Prosperous soul, mortgage neutrality & creativity Year 2

savingholmes

It's a brain dumping day.

My brain is overfull - so it feels like I'm on a canal boat and opening the sluice gate to let the water flow differently so I can move on in every sense of the word. I was talking to my counsellor the other day - I'm normally that annoying person who remembers the little details others wanted to forget - but right now I'm saying sorry brain too full - need to look that up which is practically unheard of for me... I think my brain would have shut down and I'd have ended up off sick if I hadn't been trialling stimulant meds during this period!! So kind of grateful that I had the meds at least - although it's really hard to separate out how much of what I feel is work related, how much due to the stress of trying to move - and how much could be weird effects from the meds.

I had to move a hairdresser appointment due to a clash with my holiday - but that's sorted now.  I also booked the cat in for his injections at the start of November and formally booked some leave. Shows my head is gradually releasing space to think about things beyond my recent peak workload and moving. I need to ring the garage back and say the car is due a minor service not a major as I wasn't sure when they asked. I've still got a couple of weeks before that appointment.

Like Jwil I want to give myself choices. I want to avoid becoming / staying house-poor (where too big a % of income goes on that) - and instead redirect more money towards my pension - particularly while I have the benefit of P1p and work full time. Like Jwil is pondering on her diary - I keep playing with the numbers. As long as I don't increase my debt / mortgage load and I keep p1p which isn't guaranteed - I could go part time by 60 - around 6 years and 8 months for me, I may even be able to stop working if I wanted.  If I move - a more local job would be welcome at some point and more choice of how many hours to work. I had a look at jobs last night in the area I'm looking to move to and there are jobs on decent salaries which surprised me as it's so much more rural there.

I discovered on trawling my DB pension site - that they've reduced the % they reduce my pension by if I take it early. 1.6% less on the headline rate at 60 compared with what it was before which was positive. For a moment I worried they'd gone the other way. My main pension next April should also go up by inflation - so hopefully 6.7%. That is definitely one of the biggest benefits of my job although in the past we've had rises of 1.5%.

After I've moved and sorted my new place out - I want to get back to art and writing more and creating a new life for myself. I must remember to go to the art course I booked for the next 4 Thursday evenings. Life feels so hectic currently it would be easy to forget. 

savingholmes

Hope your week is going well. Savour the little pleasures.

Things I am grateful for:

I love that I invested in indoor plants as part of this home staging - as there's one in this room with a bright red flower (Arthurium) which always makes me smile. It can flower virtually all year around if you are careful with it. Apparently it's toxic to pets which I didn't realise but I've put it in an awkward place so hopefully it's fine. I may move the other two from DD's bedroom into mine so I can enjoy them more. I think they find her room a bit dark - as there are brown patches on some of the leaves that I haven't had downstairs. I then also have a mirrored round tray with three further plants with all different shapes of pot and leaves - Stephanotis, Orchid and Sansevieria which is right next to me. I bought two twin stemmed expensive orchids at the same time - one upstairs in my bedroom that dropped its flowers a month or more ago and then one in the kitchen that is still flowering. I then have a huge dragon tree plant in the corner of the kitchen, and then at least 6 others not currently flowering plants scattered around the house. I think I had two before this!

Outside I have a purple hibiscus in flower and pink two toned one. My sedum Autumn glory are living up to their name. I have a fuscia, hydrangeas, busy lizzies all still in flower. My Mahonia Japonica has just bloomed with its stunning winter yellow flowers. Weirdly my purple azalea is flowering again and I still have pinky geraniums in flower near my pond. My broccoli is flowering well - pretty yellow flowers - the butterflies/caterpillars had feasted so much on it I just left if for them. I have a little pink cosmos still flowering at the front. 
My sis has just redecorated her living room and has picked the perfect colours to go with a painting I gave her for her 40th so she can now show it off to full effect. 

I love having choices. I love that other than the mortgage I'm pretty much debt free. I love having a good job that pays well and in which I'm respected. I love that I'm doing better now financially than I ever have. I love having colleagues I get on with (mostly). 

DD seems happy. She recently had a pay rise which helps. DS is doing okay. Work is settling down. 

For today at least, life is good.

LadyWithAPlan

savingholmes said:

Hope your week is going well. Savour the little pleasures.

Things I am grateful for:

I love that I invested in indoor plants as part of this home staging - as there's one in this room with a bright red flower (Arthurium) which always makes me smile. It can flower virtually all year around if you are careful with it. Apparently it's toxic to pets which I didn't realise but I've put it in an awkward place so hopefully it's fine. I may move the other two from DD's bedroom into mine so I can enjoy them more. I think they find her room a bit dark - as there are brown patches on some of the leaves that I haven't had downstairs. I then also have a mirrored round tray with three further plants with all different shapes of pot and leaves - Stephanotis, Orchid and Sansevieria which is right next to me. I bought two twin stemmed expensive orchids at the same time - one upstairs in my bedroom that dropped its flowers a month or more ago and then one in the kitchen that is still flowering. I then have a huge dragon tree plant in the corner of the kitchen, and then at least 6 others not currently flowering plants scattered around the house. I think I had two before this!

Outside I have a purple hibiscus in flower and pink two toned one. My sedum Autumn glory are living up to their name. I have a fuscia, hydrangeas, busy lizzies all still in flower. My Mahonia Japonica has just bloomed with its stunning winter yellow flowers. Weirdly my purple azalea is flowering again and I still have pinky geraniums in flower near my pond. My broccoli is flowering well - pretty yellow flowers - the butterflies/caterpillars had feasted so much on it I just left if for them. I have a little pink cosmos still flowering at the front. 
My sis has just redecorated her living room and has picked the perfect colours to go with a painting I gave her for her 40th so she can now show it off to full effect. 

I love having choices. I love that other than the mortgage I'm pretty much debt free. I love having a good job that pays well and in which I'm respected. I love that I'm doing better now financially than I ever have. I love having colleagues I get on with (mostly). 

DD seems happy. She recently had a pay rise which helps. DS is doing okay. Work is settling down. 

For today at least, life is good.

Wonderful list of gratitudes here  

jwil

Fantastic gratitude post!

Hope the viewing goes well today, the house sounds promising.  You're obviously putting a lot of thought into how it would work for you both practically and financially, and that is really promising and you are not being blinded by one aspect over the others.

In terms of the work, they say it's good to live somewhere for 6-12 months before making any big changes, as what you think you want might turn out to be different in reality.  That's definitely been the case for us.  It's also not impossible to have work done even with a horrendously cluttered house like ours!  It just takes more planning.  I'd definitely prioritise anything that results in multiple room disruption - i.e. electrics, and anything relating to living safely - floorboards etc.  It is hard, and disruptive and very stressful having work done, but if you've got places you can stay, that might help soften the blow.  At least with today's viewing you can balance the work needed to make the house exactly as you'd like it, compared with the one that's almost oven ready!

savingholmes

Thanks LWAP

I was awake a lot of the night again. Obviously a 3 day gap in meds at the weekend is too many. That was without the second tablet yesterday. What's worse is that I have to start some brand new meds soon and slowly go up. On a positive though - I've suddenly breached a weight plateau and I've now lost 1 stone since starting these meds. Really happy with that. That was one of my goals for the year. You know how most of the time we set ridiculously high goals like lose 6st in a year. This year I set myself a goal of reducing my weight by 1st a year between now and hopefully early retirement which is far more achievable. My BP has also dropped while on these meds.

I've just printed a couple of floor plans one showing the layout at this afternoon's house - and one showing the revised floor plan a few doors up to take with me - and also to compare with my own so I get a better feel for how I can use the space.

On that house - I may create a window between the kitchen and the dining/study area next door - so I can use the latter as a WFH space like in this house. I may add a Juliette balcony on it - to bring the outside in and maximise the hillside views. Where I thought the neighbour had knocked a wall through into the lounge - I now think  she created a new partition with a window instead and moved the door so that the her dining part of the kitchen diner was accessed from the hall not the lounge. That should make that part a little cheaper - as I liked how she'd done that as it maximised the views. Coming back to the kitchen - the WFH space seems to be about 2ft deeper than mine here - so depending on cost I may still move that wall to make the kitchen 2ft bigger instead and then create a mini dining area overlooking the view through the new window in that extra space. 

I looked online at the photos again - and the windows have black on them!! I imagine if that was easy to get off they'd have already done it. I'd have wanted to change the design of 3 of them anyway though so not too concerned about that as I've priced it in (roughly).

Best have a shower now and get on with you know working ahead of my afternoon off!

EssexHebridean

I suggest when you start looking at quotations from removals firms SH you make a point of explaining to them that you would need to pack into smaller boxes rather than their larger ones - I could just about shift the large ones as long as they weren't packed with heavy stuff, but even the heaviest of the smaller ones I could move at a pinch if needed - and some of ours were pretty densely packed. You could look at packing "lighter" into the smaller boxes as that would mean you'd still be able to move things as needed once you were in. our larger heavier boxes there was not a chance I could move as much due to arm-length as anything else. one for your "stuff to think about" list!

I assume that the drop in BP is related to the reduction in anxiety with the meds - that would be logical? 

savingholmes

Hi EH and Jwil

Anything is possible re BP.

I would mainly use 1kea cubes for packing as I have a lot of those type of units. It's furniture I'd struggle to move. But I agree keep boxes small.

Sadly on £225K house I think the amount of work needed means for there to be profit/sufficient risk margin it would need to be closer to £200k. Pretty much everything needed doing. Nothing was sealed. Fly strip paper full of flies is not a good look either!! Even the guttering was past it so doesn't sound like the landlord was good either. 

House had a bad feel to it. Not helped by bolt on outside of a bedroom door. Neighbours suspected tenants of drug growing...

I am therefore considering Sunday's house more seriously. That house was move in ready. RM suggests price reasonable. It means I wouldn't reduce my mortgage though. If I paid full asking I would virtually empty my EF. Would be worth trying to offer below asking...

Currently in an Italian restaurant with a view of green hills... while I ponder...

I need to work back through my sums... 

beanielou

Enjoy your Italian 

Merlin's_Beard

Worth thinking that 100% WFH jobs are likely to be more popular over time as well, if you're thinking that far ahead.

Glad you've got one more house definitely off the list though, yet another decision made.

LadyWithAPlan

ooh, happy decision making, at least you know the £225k is out