Five Year Fix, Five Year Plan

Merlin's_Beard

My best guess was Terminal Annuals, so I guess I wasn't a million miles away

Yearly annual  reviews sound quite a healthy approach to it too, not taking up too much brain space.

Payday has rolled in, so budgets assigned for August. I'm taking your advice SH and deliberately putting some money into the holidays budget. Also setting a fixed amount aside for the garden as well, in the hope that that becomes a steady part of my budget. And slightly increasing my emergency fund in a planned way - after reviewing spending earlier, six months of expenses has just increased a bit, because everything within the budget has gone up in price. So I'm going to add £100 a month until I've added an extra £1000.

savingholmes

Sounds like you are balancing things well.

I'm eyeing up when I can go on holiday... after the school kids go back. I need to ensure DD is around to look after the cat though - and she's having a break herself around the time I was considering... 

FlacosFloozie

Hi Merlin, sounds like you've been making great progress with the garden. I can recommend both lavender (fills spaces and seems to be virtually indestructable) and petunias (available in cheap packs, spread out to fill space, add colour and seem to be slug resistant).

I get the all or nothing mentality and its hard to shift out of. I find YNAB helps a lot for this. I tend to set lots of mini targets in different categories. Instead of throwing everything spare at your student loan could you set a target to overpay by a smaller amount this year? I also really like looking at the report at the end of the month. Seeing the debts dropping and assets creeping up does help keep me motivaited

killerpeaty

Where would you like to go on holiday?

I generally only review the money/net worth once a month for about 30 minutes and then ignore it. Life is already hard, why make it harder?

Merlin's_Beard

@killerpeaty I would like to go on holiday, everywhere, this is the problem! The UK is frankly as expensive as going abroad, and I've done a lot of UK travel, so probably abroad. I've got a week off in October, and a week in December. So I could either think about somewhere like Malta or Cyprus or Madeira in October (ie Southern Europe to north Africa-ish), or I could think about a Christmas market in Prague/Vienna/similar in December, or even Eurostar to Bruges. I just want to go away, eat a lot of food, see a lot of sights.

I've been mangling some student loan calculators and think the plan is going to be to divert the mortgage OP fund to the SLC (it's sat in a high interest regular saver until . I think (tentatively) the payrise will give me an extra £200-230 a month. If I can increase the OP from £250pm to £300pm, divert it to the student loan, I should be able to aim at the start of 2026 as my loan-free date.

Then I have 12-18 months of just the mortgage before I need to remortgage.

It feels a bit weird to give up the mortgage OPs as the route to being mortgage free, but Kajikita was right in that it's silly to focus on the cheaper debt. And increasing by £50 a month at the same time as I get a pay rise seems like a nice balance between servicing the debts and not being in service to the debts - I'll increase my pension savings as well from £400 to £450, so the pay rise is split 50 50ish between long term and short term.

savingholmes

That sounds a really balanced approach.

A friend of mine did the Eurostar to Bruges and had a fab time.

Merlin's_Beard

July roundup:

£1148.61 saved this month, much better.

Emergency savings fund: £11992.47/£12,000 (nearly there)

Surveys this month: £105 - the magical YouGov payout helping there. Yougov participants must be the only people who look forward to political turmoil.

Food spends: £217.98 - this includes the discounted hellofresh box that isn't going to be delivered until Friday so I'm calling that a win.

Bookdate: Read three books (The Idiot, which ironically I didn't really understand; The Man in the High Castle, which I didn't like as a tv series and it turns out I don't really rate as a book; and To Be Taught, If Fortunate which thankfully was Becky Chambers so I loved it, to stop me sounding like a miserable g*t.) Bought four books so a book negative month. I'm blaming the material, and here's to a more enjoyable reading month next month.

Currently taking advantage of a free Prime trial for 30 days to watch Good Omens, any recommendations welcome!

Moneyfordreams

Whale is good on prime , Brendan Frazer film.

I cancelled my prime as I didn't use it enough - then this came out and I rented it   

Merlin's_Beard

SP have decided that they want to reduce my energy DD to £70, which I'm fairly sure is a mistake but I'm taking it. That's literally £100 cheaper than 6 months ago. Hopefully it stays that low.

Same as everywhere else, it is tipping it down here today. Run and gardening put on hold, clothes going through the dryer, and there's no other excuse not to clean the house this weekend except that the cat's sitting on my head.

Ploughing through The Marvelous Mrs Maisel on Prime.

KajiKita

The cat is literally sitting on your head ….? We need photographic evidence! 😂😉❤️

Good news on the energy DD - always better to have it in your account earning interest for you rather than in theirs, for them! 😊

KK