Get a grip woman!

Suffolk_lass

DEBTS

Mortgage [STRIKE]£110,621[/STRIKE] £97,598.84 (£13,022.16 paid so far)
Barclays 0% Finance for double glazing [STRIKE]£8,755.54[/STRIKE] £3,979.80 (£4,775.74)
DH's car - paid off on 21st Aug 17 [STRIKE]£3,476[/STRIKE] £0 (£3,476)

Total [STRIKE]£122,852.54[/STRIKE] £102,979.46 - that is £21,273.89 or 17.32% paid off so far.


SAVINGS
£10,404.78 Emergency pot
£12,641.62 S&S ISA with Fidelity International (original £10,000 some years ago, no further capital added)
£6,884.74 DH's S&S ISA (with Charles Stanley Direct] (increase of 31915.04 this year
£3,155.32 2 year Bond with Skipton BS @ 4% Finishes 31 Jan 2018 - This will be used to reduce the mortgage!
£11,330.58 7 year bond with Skipton BS - matures Oct 20
[STRIKE]£38,630.43[/STRIKE] £44,417.04 Total actual cashable savings

Shortfall -£57,161.60 (all debts)

Suffolk_lass

What to do? I could retire in March. If I retire on my birthday my pension will receive the inflation increase for the next year providing there are 12 days of the tax year left. That will be the September 2017 CPI rate (3%). If I work until November it would reach that level then. If I stop in March I am sure DH will want to stop as soon as he is 60 but I wanted him to work two extra terms until his form leave and it will nudge his pension up a bit.

I need to do some serious calculating and budgeting tomorrow. I need to go to my bed now.

Karmacat

Good luck with those calculations! It's a nice problem to have, after all Are there any health issues that affect the decision? / decisions?

Suffolk_lass

Decision for now. I am going to work past my next birthday.

DH is going to take steps to drawdown 25% of his DC pension pot so we can accelerate our repayment of the mortgage. He will check with HMRC that he can have 25% of the total tax-free now and not 25% of the 25% iyswim. That option is dependent on the whole lump being tax-free. Otherwise we will wait.

I will push the proceeds of my 2-year bond into the mortgage to reduce by a little lump, but carry on dribbling in overpayments when I can.

Book a good holiday for August.

Maybe I will finish work at Christmas, maybe just after, maybe before (if things change).

Discussion with our Son as to whether to sell the other house this year.

enthusiasticsaver

An exciting couple of years for you SL. I think concentrating on getting rid of the mortgage is sensible as you are not downsizing at this point.

One thing to bear in mind and I am sure you have considered it is reducing outgoings as far as possible in retirement to leave lots for fun, travel in your monthly income.

Obviously reducing or eliminating the mortgage is key to that but I did a spreadsheet for a few years before retiring to cover everything. We had two key things we had to be able to afford. We wanted 2 cars still as we are both active. I go up to London to visit my mum, sister and brother a lot and up to Bristol/Bath to go to the theatre with my elder daughter who lives there and a car is essential for those trips and my husband has a hobby which takes him away from home for some weekends so we both said we wanted to be able to carry on maintaining two cars for the next five years at least. We also have an expensive country club subscription which we both use a lot both for fitness and social. We also wanted a certain amount monthly for hobbies/personal/entertainment and eating out so we decided on an arbitrary disposable income we needed before we would retire. We reached the point a few years earlier than we thought but it was a useful exercise and gave us the confidence we could afford the retirement we wanted.

Have you worked out firstly what your total income will be and what you think you will need?

Karmacat

Wonderful financial plans and achievements! Loving it, congratulations

Suffolk_lass

£80.51 per month is the amount I am paying in interest for our mortgage. Hmm. I would rather like to get that down by a sizeable lump in 2018. I plan to move the maturing 2 year cash bond at the end of this month to reduce our mortgage and I think I will aim to get the balance down to below £90k by the end of May.

The end of May is also crunch time with phone contracts. I am sure we can do better. A while to research these but I may go sim-only and get my screen and battery replaced and call that it. I shall talk to Husband and Son. Currently I organise all this stuff.

I have had a bit of a reflect on enthusuasticsaver's nudge to look at our deals.

Although I pay £138 for electricity there is no gas and we do run our 3/4 ton of cast iron range on electricity.

I also have a prescription payg and £5 TV package but I think these are pretty good value.

Maybe we should downsize our cars. But I love my car.

I am pondering but not posting too often.

Karmacat

Are you okay, SL?

Thinking about £138 ... I'm not sure how many people live at home, or how big your home is ... seems a lot to me, to be honest, but I know it's actually an average amount in this country, more or less. Not enough insulation, too many open doors, heating too long a time or unwanted spaces?

enthusiasticsaver

We pay £115 dual fuel for electric and gas. My OH likes a warm house so our heating is on lots at the moment as we both retired. We use PFP which are cheaper for heavy users and we are above average. 30 year old house 4 bed detached with maximum loft insulation, new double glazing and cavity wall insulation and new combi boiler. We cannot get it lower without compromising on temperature.

Suffolk_lass

Thanks both, yes we are OK - totally shattered last weekend and so very silent and a bit uncommunicative but OK after three long sleeps.

Re our electricity - it is a little high but we do run an electric 4-oven aga so it is v high for a small house and you may recall we had no central heating until literally a week before my Mum arrived for Christmas. Now the CH is working there is not a need for electric radiators - 2 oil filled and one convector - that were on a lot up until Christmas. So even if our bill is a bit high I would rather have it a bit in credit.

We are with Flow and they ask for a reading, about a week before the statement date, then they estimate the gap at 4 times your pattern of usage (sometimes half the bill is in that week between me reading and them statementing). It is that basis they use for estimating, and they cannot get their heads around high usage from October to April and extremely low usage the rest of the time. That said, DH often forgets to turn off the heating in his man-cave, and almost never turns off all the lights