teacher, I've seen first hand how important it is to be seen to be achieving certain targets rather than being able to say hand on heart that every single student has achieved the very best they are capable of. I don't think I've really explained my point very well but I don't honestly feel DS1 is in any better position now having been to Sec school than if I'd home-educated him.
On that point, we have been very seriously considering HEing our younger two. While the final decision hasn't been made however, I think we will probably send DS2 to the local school in September (startes Reception). He'll be very old in the year being an early September baby which I think will help him but it will be with a view that he only stays while he is thriving. The final push actually for us to send him to school was a comment MMM (himself now a HEer) made about efficiency and perhaps the most efficient thing we can do right now is send the little lads to school while we go all out for financial security knowing we can remove them if needs be without financial constraint.
Right. I originally joined this site about 8 years ago. I was a single parent with a boyfriend who didn't live with me and I lived in a small house with my DS1. When I graduated from uni I went into teaching and went from a student wage to a FT professional one. Having been raised with very little money I was always going to go one of two ways - either spend like there was no tomorrow or live the way I had always lived. Naturally the fact I'm posting in this part of the site shows I went the frugal route and after a few years paid off the mortgage. During the period of OPs me and boyf got married and small people started appearing. We grew out of my little house and 3 years ago bought this place and added an extra human. Obviously having already paid off one mortgage I knew only too well that paying interest for 25 years is a mug's game especially when small OPs really add up particularly at the start of the mortgage.
So with this knowledge I duly started up another diary here and ..... nothing happened. For three years now I have been attempting to give myself a kick up the rear and start hammering down this debt. My recent namechange and new diary was another attempt to do this and so far has had little success. Of course I could just forget the whole thing and just pay it off over 25 years like I'm supposed to. Thing is though, once you've seen a diferent way of doing things you can't 'unsee' them so for the last three years I've had this nagging voice that I'm vegetating.
Now, it's easy to make excuses. I have had babies and miscarriages and other health issues in this time and of course my family will only be small once but there's something else nagging at me and it's taken me a while to work out what it is and I still don't think I'm there. This house we live in is fine, it's a decent area and we have a good network of friends and other things that matter. However, if the worst happened and we had to sell up, this house is by no means unique and with the equity we hold here and in my old house which we now rent out we would have a roof over our heads. Of course it would be great to be MF but it's just not something I feel I am prepared to sacrifice the present for. I need to strike another balance now but I'm not really sure what it is yet.
I keep giving myself goals like pay off in 5 years or more recently to save up the equivalent of the outstanding debt by x time but the numbers compared to our income just seem too massive. So I then set myself smaller challenges like save up £20k in 5 years but actually that's a completely arbitrary number and wouldn't really make any difference to our way of life in any meaningful way. I've attempted Edinburger's number to FI thingy, as in if you want to retire by x time you need to save up this a day. I worked it out but I can't remember it now.
So, not sure even what the point of this post is. I'm trying to get my thoughts cleared so I can formulate a plan. I like to have a plan but I've also felt that I've missed out on fun in my life in order to be sensible and do the expected thing. It feels as though there isn't enough money at the moment to both secure our financial future and to have some fun in our life and I feel constantly conflicted between these two things.
My most recent plan is to save up £70k in 5 years. With the regular mortgage payments that will come off in that time that would give us the option at that point to be MF or we could use it as income if we wanted to remove the little boys from school or it could be used as a leg up onto the property ladder for DS1 or we could use it to travel round the world. I realise I am so much more motivated by flexibility than MF and having read Edinburgher's diary from the start recently I can see that saving is probably a much better course of action than MFing anyway. However, £70k in 5 years is £38 a day and that's ever such a lot. I'm worried that going for a target like that would compromise the present and I just don't want to do that.
Right, well done anyone still reading. Any words of wisdom gratefully received.
I'll edit this out at some point and please don't reprint in subsequent posts, but I used to be Courgette. Far from convinced by my new name but it's fair to say that every other name in the known universe is taken :rotfl:
"What we're talking about here is money and the freedom it gives you... freedom from worry and freedom from most forms of BS" MMM
Mortgage 1: [STRIKE]£95,000[/STRIKE] £83,848.23 at 3.1%
Mortgage 2 (BTL): £83, 489.15 at 4.8% (I.O.)
Family loan: [STRIKE]£15,000[/STRIKE] £6,000
Long term savings/investments: FundCirc £100 7.1%, Saver account at 5% £500
I had worked out who you were straight after your first post in the new diary but respected your privacy! Now that you have 'come out' I would like to say how good it is to have you back and I hope that you can find a way forward.
Unlike you, I had a very spendy first marriage, we never had any money in the bank but earned a lot and we spent as if there were no tomorrow. I was always suggesting saving or paying off the mortgage but my then oh was having none of it, and I had no other more sensible role models, so I went along with it all.
After the divorce, I bought a tiny house and paid off the mortgage in a year. Then I remarried and we bought a larger house together and that too is now paid off. For the first time ever, we have some savings. My new oh was equally spendthrift in his youth but is now fully on board, mainly because retirement beckons and we badly want our freedom. One of my biggest regrets is that we wasted so much earlier on and didn't think about the future.
What I am saying is, you may feel that you are missing out, but what are you really missing out on? Young children don't care if their clothes are new or second hand, or if there food comes from Aldo or waitrose. Their idea of a perfect day is a picnic on the park with mum and dad's full attention, the swings and a ball game. They don't need to go to theme parks which involve a long car ride, loads of money, queues and crowds. My own children said recently how much they would have enjoyed camping in sites with loads of other children instead of the boring villas with private pools that cost us thousands. I also have experience of helping out adult children with buying their own houses and don't recommend it for a whole raft of reasons, including resentment that the other parent isn't helping too, resentment that they go off on fab holidays which we don't because we are saving to help them, etc etc.
and of course, if you stick to the 25 year term, you will end up paying thousands to the banks in interest when the rates inevitably go up.
Sorry to ramble - but in a nutshell, as long as you have a roof and are fed and clothes, I would put all the surplus into buying your freedom NOW. Please feel free to ignore!
All the best with whatever you choose.
Paid off mortgage nine years early in 2013. Now picking and choosing our work to fit in with the rest of our lives!
Still thrifty though, after all these years:D
Replies
I'm an ex-Secondary school teacher and set up my own business as a private tutor 4 years ago and am now at the point where working a 10 hour week earns the same as being a full time NQT did when I first started! I'm very pleased with this turn of events (naturally) but something about being self-employed has turned a switch on and I have, over time, become more ambitious to be really really successful (which also includes being wealthy) than I ever thought I would be!
New challenges await though. My middle child will be starting school this autumn and as most of my teaching time currently falls out of the school day and at weekends I won't be able to work so many hours. I need to expand into the adult learner market as adults are available for lessons during the day and in the evenings after the children are in bed. I also intend to actively develop passive income streams and I have some ideas bubbling away for this.
I got a book out from the library called, er, something to do with 90 minutes. It's a business book and its basic premise is that in order to be really successful in business you need to spend a 90 minute chunk most days working ON rather than IN your business, ie spend regular time planning, coming up with ideas for growth etc rather than the tasks themselves. The author states that this must be an uninterrupted 90 minutes at a time you work best. When I work best is when the children are unconscious so I'm planning on a 5.30 start tomorrow so I can do my time before breakfast. The only problem I can see is how I wake myself up without waking the rest of the house!
Anyway, we'll see how this goes!
Mortgage 1: [STRIKE]£95,000[/STRIKE] £83,848.23 at 3.1%
Mortgage 2 (BTL): £83, 489.15 at 4.8% (I.O.)
Family loan: [STRIKE]£15,000[/STRIKE] £6,000
Long term savings/investments: FundCirc £100 7.1%, Saver account at 5% £500
Never done that either but I get the principle
In the event the proverbial hits the fan then co-habitees are better stashing their cash than being mortgage free !!
Still thrifty though, after all these years:D
What worked less well with the early starts was the children, despite never normally getting up that early, sensed that they might be missing out on something and got up to join me.
It's been half term here and we've managed lots of lovely family days out as well as extra tuition. We managed a 25 mile bike ride on Thursday and today we've been out to the countryside. Feeling very rested and very motivated to knuckle down again next week.
Our reasoning behind wanting to get rid of the mortgage in 5 years are to do with schools. We live in a perfectly nice area with lots going for it but the local secondary schools are really dire. Being mf will enable us to move to an area where the educational opportunities will be far better.
Mortgage 1: [STRIKE]£95,000[/STRIKE] £83,848.23 at 3.1%
Mortgage 2 (BTL): £83, 489.15 at 4.8% (I.O.)
Family loan: [STRIKE]£15,000[/STRIKE] £6,000
Long term savings/investments: FundCirc £100 7.1%, Saver account at 5% £500
Still thrifty though, after all these years:D
Have you been thinking about how to get more adult learners? Any nearby colleges with adult learners? There are always tutors with adults in my local library. Not sure who they are - community learning teachers maybe?
I've found tutoring for the local authority great, and they actually prefer day time tutors. Its for children who are not in school for medical reasons. Maybe your council has it?
Progress not Perfection
Welcome and Good Luck.x
Sorry hadn't meant to leave such a huge gap between posts.
You're quite right, Squirrel, in that a good head can turn a school round but my issue with schools is a bit more deep-seated than that. My oldest son is 17 and I am an ex-Secondary teacher and my overwhelming issue with the schools I have had links to is that they are boring and only really cater to students who are remarkable in some way. My DS for example is introverted but not so much he got noticed for it, he's bright but not so bright as to really stand out, behaviour was fine, attendance fine etc and his experience of Secondary school was all a bit beige. He couldn't quite push himself to join groups and obviously it would have been mortifyingly embarrasing had I got involved in any way so really he floundered through and spent a good deal of his teenaged years in a state of boredom. As an ex-teacher, I've seen first hand how important it is to be seen to be achieving certain targets rather than being able to say hand on heart that every single student has achieved the very best they are capable of. I don't think I've really explained my point very well but I don't honestly feel DS1 is in any better position now having been to Sec school than if I'd home-educated him.
On that point, we have been very seriously considering HEing our younger two. While the final decision hasn't been made however, I think we will probably send DS2 to the local school in September (startes Reception). He'll be very old in the year being an early September baby which I think will help him but it will be with a view that he only stays while he is thriving. The final push actually for us to send him to school was a comment MMM (himself now a HEer) made about efficiency and perhaps the most efficient thing we can do right now is send the little lads to school while we go all out for financial security knowing we can remove them if needs be without financial constraint.
Right. I originally joined this site about 8 years ago. I was a single parent with a boyfriend who didn't live with me and I lived in a small house with my DS1. When I graduated from uni I went into teaching and went from a student wage to a FT professional one. Having been raised with very little money I was always going to go one of two ways - either spend like there was no tomorrow or live the way I had always lived. Naturally the fact I'm posting in this part of the site shows I went the frugal route and after a few years paid off the mortgage. During the period of OPs me and boyf got married and small people started appearing. We grew out of my little house and 3 years ago bought this place and added an extra human. Obviously having already paid off one mortgage I knew only too well that paying interest for 25 years is a mug's game especially when small OPs really add up particularly at the start of the mortgage.
So with this knowledge I duly started up another diary here and ..... nothing happened. For three years now I have been attempting to give myself a kick up the rear and start hammering down this debt. My recent namechange and new diary was another attempt to do this and so far has had little success. Of course I could just forget the whole thing and just pay it off over 25 years like I'm supposed to. Thing is though, once you've seen a diferent way of doing things you can't 'unsee' them so for the last three years I've had this nagging voice that I'm vegetating.
Now, it's easy to make excuses. I have had babies and miscarriages and other health issues in this time and of course my family will only be small once but there's something else nagging at me and it's taken me a while to work out what it is and I still don't think I'm there. This house we live in is fine, it's a decent area and we have a good network of friends and other things that matter. However, if the worst happened and we had to sell up, this house is by no means unique and with the equity we hold here and in my old house which we now rent out we would have a roof over our heads. Of course it would be great to be MF but it's just not something I feel I am prepared to sacrifice the present for. I need to strike another balance now but I'm not really sure what it is yet.
I keep giving myself goals like pay off in 5 years or more recently to save up the equivalent of the outstanding debt by x time but the numbers compared to our income just seem too massive. So I then set myself smaller challenges like save up £20k in 5 years but actually that's a completely arbitrary number and wouldn't really make any difference to our way of life in any meaningful way. I've attempted Edinburger's number to FI thingy, as in if you want to retire by x time you need to save up this a day. I worked it out but I can't remember it now.
So, not sure even what the point of this post is. I'm trying to get my thoughts cleared so I can formulate a plan. I like to have a plan but I've also felt that I've missed out on fun in my life in order to be sensible and do the expected thing. It feels as though there isn't enough money at the moment to both secure our financial future and to have some fun in our life and I feel constantly conflicted between these two things.
My most recent plan is to save up £70k in 5 years. With the regular mortgage payments that will come off in that time that would give us the option at that point to be MF or we could use it as income if we wanted to remove the little boys from school or it could be used as a leg up onto the property ladder for DS1 or we could use it to travel round the world. I realise I am so much more motivated by flexibility than MF and having read Edinburgher's diary from the start recently I can see that saving is probably a much better course of action than MFing anyway. However, £70k in 5 years is £38 a day and that's ever such a lot. I'm worried that going for a target like that would compromise the present and I just don't want to do that.
Right, well done anyone still reading. Any words of wisdom gratefully received.
I'll edit this out at some point and please don't reprint in subsequent posts, but I used to be Courgette. Far from convinced by my new name but it's fair to say that every other name in the known universe is taken :rotfl:
Mortgage 1: [STRIKE]£95,000[/STRIKE] £83,848.23 at 3.1%
Mortgage 2 (BTL): £83, 489.15 at 4.8% (I.O.)
Family loan: [STRIKE]£15,000[/STRIKE] £6,000
Long term savings/investments: FundCirc £100 7.1%, Saver account at 5% £500
I had worked out who you were straight after your first post in the new diary but respected your privacy! Now that you have 'come out' I would like to say how good it is to have you back and I hope that you can find a way forward.
Unlike you, I had a very spendy first marriage, we never had any money in the bank but earned a lot and we spent as if there were no tomorrow. I was always suggesting saving or paying off the mortgage but my then oh was having none of it, and I had no other more sensible role models, so I went along with it all.
After the divorce, I bought a tiny house and paid off the mortgage in a year. Then I remarried and we bought a larger house together and that too is now paid off. For the first time ever, we have some savings. My new oh was equally spendthrift in his youth but is now fully on board, mainly because retirement beckons and we badly want our freedom. One of my biggest regrets is that we wasted so much earlier on and didn't think about the future.
What I am saying is, you may feel that you are missing out, but what are you really missing out on? Young children don't care if their clothes are new or second hand, or if there food comes from Aldo or waitrose. Their idea of a perfect day is a picnic on the park with mum and dad's full attention, the swings and a ball game. They don't need to go to theme parks which involve a long car ride, loads of money, queues and crowds. My own children said recently how much they would have enjoyed camping in sites with loads of other children instead of the boring villas with private pools that cost us thousands. I also have experience of helping out adult children with buying their own houses and don't recommend it for a whole raft of reasons, including resentment that the other parent isn't helping too, resentment that they go off on fab holidays which we don't because we are saving to help them, etc etc.
and of course, if you stick to the 25 year term, you will end up paying thousands to the banks in interest when the rates inevitably go up.
Sorry to ramble - but in a nutshell, as long as you have a roof and are fed and clothes, I would put all the surplus into buying your freedom NOW. Please feel free to ignore!
All the best with whatever you choose.
Still thrifty though, after all these years:D