A Year in the Life of...

savingholmes

Welcome back @boxofpaws

girlatplay

boxofpaws said:

Morning GAP

Haven’t posted in a while, and am catching up. LMG was a child when I last posted! She was always splendid though, lovely to hear she still is.

Somehow I am not subscribed so maybe I read an older diary, so will do that now.

Paws

Thank you for posting.
She was about 7 or 8 when I first came here.  I've been here a while.  She's good and I'm very lucky.  She is turning out to be a decent adult too.  Has her moments, as we all do, but she's kind, funny (laugh out loud until you cry and your abs area aches, hysterically funny sometimes) and just beautiful.  Just trying to negotiate her way through life and it's not always easy for her.

We hope to move at some point next year and WHEN we do I will start a new diary.

savingholmes

I look forward to that - although this diary isn't that long...

girlatplay

savingholmes said:

I look forward to that - although this diary isn't that long...

Thank you.  This is probably the longest out of all of them.  Things change in my life and a new diary always seems the right thing to do.  Also, this was supposed to be a year, pretty sure it's nearly two!  I just need to be accountable and posting here really helps.  My next one will need to be with you on MFW but, very like yourself, it will be more like mortgage neutral.

savingholmes

Financially I think it makes sense to go for mortgage neutral if you put the money you would have paid into something that is building your net worth in another way - like pensions - and possibly wider investments like index tracker funds... I am only 3.5 years away from the earliest date I can access my pensions - so the tax refund alone makes it worthwhile. I've no spare £ to put in yet though.

EssexHebridean

We ended up going neutral for a best part of a year or so before we were able to go full MF as we were marking time on a five year fix which was also the right thing for us to take, when we took it, but our op’s spiralled to the extend where we could have done with it being a 3 instead, really. I *suspect* had we done that our MF date would have been 18 months sooner. I’ve never really thought that through before reading the conversation between you and SH, GAP, so thank you for that! 

savingholmes

Glad it helped. Looking forward to being MF too

girlatplay

I have raided the dipping pot.  Rounded it down to £500.  I possibly won't need as much as I think as it looks like I have £98 too much in the cc holding account.  I buy everything on two credit cards every month and then pay them off in full at the end of the month.  I have budgets for everything so I take the money from the budget account when I buy something and transfer it into the cc holding account.  When the bill comes in, I pay it off.  I rarely spend what I don't have and when I transfer, I round up to the nearest £1 so I always have a little left in the account when the two bills have been paid, a few pounds, nothing major.  I check the credit card apps after I buy stuff to check that I have been charged correctly and then transfer the funds over.  It was looking a bit off so I decided to pay off both cc's today and see what I have left.  Yes, £98. Something has gone a bit wrong.  I can't see anything missing.  There are pending items but I have accounted for them.  I'll need to double check when I have some more time.  Puzzling though.

Finally got 19p I had been waiting for from Prolific so cashed out £8.50.  I don't usually let it get that high.  Moved that to Xmas account.
I need two receipts to scan then I'll be able to cash out £10 on one of the receipt apps.  That will go to Xmas too.

I have ordered a few bits from various places so just waiting for deliveries.  Not got much more to get so feeling organised.  I've sent off some Xmas cards to the few I still exchange with.  Only got about 5 to do and that's that.

Still need to buy wrapping as I've used up all that I had from over the years (I always buy too much so the last two years' challenges to myself was to not buy any and I didn't! 🙂).

EssexHebridean

You really are sounding organised! I need to use some time over the next few days to get the online portions of my present shopping planned and bought, I think. With the postal service being a bit uncertain round here it’s not wise to leave things too much to the last minute. 

I like the idea of your CC holding account - and am now trying to decide if that would be a good way of working things for us. Hmmm. It may be made too complicated for us by having stuff spread across two different banks now, but the “spare” account ai have which could be used for it is at least with the same institution as the CC, so that’s something… 

astrocytic_kitten

I’ve done things the wrong way round this year - bought all my presents, wrapped most of them…but I haven’t written any Christmas cards yet. Have a stack of them sitting on the side table and a massive mental block about starting them. And it’s not like I write anything particularly in depth or thoughtful in them either 😂