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Ding! Ding! All change, please... (now replaced with new diary on MFW)
Comments
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Fascinating - thanks for sharingstarnac said:
July in Welsh is Gorffennaf which can be split into two words - Gorffen which means Finish and Af which is a shortened version of Haf which means Summer. So July literally means The End of Summer. As children we took it to mean Finish For the Summer which is a nicer translation.EssexHebridean said:Afternoon gang - and here, I have to say, it is a very muggy, cloudy, grey and rain-threatening afternoon. In short - WHO STOLE JULY?!
Achieve FIRE/Mortgage Neutrality in 2030
1) MFW Nov 21 £202K now £171.8K Equity 36.37%
2) £2.6K Net savings after CCs 10/10/25
3) Mortgage neutral by 06/30 (AVC £27.9K + Lump Sums DB £4.6K + (25% of SIPP 1.25K) = 34/£127.5K target 26.6% 10/10/25
(If took bigger lump sum = 60.35K or 47.6%)
4) FI Age 60 income target £17.1/30K 57% (if mortgage and debts repaid - need more otherwise) (If bigger lump sum £15.8/30K 52.67%)
5) SIPP £5K updated 10/10/255 -
Have fun, and yes, have one for me too! I prefer light session bitters, personallySave £12k in 2025 #2 I am at £10,020.92 out of £6000 after September
OS Grocery Challenge in 2025 I am at £2234.63/£3000 or 74.49% of my annual spend so far (not going to be much of a Christmas at this rate as no spare after 9 months!
I also Reverse Meal Plan on that thread and grow much of our own premium price fruit and veg, joining in on the Grow your own thread
My new diary is here4 -
Hope you’re having a great time.LTotal Debt Dec 07 £59875.83 Overdrafts £2900,New Debt Figure ZERO !!!!!!:j 08/06/2013
Lucielle's Daring Debt Free Journey
DFD Before we Die!!!! Long Haul Supporter #1244 -
Hope you're enjoying yourself EH!
I'm just catching up after my month off (ish) the Internet. Sounds like all is progressing reasonably with your house! We too had a panicky sales agent - she never ONCE spelled my name right in all her emails, and I have NEVER seen so many exclamation marks from anyone in a professional capacity or otherwise.
Oddly enough, I just went searching through my emails for an example but it seems she calmed down considerably towards the end, once we had our mortgage and everything was in place - and when I was being cross about the bottom of the chain having told everyone they were ready to exchange, but then finding out Granny had given them their deposit but not signed the money laundering paperwork before going on a cruise, she actually told ME that we needed to keep calm! 😂😂 "We will all try to keep calm Cheery, and hope it all comes together shortly. We don't want to upset the first time buyer at this late stage" 🙄😂😂
Fortunately we did all keep (relatively) calm and exchanged less than a fortnight later 😂 No wonder it's all so stressful though!6 -
Cheery I well remember your panicking agent - what a nightmare that one was! ours too seems to have calmed down a little now, although that may in part be that she now knows we have direct comms with the sellers so she can't create any mayhem!
Starnac thank you for that lovely bit of information - that's fascinating! I love finding out things about how words come about in other languages!
And thanks to all who dropped in and wished us well for the festival - your collective good vibes must have had an effect too as we had a really great week, ending up with just 16 pints unsold on our bar which was so close to a sell-out we don't even care that we didn't quite get there! That means that in the course of the 5 days we were open we sold over 9,000 pints in total on our bar which is quite a good-sounding number isn't it - but most importantly across the festival as a whole things went well - a number of bars did sell out, we judged the sale or return element pretty decently on the bars where that applies, and we had lots of happy folk in through the doors having a great time!
Now it's back to reality - I was off work yesterday (which was a good decision as there was lots of firefighting of panics to sort out in between various breweries not collecting their empties or having even managed to completely forget that they needed to...I may have been herd to utter the phrase "herding cats" again once or twice! I also managed to get out for the shopping - Lils this week, and a bargainous £32.56 for the standard post-beer-festival trolleyfull which is mainly fruit and veg! Got king prawns for a stir fry last night, pork chops for a couple of meals during the week and probably two for the freezer, and took advantage of the offer on the card for 2 x ready to wok noodles for £1 as that was a good saving.
House moving stuff still seems to be shuffling along - our buyer is apparently away now, but then again so is Mr Boss. The probate is through on our sellers onward purchase, and we are all ready at our end, so once the buyer is back and Mr Boss we can hopefully get exchanged. I checked the finances again last night and the money is all straight, the final part of the cash side of it matures on Friday so I will switch it to the C0v3ntry at that stage so it's all basically in once place apart from a very small amount needed to top up. I've paid the removals company this morning for the part of the cost which relates to the boxes and they will be delivering those hopefully at the end of the week. We also brought back some empty boxes from the festival which will be ideal for packing glasses and similar (we've got the dividing inserts for glasses as well so even better) and to be honest now we're just of a mind to start packing things up starting with the least used cupboards etc.
Other than that - banks all checked and good, and the spending from last weekend wasn't as steep as I was expecting so I will be transferring some of the top-up money I sent to my spends account back to the "fun stuff" account for use elsewhere. The transfer of my mobile contract and number all went smoothly barring a little glitch on the first evening when I couldn't get texts to send - that righted itself overnight thankfully so was presumably just as things settled down. Food is roughly planned for the rest of the week - there will be couscous this evening with roasted veg and halloumi, tomorrow will be pork chops with new potatoes and veg, and Thursday will probably be some form of traybake type thing with chops again - possibly marinaded. Friday is too far ahead for my poor tired brain to think about as yet!🎉 MORTGAGE FREE (First time!) 30/09/2016 🎉 And now we go again…New mortgage taken 01/09/23 🏡
Balance as at 01/09/23 = £115,000.00 Balance as at 31/12/23 = £112,000.00
Balance as at 31/08/24 = £105,400.00 Balance as at 31/12/24 = £102,500.00
Balance as at 31/08/25 = £ 95,450.00
£100k barrier broken 1/4/25SOA CALCULATOR (for DFW newbies): SOA Calculatorshe/her12 -
Welcome back to reality. Glad to hear you had a good time.Making the debt go down and savings go up
LBM 2015 - debt £57K / Now £28,084....its going down
Mortgage Free December 9th 2024! 18mths ahead of schedule. Since 2022 we paid over £15K in OPs.Challenges
EF #68 £850/£3000
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Studies/surveys November £0
Decluttering items 1382/2025
Books read 20
Jigsaws done 18
My debt free diary...https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6396218/we-will-get-this-debt-d£own-the-savings-up5 -
Welcome back EH - so lovely to hear it went well!4 YEARS 10 MONTHS DEBT FREE!!! (24 OCT 2016)(With heartfelt thanks to those who have gone before us & their indubitable generosity.)...and now I have a mortgage! (23 AUG 2021)New projection - 14 YEARS 7 MONTHS LEFT OF 20 YEARS (reduced by 17 mths)4
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Sounds like you all had a great time. Brilliant sales on the beer and I’d take that as a win.Hopefully get a moving date very soon.LTotal Debt Dec 07 £59875.83 Overdrafts £2900,New Debt Figure ZERO !!!!!!:j 08/06/2013
Lucielle's Daring Debt Free Journey
DFD Before we Die!!!! Long Haul Supporter #1244 -
Glad it went well
"Good financial planning is about not spending money on things that add no value to your life in order to have more money for the things that do". Eoin McGee3 -
Sounds like it all went exceptionally well. Anyone would think you are a great organiser...Achieve FIRE/Mortgage Neutrality in 2030
1) MFW Nov 21 £202K now £171.8K Equity 36.37%
2) £2.6K Net savings after CCs 10/10/25
3) Mortgage neutral by 06/30 (AVC £27.9K + Lump Sums DB £4.6K + (25% of SIPP 1.25K) = 34/£127.5K target 26.6% 10/10/25
(If took bigger lump sum = 60.35K or 47.6%)
4) FI Age 60 income target £17.1/30K 57% (if mortgage and debts repaid - need more otherwise) (If bigger lump sum £15.8/30K 52.67%)
5) SIPP £5K updated 10/10/253
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