Learning to walk before I run

Suffolk_lass

I confess I have to be rather blunt with him (yes it is - and I made an assumption Mrs E's  bitter sibling is female) - it is primarily an anxiety and health related thing with our friend and talking about the area of anxiety last year (for literally hours) took months to back out of.  Her poor husband. It's not what they planned. She is bringing a meal to reheat here. Poor girl. The other woman will help, I'll prime her!

I have never got into South African wines (goes back to boycott days in my formative years, I suppose) but that's a good offer price, 25% off. I have a similar fizz offer too, but I bought mine earlier at 33% off at Morries for some of their prize-winning options. I still buy Paul Mas wines when it's on offer and this time it was their "The best..." black label DOCG Prosecco which is very much to our liking.

HNY if I'm not back before 2023! No plans formulated here yet, other than to reduce food in stock levels a bit!

edinburgher

@Suffolk_lass - we bought our champers from a website called Classic Deli this year. They offer a blanket 35% off BF deal once a year which we use to stock up on foodie gifts and smoked salmon etc. Good vintage blancs de blancs for about £30 👍

edinburgher

Happy Hogmany all

Today marks the end to a year that was far more dramatic than I like - a new baby, an attic conversion, lots of other home maintenance, burnout at work and the realisation that I wasn't willing to invest the energy required to take my current career to the next level. I've had to think a lot about a lot of topics that have made me quite uncomfortable at times and I can only hope that I've come out the other end as a better man for it     

In terms of finances, the year end net worth calculations see us doing fine, largely because I think our extra bedroom comfortably lifts the value of the house to £300k, even applying a generous discount to what we'd hope to get in a down market. As an example, a 3-bed teardown 2 doors along sold for £267k in the summer, albeit a detached one (considerably smaller plot than ours).

I do not have any grand plans for the New Year. Sure, I'd like to lose a bit of weight (this is a seasonal/cyclical thing for me) and maybe explore some first steps into coding, see if it could be a new direction for me. These are, however, gentle goals to be approached in the spirit of curiosity and realistic expectations. I am sure that life will throw us some curveballs along the way I'll also turn 40!

Financially, I'd like to pay off the CC (£3,739 as of today) and remain on track to surpass my SIPP target of £1,200 this financial year by 10% to reflect the ravages of inflation (so £1,320 minimum, or £110/mth). Hopefully these goals are achievable. We will have nursery fees to pay as of March, will be joining everybody else in energy bill hell come the 1st of April when our fix expires and will just escape 5% mortgage rates until January 2024. It is going to be an interesting year regardless of what we do! I am starting off the year on the right foot by joining FD so as to take advantage of their 7% RS account, which is a no-brainer at the moment.

QueenJess

Hoping for a more serene year for you

I can’t believe how many things you said above are similar to me… I was 40 in 2022 and I started nursery fees. Energy hell starts today for me (I fixed before any of the prices started going up), my mortgage fix lasts until Feb 2024 and I signed up to the 7% FD account a week ago! Creepy!

FlacosFloozie

Happy New Year, Ed!

I think it can be really difficult when you realise that what you want in life isn't necessarily what you feel you 'should' want. Ultimately, it is far better to realise what you truly value and prioritise it.

I hope 2023 is good to you and yours.

savingholmes

MSE seems to be throwing a wobbly and coming up with errors so hope this posts.

Well done on what you've achieved. Your Xmas plans sound sensible - I think we all do far too much people pleasing. Good to resolve that earlier in life if you can!

Happy New Year.

edinburgher

Happy New Year @FlacosFloozie and @QueenJess

We have started the year with a frugal but tasty cooked breakfast (French toast using stale baguette and some leftover haggis from a breakfast hosting session on the 28th), followed by a family walk around the neighbourhood (it is incredibly quiet). Then off to inlaws for lunch, which mercifully didn't feature grumpy sibling

Since I got back, I've watched a few short YT videos about HTML, CSS and JavaScript and saved links to 4 blog posts about these to review tomorrow before I start the short coding course that I'm working on over the next week. I'm also considering whether there would be any value to registering a couple of domain names related to my real name (for example, so that I could have more secure email addresses not hosted with a free webmail service and some sort of web presence should I change careers and consider consultancy or self-employment in the future). Might be a reasonable investment for 10s of £ a year?

I've also updated the budget spreadsheet and paid £16.08 off the CC. I'm going to pay £80 into my SIPP after dinner (£100 after tax relief) on the basis of starting the way I mean to continue. I used the MSE savings calculator today and it states that I could be looking at £145k by the time I retire assuming I invest £100/mth. That would be a very helpful supplement to my DB pensions and would allow me to delay taking them and seeing them reduced by less of an early payment penalty.

From reading a Monevator article on the topic, I understand that I could withdraw £16,667 a year (personal allowance + 25% tax free amount) and drain the SIPP that way. That would go reasonably far as my share of the bills is concerned (assuming we pay off the mortgage).

QueenJess

All sounds very organised.  How do you decide the never ending conundrum of how much to put in a SIPP versus mortgage overpayments?  Do you have a target for both?

savingholmes

Well done on getting the year off to a flying start with a SIPP payment

edinburgher

@QueenJess - what are these mortgage overpayments of which you speak? Frankly the thought of trying to pay off £213k in 18 years fills me with terror We would need to find £600/mth to make that happen... I had wondered whether filling a LISA for 10 years and making our normal payments might allow us to pay it off at 60. Like the sun, it's a bit too bright a problem to look at head on