The Piano Diary

glass_half_full

Dear diary and all,

Great to get to the bank holiday weekend! Yesterday did the weekly shop. We are becoming creatures of habit and the weekly bill is coming out at around £140 although £20 of that is the top up shop we do for our neighbour. We are meal planning for 7 days so we literally only food shop once a week, no take-aways or other spends. I hope we can keep some of these habits going. We dropped into our local village to get something from the local hardware shop. It was good to see life semi-returning to normality. About half the shops looked like they were open with varying attempts at social distancing happening.

Today I will mow the lawns and this afternoon we are going to visit the local garden centre. Tomorrow we will go for a walk in the local area.

We had a bit of a briefing at work last week. Looks like things will be very tight financially for the Uni in coming months, even with a good outcome on student numbers. No plans to cut jobs yet, but let’s see.

We have both been paid and made the savings payment. Savings have now reached £6500. Still aiming for £15K by the end of the year.

Mortgage payment has also gone out. The OP is £300 per month so that’s £1350. It’s great to see it reduce by a whole £,000 number each month now, it is now down to £57,500. Moved another marble across between the jars. I have spotted the MFiT challenge, not sure how I missed that before. I have filled in the form and asked trix-a-belle if I can still join. According to my plan, the mortgage will be £31,600 by January 2022 so I have set a round number target of £30,000 by then. These round number targets really help me to stay focused.

I’ve been thinking about the holiday in August. It would be great if we could get away for a few days, either booking a cottage or going camping. I hope that this will be possible.

Hope you all have a great Bank Holiday weekend!

savingholmes

Glad your EF is coming along and your mortgage is going down. As to holidays it's hard to know what to plan for currently.

glass_half_full

Dear diary and all,

Deep blue sky this morning reminds me more of the continent than the UK! Unfortunately I won’t be getting out much as I have a lot of marking to do. A quick look at YNAB shows that overall spending in March, April and May was down on previous months although it has crept back up in May. We are hardly spending anything in shops etc, but spending on line has crept up a bit.

Last weekend we went to the local garden centre and ordered a couple of window boxes to put outside in the front garden. They are going to plant them up for us so looking forward to how they turn out.

DS is coming home next weekend, his Uni accommodation is over. He has decided to apply for a PGCE in secondary music. He seems really enthusiastic so OH has been helping him this week with his personal statement etc. Really hoping that he is able to get on a programme. On paper he meets all the criteria so fingers crossed. He can keep his performing going on the side, but that isn’t going to be a viable option in the next 12 months. Of course looking forward to seeing him as we haven’t seen him since before the lockdown came into force.

Have a great weekend all !

savingholmes

It will be lovely to see him again. I wonder how long mine will stay. He's doing freelance work from our home now. We are talking about starting to charge him board.

glass_half_full

Dear diary and all,

A change of plan of sorts. One of the things I like about MSE is the planning and plotting and tweaking the approach from time to time. I decided to ring up the bank I have the car loan with and find out what the settlement figure would be to pay off the loan in full. It turned out it was £4,000 which was less than I thought it would be. I decided to pay it off in full, so did so by phone. I think what swung it for me in the end was the simplification it leads to. Less things to think about and moves me closer to the goal in my head. I also saved some money in interest. This means we own the car outright! It also means I can accelerate the next stage of my cunning plan. The car payment is almost exactly the amount I need to increase the pension contributions to 40%. Then I started to play with numbers looking at mortgage overpayment, pension contributions and savings to see what this might mean. This is my ‘Freedom’ spreadsheet which shows me when I might be able to be financially independent. I currently have a few pensions, some are DB and some are DC which came about through AVCs which I have been paying all my working life since my mid-twenties. The largest of the DC pensions has £120,000 in it. It recently fell to £100,000 in value and then back to £120,000 since the virus struck. I have another one worth £25,000. Then I have my main pension I am paying into now. The spreadsheet models these various pensions, including the state one, and I have my required income and it shows when I will have achieved that. At the moment it looks like 60 is a safe age, but I think it could be sooner than that. It looks like with the OP on the mortgage being limited to 10% I should be able to save more and so this will build up a combined EF and additional freedom fund. Of course all this depends on us keeping our jobs and health neither of which is a given. However, these recent weeks have only strengthened my resolve to achieve this plan. My latest reading material is "The Simple Path to Wealth" by J L Collins, came across him in a talk on Youtube.

Off to collect DS this afternoon and bring him home. The first time we have seen him since 2 weeks before lockdown. Looking forward to seeing him of course!

Have a great weekend all!

savingholmes

It's a good book. Enjoy it. I too am wanting financial freedom. Well done on the car loan payment. 

glass_half_full

Dear Diary and all,

Picked up DS from his accommodation last Saturday. It has been great having him home and around generally. There has been loads to catch up on. We have been out on a couple of mountain bike rides and today we are going out on a longer one, travelling to a location in the car. He has applied for a teacher training place and has 2 interviews next week, so fingers crossed on that.

Finances are ticking over, nothing major to report. Starting next month, will probably split savings across various accounts including OPing the mortgage so I hit the 10% target this year.

Have a great day all!

savingholmes

Glad things are going so well for you.

glass_half_full

Dear diary and all,

Great news for DS! He has been offered a place on a teacher training PGCE for September. Really pleased for him and proud too. It was not easy with several hoops to jump through including a presentation, interview etc. He took it seriously and prepared really well. It all happened quite quickly, no more than 10 days between applying and getting an offer. We are relieved because it gives him a clear focus and purpose for the next 12 months which is important. He also gets a bursary so that means he will have some of his own money which is important too. He will be living with us for the year. Proud parent moment.

Finances

We have both been paid, this month is the first time my pension contributions have been at 40%. It has taken the take home pay down of course, but only by the amount of the missing car loan payment so should be manageable.

This month I have decided to split the savings across mortgage OP (£1000) and ISA (£750). This takes the mortgage balance down from £57,500 to £55,500. I like to see the total thousands come down by 2. I have transferred the marbles between the jars. We are on target to go below £50,000 by November this year which is great.

Rethinking the emergency fund

I watched an interesting video on Ytube with Mister Money Mustache. He was putting over an alternative view on the emergency fund. Basically he was saying that you need to think about how you can flex your overall financial position if you have an emergency. So that might mean having a large pile of cash if you have a high level of outgoings which are fixed, or at least hard to reduce. On the other hand, if you have other levers to pull then you can afford to have less tied up in cash where there are lower returns. Thinking about this, at the moment we have got our expenses at about 50% of our income. If one of us loses our jobs which could happen, then I think we can respond to that. I would reduce pension contributions, reduce mortgage overpayments, and if necessary liquidate the savings. On this basis I have revised the idea of saving up a large cash fund and instead I am going to split any additional savings between the mortgage OP and the ISA for the time being.

Enjoying the cooler weather!

 

South_coast

That's very interesting, might have a read of that article....

Great news about your son, that's definitely a proud parent moment 😀