10 years to clear £334K - our FIRE journey

savingholmes

I am sure once you set your mind to it your FI journey will get a huge boost.

CCW007

Batch cooking for the freezer and lunches done at the weekend, used up lots of bits which may have ended up as waste otherwise. Even made up smoothie packs with bananas, strawberries and spinach to make breakfast easier and use up food from Olio.

Aiming to stay off the beer until the first May bank holiday which will save a few ££ - it's not just the wine, it's all the extra bits we pick up at the store at the same time and the fact I turn into a carb monster the next day.  So good for the waistline and the bank balance!

CCW007

Requested a refund of credit from our energy supplier - due back £1k which is going straight into savings to earn some interest.  I upped our payment to get the max cashback from my current account and so the balance has built up as a result.

Am considering looking into stoozes again - we have about £26k on the credit cards at 0% which is all in interest bearing accounts.  I've been investigating what offers we have on our current cards but will also look at new cards as there is at least two providers I don't hold cards with

Trouble is I've had really complicated arrangements before when we had several cards and it was quite stressful checking minimum payments had gone each month, updating balances, keeping track of when they end (and my OH gets very nervous about his credit record understandably).  We currently only have three card balances and that feels easy and manageable but the extra interest would be useful to put towards the WIOTW balance / FIRE.  Hmmm, decisions.

South_coast

I think with the stoozing I'd work out the actual £ figure that I might get if I went for it, then ask myself a) "Is it worth jumping through the hoops for this amount?"; and b) "Is there an easier way I can make this same amount of money?" 

Excellent work on the batch cooking 👍

CCW007

I think you are right South-coast, good idea.

I have done YouGov polls over the years but find them quite tedious and it takes so long to reach target - every time I cash out I declare I'm not doing them any more.  Last cashed out a few months ago and have been strong so far but keep getting surveys coming through and I can feel myself weakening - help!

savingholmes

Nice to have the £1K refund. Good luck with clearing the cards.

CCW007

Right, I've decided on a mini challenge - to get our WIOTW to £260k by the end of the year.  This means we need to reduce mortgage / increase savings by £21k on where we are now or £18.5k on where we will be at the end of this month.  So we need to reduce WIOTW by £2.6k a month from May onwards.

I would ideally love to get to £250k but that means £31k / £28.5k overall and £4k per month which will be really challenging - great if we can achieve it but I'll go with the lower target as I think it will be achievable and can always aim for the stretch target if we are getting close. We have a trip away in June which will be expensive and some expensive car costs coming up which we need to cover.  

We are also working to reduce our electricity by £50 a month. Currently pay £250 - on a time of use tariff as we have an EV and we load shift as much as possible (hot water, dishwasher, washing machine, car charging) to the cheap rate. 

My EV has V2L (vehicle to load) capacity which allows us to use the car's battery to run appliances up to 2kWh via a three pin plug so we are using it for as much as possible - we have a standalone induction hob which we use to boil the kettle, run the ninja multi cooker / toaster etc on it so all of that power used is coming from the cheap rate.  Will be interesting to see how much of an impact it makes.  

linz

Are you on an Octopus tariff by any chance? They have lots of smart tariffs for those in your position, with EVs etc 

CCW007

Hi Linz!  Yes we are with Octopus, they are great for innovative tariffs.  Once the workshop is finished we plan to get solar and will look at their other tariffs like Flux but for now Go suits us and we load shift anywhere between 1/3 and 1/2 our usage to the cheap rate.

KajiKita

Hello @CCW007 😊

What does “WIOTW” mean? I have been trying to work it out and G00gle has not helped! 😂

KK