Five Year Fix, Five Year Plan

savingholmes

Definitely do it once is a good philosophy 

Merlin's_Beard

LadyWithAPlan said:

Well done on your tax refund curtain pole

ISA's for cash are great and important for FIRE but if your budget (and home) can take it I would aim to put every bit of that HR extra into a SIPP or work pension..  Single best thing you can do by far - 40% rebate - your isa will not do that well..Vanguard sipp is great and low platform fees.
Every year I am there end March sorting out my end yr accounts to exactly plug the HR gap as SE. Now I have set up my company so I pay my SIPP direct from company but I will still be looking at withdrawals and profits to maximise this brilliant tax advantage.

Ouch on the 13k costs, I am sure it all looks fabulous though.

S&S ISA LWAP, not cash!

The downsides of SIPP/pension being, of course that you can't access it until 10 years before pension age. So with cash I've covered now-5 years sensible saving, and SIPP/pension would cover from 25 years from now - death (assuming pension age will creep up and I'll only get to access them at 60). S&S ISA would give some sort of medium term savings. 

And once you're down into the bits of your salary that are out of that higher tax bracket, yes, you get 20% extra into a pension but you also get taxed on the way out - ISAs don't have that tax burden.

As everything, all about finding the right balance...

Merlin's_Beard

I have moved. It was chaos. About nothing went right but it was okay in the end.

Firstly, I still had (and have) no floor in the bathrooms, and at the point of move had no doors still because Flooring Guy had family really ill in hospital. Which is not his fault, but he had repeatedly kept promising to turn up and then realising that he had no childcare and cancelling again (mainly about an hour after he said he'd be there).

Main knock on was that the plan for the Cat Thing was in chaos, because you can't shut a cat in a quiet room when you have no doors.

On the morning, I'd already managed to spill (clumping) cat litter onto the patio, which meant I was frantically trying to sweep up the outside in the rain before it clumped and stuck to the paving slabs, and not leave any behind. And then chucking big buckets of water at the rest to try and dissolve the rest, and brushing it out the fake lawn.

About half an hour after the removal people were meant to show up I'd heard nothing - cue frantic phone calls everywhere and leaving messages. Miscommunication everywhere - they showed up at the time they'd been told to show up (which was not the time I'd been expecting them.) As it's a husband and wife outfit and I'd left messages on both numbers, she calls and tells me she has no idea why they're late, he calls back independently from a different job and drops her in it.

The blinds which were awol suddenly announced that they were going to get delivered right now, this morning - to old house. And because they were courier, the post redirect wouldn't have an effect. Cue my sending my poor mum to sit in an empty house and wait for those while I went onto the new house to position furniture. Also a message to the handyman doing the curtain poles - he can fit them.

Internet man turned up at new house just after the removal guys had finished, and announced that the outside work hadn't been done, showed me the flapping bit of cable that should be connected to my house. Checks his ipad - the work has been marked as done. Still trying to figure out which neighbour has been graced with a connection they didn't ask for. He gets onto them, promises they'll be over from local town at some point.

Flooring Guy then shows up to shave the doors, and he and Internet Guy repeatedly do a mad dance around the doorway that IG was trying to get through about once every 3 minutes and FG was trying to get a door into.

While this is going on, the blinds show up and my poor mum gets to come out of solitary isolation at old house. I had measured them wrong, because I am an idiot. I stare at them for a bit and try not to cry in front of IG and FG.

Anyway, I get my doors on, IG has done as much as he can do, both of them disappear.

Handyman then turns up. Looks at blinds, cuts them down to size, fits them, saves me about £100. Doesn't even make fun of me. He goes on to fit all my curtain poles as well.

At the same time, my internet blips into life.

So everything that was planned to happen, happened. Just took the scenic route to get there!

Hopefully FG will return in the week to give me a bathroom floor!

Merlin's_Beard

On a more financial side, HSBC has told me they're not taking a payment until October, so I'm going to follow my priorities and shove this month's mortgage and OP into the emergency fund. While it's tempting to use the whole thing as OP, I wrote a priority list for a reason!

killerpeaty

Okay so first of all, welcome to your new home! I hope you and cat thing settle in and love it there.

Secondly, it sounds like it's been a hell of a day. Have a sit, a drink and think about how marvelous you are to have survived it.

Third, I love handyman, he's my favourite for rescuing the blinds. Also your mum, she's brilliant too.

Merlin's_Beard

Have completely blitzed the old place. Many spiders lost their homes (more than I'm happy to admit in public, it was a bit grim really), but I want my deposit back!

savingholmes

Sounds like you came through a stressful time really well. 

Welcome to your new place. It will be grand in no time. Hope kitty calms quickly too. 

Good luck for your deposit return. Good call on EF. I too think you've found a keeper in your handyman. At least the blinds were too big rather than too small.

Merlin's_Beard

Cat Thing refused to eat her food on the first morning which is literally a first for what is essentially a labra-cat. Thankfully she's chilled out a lot and even had a moment of zoomies this morning, which makes me feel a lot better about the whole thing on her behalf. Still got the F*liway diffuser chugging away for the first month, and still dosing her up with the Y*Calm capsules to help for the duration as well. The capsules don't have an awful lot of scientific evidence behind them but they don't hurt, so...

Mortgage is still not showing up on my online account and the chat help says I have no mortgage connected to my account at all at the minute, so I couldn't actually OP even if I wanted to @savingholmes - not sure how long I leave that before I start phoning to see what's going on there.

And both you and @killerpeaty are right - handyman is a keeper - fit me in at short notice, turned up on time, not much mess, did a good job - worth his weight in gold.

killerpeaty

Cat thing will be okay, cats are little crazy little things that take up a huge amount of space in our lives. It's been a very short time, it'll settle in before you know it. I know you're the vet here but sometimes you need to hear it from someone else!

I love when handymen just turn up 

savingholmes

Doing fine thanks. My cat is asleep on the window sill one leg dangling off...