10 years to clear £334K - our FIRE journey

CCW007

Mortgage - £283,149

Reduction of £1,193 

Savings - £18,300

KajiKita

CCW007 said:

Mortgage - £283,149

Reduction of £1,193 

Savings - £18,300

Doing well!
How's life treating you?

KK

savingholmes

Well done. Hope the new job is what you hoped.

CCW007

Mortgage - £281,968

Reduction of £1,181

Savings - £19,900

CCW007

January we should be in the £270s which will be nice.

Savings adding up nicely but we really need to get on with utility room which will eat into them.

New job going well - challenging and new boss is very hands off (just as well I know the systems and where to go for help from my previous time here!)  Just sent me over my proposed objectives so need to review those and add / amend as necessary but he seems pleased with how it's going.  Got a good team and hope to be able to recruit soon.

Also good working with old boss from my previous time - very odd as we are now at same level (both Head of Service!) Had a bit of a battle to get my holiday allowance sorted (got continuous service but it hadn't been applied so went from 35 days at old job to 28 days here rather than 32 days for 5 years' service) but sorted now.

Going to the office more is taking some adjusting to but the commute is so much better (30 minutes each way compared to an hour).

SIPP and S&S ISA are doing really at the moment.  I ran my numbers through AI and they confirm I am on track and have different options (stop at 55, take ISA to 57, SIPP 57 to SPA, DB from SPA or take DB earlier and use SIPP for longer). Won't be a massive income but once mortgage is gone that's £1,600 a month we don't have to find.

OH's pot is less well set for early retirement so we need to find some time to have a look at that.  He's contributing a lot so not sure what more we can do but will find some time to sit down and review it.

edinburgher

Your numbers are looking great. Please double check the bits of calculation that you can with spreadsheets, calculators, free online tools etc. I'm a fan of AI for some things (I used the G one to great effect during my recent job application) but I hear they sometimes fluff compound interest...

CCW007

I was double-checking my calculations (based on a modest 3% growth) as a sense check but will go investigate online tools as well, thank you for the suggestion.

I'm using AI more and more in my job but only as a starting point or to provide an outline e.g. suggest an agenda for a team meeting which I then customise and develop. 

The interim replacement at my previous role was very obviously copying and pasting responses (including leaving the "would you like me to draft..." notes in!) and was called out on it.

edinburgher

Poor interim replacement!

Unfortunately I can't use AI for my actual job yet as we're being very public sector-y and ruminating over whether it's worth paying for the licenses that allow us to actually do useful work with it. A recent pilot has come to an end, so fingers crossed for valuable use cases arising. 

Edit: I'm with you on the caution, my number is 3.5% real growth. I've never had anything like that low but I prefer to keep excess growth as potential upside/a pleasant surprise.

CCW007

Non working day today and OH is on annual leave.

Getting back to using time off for improvements, we are both blitzing the kitchen which has become overwhelmingly messy recently.

Cat beds in the washing machine, even though it isn't cheap rate #badmse-er!

Windowsill where cats sleep, cleaned - shudder. Pressure canned chips put away.

Need to do cupboard and freezer inventory and then start meal planning - we don't do well with "it's Wednesday therefore we are having XX" but do better when we have a menu of possible options to choose from, as long as we are organised enough in the morning to get what we are having out of freezer if needed.

CCW007

Brought in enough wood for the weekend, moved more wood from the log store at the far end of the house to the store by the front door for easier access to bring it in and made space for more wood to be split. 

Job for this weekend to get the log splitter out and do a session. got plenty ready to be split and stored. It's all at least a year old so ready to burn.

One of the few self-sufficient things we still do.  Need to find more time for things like this as it is so satisfying.