The Piano Diary

glass_half_full

Dear diary and all,

The car situation seems to be settling down and I have moved DS’s MOT failed car into the garage and he needs to SORN it so that it no longer needs taxing and insuring and then we can deal with it. The electric car seems to be fine and so far so good,  I have switched to an EV tariff with my energy provider. I have programmed the car to charge itself during the cheap period from midnight to 05:00. DS was paying £100 + per month on diesel so this should be a significant saving on that. I have started to run a few appliances in the cheap period like the dishwasher, and will also see if I can run the washing machine at this time also. I will need to keep an eye on energy use. Our other car is a hybrid and I’m trying to be a bit more diligent with charging that as well.

OH has gone to 4 days per week from the beginning of September. This is really helping giving us a bit more capacity away from work. That said we must make sure it doesn’t become a ‘chore day’ for her. She needs to get the benefit of the day off.

We are trying to keep the holiday feeling going from the summer. We have a couple of mini weekend breaks planned. This coming weekend we are going to a nature reserve which will be nice.

savingholmes

Enjoy your time out in Nature. 

Money will sort. You have a great plan in place. The investment sounds worthwhile. Enjoy the journey. 

glass_half_full

Dear diary and all,

The electrician came today and fitted the new fuse box. Very efficient, just got on with the work and was done in 3-4 hours. The new fusebox has things clearly labelled so if the fuse trips I will know exactly what has caused it. No more losing the whole of the ground floor to a mysterious problem, I hope. Good also to find a really good electrician for the future.

I’ve transferred the £7.5K credit card debt to another 0% interest free offer over 12 months with no transfer fee. I think I’m going to set a direct debit to pay it off over the next 12 months and then just forget about it.

Pension fund seems to have really grown well recently. It has reached £458k from £400k at Christmas.

glass_half_full

Dear diary and all,

We reached mortgage freedom in July 2021 so just over 4 years ago. Following that we have focused on pension contributions so that we can step back from work. Back in January the DC fund had reached around £425K and was mostly invested in the US based fund. Not long after Trump’s election there was a fairly dramatic drop in the stock markets and I rebalanced to UK, US and Bonds. In around March/April I rebalanced back towards equities since the market seemed to be recovering. Since then the US fund has recovered and is now around the same as it was in January. The total DC fund has now reached £460K. Of course I don’t have a crystal ball, but I think this US fund may now continue to grow at the current rate for a few more months. I am going to rebalance back to a higher US fund %. I am ok with the risk since to be honest I was ok with £400k so if it was to fall back a bit then so be it. In the event of a crash I would move the money out although of course I accept that the falls can happen very quickly. As I plan to go into draw down eventually, I will need to stay invested anyway. There is a possibility it could reach £500k by the time I finish.

Its strange to think that I was considering finishing this December when I will be 59. Now I am  nearly at that date I realise I am not quite ready to step away. I think that 60 may be the right time for me, lets see.

Still focused on clearing the CC debt as soon as is practical.

AgathaSquirrel

Your progress has been inspiring. If all goes to plan we hope to pay the mortgage off by the time we’re 53/54 and, like you, focus will turn to pensions. Nice to see you are choosing to remain in work, rather than having to. Lovely position to be in. I suspect we will work into our early 60s but I hope it’s down to choice not necessity.

glass_half_full

AgathaSquirrel said:

Your progress has been inspiring. If all goes to plan we hope to pay the mortgage off by the time we’re 53/54 and, like you, focus will turn to pensions. Nice to see you are choosing to remain in work, rather than having to. Lovely position to be in. I suspect we will work into our early 60s but I hope it’s down to choice not necessity.

Thank you for this . I'm sure you will make it to mortgage free and then once there use the extra money to fund the pensions. On the working front, and how long to continue I guess there are so many variables like ones own health, the health of relatives and potential need to care for them etc and then of course the context at work and whether it still feels right to continue. I think what has surprised me is that that you never know how you are going to feel until you get there. I think it makes sense to target a year so that when you do get there it becomes optional and that really changes how you feel about it because you are choosing to continue rather than having to.

glass_half_full

Dear diary and all,

Glad to get to the weekend this week! Talking to adult children about money can be a challenge. I’ve been trying to have a ‘proper’ chat with DS for a while now. He has been avoiding it a bit. Somehow the conversation kept being postponed. But we managed to find time yesterday to talk about it. It’s a difficult balancing act as a parent, I don’t want to get it wrong. So we talked about budgeting and how he knows how much is coming in and how much is going out. He was ok on the former, but less so on the latter. We talked about budgeting apps and we found one that looks promising, you can link it to your bank account and it will auto classify transactions to various categories. He is going to give this a go. We talked about savings. He has a LISA which we checked and has reached £7500 of which £1700 was from growth. We talked about how one day he can use this as a deposit for a flat / house and how much that would need to be when that time comes. I reminded him that the Government will add 25% to your savings as well. This was an opportunity to talk about funds and the stock market and how it grows over the long term. Then we looked at the pension which I helped him to set up 6 months ago. It is a SIPP and I showed him how you can invest in various funds for the long term. I showed him how much some funds have grown over the last 30 years and how that a small amount invested now can be worth so much more in the long term. The conversation went pretty well so I said to him, it wasn’t that painful was it. He said that he sometimes found talking about money issues to be a problem because it has bad associations from when he was struggling to make ends meet in the flat. I hope I can get him to a place where he feels more comfortable around money matters in the future.

AgathaSquirrel

He’s lucky to have such a caring, thoughtful parent.

glass_half_full

AgathaSquirrel said:

He’s lucky to have such a caring, thoughtful parent.

Thank you!

glass_half_full

Dear diary and all,

I have been trying to track down a DB pension for a job I had some time ago from 1998 to 2004. The company concerned have changed hands a few times since as has the pension scheme. I have written to various organisations over the years but have not received a reply. I had started to wonder if this would ever materialise. I haven’t included anything from this in my estimates because I had no idea what it might be. Finally this week I received a reply from the administrators that I would receive an index linked DB pension of £8500 per annum from age 65.. This is a big boost as it means that our combined income from my age 65 of DB pensions and state pensions from 67 will probably cover our outgoings near enough. So the DC fund is only really needed to bridge the gap from finishing work to 65. I’m glad I persevered with chasing this down.