The Piano Diary

savingholmes

Glad you realised about mot. Other things will sort but often takes longer than we would like

AgathaSquirrel

Sounds like you have a lot going on at the moment. I’ve just dropped a day, possibly on a temporary basis only, but I do feel a weight has been lifted. Would it be possible to consolidate your hours and work longer days but have a day off a week or a fortnight. Would that make a difference?

It is so hard balancing the needs of today with mental health, family needs and what you think you’ll need in the future.  Hope you find a solution.

glass_half_full

Dear diary and all,

Hi AgathaSquirrel, by the way, love that screen name!

That’s a good suggestion actually. I was even thinking about this myself recently and even got as far as reading my organisation’s policy on going part time. You have to give some kind of justification ie childcare/care responsibilities etc. There isn’t any reason though why I couldn’t ask to go to 4 days per week. To be honest I feel like I need a holiday so I can clear my head and think straight before I decide what to do. It looks like we will be going back to some version of face to face in September and I wonder if this might be more manageable than the last 12-18 months of working remotely.

A while ago we decided to plan in a couple of days off to have a bit of a break. We’ve taken Friday and Monday as holiday. On Friday, I went to visit my Mum in her care home. Its quite a long journey, around 3 hours.  It’s the first time I have been able to visit since before the pandemic started. My brother has been the nominated visitor and only recently have they allowed other visitors in. I had to take a test and also show evidence of having had the vaccines. It was very well managed. It was great to see her after such a long time. We stayed over in a pub b&b nearby and travelled back on Saturday. Yesterday was nice and relaxing, sitting in the garden listening to the football. Today we are walking to a local pub for lunch.

Work is finally slowing up a little bit. I’m glad we planned these couple of days.

Money wise, things are going ok. We have had a few extra spends. Bought a couple of garden loungers so that we can relax in the garden. We also bought two little half barrel plant pots and some flowers to go in them to go on the patio. I also gave DS some money towards his driving lessons. We have £4K in the OP savings account. Its going to stay there for the time being. DS has his driving test in August and if he passes I want to give him a contribution towards buying his first car. I should have some more savings to set aside in July. To be honest I have loosened the purse strings a bit recently. I have a couple of spends coming up that are quality of life things. One is a piece of exercise equipment. The other is a cute little black kitten who is coming in July.

Maybe in a few months time I will pay whatever I have saved to the mortgage.

savingholmes

Sun loungers will be worth it. Helping your son out also good

glass_half_full

Dear diary and all,

Wow its hot! OH and I are both off work and enjoying our staycation. Yesterday we spent the afternoon in the garden on the loungers in the shade reading with cold drinks. We have just got back from a few days away in Wales with some friends. We really enjoyed it, went on some lovely walks and enjoyed some nice meals out.

Well it has been quite eventful since I last posted here in June about 5 weeks ago. Before this I got some surprising news about a windfall. I have received £30,000 from the sale of a property. It was inherited many years ago, but the circumstances around it were complicated and I never expected to benefit from it, so had put it out of my mind. It seems that the issues surrounding it have been resolved, the sale has gone through and I have received the money. I couldn’t believe it until the money actually appeared in my bank account. I feel very fortunate, and I have never received anything like this before, so it was a complete shock. Can’t quite believe it to be honest. For so long I have been planning and dreaming of being debt and mortgage free, I never expected it to happen like this!

I didn’t have to think long about what to do with the money since getting mortgage free is my focus. When I went to make the overpayment it said on my online account to call them if the payment would be over 10% of the outstanding balance. So I called them and they said, this is just so you know what the early repayment charge would be. I was already aware of this so that was ok. When I went to make the payment it asks you to explain the source of the funds, so that the bank can prevent money laundering, so I had to give a short explanation about it. Because I was using a debit card, there is a limit on the amount to £25,000. Its interesting how moving around large sums of money is actually quite difficult, I had no idea having never been in this position before. So I had to make the OP in more than one transaction.

So the balance of the mortgage before I made the OP was £36,100 and so with the ERC it has taken the balance down to £7,000. According to my calculations, this should be gone before by 55th birthday in November which is great.

I don’t think this will sink in for a while. I’ve been on this journey since 2015 (about 5 ½ years) when I started my DFW diary when we were £17,000 in debt and the mortgage was £87,000 so in total that will be around £104,000 paid off in about 6 years.

I think becoming mortgage and debt free will also help with my job situation. Since having a few days away I feel more relaxed about things, as if I have been able to regain some perspective. I feel like if I can make some changes to my work going forward I can prevent myself getting back into burnout territory. Also, the knowledge that I could potentially walk away if I needed to is making me feel less trapped if that makes sense.

So I hope to be able to report back with the paying off of the remaining £7K as soon as possible.

 

Moneyfordreams

What lovely news . Congratulations  

South_coast

Wow, that's wonderful news, and what a lovely gift to have been left. Well done you for staying strong and putting it into the mortgage. Looking forward to hearing about the destruction of the final £7k 😀

glass_half_full

Thanks @Moneyfordreams and @South_coast ! I have done a quick calculation and it looks like my mortgage freedom day will be around 26th October, so three months time. This will be exactly my six year anniversary on here. I'm feeling motivated for the final push.

glass_half_full

 Dear diary and all,

We are mortgage free!

I didn’t expect to be back here so soon to report this. We have received another gift, this time from OH’s parents. We have just had a significant wedding anniversary and they had been saving this for us for some time. This gift more than covers the remaining mortgage. I called the bank yesterday and asked them for a redemption statement which they e-mailed me. I then went on-line today to make the final payment of just over £7000.

Its happened quicker than I could have hoped.  So I guess this is me reaching the finishing line. I started this diary in June 2018 with the aim of being mortgage free in 5 years, so I have achieved this in just over 3 years albeit with some significant help towards the end from windfalls.

The next phase of the journey is towards financial independence. I will be turning my attention now to serious saving into the pension and building up enough to finish somewhere within the next four years.

There are a couple of threads which address this question such as FIREside Chats and Early Retirement Wannabe over on the Pensions forum so look forward to joining these conversations in due course. I will also be cheering you all on.

Good luck to everyone on this forum. Everyone’s journey is unique, but I love the supportive and positive attitude on here, it has kept me going more than once over the last few years.

All the best,

glass_half_full

savingholmes

Wow reading your update gave me chills. The universe conspires to help you. Congratulations