I Want To Retire

jwil

Good luck with it! Sorry about your Aunt.

I hate Bing with a passion, he is so whiny!

SAVVYSCOT

Ladies, Blinking BING. I am not a FAN. I actually banned him as I found my two year old starting to whine all the time, however I've allowed him back into our lives in small doses :rotfl:

Thank you very much Enthusiastic. This is the second family/friend we've lost in last year . All have died just after retirement. I think this might be why my husband and I are now up for making changes. Both had these great plans and sadly never got to see them. I would like the OPTION to work, but as you say when it affects your health like your dad, then the OPTION to leave and occupy my mind elsewhere.

As I'm on mat leave, if i'm in the house i'll eat lunch here. For me it's the daily visits to t3sco or the coffee shops and treats for the girls. No coffee shop today, and I stocked up on supplies for home to ensure we have zero visits this month (unless i meeting a friend). However i need to get control of the t3sco shops. I went today and bought more than was on the list!!! I THINK i might need to go back to online deliveries or just send my husband with a list, although he can be just as bad as me. This needs to be the area of my focus, i feel i can control the coffee shops and the girls treats, but the monthly food shopping etc is out of control.

Quite right, you've earned your meals out. We are actually not that bad at eating out. We like to cook and good food and I often find I'm disappointed with takeaways! HOWEVER, if we had a dominoes near us. That would be my monthly treat. I miss Dominoes... we are partial to the odd fish n chips or just a bag of chips though. Can't beat chippy chips

GlendaSugarbean

Meal planning and weekly shopping will be your friends here . Buy enough for a week's worth of meals (bonus if you can do your weekly shop on a cheaper supermarket like A!di) then stop the top up shops!

EsmeWeatherwax

Have you tried scan and shop? Not only quicker as you pack as you go but you can see a running total. That helps me keep to my shopping list because I can see how much all the little extras are adding to my bill!
I also try to get as much as I can at A!di, but I find the fruit and veg isn't as good. Not money saving if it ends up in the bin after 2 days!

Sofee3

I have been thinking about this recently too, I don't want to still be working in my 60's. We're clearing credit card debt to move in 2 years time and will try and make over payments to our mortgage at that point. We are similar ages with 2 kids too and I want the same when they are older, treat them and help them out! I'll be following you

SAVVYSCOT

Hi Everyone,

What a sad day for NZ today

How has the weather been where you are? It's been utterly miserable weather here for the last 2 days and I caved and purchased a movie on amazon prime. £7.99. I'm very annoyed with myself, but torn by the fact that soft play would have been more expensive so we saved money. HOWEVER, soft play would have been physical activity and fun play that didn't involve sitting watching a TV. Parenting dilemma. However we are tired after a long week of family visits and no naps so I feel that a few lazy days are good for the soul and some lovely walks tomorrow will make up for the TV heavy days (although they are currently drawing on a water mat and no actually watching the movie i just bought!!).

A good money saving thing I DID do :money:, was move our emergency fund to a different ISA for a better rate. Some of you may think I should use that to clear our CCs but i really believe in an emergency fund. We also have family abroad and if we needed emergency flights abroad this would cover it aswell.

Weekly meal planning does work but I'm thinking monthly planning or two weekly planning might be the way for us to go. I really like the idea of monthly planning however when I see it in writing I will probably see how much we repeat meals However if we are doing it without a plan then it makes no difference repeating with a plan!

I tried the scan and save, not ideal with a two year old and one year old. I would forget to scan something when a child started to cry or try and run off. Then have to check through incase i missed anything. I also stole a lime once. :rotfl: Unintentionally, of course, but it stressed me out!!

Good to know i'm not alone Sofee, think anyone I mention it too in "real life" seems to think i'm crazy for even thinking about retirement at this age or the thought of paying off my mortgage EARLY - especially when we have £21k of debt . I have family members who are very financially savvy and two sets have nearly paid off their mortgages (before they are 40!) One set has kind of just happened for them as they bought their first house when they were 20 and the other set are very financially savvy but don't even know how good they are, it just seems to be how they live? If that makes sense!

Friday nights are usually a easy dinner, In a dream world it would be a takeaway night but for us it will be sauce out of a jar night :beer: I'm making a curry with a jar of sauce. I have shop bought nanns and will just use up veg and quorn for dinner. Done!

Right I'm off to chop some veg whilst my little one naps!

aimeemum

Love the diary - Subscribed!

I totally understand the feelings about retirement. We have plans to 'retire' at 55....we know we wont actually retire but we want to change jobs, reduce hours and downsize and generally just do something 'for us' at that point while we still can. We have 3 LOs and our youngest will be 20 by the time I'm 50 (in 15 years time!) so our plan once we're debt free at the end of this year is to put money aside every month that we can then use to buy our first home in 20 years time! Silly to think we'll be first-time buyers in our 50s but we know we wont get approved for a mortgage for at least a decade so may as well wait lol. Hubby has a very good pension pot with 5 years of contributions in there - I however have nothing, which also needs to be remedied.

Good luck with the spending. I'm trying so hard to keep spending right down too and groceries are giving me a massive headache at the moment....3 growing boys are expensive to feed!

And I'm so glad that most of the time mine have outgrown CBeebies....my youngest loved Bing, but he still enjoys a bit of Go Jetters (and so do I on the quiet! lol).

foxgloves

I agree that losing people makes you rethink your own future plans. In the last 2 years, I've lost both my parents & a dear friend, & I've noticed that Mr f & I are talking a lot more about how we envisage our retirement (when/where, etc) & keeping ourselves as straight as possible financially to facilitate the things we'd like to do. We have two tiers of plans - the first one is our ideal choice if when the time comes, we can afford it without leaving ourselves short. Then there's the back-up plan - not our first choice, but a likely to be more affordable option we would still both be perfectly happy about.
Good luck with turning your finances around. I am now several years past my LBM & one of the key reasons I started a diary on here was to show that it IS perfectly possible to change from being a big spender to a born again sensible budgeter. I really was the world's worst frittered. Frittering is a choice, however, & I now simply make different choices. It can absolutely be done.
F

SAVVYSCOT

aimeemum wrote: »

I totally understand the feelings about retirement. We have plans to 'retire' at 55....we know we wont actually retire but we want to change jobs, reduce hours and downsize and generally just do something 'for us' at that point while we still can.

EXACTLY this!! I want to get into a stress free job that gives me pocket money and keeps me young :j

You guys sound like you have a good plan in place. My family member who has nearly paid off their mortgage plans to just keep putting their mortgage payment aside and hopefully after 10-15 years retire aswell!

SAVVYSCOT

foxgloves wrote: »

I agree that losing people makes you rethink your own future plans. In the last 2 years, I've lost both my parents & a dear friend, & I've noticed that Mr f & I are talking a lot more about how we envisage our retirement (when/where, etc) & keeping ourselves as straight as possible financially to facilitate the things we'd like to do. We have two tiers of plans - the first one is our ideal choice if when the time comes, we can afford it without leaving ourselves short. Then there's the back-up plan - not our first choice, but a likely to be more affordable option we would still both be perfectly happy about.
Good luck with turning your finances around. I am now several years past my LBM & one of the key reasons I started a diary on here was to show that it IS perfectly possible to change from being a big spender to a born again sensible budgeter. I really was the world's worst frittered. Frittering is a choice, however, & I now simply make different choices. It can absolutely be done.
F

Apologies foxglove I completely missed your post when replying yesterday!

It really does make you reevaluate. I also have a plan. I'd like to be mortgage free relatively early into my 40s and start putting money aside to basically live off for retirement. I would also like a holiday home although I really like the idea of a caravan which we can move about. Hubby and I have actually discussed getting a caravan in the next few years for the kids.

I actually cleared a good bit of debt in 2014, LBM was 2011 maybe? It was also from frittering away, at least this time i have a car and a few holidays to show for the money, back then I had a laptop for £16k of debt!! :eek:

I was so good then, I stopped buying out AT ALL and hubby and I gave ourselves pocket money. I'm actually thinking that might be the way forward this time. Back to pocket money... :cool:

Hmmmm. Defo some planning to do. But I'm glad that i'm back talking and thinking about it and you guys are giving ideas and inspiration. Thats why I'm here with the diary, as I would probably think about it but not ACTUALLY do anything about it :rotfl: