Staying on track to be MF and ready to support my daughter at 18

the_cross_rabbit

🥳 so happy she got the grades she needed for 6th form college.
CRx

ElmoR

Thanks Cheery, Cross Rabbit, AFK and South_Coast for all popping in recently

AFK - if only someone had introduced us to these habits in our teens or early twenties! I have started to indoctrinate my DD...

End of the month round up time. I'm glad August is coming to a close, it was a really rubbish and needless emotional rollercoaster. However, September looks to be a repeat too. We've been told that we will be doing blended delivery at work, with some face to face activities. It's in the news today. I bet there is going to be a U turn on this and that will mean that all the additional paperwork needed and done for risk assessments go out the window and additional materials will be needed for online delivery at no notice whatsoever. What a nightmare.

Will keep reminding myself of that mantra along the lines of 'you cannot control stuff that happens, but you can control how you react to it'... Think I will distract myself with positivity bubbles where possible.

The finances side is going good guns. DH and I agreed to recycle the flights refund into the mortgage OP. The mortgage interest rate reverts to SRV of 3.5% in October, any savings account would come nowhere near beating that interest rate, so it made sense. This means that we could be on track to finally clear the remaining mortgage (£3650) by Christmas   Tricky month coming up though, with car service and MOT, car insurance leaving my bank account, payment due for the recent garden fencing, cats need their yearly vaccinations and check up too, so will be touch and go whether we can keep up the usual OP.

Family all doing well after the stress come down of last week. I have another day of AL added onto the Bank Holiday Monday, so not back til Weds this week. Am enjoying reading and pottering in the garden/greenhouse. DD starts her NHS Youth Volunteer Programme placement today, she's quite nervous I think, but that's normal when you start something new. The whole process of applying and being given formal induction and a job description has been excellent experience for her already. She's been assigned to the cancer ward. I hope she will be ok?! It will  certainly help her know if she wants to work in a hospital environment in the future. Help her build some personal confidence talking with patients/relatives/staff too.

That's the end of the month round up from here! Stuff's happening, doing fine...time to batton down the hatches for the coming teaching semester...

ElmoR xx

South_coast

What a fab Christmas present that would be! Definitely great motivation to push on 😀

Oh, and I'm loving the sound of positivity bubbles, could do with a few of those myself some days!

Cheery_Daff

Wow ElmoR, what a fantastic Christmas present indeed!! Didn't realise you were so close to the end of the mortgage, how brilliant! And it sounds like your daughter is in for an excellent experience too, after a difficult August for you all. We too are going for blended delivery... but I confess I am expecting it to prove unrealistic, and for us to be back to all online within a coupe of weeks. We'll see. LOVE the idea of positivity bubbles! 

A_Frayed_Knot

I am so excited for you. You are there in my eyes, just a few months more.  I was the same as you, with my mortgage going to SVR before I managed to pay it off - it certainly spurs you on, as I didn't want to pay any more interest than I had to, so with £'s in the bank for a c/c that didn't need paid off until nearly 8 months later, I decided to use that cash and clear the mortgage, then replaced the £'s for the c/c over the next few months.  That was a good move for me.
Good Luck to DD,  she will be OK,  I would hope that the ward she has been assigned do not have any covid patients.  Everyone that can, has to wear a mask and gel their hands as they enter the hospital, with still the "no visitors" policy for the patients in all wards, except the kids, here - it's eerily quiet.  Only the odd pt being allowed someone with them when they are brought into @&e.
Hate to say but we are getting ready for the next bumpy ride expected, or in your own words "battening down the hatches"

ElmoR

Still enjoying September with annual leave days peppered all the way through. Monday will be my last one though and then it's back to the 5 day working week again after that. Campus has become populated again. I notice that I am in a minority wearing my face mask around. I feel like such a killjoy witch when I ask people to please put them on inside the building. Next two weeks are going to be ...(pick a word). Once our research project has delivered on the lab results, I am going to retreat back to WFH as much as possible. It seems sensible.

DD seems happily settled into her new sixth form college. It involves a bus ride and an earlier start but she is really enjoying her lessons/subjects and says she has great teachers. That's the battle won right there! She is worn out in the evenings though so probably just as well that her usual social/hobby sessions are covid-cancelled just now. The ward placement seems to be going well too though there are fewer patients to chat with (I guess we are hearing that in the media too - less people being diagnosed due to backlogs etc), so she does general duties much of the time. It's allowing her to get comfortable with the team and the environment, there are no covid patients there at the moment.

The greenhouse is filling up a bit now. I have many coriander plants, spring onions, parsley and two chill pepper plants on the go so far. Just planted some poppy seeds and left to germinate. According to a magazine article, you can also start off sweet peas now too? I'll give some a go. I'm wondering if all these plants will survive in the greenhouse once the temperature starts to drop at night? It's already dipping to 5 degrees this week. The greenhouse isn't heated.

Had a brief foray onto the Pensions/retirement forum board last week. The first reply was rather unpleasantly judging but there were several helpful posters after that. I understand that putting money into paying down a mortgage is considered a stupid investment decision by some people if you can play the stock market instead and get a better rate of interest, but why don't they understand the relief that having no mortgage is "worth" something too? Anyway, there were some helpful comments that I am mulling over. One thing is certain though, once we switch from MFW to MF, the next goal is FIRE and I will be staying firmly in this forum group!! (assuming everyone will still have me).

Have a safe week all,

ElmoR x

DiamondLil

You're almost there, doesn't matter if no-one understands your feeling of relief; the relief is real. I take my hat off to anyone who manages to pay down early the huge amounts that are mortgages nowadays.

For what it's worth, no debt means no-one owns you, which is absolute bliss.

Cheery_Daff

There's a definite split between people who think paying off the mortgage is worth it and those who don't - I've seen it on the Mr Money Mustache forums too, and elsewhere. I suppose both sides have sound arguments. For what it's worth, I have NO intention of playing the stock market and am definitely aiming to pay the mortgage off early too.

Interesting to hear you talk about being on campus. My office is still shut, and no face to face teaching for me til early October so I'm just waiting to see what happens - we might be back in local lockdown by then anyway.

I saw mr Higgledy Garden talking about sowing sweet peas this week too so I assume it's possible! Can't comment about greenhouses - I rarely manage to keep anything alive in mine at the best of times

ElmoR

Thanks DiamondLil and Cheery for popping in.

Had a phone call with the mortgage guys this week, making arrangement for the last payment next month

I wanted to double check the rules and be absolutely certain that we weren't heading for early repayment charges etc. Think we have it nailed. I have butterflies of excitement building up already. Have asked DH to bake a cake for November the 4th, which will hopefully be "THE BIG DAY".

DD still enjoying her new college and subjects, so all good there. She's made good choices.

I needn't have worried about the sweet peas either - many have already sprouted and the first is already 10 cm tall. I hope I can keep them alive in the greenhouse now until spring?! Harvested a whole load of coriander today too, frozen it for now because I have so much. It's possible that I have developed a hobby finally?! DH is installing some lighting for me so I can navigate to the greenhouse in the dark evenings. I keep a stick by the greenhouse door and wave it around each time I enter to avoid a face full of spiders webs too. This gardening lark is not something that comes naturally to me.

Work. Yikes, what to say? 'Challenging' doesn't really cover it. Mostly dropped my research side to focus largely on supporting the students for now. Simultaneously leading three modules and contributing to others, juggling plates big time and enthusing passionately about my topic to blank screens with an occasional thumbs up. This year also reminds me of the first year as a new lecturer (ahem a couple of decades ago) where we had full pastoral responsibilities for students as well as the teaching and learning role. There were 'things' we dealt with to support students that were later picked up in the sector by professional welfare/wellbeing staff once managers realised that staff who know an awful lot about how fish respond to chemicals in rivers, or what the mass of an atom is, or how newts spread to another continent, are not necessarily the best people to counsel young people with personal problems. The huge numbers of students feeling understandably stressed and needing support means we are all back in that role again. Hopefully we'll all get through this together...

ElmoR xx

ElmoR

Hello from the work long, dark, stressful tunnel that is the HE sector right now. I took a stuffed animal to my online sessions this week and that encouraged a few students to switch on their cameras and chat a bit. Much better to see a few faces  Every time there was an awkward, pulling teeth, silence, I cuddled the animal and said, 'oh no, please don't make me a suffer another awkward silence'... As a strategy, it worked. I'm not sure as to how professional I am now viewed, but hey ho. The activities work well for the bulk of the sessions, though my eyesight is struggling (even with two screens and one being giant), so it was off to Sp*cs*vers and I need two new pairs for different tasks totalling £365, ouch. It'll be worth it to avoid the headaches.

A letter arrived about the mortgage changing from the fixed term to the SVR. Sadly, the amount it says is remaining is wrong. I think they screwed up their decimal point. They had one job to do...Message sent asking for them to clear things up.

It feels a bit unreal to be approaching 'The End', not quite sunk in yet. I'm suspecting there will be a bit of 'what now?' navel gazing too, probably a watered down FIRE plan for the next decade? We have some exciting news too (as well as the mortgage news, that is) - we are going to have a puppy soon

We had been on a puppy list but had not been near the top enough when the pups were born in early September. Hugely disappointed at the time but we knew the situation. But someone has changed their mind and we became the lucky ones I've never had a dog before, so this is going to be very exciting and all very new. Also hoping that this helps (along with the greenhouse/gardening new hobby) transition towards that early-ish retirement gradually/slowly. We've been taking an imaginary dog for a walk most evenings for over a year now! It will be surreal to have an actual real life one!

Lots to plan and organise now...(eep!). We haven't known how to tell the cats...

Have a good weekend all

ElmoR xx