Mortgage free by 2021?!

BookWorm

well done on passing your probation :T

Do you have anything in mind you would like to see at the theatre?

User1489

Be careful with the phone tax - if you imported it, you can get a letter from the postal service after with an invoice. Sorry to tell you this I imported some stuff from the US and got a letter a couple of weeks later.

hiddenshadow

BookWorm wrote: »

well done on passing your probation :T

Do you have anything in mind you would like to see at the theatre?

Thank you!

We have quite a few things we'd like to see, just a question of whether they're available through the place we have vouchers for.

Groundhog Day (not available, but will book separately)
Death Takes A Holiday
Bumblescratch
No Man's Land
Hamilton (?)
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (?)

not sure what we'll see and when, but maybe this weekend we can actually plan things.

hiddenshadow

rasputin_thorpedo wrote: »

Be careful with the phone tax - if you imported it, you can get a letter from the postal service after with an invoice. Sorry to tell you this I imported some stuff from the US and got a letter a couple of weeks later.

Boo, thanks for the warning. I don't mind paying the import duties, but it would be a pleasant surprise if I didn't have to. We'll see...

hiddenshadow

Got an e-mail from TCB offering £50-100 reward for following a "money-saving diet", which sounded up our street. Sadly we're already pro dieters!

• Take out or renew home insurance - done, expires in December
• Get a new reward credit card - done, don't really want any more credit checks on our profile
• Sign up for a credit report - done in the past, could do again I suppose
• Switch bank account to an interest-paying account - done, several times over
• Take out or renew life insurance - done, expires in the spring
• Do a weekly grocery shop - already do every week
• Switch broadband providers - done twice in the last month
• Switch energy suppliers - started this today
• Switch or renew car insurance - done, expires in April
• Write a will - done 2 years ago
• Buy or renew pet insurance - done, can't switch due to old dog's age

At least it confirms that we're doing the right things... :beer:

lippy1923

Hi Hidden, just catching up with your diary.
Well done on passing your probation and great job with the mortgage figures.
I got that email from TCashback as well. Nice little reminder we are doing things right

hiddenshadow

Got £1.80 from work yesterday - spent £8.20 and boss gave me £10 back. Not bad for 15 minutes effort.

£18.65 came in from p@nelbase.

Both have gone to the offset pot, plus some extra budget shuffling, leaving the mortgage at £136,039.97. Really hoping to break into the 135s this month.

Fencing got installed and looks great. Bang on budget quote-wise as well, which is nice. They did far more work than I thought they'd do - our garden is now (almost) flat and completely bare except for one bit of paving slab that's sitting under our water softener at the moment. Gate looks appropriately sized and looks good from both sides. Dogs very confused to go outside in the afternoon to realise their jungle is gone. :rotfl:

Estimate another £1,300 to actually do up the garden (decking, install raised beds, put in a path to the gate, and astro turf between the raised beds and the path). I think that's reasonable, but I also think we could do the beds and possibly the astro turf ourselves so that could save some cash. We're going for ultra-low maintenance options for everything as we're not planning to grow any veg pre-moving (so will likely put gravel/plant pots in the raised beds). Shame our lawnmower is still (unused) in its box - should probably flog it online or something.

Met up with friends for dinner last night - they're moving to Berlin in two weeks so that's exciting. They were planning to move next summer but Brexit has dramatically accelerated their plans. We spent the evening comparing notes on expatriating and they tried (again) to convince us to move to Germany. I'm not dead-set against the idea but I also don't really fancy it either. We might go visit for a weekend, though, once they're settled in. On the plus side, with the Ireland plan being 5 years to citizenship, we keep our options open if we did want to live somewhere else like Germany later on down the line. They do have nice horses...

edit updated my sig with the new figures and we've just barely broken into 26% progress on the MFiT challenge. Should probably update that goal to account for our accelerated payment plan, but I honestly have no idea what we'll be shooting for in 2 1/2 more years so will leave it as-is for now.

BookWorm

hiddenshadow wrote: »

Groundhog Day (not available, but will book separately)
Death Takes A Holiday
Bumblescratch
No Man's Land
Hamilton (?)
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (?)

I hadn't heard of some of those but after looking online they all sound interesting.

I have to wait until April for HP and the CC (although since I booked it back in October last year - it's coming around quicker than I thought!)

hiddenshadow

I listened to a review of Early Retirement Extreme on a finance podcast the other day and have been mulling it over ever since. I have yet to buy the book, mostly because I'm not sure I want Early Retirement (I like my job/work, as does DH) or for it to be Extreme (I like our balance of hammering at debt but still enjoying some luxuries like eating out, not feeling guilty spending on hobbies/things we enjoy, going on holidays, etc).

The bits that the reviewer read out seemed very preachy to me. One bit was about how it was so stupid to spend money on a big fancy house and a fancy new car when you could just walk for an hour to work and back (assumption is that you live within 5 miles of work, ha). We don't have a big fancy house (though I'm sure the author would argue that we should have bought a small flat for less money) and our car is neither new nor fancy, but I'm fine with paying for a bus/tube to take me in to work every day because it gives me the chance to listen to podcasts, read, knit, etc. I probably could use that hour's exercise, but I do walk about 3 miles a day to/from work (which also saves money as I get a cheaper tube fare).

I suppose I struggle a bit with pragmatism vs idealism. Sure, we could get by on, say, 30% of our income, especially if we stopped contributing to a pension altogether. That could potentially mean that we could put 70% of our income into investments and reach FIRE within 8-9 years. That sounds nice, but how much of a slog would those 9 years be? And if we can reach a semi-retired state in 3-5 years by downsizing property to be mortgage free and continuing to work/save most of our income, I'd rather do that even if we're not truly at FIRE state for another 10-15 years, especially as neither of us particularly want to "retire" and do nothing all day.

Not sure any of this thinking out loud makes sense, but I thought I'd share anyway.

shangaijimmy

This site is all for thinking out loud! That's always the dilemma for us; how much to debt/investment, how much to savings, how much to retirement etc.... Somehow a happy medium gets found and ours is approx 33%, 33%, 33% and 1% to the dog!!!