Mortgage free by 2021?!

hiddenshadow

Just booked our holiday. :j Turns out we'll be in Rome the same days as our friends, which is excellent.

Will get ~77p cashback on one of the flights, apparently in a few months. Will not be waiting with bated breath on that one. :rotfl:

Will also get ~£10 cashback on our S@ntander credit card for the a!rbnb hotel, in theory that should appear on February's statement.

So far have spent £482.86 on flights/hotel. We've got €50 leftover from previous holiday spending money, so will probably add about €100 (~£75) to that closer to travelling. At today's rate that'd be ~£560 total for the holiday - not bad for 4 days in Rome. We did a few touristy things when we were there a few years ago (Vatican, Coliseum, etc) so will probably do different sights/museums and limit our cash spending to food (mmm, food). Our vacation pot will have £157.54 in it by the time we go on holiday, so we'll have extra wiggle room on the spending if exchange rates change or we spend extra while there.

lippy1923

I'm so jealous. Rome is on my list to visit. One day! Good money saving on the holiday.

Sundaysgirl

Yesterday must've been the day for holiday planning Would love to visit Rome - I have a long list of places to see! - great price for it. When do you go, and for how long?

hiddenshadow

Thanks lippy and SG!

I was surprised at the price, to be honest. I think we spent ~£500 when we went in February 2012 and I would have expected going in March/April to be quite a bit more expensive, as it was still the off-season when we went before.

We'll be there March 26-30 - should be pretty mental with Easter, plus the place we're staying is a stone's throw from Vatican City. Hoping it won't be too loud in the mornings - our last Italian holiday (Florence) had us awake at 6/7am every day thanks to the cathedral bells 100m away! I'm rubbish at sleeping in anyway, so it'll be DH who "suffers" if we're up early.

Think I've figured out our transport to/from the airports (between the two flights we'll be at 4 airports!). In theory, the Rome side should only cost €24.40 to get in/out to both airports. That does rely on my correct interpretation of bus schedules in Italian, but worst case scenario we can get a taxi to the metro which would add about €10 to the cost.

Sundaysgirl

That price is even more fabulous when you factor in that it's over Easter - well done! Not long to wait for it, either - not that I'm at all envious

hiddenshadow

Sundaysgirl wrote: »

That price is even more fabulous when you factor in that it's over Easter - well done! Not long to wait for it, either - not that I'm at all envious

I know! We normally travel out of term dates as we may as well take advantage of not having kids. DH's holiday resets on April 1, though, so we needed to use up some of his days, and I have carry-over days from last year that I have to use by March 31. So with the bank holiday, it seemed most sensible to take the Easter week off (6 days off for the price of 4, 10 total days including weekends), and since our friends were already going to Rome (she's a teacher so has to go with term breaks)...

Definitely looking forward to it now. We'll have a long weekend in a couple of weeks around DH's birthday, but I'm secretly hoping we can tackle some of the [STRIKE]garden[/STRIKE] jungle those days. No other holidays planned at the moment, though we've been talking about a long weekend to Ireland sometime over the summer, and/or maybe Amsterdam (we keep saying we should go but only remember during the winter months when it doesn't appeal!).

I'm still getting used to how much holiday we have. When I lived in the US the standard was 10 holidays a year (+ bank holidays which were another 7-8), so getting almost 3x that much is still shocking to me!

Sundaysgirl

I could never work in the US for that reason alone - love my holidays too much! They are my one big extravagance, I could have probably paid off the mortgage by now if it wasn't for all the travelling we do but I don't care

We are going to Amsterdam this year, in April for the tulip festival - looks AMAZING! We were same as you, had been meaning to plan it for years and then timing was never right, so we took the plunge. Weather will be iffy but I'm sure it'll be worth it.

hiddenshadow

To be fair the weather's iffy here as well, so it's not much of an issue if you're going for the experience/culture rather than the change in climate. My friend's parents went for the tulip festivals a few years ago and said it was outstanding, I'm sure you'll have a great time.

hiddenshadow

Mortgage reduction: £2,957/£30,000 (9%)

VERY happy with this. Mainly a result of DH's bonus money, but hey, it's still income.

Stocks & shares ISA: £500/£1,000 (50%)

Good start to the year, and may as well buy now while everything is cheap. Obviously hoping things turn around post-buying, of course.

Fitness: 12/150 cardio (8%)

Meh. Did quite well in spurts but also had stretches of lazy days. Aim to be more consistent in February.

Net worth increase: £3,683.69/£65,559.14 (5.6%)

Not too bad, stock market really didn't help us out.

MFIT-4: £788.31/£90,000 (0.8%)

Good start, given that this doesn't count the majority of January's OPs.

hiddenshadow

Back on track fitness-wise. The gym shower is limping along - it technically works, and provides hot water, so that's good enough for me. Hoping it'll get properly fixed soon, but apparently it took over a year to get hot water working. :eek:

On that note, (inspired by edinburgher's thread) I've signed up for a 5k race close to me on May 15. Was MSE and entered yesterday to take advantage of the early bird offer for January, saving myself £4.99. In theory I can bring a dog with me, so may haul the greyhound out running - not sure he's quite keen to run a whole 5k, but we'll see what he thinks on training runs, so far I run so slowly that it doesn't seem to register as work for him. The race supports Cancer Research UK, which is nice, and there doesn't seem to be a fundraising minimum (which is good as their system to setup a fundraising page was broken when I tried it).

Will aim to run Tues/Thu/weekend this week, plus stationary bike Wed/Fri (already did it today :j)