Prosperous soul embraces creativity & mortgage neutrality

MovingForwards

I only have two tabs on my spreadsheet.
The first one details income and expenditure for the year, with a row listing current account balance.
The second lists all my savings accounts, now down to 8, and balances for the year. It has another section below that detailing my pensions and early retirement fund pots, currently at 10 pots, info is updated once a month.

Well done selling the chair and putting the money to use.

WelshmansDaughter

A dashboard style layout may work for you if you are a visual organizer?

savingholmes

Thanks MF and WD

I think I've been having too many transactions!! I think that's part of the problem. I also like to look at what would happen at different retirement dates to try and motivate myself to stay on plan... But those had mushroomed.

WD - I like your dashboard suggestion. Will think about how to achieve that. I want to move to more conscious spending.

This has been a 'funny' month as I had a lot of extra income - but I'd also moved my mortgage date - and despite my OP they  charged me an extra £180 in theoretical interest. Will be interesting to see how that shows on my credit report - as I'm hoping that it may class as a further OP given I prepaid. 

Extra spends this month

• arbour 
• handyperson 
• clothes 
• accommodation
• eating out (part graduation, part holiday)
• Completely overspent on groceries (part holiday)
• Bought lamps, curtain, blind for house - not sure if any of that fell into previous month
• Gifts - 2 birthdays plus DS. Will significantly reduce xmas & birthday to compensate
• mortgage
  
• extra fuel
• loans to kids

I've 'owned up' in my journal the amount that came to but decided not to list here!! A lot!! But savings have risen and bank balance has improved thanks to extra £. I enjoyed my time away so I think most things gave me value compared to the life energy spent. I think my main regret on spend would be over-spend on groceries and eating out and general fritter spends at HB and BnM. So those are the areas I most want to target next month. 

My food target is £160 & miscellaneous is £50 - but currently overspending. If I was just on target next month that would be a huge saving.

Plus I want to fast from spends on eating out/days out, art, hobbies / entertainment and clothes next month. However - if I have the opportunity to go to the beach happy to spend on that and eating out with a friend(s) is okay. I could save up to £180 from those parts of the budget.

If the TUs accept the proposed pay deal I should be fine with my savings & AVC plans - depending on how much the work on my house costs and how much we manage to reduce our energy use. It also depends how well I stick to budget in other areas.

WelshmansDaughter

I think I mentioned Notion before, that's free to use. Has a few good tutorial videos online as well

girlatplay

A thought on HB and BnM; don't go in them unless you absolutely need to and if you do need to, take a list and go when you're in a rush to get somewhere else (allowing for queueing at the checkouts depending on the time you go).  Really works for me.  It's the browsing that causes the most issues, I find.

savingholmes

Thanks WD - had a little look at that but not for me.

GAP - It works best if I send DD in for me... Otherwise I go in and come out having spent about 6 x more than planned. Being in a rush could help too but not sure I trust myself. If I go in with DD - I tell her what I'm allowed to buy and ask her to discourage other spends!!

Had a weird day. Work was fine. Saw my counsellor. Nice meal out with friend and her DD and mine. Then came back here for a bit as I had a piece of furniture that would help out her DD. She made the mistake of parking near the end of a nasty neighbour's drive and came inside. I suddenly heard banging from outside. They were literally banging on her car even though they could get on and off their drive fine and even though she has the dinkiest car ever. I apologised for her parking there but said they shouldn't have banged on her car at which point they began swearing at me. My friend apologised - and the neighbours backed down a little Jekyll and Hyde style. Bizarre. Trying not to let it ruin my evening. I have as little do do with that neighbour as possible but they were so out of order!! All I can think is they are them all day long and all night too. Glad I'm not them!!

Prior to that my friend and I were brainstorming ways she could retire early and bring in extra income. Hopefully we came up with some useful ideas. We had a 30% off mains voucher and I skipped a drink so wasn't a horrific spend today. A bedside cabinet has left my house that I got free a year ago and just stuffed in my garage. At the time I wasn't sure what Ex was taking so took it when offered just in case when I bought something else.

Working again tomorrow - and then hopefully DD and I will go to a beach Saturday and enjoy the nice weather. Does mean I will be filling up my car with fuel and will need some food to take with us - but get paid Monday so all good. Hopefully the chair is being picked up tomorrow so should have the £30 from that too. 

Need to list more stuff but happy just to have some things leave my house... Progress.

jwil

Glad you had a good day.  Annoying about the unreasonable neighbour though.

savingholmes

Thanks jwil

Perhaps predictably with both the heat and the neighbour's nastiness - I slept badly. I journalled between 3.30 and 5am. My watch didn't really class what I did last night as sleep. I woke up early to really bad cramp in my left leg. Despite being up for hours at this point I haven't yet started work!! (Roll eyes at self).

I keep playing with calculators - if I can transfer my old DB pension after age 55-57 (currently 52) - at last summer's values - I could pay around £46K off my mortgage. This at today's rates would mean I'd need £300 less a month or it might then be enough with whatever equity I have at that point to either buy a smaller house outright (particularly if I move areas) or buy one with a small mortgage. If I had no mortgage - I could go part time by around age 57, still gradually improve one DB pension by £400-500 a year while either ignoring or slowly using the first one. Or I could live off the tax free lump sum (alongside part time work) for around 6 years before needing to draw more and keep this place. These figures ignore the current energy crisis... 

Given that this is a recurring obsession of mine - I'm sure you'll read about this again. Many people call this kind of move coast F1r3 as you don't then need 25 times your income to be able to quit - as you can supplement your savings/pension with part time work. I appreciate I am fortunate to have the pensions I do.

girlatplay

I'm sure you are factoring this in but watch out for early repayment charges on your mortgage.  I've got it in my head that you're on a 5 year fix.

I'm sorry to hear you slept badly.  Waking up with cramp is not nice.

savingholmes

Thanks GAP

I am on a five year fix. If I did do a lump sum payment I would wait until I was out of it. I only have 4 years and 4 months left of fix  (end of 2026). I can OP 10% per year though - which for this year would be equivalent to £20K+. I've not reached £1K yet... I'm not sure I would actually use pension to OP the mortgage unless I was radically downsizing and it meant I was mortgage free or close to it.

The current ERCs are horrific decreasing over the 5 years: 10%, 8%, 6%, 4% and then 2%. If I'd known that upfront I might have gone elsewhere for the mortgage. In theory it's portable but if I moved I'd probably want to downsize. That's why I think the earliest I'd do anything with my older pension would be after my 57th birthday in 2027. My mortgage rate at 1.84% is also low enough that savings accounts are likely to beat it with the recent rate changes so even if I wanted certainty - I could offset it as a mortgage neutral pot.

I still will want to know my pension value at 55, 56 and 57 so I can explore what's possible... but this crisis is underlining the benefits of DB pensions so I'll try not to rush to take on the responsibility of managing it.

I've got my payslip for Monday which is nice. As I predicted they failed to set up the new health benefit - so still can't progress chiropractor which is irritating. I've sent a chase up email.

I've read my gas meter - and I'm still just using it for hot water - so about £25 worth for me and DD.

I threw £2.25 of food today as it had gone off. Meat that was still in date and half a tin of baked beans. In better news - lunch was mashed potato using some YS 20p potatoes from last week, 1/3 of a portion of YS sausages for 43p from last week and half a tine of 50p beans - so felt quite frugal. Also had porridge today. May defrost a soup for later.

Ideally I need to do some washing.