Rolling Down the Green Hill Towards REtirement 😊🌄💚💜

greent

 Happy New Year!!!

As our MFW journey finished back in July 2015(wow!) on our family home and Apr 202 on our BTL (because we sold it! ) I thought it was time for a new diary (seeing as some others are doing it, I thought I'd also jump on the bandwagon 😉 🚙) and the new year seems a good time to start.

Back when I started my original diary (https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2364743/greents-mfw-journey) the children were 12, almost 10, 4 & 10 months - now they are 24 (with a Masters, a FT job and saving hard to buy a home), 21 (doing a Masters), 16-next-week (hopefully sitting some actual GCSEs this Summer) and approaching 13.... the time has flown! - and we had a mortgage of just under £105K with an end date of sometime in 2023. DH had just started as a contractor with all the job uncertainty that comes with that (and which led to 2 periods of almost 12 months each with no contract in the next few years - that was hard!!) Now he has a 'regular' PAYE job with a 6 figure package and I've started a FT (term time) job which doesn't even cover how much tax he pays in a year! (school jobs really aren't well paid!) 

We are now 52 & 51. DD will be moving out at some point in the next year or so, I'm sure. DS1 finishes his MSc this Summer so will hopefully get a job after then and may or may not be living here at that point. Because we had a gap before DS2 & DS3 we still very much have dependent children for the next few years - whilst we could have relatively comfortably afforded to retire now without them and could probably just about do it with them we are likely not to do so until after DS3 is 18 - so another 5.25 years minimum. DH has aged 60 in his head (well, 3 weeks before - which is when his security clearance thing runs out for his job) but I think we could bring that forward and still cope with 1 (maybe 2 if DS2 does a post-grad qualification) child at uni's costs. We shall see!

DH has no real idea of how much money we have - the vast, vast majority of money is held in my name - he earns a decent amount - but also spends a lot - if I showed him how much we have he would be off buying a £50K motorhome along with a heap of other stuff - and putting in an order for a £30K car for me, etc - he is a real magpie. I am waaaay more cautious - we would not be MF now if it was left to DH! - he freely admits this. He knows we have savings and that we have enough to get some jobs done on the house and money put away for a big family holiday to Florida when things allow for it, etc - and that generally keeps him happy enough. 

I plan for this diary to chart our way to retirement - starting off at the top of the hill slowly and gathering momentum as we get closer to the bottom of the hill (ie: retirement) I'm not really one for true budgets - we have a decent income and I know we could reduce our spending - but I'm not too concerned about that right now, as we also save a reasonable amount. I'll update with some figures at some points - when I've done the end of 2021 figures  

rtandon27

Happy New Year & New Diary dearest Greent!

Cheery_Daff

Yay! The new year, new diary one is an excellent one! Happy both!

killerpeaty

Happy new year and diary!

Love your positivity.

A question, if rude, please ignore. Do you have a contingent so that if you were in an accident and couldn't look after the money, that dh would be able to find the logins if necessary.

Karmacat

Happy Shiny New Diary - love the concept, absolutely love it.  I think when I eventually post my mullings online, I'll have to do the same, I need a tune-up.  Lovely to read of the very start of your journey, I don't think I was reading then.  Congratulations on the journey so far  

newgirly

Happy new diary greent, you have achieved so much and it’s been great following your journey, best of luck with he future and happy new year 😊

South_coast

Ooh, a lovely new diary to get stuck into! Looking forward to hearing all about the next chapter x

Jessy103

Happy New Year and new diary greent! 🙂

f0xh0les

Happy New Year greent.  Will read and learn.

greent

Thanks everyone!

killerpeaty said:

Happy new year and diary!

Love your positivity.

A question, if rude, please ignore. Do you have a contingent so that if you were in an accident and couldn't look after the money, that dh would be able to find the logins if necessary.

Not at all rude - I was just thinking whilst in the kitchen that I hadn't explained that it's all on a spreadsheet and that DH has my laptop p/w (which I never change) so could access all the details if necessary. He also already has a list of places where money is held, just not all the details (like numbers of all the accounts) - so could contact the banks/ ISA co/ pension cos/ life assce etc with basic details if necessary - plus we have joint accounts at our 2 main banks, so they could easily identify the other accounts straight off   Nothing is truly hidden from him - eg I still get paper statements for all things and they are filed in a file in a cupboard in his office - the file is labelled bank statements. The pensions are all in a file in the office labelled 'pensions'. It's more a case of it not being overly on show, rather than really hidden - he could easily find it all out within an hour if needed (30 mins in reality) - and my online logins for most finance things are variations on a theme, which he knows - and if passwords did need to be reset and a link sent to my email address then he has the password for my email account - so I think he should be fine

postmenopause

Happy new year @greent , ill enjoy reading your diary XXX