julicorn's journey

NorthernPeach

Looking forward to following you on your journey and intrigued to see where your surprise holiday takes you to!

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JennyP

I love Bath. Hubby proposed there in the Roman Baths one night just before it closed. Unplanned. He didn't have a ring which was good as I have rather particular tastes. We found a secondhand brown diamond a few weeks later - had never heard of brown diamonds but it's very me. I want to go back to bath and go in the spa bit!

That website sounds great. Wonder where you'll end up.

Bexster, in theory i could do that as am also a qualified teacher but I think I want a way of earning money that would be more doing stuff when I feel like. Rather than scheduled. Partly because I have bad migraines!

Julicorn, have a lovely trip. Am off to look at that website!

julicorn

NorthernPeach wrote: »

Looking forward to following you on your journey and intrigued to see where your surprise holiday takes you to!

*subbed

Thank you! I'll update you all as soon as we find out Monday morning. Our weather forecast has been updated again already, 28° and sunny now. My cheeky weather app searching is still proving completely useless :rotfl:

JennyP wrote: »

I love Bath. Hubby proposed there in the Roman Baths one night just before it closed. Unplanned. He didn't have a ring which was good as I have rather particular tastes. We found a secondhand brown diamond a few weeks later - had never heard of brown diamonds but it's very me. I want to go back to bath and go in the spa

Wow, that sounds incredible! I had to look up brown diamonds as well, but they look absolutely stunning. And that just sounds like such a wonderful proposal. I agree, Bath is such a nice place. Could see ourselves living there one day (but we're not tired of Brighton just yet).

julicorn

Just thought I'd stop by to tell you where our surprise holiday has taken us - MADRID!

Loving it already, and we're just going to try to have a few nice and relaxing days here, with plenty of tasty Spanish food and not too much planning. If any of you have any "must see" tips though, then let me know

julicorn

We're back from an amazing few days in Madrid. We had SUCH a good time, honestly loved every minute of it. I would definitely recommend it, both Madrid as a city and the surprise holiday as a concept - hopefully we'll be able to book another one sooner rather than later!

I also made another spreadsheet to track our spending. It's really hard to see for me at the moment whether my overly ambitious overpayment plans are actually achievable, and I guess tracking our spending and then working up a budget is a good first step.
At the moment, I'm thinking we might set up two overpayments. One just after payday (with the minimum amount we'll decide to overpay), and then just after payday, with money that's left over for the month. Still trying to get my head around it all though, don't know why I'm finding it so tricky to work out!

julicorn

Just paid £250 into my ISA, that's the amount of money I have "left over" for the month. It doesn't feel as satisfying as paying it into the mortgage, but I'm determined to get our rainy day fund back up to £10k.
What my husband has left over just before payday is going to the mortgage, I reckon it will be around £200.

Our payday coincides with our regular payment date. I'm slightly curious if they change our standard direct debit amount because of the overpayment last month... guess I will find out on Friday. I'm hoping not for now, would make it that bit more fiddly trying to adjust for lower standard payments as well as other overpayments.
Either way, after payday, the aim is to overpay £1k and see how we get on with the remainder for the month. Would be amazing if we could keep up that sort of level, but at the moment it still feels a little ambitious. It feels like it's worth a shot though.

newgirly

Hi juliecorn, just caught up with your diary and wanted to wish you a belated welcome

julicorn

:hello: Thank you newgirly! :heart2:

JennyP

Never been to Madrid and always quite fancied it. My degree is in Spanish but am very rusty now!



Looked at that website for surprise holidays but realised I enjoy planning the holiday to the nth degree almost as much (if not more!) than the actual holiday.



They wrote to me to tell me they changed the direct debit amount. So if they haven't, maybe yours hasn't changed.

julicorn

I can thoroughly recommend Madrid, JennyP! It was honestly so awesome, and had never been on our radar to be honest. I'm sure we'll go back there at some point.

Haha, and I was always a big holiday planner. I don't know, I blame work for not getting quite as into the planning any more. I manage 7 project managers who all handle a stupid amount of projects now, so in some way it was nice to just have a nice trip away that I didn't have to plan. (Mr Julicorn doesn't really plan, it's just so not his thing, so it's always me :rotfl:). What was nice though was that it was just flights and accommodation booked, so we could spend the days however we liked (with some last minute planning, of course! ).

That's good to know that you're provider gave you a heads up as well! I'll report back.