Mortgage free by 2021?!

hiddenshadow

Hard drives themselves are very cheap, less so when one's spouse insists that he would need a 4x RAID array and each would probably be 4TB.

I do like the idea of everything being digital, though - fits well with the minimalist/smaller space/less clutter thing.

Like SJ, I don't mind books so much - at least those can have a benefit in tangible form (better pictures, colour, not to mention the sensory impact of holding a book in your hands). Movies/TV...not so much.

PrincessLou

DH has a massive collection of dvds (and my twins' is growing steadily too!). He recently uploaded them all to Plex, a media server which will hold all of your dvds online and allows you to watch them from anywhere. So even if you were in Hawaii you could be watching your dvd collection.....not that you really would...but you get the picture :rotfl:

hiddenshadow

Oh we totally would. We've got Plex and have been known to watch them while on holiday. Not Hawaii yet, but Italy/France/Scotland so far.

edinburgher

Could be worse, 4 x 4TB SSD would set you back about £5k :rotfl:

hiddenshadow

Payday today so all the accounts are topped up. Will see if we have any to make an actual OP with, but the £1,400 is dedicated to the offset pot for now.

Really rough day at work - the heat is not doing me any favours, plus our office has zero ventilation. Our MD suggested we could work out of his London flat that he's moving out of, which sounds good to me both for flexibility (would love to have a shower at work again, and a full kitchen), and location (5min less time on the underground plus a 5min walk instead of 15), but my manager seems very unhappy with the idea (for, IMO, stupid reasons, like "there's no vibe there"). We'll see what happens, but I suppose if the entire situation is only going to last me another 6-8 months until we head to Ireland, I don't really care too much anyway.

On another rant-y note, did anyone watch Eat Well For Less this week? So much yelling at the TV. The guy clearly knows how to get gluten-free food on prescription because he had loads of it, but can't be bothered to cook with it?? And then the wife insists that the kids couldn't possibly eat g/f so clearly they have to eat separate meals...won't even touch on the stupid diet food that's both more expensive and not as healthy...or the coffee-with-cup thing that I didn't even understand.

I've only been g/f for 2 years but we've pretty much nailed how at-home food preparation works. It does take more time to figure out what ingredients are safe vs not, but once you do you just buy them and move on with your day. Buying pasta sauce or rice (!) from the special snowflake free-from aisle....so wasteful. Not to mention I can't imagine eating the same 5-6 ingredients all the time for 6 years and never considering asking the internet or your GP what else you can have. Gluten is in a load of things but it's not rocket science to figure out what you can still eat.

I was curious about whether their costs/savings included the regular price of g/f foods if they had to actually buy them rather than get them from the NHS.

Anyway...hoping DH gets paid tomorrow so the budget for September can get locked down. Not much planned over the bank holiday, possibly some DIY if energy levels/weather cooperate.

Can't wait until my neurology appointment at the end of September - the vertigo has pretty much entirely gone, but the lightheadedness hits about once a day, and my feet/hands have been numb and/or painful almost constantly for the last week or so. Very worrying, but not much I can do.

User1489

Can't wait until my neurology appointment at the end of September - the vertigo has pretty much entirely gone, but the lightheadedness hits about once a day, and my feet/hands have been numb and/or painful almost constantly for the last week or so. Very worrying, but not much I can do.

Sorry I have to ask - have you been tested for diabetes?

hiddenshadow

Yep, no sign of diabetes. No other sign of anything awry on my bloodwork, other than my ESR level is a bit high (sign of inflammation). That could be from the coeliac disease, or it could be from something else.

hiddenshadow

House price for the place a few doors down is finally online....£285,000 on June 3.

Of course, in theory house prices have dropped by £7k on average in our area since the referendum, so that doesn't help. I've been estimating a £275k sale price (in 18+ months after we've tried out Ireland, possibly longer), so hopefully that would still be a reasonable guess. In theory our house is a bit more valuable as well as it has the solar panels, though I doubt that would add more than £2-3k to the value.

Assuming £275k sale price and £100k mortgage (should be less as my goal is to get us close to that before we move to Ireland, and it'll drop more after a year of renting and paying the mortgage)...gives us ~£175k cash to play with. Should be enough to buy something outright in Ireland, even if it needs work.

Quiet day today. Dogs both have dodgy tummies, probably thanks to the heat, so I'm working from home to keep an eye on them.

hiddenshadow

Listened to another podcast (Radical Personal Finance) which was talking about not hoarding all your money in pursuit of FI(RE) if you're not really going to be able to enjoy it. He outlined the stages of personal finance as 7 steps here:

Stage 0: Financial Dependence, struggling to pay bills/stay afloat
Stage 1: Financial Solvency, can pay bills but not get ahead
Stage 2: Financial Stability, can save an EF
Stage 3: Debt Freedom, may or may not include mortgage
Stage 4: Financial Security, investment income covers housing/food/bills/etc, basically your bare bones existence
Stage 5: Financial Independence, investment income covers your current lifestyle
Stage 6: Financial Freedom, investment income covers your desired lifestyle
Stage 7: Financial Abundance, investment income provides a surplus that you can/should spend

This podcast episode was about Stage 7 and how people focus on it too much and miss out on a lot of experiences/opportunities now in favour of stockpiling a bunch of cash when one's too old to do anything with it.

Examples like giving to charity - all well and good to want to leave, say, £100k in your will to charity, but you'd probably do more good donating £100/mo now, both so that you can make an impact now, and so that you can become familiar with the charity and know that a lump sum later would do good.

Helping out your kids - again, nice to think about leaving them a lump sum when you die but if that's when they're 50 it probably won't have that big an effect on their lives, whereas if you helped them when they're 20 with paying for university, starting a business, buying a house, etc, that'll have a bigger impact and for more time.

etc.

Very thought-provoking, and sort of along the lines of what I've been thinking lately. If we can become MF in the next few years, we could achieve Stage 4 pretty quickly I think (perhaps another 5 years?) and Stage 5 not long after that. (Stage 6 is probably synonymous with Stage 5, really, unless our lifestyle tastes change a lot...though I suppose I would like to fund a horse, or maybe 2 )

Then we have options...career change (both of us like our jobs but we also like other careers, perhaps something book-related for DH and animal-related for me), work part-time, volunteer part-time, etc.

I like that with the stages broken out into this detail, you feel a sense of accomplishment. Stages 0-1 I did 15 years ago, go me! Stage 2 has been done for a while (though perhaps also un-done as we don't have a huge EF, but we also count on our job skills/stability there). Stage 3 we're busting through fairly quickly.

The last bit I liked was to treat your investment income as partial financial independence. His example was getting a podcast patron subscriber at $25/mo = being financially independent of his cell phone bill. (To be honest I don't know if that really counts as you can't necessarily count on a subscribing person to maintain their subscription, but maybe I'm splitting hairs.)

By that logic, I estimate our investment income (current account interest + S&S ISA interest) to be...drumroll please...£120.11. Not bad, I was thinking it would be more like £75. :rotfl: That would cover our monthly household, pet, and water categories, and put £5 towards groceries.

edinburgher

$25/mo for a podcast??? !!!! me, that's daylight robbery!