Mortgage free by 2021?!

hiddenshadow

Thanks lippy. Nice to see you around again.

hiddenshadow

We completely re-organised our budgets post-move, so this is only based on data since August.

All percentages are based on our income.

UK BUDGET
Transfer to Euros: 41.91%
Savings: 25.23%
Mortgage: 15.63%
Loan: 5.57%
London Trips (mostly work): 1.91%
DH Allowance: 1.89%
My Allowance: 1.08%
Misc: 0.91%
Transfer to Dollars: 0.85%
Gifts: 0.42%
Charity: 0.41%
Life Insurance: 0.20%

Would like to get the charity number up this year.

IRISH BUDGET
Rent: 44.91%
Savings: 23.99%
Car Insurance: 5.49%
Groceries: 4.16%
Travel (mostly work): 3.05%
Household: 2.29%
Natural Gas: 2.11%
Car Taxes/Fees: 2.01%
Pets: 1.89%
Medical: 1.89%
Health Insurance: 1.84%
Petrol: 1.24%
Internet: 1.08%
Electricity: 0.67%
Phone: 0.59%
Horses: 0.47%
Contents Insurance: 0.40%
Misc: 0.35%
Waste/Recycling: 0.33%
Pet Insurance: 0.26%
Eating Out/Takeaways: 0.24%
Allowances: 0.17%
Vet: 0.16%
Gifts: 0.15%
Work: 0.11%
Culture & !!!!: 0.08%
Parking: 0.06%

I'm pretty happy with that, aside from spending 11.85% of our budget on car/transport. Could be worse, though. It'll definitely be nice having that 45% of our budget back once we buy a house and are MF.

hiddenshadow

Hope everyone had nice holidays. Ours was very quiet, just us and the pets. DH and I exchanged quite practical gifts, which was nice. (On the other end of the spectrum - our gift to BIL was to contribute towards a chair which retails for over £5k :eek: I think it's used so a bit cheaper, but still..!!)

I've had today off due to an extra day of holiday carried over from last year, so I've just been pottering around.

Bit of progress towards goals:
- went for a run yesterday, which went well
- think I've decided how much I want to request for my raise, still have no idea how to actually request it (beyond pointing out that I've been working insane hours and have completed every project handed to me on time or early, I'm not sure how best to illustrate that it's much cheaper/better to give me X as a raise than to hire an extra dev for some multiple of X...though they should do that too, we're still understaffed!)
- researched US flights a bit, think we can go for ~£800 which would be quite good, need to figure out luggage options as we'll be carrying back horsey stuff with us (which has been languishing in my parents' basement for almost 8 years!)

Otherwise generally being a bit lazy/fatigued. Back to work tomorrow though, boo!

hiddenshadow

Quiet rest of the week. Been dealing with fatigue and brain fog, so just as well that work was extra-quiet.

No major financial news, except that we got the last of our interest from our T$B accounts. We've decided to pay off the loan that we stoozed from nationwide, as that's currently our highest interest debt (by 0.5% over the mortgage ). Won't be complete until Monday when we can get the final payoff figure from the bank, and had to raid the EF to do it, but DH gets his quarterly bonus this month so that will replenish it anyway.

Quick goals update...

Goals

Personal

• Health/exercise: Horse riding 0/3 Barn opens next week!
• Health/exercise: C25K Week 5 started on week 3, lost a couple of days this week to fatigue
• US Trip: Look into flights have tentative dates planned

Financial

• Mortgage balance: £103,847.46/£103,855
• Sell the house: Draft letter to tenants (who asked for first right of refusal) still to do
• 2018 Rent: €6,350 currently have €5,200

Career

• Research current positions to figure out what sort of raise to request need to write up my thoughts, if only for my own use

FloppyDisk

I LOVE what you do to your data.

hiddenshadow

FloppyDisk wrote: »

I LOVE what you do to your data.

Thanks - I'm all about the geeking out over data (and/or spreadsheets).

hiddenshadow

More goal updates...

Goals

Personal

• Health/exercise: Horse riding 1/3 Good ride today, sensitive mare this time...just my type
• Health/exercise: ZR5K Week 4 switched to Zombies, Run! 5k program because my C25K app was bugging me and this one includes some other exercises, just finishing week 2
• US Trip: Look into flights have tentative dates planned

Financial

• Mortgage balance: £103,847.46/£103,855
• Sell the house: Draft letter to tenants (who asked for first right of refusal) still to do
• 2018 Rent: €6,350 currently have €5,200

Career

• Research current positions to figure out what sort of raise to request need to write up my thoughts, if only for my own use

DH and I also chatted today about the car and I think we're both happy to drive it (figuratively) into the ground. We don't want to sink too much into it if/when it starts to deteriorate, but it's still pretty low mileage and works for our needs, so no rush to swap it out. Perhaps when we're MF and have loads of savings set aside we'll decide to change it sooner rather than later, but in the meantime we'll stick with no car payments/selling and buying hassle.

Also on the subject of cars, I should be able to drive here. I'm going to investigate a learner's permit and see if I could get my license pretty quickly (as I already know how to drive). Then I can just not drive for 3 more years and count as an "experienced" driver again and hopefully not have to pay tons for car insurance. :money:

We're finally planning to explore a bit next weekend. We need to head to Dublin anyway to get pet food, so we'll detour on the way home and explore the likeliest looking town for when we move. It's about the same distance from Dublin as we are now (possibly a bit closer), but in a much cheaper county, so worth exploring.

FloppyDisk

I am a big fan of the zombie run app. I find it great for distracting you enough to just get on a run and find I go much further than I do in silence. I haven't done one of the training plans before though.

hiddenshadow

I was listening to podcasts/audiobooks before, but I find it much easier/more motivating to run to something with a beat/tune.

Bit disappointed that ZR has swapped to a subscription model for the main app...think it's £24/year which isn't horrible compared with a gym membership (but then I wouldn't get one of those anyway :money:).

The 5k app is a one-off fee of £5 I think, so I may get that and then see if I want to keep with the ZR theme once I'm consistently doing a 5k distance.

My only complaint about the ZR app is that it's not always clear what you're meant to be doing. This past run was 30s run, 5x heel lifts (the training bit), then 1min walk...repeated. First few times were fine, the audio just said "do x", but the last one they got clever and rather than say "ok now run for 30 seconds" they had a storyline as to why you were running....but they never said "stop and do heel lifts" or "now walk for 1min", so it just bled into the longer run/walk section at the end, which means I skipped heel lifts and ran longer than I was meant to.

They do the same with the first bit...after your warmup they do a little rundown of what the day's exercises will be, but it's never obvious if you're meant to just keep walking while they do that (which is boring after 10min of walking already!) or if you're meant to start running (which is what I usually do but then after they eventually finish their rambly intro they finally say "ok, now go run").

Minor quibbles, all told. I'm not really a zombie person (haven't watched The Walking Dead or any of those shows), but it's entertaining and (mostly) well-done.

Today's meant to be a run day (well, yesterday was) but I'm still exhausted. Hardly slept on Monday night and am still dragging. Plus our needy cat has gone missing so we were out looking for him this morning, which tired me out a lot more than it should (but at least I've walked 2km today, if nothing else).

ChasingSunshine

Just a quick bit about the ZR main app. You can unlock an episode for free every 6 days obviously doesn't help if you are running very frequently but might work for occasional run or if you start now will have a few unlocked by the time you finish the 5k training app and can decide if want all the features.

I have been lurking on your thread for a long time now and really following your progress. I'm originally from near Offaly and the cost of living there is so much lower than where I am now (London) and obviously other parts of the country are cheaper again. Not sure it's enough to convince me to move home just yet (or ever) though :rotfl: especially when reading some of the hassle you had with the move.