Peering over the hill...

Grogged

Had email from Vanguard late last night about their SIPP launching.
Opened pension account and started transfer process for my dormant pensions.  Big one was for standard life, which grew by £13 last year on investment of £130k. 😠
So that's the start of the great pension simplification strategy...
Now just need to find a better home for the savings and EF.
Not sure what to do with the premium bonds either...

Grogged

Made a small TT into savings on Thursday.
Friday was one of those busy days at work, but with nothing to show. Hate those days...
Saturday we went to Nottingham 1kea for breakfast and a mooch. Bought a few storage bits and a big d1am bar...😋
We nearly bought some of their huge (30cm!) light bulbs, but couldn't work out where to use them. Looked cool though...
Saturday afternoon spent on the budget spreadsheet modelling retirement and mortgage payments. Very therapeutic (it was honest 😇).
Just waiting for my pension transfer to the new SIPP to happen, should be complete mid March I reckon.
Sunday finished watching The Good Place. Really enjoyed it apart from the last scene, which wasn't needed.
Sunday roast was Chicken, tonight Chicken pho style soup and tomorrow a curry (which I think will be, err, Chicken...).
£4.64 TT to mortgage as it's Monday.
For those worried about the d1am bar... it had a short happy life... 😋

Grogged

Been catching up on some diaries, which I find very inspirational, both for those who've made it to MF and those on the journey.
Just finished karmacat, half way through greent, then I'll make a start on shangaijimmy. Those are the long ones.
It took me 20 odd pages before my brain let me in on the secret that greent was probably green-t, rather than something that sounds like groot... :slaps head:
Looking forward to Friday - payday and closing February in the budget spreadsheet....

Grogged

February update:
Mortgage now at £96,947 from 97,578 in January.
Only OP have been some TT on Mondays (M for mortgage 😊).
As per 2020 plan, will OP £500 in March, which should reduce also mortgage term.

Savings fairly unchanged. Annual NW 5% deal is over, so a new home is required.
Won't be at 5%, but hopefully 1.3%.
Did some TT into savings on Fridays (F is for... clearly I need to work on my letter choices here...)

Pension big changes here!
So I signed up to the Vanguard SIPP and started transfer same day.
It's been two weeks, I expect it will go through in first half of March.
Their maybe a small upside in that I may have sold out of SL before the markets went south.
If not then still a good time to buy as every things cheap.
I won't try and time the market as I'm not retiring tomorrow and the idea is to passively invest in the market, not individual companies.
I also spent last weekend adding in a simples retirement model into the planning/budget/everything spreadsheet.

Thursday was music night - so Dire Straits, Oasis and Adele, nearly at the end of the top UK albums of all time, so we'll need a new "Top" chart to start working through in a couple of weeks.  It's been really interesting over the last couple of months, the UK's had a quite a variety of artists in its top 100 albums of all time.

Friday TT 2.48 to savings (I take the balance down to the next £5 (or £10 if under a pound as the min with NW is £1). 

Saturday was trip to Chiropractors, followed by a "prepper" shop.
I don't think it's 12 monkeys time, but want to avoid the frenzy that the papers will try and whip up and also given how much shopping needs to be at Christmas when the shops are only closed for a day...
So we've bought the next 2 weeks of canned goods and frozen stuff, that way we'll have a two week buffer should the world go mad.  If not we've just forwards bought our staples by two weeks.

This morning was trip to my parents.  Dad has just bought a second model railway, which needed rewiring.  Cue lots of engineering words as a miniature world was resoldered to within an inch of its wires!

And I'm 50 pages away from finding out what happened to greent in her diary - no spoilers please. 😁
Then it's onto shangijimmy, which should keep me busy for another month or so.
I do find myself being a bit shy when commenting some of the others I've read, but I suppose that's normal.

And finally, I found that the "Windows" key + ";" or "." brings up emojis on a PC!

ETA - fixed autocorrects for my original bead spelling.

Grogged

Decided to change my savings TT day to Thursday (T is for TT, which is better than F is for...😐).
Mortgage OP of £5.46... Big one on Friday... Will the theory hold water?

Super busy at work, we're a BC company, so Mr Corona is keeping is busy... (Unfortunately).

coldcazzie

Grogged said:

It took me 20 odd pages before my brain let me in on the secret that greent was probably green-t, rather than something that sounds like groot... :slaps head:

This really made me laugh!

Have bookmarked your diary G  

Grogged

On this weeks Thursday night is music night...
Finished top UK albums chart with Queen, ABBA and the Beatles.
Next week will be a new chart - any suggestions?

£1.18 TT to savings.
Private pension transferred to vangu@rd sipp today.
Now got something new to track! 😆

Finished greent diary, started on shangaijimmy.
These diaries can be quite addictive! 😂

South_coast

Hi Grogged, no music suggestions, but on the diary front I'd recommend SuperSecretSquirrel's once you've finished SJ's. I think it will appeal to you

Grogged

Thanks SC!
I'll add it to my list (wonder if MSE do library cards? 😆).

Grogged

Apart from a quick shop today, we've decided to be stay at home this weekend.

Spent an hour or so adding in two new sections on me spreadsheet. 😁
Both are the same, to track allocations in my SIPP and S&S ISA.
I'm not going to track the performance as that's built into the VG website.
What I am tracking is the percentage allocation for each fund. I'm basing my fund choices on their lifestyle 80 fund, but buying the underlying funds directly. This is to allow me to gradually increase the bond allocation as I approach my dotage...
Similar to monevators slow and steady portfolio.
I'm using a unit size of £2k for the SIPP, have bought first set of bonds and equity funds. As I can't guess the market in these coronavirus times, I won't be buying any more bonds.  I will look to drip feed into equities and hold the bond money in cash for the time being.

On the mortgage front the first quarterly big OP has gone in! 👍
So I'll now wait to see if I get a letter saying the term has been reduced.
Daily interest is now £4.57, £141 this month.
I think that the small Monday OP 's will save me 4 or 5 days interest a month. Should finish March a smidge over £95.8k.

This afternoon's job is car insurance renewal for end of March.
Will use this months council tax holiday towards it.