Ruby's Bought a House, Now I want to Own It!

savingholmes

Simplify is a great word - I added reclaim to it for my month a few months ago plus create. I wanted to simplify parts of my life, reclaim lost areas and create the life I wanted. Good luck with your mission.

South_coast

savingholmes said:

I wanted to simplify parts of my life, reclaim lost areas and create the life I wanted.

In the space of a month 😱😱😱?

savingholmes

South_coast said:

savingholmes said:

I wanted to simplify parts of my life, reclaim lost areas and create the life I wanted.

In the space of a month 😱😱😱?

When you put it like that - it helps explain my lack of progress.... Demonstrating how hard I am on myself... 

In all seriousness - I tend to pick a them for a month or as long as my journal lasts and give that a bit of focus that month... 

This month's theme is "invest in fun and frolics and not just future self" - so a tad easier to achieve

ruby_eskimo

Don't worry @savingholmes, I think we've all been guilty of putting a lot of pressure on ourselves to achieve everything all at once!  

Had a lovely weekend with a friends doing an escape room that was meant to be part of my birthday present in March but we had to keep rescheduling for a few reasons, followed by pizza and wine back at ours.  Then yesterday in a twist I ended up going into the office as was invited out for Christmas drinks with some people from my department.  I've been there almost 3 years and this was the first socialising I'd participated in 😆 Was a nice evening, lots of work talk of course, but still nice to see people outside of the office.

Working the rest of the week, and also going out on Thursday with a couple of the book club ladies to an "adult" panto (basically very smutty jokes I think!) as well as heading out tomorrow to get the very last of the food bits and pieces that we need for Christmas (like cream and some veg). 

On the MSE front, I've started on one of my goals for next year a little early.  Basically I'm probably going to need to replace my mobile phone next year as the battery life is woefully bad and it is over 5 years old.  I will of course keep it going as long as I can with external battery packs etc. but still need to think about the inevitable.  So I've decided that I'm going to side-hustle the money to pay for it, using cashback, surveys etc.  Might take a while so thought I'd get started now.  I have about £40 of cashback that is still pending so that will be a good start and I've made about £10 through surveys already this week, plus it will all be earning interest in the savings account so that's a little bonus too.   

savingholmes

Like the idea of side hustles to pay for your upgrade. Just remember some of the banking apps have limits on what level of android or whatever they'll run on - so don't leave it too long. Having said that I think I am in year 3 or 4.

ruby_eskimo

The version of Android isn't a problem for me (I have a google pixel so we get regular software updates) it's just the battery life is shockingly bad and that's probably because I use it too much!  Already 3% of the way to my goal so should be there in no time 😆

Payday shuffle has been completed.  Yes I could automate it all but I actually like "moving" some of the money around myself and updating the spreadsheet as I go.  One of the things I might do this afternoon is tidy my bank accounts, and by that I mean, make sure they all can pay each other.  Currently think there are two where I have to transfer money from my current account to a middle account and then pay from there.  No idea why I set it up like that, clearly there was a reason at the time, but it just makes no sense to me.

savingholmes

Hope you are having a lovely Christmas. Happy New Year to you and yours too.

ruby_eskimo

Looks like I may have forgotten to press post comment on my end of the year round up just before Christmas so here it is before the update...

Money

- Overpay the mortgage by at least £5000: Smashed this thanks to DH 🥳
- Max out the LISA: Getting there slowly (80% achieved) and this is a financial year goal 
- Build the emergency fund to £10,000: £8825.19 / £10k (again a financial year goal)
- Reduce my personal spending: Going to claim this one as done, as didn't have as much to clear off the credit card this month and the amount of stuff coming into the house has reduced.  Will carry this over in spirit into 2023

House

- Declutter 365 items: DONE 🥳  
- "Renovate" the Kitchen: Still need to buy that blind...
- House to Home: 1 more task to do, carried forward to 2023

Personal

- Learn a new skill: Still need to start the calligraphy classes but have set time aside for after Christmas to start.
- Visit a new (to me) place in the UK: Done, had a great time!
- Visit a new (to me) country: Done 🥳
- Read 52 books: Done! 🥳
- Build healthy habits:  I'm calling this one achieved / ongoing and carried forward to 2023

All in all I'd say that 2022 wasn't too bad a year.

ruby_eskimo

Right now I've got that out of the way, happy new year to you all and thank you for the well wishes @savingholmes!

Christmas day was relaxing with just the two of us as usual.  DH and I ended up buying each other the same gift - animal keeper experiences, although his is for penguins and mine is for otters 😍😂😍😂  A lot of people also bought us jigsaw puzzles which was either because a) DH had told them that I'd "got into puzzling" after falling down a Youtube rabbit hole whilst I was ill with Covid or b) it was purely coincidental 😆  Either way I have 4 Disney themed puzzles to work my way through during the year plus a whole bunch of other ones.

Boxing day onwards was a little stressful and frankly exhausting.  All the socialising with family and a lot of driving took it out of me and then to top it all off my dad told us over boxing day dinner that he hasn't been well for a few months.  He eventually went to the GP just before Christmas which resulted in lots of appointments at the hospital scheduled in for the end of December which I ended up taking him too.  There are three possible causes of his symptoms; 2 involve routine surgery and that would be it, the third is more invasive / intense.  We're just waiting on test results now so 🤞 although the most stressful bit was dealing with my in-laws when they got annoyed that I wasn't spending a lot of time with them over the festive period and I didn't want to tell them the in's and out's of my dad's health 🙄

Anyway we're into January now and it's time to look forward to the year where SIMPLIFYING everything is the aim of the game.  Immediately this is decluttering the house - we have made great progress in recent years but there's still a way to go.  As well as decluttering I want to organise our things better so we actually use them and know where they are.  I also want to automate things more by either actually automating them (like regular money moves etc.) or by creating habits and routines that just happen without me thinking too much about them.  And if we have less things and make use of the things we have then this will hopefully lead to us spending less money frivolously. 

I'm not sure how I can turn these concepts into measurable goals but I think if I can achieve the following by the end of the year then we'll be well on our way to a more SIMPLIFIED lifestyle:

• At least 365 items decluttered from the house
• At least 180 NSD's over the course of the year
• Completing the 30 day yoga challenge and building that into my daily routine for the rest of the year

Some other more concrete goals that I want to achieve:

• Overpay the mortgage by £5000
• Read 52 books
• Side-hustle the money for a new phone

And I think that's it for the moment.  I think ultimately I want a better sense of wellbeing which is something I've been working on for the last 5 years since my breakdown and now is the time to be gentle on myself and take the approach of small changes adding up to big ones.

I've already made a start on the decluttering with almost 30 items gone already, the first OP of the year has gone through and I'm almost 10% of the way there to my new phone 😁

Merlin's_Beard

Fantastic to see all those goals being smashed!