Arrietty's Acorns

Arrietty

Good morning,

it's a sunny and breezy day here but is due to cloud over later. I'm having a relaxed morning today having been super productive yesterday and got all my chores done as well as popping to Waitrose and the chemist to collect my prescription before I went to the yard.

It's been another expensive week - but this time just keeping myself and the homes supplied with groceries and household essentials. I went to Sainsbugs to do a BIG shop on Thursday evening - my first visit after I had a full stop and search in April which really annoyed me! Well it was certainly BIG in terms of cost … even with various offers it cost £119.61 😮

I picked up a couple of cleaning products but bear in mind I don't buy loo rolls from the supermarket and I don't buy any beauty products there either so it was just a couple of packs of bathroom wipes, bathroom cleaner, bleach and a pair of gloves… the rest was food! I stocked up on pantry items and noticed that they no longer had the 1kg packs of spaghetti but the 500g pack was £1.50. A bag of Demerara sugar - I use that for everything and it does last a long time but it had gone up from £3.50 the last time I bought it to £5.25!!

My favourite quiches were on offer again; 3 for £8 so I got those to put in the freezer and also got 2 packs of rolls for work lunches and some frozen veg and fish fingers for my lazy dinners. I bought a few different cheeses and big blocks of Cheddar and Red Leicester as I use it a lot in cooking (or just for eating) and their dates are pleasingly long. One bonus is that my mini-cheddars habit was rewarded as the packs of 12 were on offer for £2 so I bought 2 bags and mentally calculated that that was 6 weeks worth of packed lunch snacks!

An interesting and previously not-thought-about benefit of leaving work at lunchtime on a Friday means I'm only having to make 4 packed lunches a week which actually works out really well. I tend to do 2 at a time and having an odd one at the end of the week was quite annoying but not anymore - it's the little things 😆

I popped to Waitrose yesterday morning to get a few fresh bits that I prefer to buy there and that was another £32.67 gone - yes, that was partly due to my ice cream and chocolate habit but I'm stocking up while things are on offer. Then to collect my prescription and that was another £19.80 gone.

So a total of £172.08 spent in 3 days, to sustain just 1 person. No meat or fish other than fish fingers was included in that shopping. What I'm struggling to work out is what it costs to sustain me for a week or day. I know I over buy some times because I don't like running my stocks down to nothing and although they're adults and no longer live at home, I always like to have enough in to feed / supply my children if necessary! I also think that if I'm taken ill or can't get to shops I can still feed myself.

HRH on the other hand has for once been completely cost-free this week 😁 He's been an absolute joy as well which is great because that means he's feeling really well in himself and no extremes of temperature have affected him. I rode two days in a row during the week which he accepted without a murmur and then had a day off and then walked him in hand one day and had an excellent ride again yesterday. I try to vary the routes we do when hacking mixed in with letting him choose where we go sometimes and he was really forward and sure-footed so clearly putting shoes back on was the right thing to do for him. I'm happy to take them off over winter as per the farrier's suggestion but next year will have them put back on a month earlier.

To the money …

No changes to any of the accounts other than the new one. I added the £25 Premium bond win when it appeared and 2 scoops totalling £9.07.

Emergency Fund = £49.95

I'm currently taking part in an on-line finance course and gradually coming to terms with the fact that I need to streamline my accounts and do investing rather than saving. I know in my head that that's the only way to really 'grow' my money which is the whole reason I'm here and hence the diary being called Arrietty's ACORNS but I'm still struggling with the concept of having "too much cash" and then when you add in the making choices between stocks & shares ISAs' and SIPPs and the tax implications of it all … well, it just blows my not very mathematical brain and I am struck with inertia!

I fully appreciate that I'm very fortunate to be able to even think about these options but sometimes, just sometimes, I feel that life was much simpler when I had income, essential outgoings, a tiny savings pot for future expenses and everything else spare was thrown at clearing my debts!

Have a lovely day x

Arrietty

Another little update - well, I say 'little' but it will probably turn into a lengthy ramble as I tend to do a lot of musing on here.

It is already very warm and due to be alarmingly hot over the next few days. I leave for work at 6:40am so it's not too bad then and my office is in what is charmingly referred to as 'Level 1/ Lower Ground Floor' but to you and me 'tis the basement - there are no windows so the temperature remains fairly constant throughout the day but leaving work at 3:30 is always a shock!

The sheep fields are now open and a track has been cut through them so HRH and I had a lovely wander round there on Saturday but I don't expect to ride for the rest of the week so I will be mainly performing feeding and hosing down duties and trying to get him to stay in the shade.

A lot more decluttering was done over the weekend; 2 bags taken to charity shop and some old and rickety furniture pieces from YD' old bedroom dismantled and put into shed ready to go to the tip next week. I truly believe that deep inside me is a minimalist and whilst I've been decluttering for years now … I suspect that my primary skill has actually been clever concealment. I'm fairly tidy and I don't like ornaments per se, but what I realised over the weekend is that I've been gathering things like candles and candlesticks which essentially perform the same duty as an ornament and who, in their right minds, is lighting 8 taper candles of an evening, as well as a scented one in this weather 😄

No changes on the money front other than I've done a few scoops over to the new emergency fund and now have a total of £79.50 in there. Payday on Friday so all the shuffling and sharing will be done then.

I have now accepted the fact that investment is where I need to focus my money in order to maximise it and possibly think about retiring a couple of years early or at least significantly reducing my hours, however, I've filled a cash ISA for a reason this year and that amount is staying put!

I'm still focused on building an immediately accessible emergency fund but I'm now also thinking that perhaps I should continue with saving as much cash as possible until April next year, at which point I can then pour a decent amount into a Stocks and Shares ISA 🤨 I know I could be putting that money into a SIPP now instead, but I'm still not fully understanding how they work in terms of withdrawals, tax, annuities etc and I think they are probably far more complex than is necessary for my modest means!

There won't be any major changes to my plans until August now as decorators and wedding costs are my main focus, but from then on it will be full steam ahead 🚂

Have a lovely day

x

Skint_yet_Again

Hope you both stay cool with the hose Arrietty 🥵

Stock & shares always scared me as they say your money can go down as well as up 😨 I’m very risk adverse. I hope it works out for you as I’m sure that’s where the big bucks can be made 🤞

Arrietty

Good morning,

thanks @Skint_yet_Again the hose is our best friend! I hear you re investing and it scares me too but I don't think I will ever have enough cash to retire comfortably and investing seems to be the only way I can get to the next level without robbing a bank and frankly, ,it's far too hot to be wearing a balaclava 😂

Hopefully today is the last obscenely hot day. We were due a bit of rain during the night but I can't see that it happened and the sun is up and blazing away.

I saw a tip about putting foil on your windows to reflect the sun and immediately thought of all those reflective panels I bought a couple of years ago to put behind the radiators to keep the heat in during winter…. I opened the cupboard they were in and decided it was far too hot to be clambering about and decided it was indeed an excellent tip and that I shall remember it for the next heat dome! I have to say it really pleased me to think that they could be used both during summer and winter.

All during the last week my home has felt fairly cool when I got in after work and yard and I was feeling fairly pleased about that. Well, with my first day of annual leave yesterday, I discovered that is not at all cool when you're in it and usually when I get home it has it has had a few hours to cool down once the sun moved round the other side. Shame I didn't think about those reflective panels 5 days ago 😂

Anyway, alongside yesterday being the first day of 10 days away from work 🙌 it was also payday so I did some shuffling to my various pots.

Livery fees are due to go out on Wednesday and he has Farrier visit on Friday so it won't last but for now…HRH account = £372.68 -

Car & Christmas fund = £800.00

This account is one where I keep the interest rate of 3% as long as I only make 2 withdrawals a year which is why I thought it would be perfect for car & Christmas funds. However, it's a lower interest rate than my Early Retirement Fund account which has no restrictions on withdrawals and pays the interest monthly 🤔 so my plan was to try NOT to withdraw anything from it for either car or Christmas until the interest gets paid in April next year and then I"ll close it. I will then continue to pay £100 a month towards car / Christmas but into a different account…

Actually… having just re-read that, it makes absolutely NO SENSE whatsoever to keep this account open for another 10 months especially when I may need to withdraw the money in 6 months in order to receive a one-off interest payment at a lower rate than an account I already have! I need to transfer that money into the highest interest paying account and close it now!

It's annoying how my brain works; it likes to keep things separate so I can see what I have in each pot but I could just continue to track each pot and throw it all in together to maximise the interest.

That is exactly why I like to come and waffle on my diary to get things out of my head so I can reflect on them and then take action if they don't make sense.

Emergency Fund = £100.07

Just a few scoops this week; some untidy pounds and a couple of cashback payments and that's all that will be going in there until August unless I have a win on the PB's. The money to pay decorators is also sitting in the same account and yes, I should have either left in in my PB's until I needed to pay them, or transferred it to my EF. At the time I wasn't sure how long it took for withdrawals to be paid… now I know withdrawals are paid the same day which is another reason I'm now sure that putting car/christmas fund money in there is the right thing to do.

Water Bill / Linked Saver = £446.33

I feel like I should rename this one the Mean Account such is the measly interest rate 🤣 However, it's where they save my change to and it serves its purpose as somewhere to keep future bills money and do a speedy transfer if funds are getting low towards payday. I find that by transferring £100 in stops them from messaging me to warn me I have less than £50 in there and suggesting I might like an over draft, car loan, etc… So, I have repaid the £100 I borrowed and added another £50 towards the future water bill, whenever that may be.

Monthly Saver = £250.00

This account is due to close sometime in August and I only stuck that £250 in there to make it worthwhile as I'm not able to close it so just have to wait for it to run it's term and then the bank will close it for me and hopefully give me 25p or whatever. If I have any spare cash between now and mid august I will add it in there, otherwise it can just wait to be be closed.

It's funny how you can open as many accounts as you like via apps … but closing them is not nearly so simple. I've had to send a secure message to the other bank to close that car /christmas fund even after I withdrawn the money.

Early Retirement Fund = £12,000.15

Yes, it has hurt to not be paying into this one as it feels as though my actual plans have stalled but it's only in the short term. I am actually considering withdrawing a bit more 1) to cover the wedding costs and 2) to also just fill the easy access emergency fund to get that 'done' and then I can get back to focusing on building up the actual purpose of the fund without having to think about anything else.

I will, of course, be putting the car/christmas money in there each month as that will serve to maximise and compound the monthly interest. Compounding is where it's at! Still unsure whether I should dump my PBs into a SIPP now - I know there are tax benefits when paying in but I'm still learning about the tax implications of withdrawals and will never have enough in there to buy an annuity - whatever that and crystallisation of funds means - or wait until next April and dump into a S&S ISA.

Both SIPPS and S&S ISA's values can go up and down and at some point funds need to be switched from accumulation to income or dividend and I suspect that I have enough years left to learn all this stuff and benefit from it which leads me to conclude that I probably need to meet with a financial planner / advisor! To be completely honest, I'm not even sure if they're the same thing 😀.

Have a lovely day x

Arrietty

Hello,

it's been a couple of weeks since I last updated or really even thought about budgets and savings and that's because I have spending like a woman possessed 😮

One day of my annual leave was spent shopping for wedding accessories with ED and having lunch. We had a lovely, lovely day and under her guidance I came home with a pair of shoes, a fascinator and a handbag on order (none in stock at the shop). Bearing in mind I had already bought my dress in the sale for £63, the shoes were also in the sale for £73 ( yes, quite a lot but they will go nicely with lots of other clothes I have ) the fascinator was in the sale for £69 …(unlikely to be worn again but eh, it's my Daughters wedding) I thought I was doing ok until it came to the bag which was £120!!! For a tiny and likely never to used again item. Anyway. later that week I received an email to say it had been lost in transit and would I like a refund or a replacement… 🤔 a quick search on eBay and I found a similar but much more practicaly-sized bag for £15 which I bought and was delivered 2 days later.

Total cost of my wedding outfit is £220 which I don't think is too bad for 4 items.

Anyway, whilst I was out shopping the lovely decorators were getting on with their work and completed the entire place in 4 days. They were brilliant, nothing now niggles at me when I look around and they did so much prep work, filling cracks and holes that should I so desire in the furtur,e I could easily paint myself. I absolutely will NOT be doing that but it won't ever cost that amount again. I was so pleased with how clean and fresh and smooth it looks, I didn't want to put any pictures back up 😆. I have only hung 2 so far (ones my Mother painted and which are so bright and cheerful I love them) everything else is just leaning & waiting to see if I do want it hung!

Total cost was £2560 and they left me all the unused paint which includes a giant tub of emulsion and half a tub of very fancy mould-resistant kitchen and bathroom paint. Absolutely worth every penny to me.

Unfortunately this (carefully considered and budgeted cost) - seems to unleashed an absolute beast of spending mania within me. This is something I thought I had conquered and put behind me … but apparently not 😟

I spent one morning unloading the shed and loading my car and then travelling to and from the tip three times and got rid of various unwanted and dismantled old shelf units, decor, mirrors and blinds. Took my car for a thorough cleaning inside and out afterwards and was so ashamed at the state of it I left a rather large tip - total spend £30 🙄 but I felt very proud of myself for having tackled the mounting shed-clutter and consequently rewarded myself / car.

I had a lovely day down in West Sussex with an old colleague who took out for lunch - honestly the best food I've had in ages - where they catered for dogs and brought a giant water bowl and a plate of biscuits - we had a Springer and a recently rescued Cocker with us and they were CHAOS 🤣 but staff were all dog lovers so ti was fine, Lovely animals but made me realise a horse suits me better - he doesn't have to come out to lunch with me|! The meal was astonishingly expensive and I wasn't allowed to contribute so I sent an M&S afternoon tea hamper as a thank you - £35.

The heat has been really getting to me, I've felt hot & grubby a lot of the time and after a BIG wardrobe declutter I realised there were a couple of gaps so I decided to get a couple of new items to replace ones I was relating and that is where everything started to unravel….

A bit of a splurge followed with some wafty striped linen trousers, a linen top, a linen shirt, a cotton maxi dress and some new underwear … total cost £227.45 😮

I got a bit carried away with how fresh and clean my bedroom looks and after an incident which resulted in my lovely white bedlinen coming out a dirty beige pink colour … I decided on some fresh bedding and that I absolutely deserve lovely 100% cotton percale with a very high threadcount… 3 new bedding sets later that was another £239 😲

I was back at work last week but had to do a quick grocery shop at Waitrose on Tuesday and for some reason I spent £83.48 🤷‍♀️… then met up with both Daughters on Friday to have a look at the wedding venue and get an idea of proceedings, of course we had lunch as well and because I'm Mum and literally incapable of NOT spending at the moment I paid - £67

Spending then continued with some (admittedly divine) candles from a small independent brand and some 'age-defying' skincare ( which will vanish any forms of crepeiness so it declared) and then some new blinds for the kitchen which were actually replacements but still… total spend for that lot was £129.08.

Of course, as I had to collect the blinds from Sainsbugs, I thought I might as well do a bit of grocery shipping whilst there …£55.70. Miraculously did not get Stopped & Searched but how on earth have I spent £139 on groceries in just 4 days and all I ever seem to buy is chicken, fruit, water and salad items?

I then spent an hour sweating on top of the kitchen counters while I put the blinds up ( blinds are mainly to help filter the sunlight coming in first thing in the morning and later afternoon) and of course, this morning was the very first morning in a bout 3 weeks that was both cloudy and breezy 😂.

Had I known that my blinds purchase and installation efforts had the power to stop the sun from shining I would, of course, have done this weeks ago and saved everyone in the South East from waking up to blistering heat every day.

Needless to say, my Credit Card is currently holding a rather large balance which needs to be paid off by 27th July but thankfully I have barely used my current account so that will cover the majority of it and I have withdrawn cash from my Early Retirement Fund to pay for wedding gift/accommodation so that's accounted for.

I've declared all the above both to hold myself accountable for my (clearly not all necessary) spending and also to remind myself just how easy it is to get completely carried away when I have credit at my disposal.

I think I'm very much a 'reward spender' as in, after the unwanted spending on my car I felt I deserved some treats and then after the decorating spending, I wanted to update my home / reward it with some fresh items.

I decluttered a lot of items from my wardrobe and then 'rewarded' myself by buying replacements.

I don't regret any of these purchases and these days I am very quick to return items that don't fit or suit me but it was still A LOT of spending in a very short time and that kinda scares me; that even after years of being Debt-Free I sill have those impulses 😰

I know that August will herald a new period of frugality after wedding spending and I think I also got in to that 'spend while I can' mode a little bit too much.

In other money news…

HRH account = £136.33

I closed the limited withdrawal account but they still sent me 2 x warning messages about having reached my limit, 2 x emails and then a letter as well before finally sending me the closing statement. I'd earned £4.19 interest so that and the balance have now been transferred to the other savings account with that bank. It's a lower interest rate but I can transfer money in and out as I please and for some reason, my Premium Bond winnings are still being paid in there. So, what with the £800 for Car & Christmas savings, the interest earned, the money I put in there for the emergency fund and my most recent Premium Bonds win it's looking quite healthy,

Emergency / Car / Christmas / Gift account = £ 1950.07

So, now it's just HRH and my ECCG accounts with this bank and I also have a CC which I haven't used in years & keep mainly for any HRH-related things so I do hope it's still active - might have to try it out 🤣

With my regular bank where my salary is paid in and most bills go out, I have a Current, a Linked Saver, a Monthly Saver and a CC which is manageable.

As most of my recent spending has been on the CC there have only been a couple of scoops into this account which is mainly for water bill and any other unplanned expenses ( Breakdown due out this month)

Linked Saver = £449.40

I can only make one more payment into the regular savings account before it closes so will try to do that on the 1st August and then the balance with any interest earned will either got into the ERF or the ECCG or go towards next CC bill. I don't think I'll set up a new one as I can't afford to fund both that and the ERF which is my priority.

Monthly Saver = £500

I did decide to withdraw the full £1000 emergency fund from here and then another £1000 for additional wedding expenses so it is somewhat depleted but hopefully I will recover that £2k by the end of the year. That's £400 a month so a bit of a challenge, but it's a fairly short term one so I'll see what I can do!

ERF = £10,039.26

It's been a wild couple of months with money but every party has to end and someone has to do the cleaning up after and in this case it's ME!

Have a lovely day

x

Arrietty

Good morning,

still hot, dry and sunny here and we now have a hosepipe ban in place. This doesn't bother me at all as the only thing I water is HRH to cool him off 😂 and I have barely been in my garden this summer and decided not to plant up any pots due to all the works going on - both in and outside. My garden is mainly made up of well established shrubs and despite the hydrangea's coming out blue rather than pink this year 🤷‍♀️ it has held little interest for me.

HRH's herd have been moving between the barren summer field and their winter field which was lush and green but now is dry and crispy but still has something for them to nibble on. I have no idea what the plan for winter will be if we don't get any rain to get the grass growing but I have bought 2 bales of hay and HRH is doing fine. I feel sorry for yard manager who constantly has people moaning about their horse not having grass / too much grass and wanting to move fields without any regard for the other 50+ horses there.

Anyway, I have paid off my CC and my spending insanity seems to have earned me about £9.60 cashback which is not a lot and will be paid at the end of year.

I got paid on Friday and immediately did all my shuffles:

• Sent £200 to HRH account which now = £336.33

(Healthy Horse & Livery to go out this coming week and YD's contribution to go in at some point.)

• Sent £100 to Car/Christmas fund which now = £1900

(I used the £150 PB win to help pay off the CC balance as I would have probably spent the money one way or another).

• Sent £50 (water bill) to the Linked Saver which now = £500.82

( a couple of scoops with about £1.97 were also paid in here)

• Monthly saver = £500

(I will add another £250 on 1st August just so I can say I have earned a wee bit of interest on this account) Presently, unsure if I will set up another one when this ends but I'm thinking possibly not as I may as well send my savings to the ERF account which will also be back to getting regular payments as from August and offers me monthly interest. I definitely won't be able to afford to add the maximum payment each month to the Monthly Saver as well as put money in the ERF… but on the other hand, it would be useful to have a nice little lump sum in a year's time… and I can withdraw / deposit money as and when without any penalties. Hmmmm need to think on this a bit more)

• No change to the ERF which = £ 10,039.26

( As above, I plan to start funding this regularly as from August and the aim is to build up as much as I can so that when the new tax year comes around I can invest it all into a S&S ISA 😅. This is quite scary but I still have over 8 years until I can claim both my State Pension and Workplace Pension so that should be enough time for markets to recover if there's a crash and hopefully to make some more money. My State & Workplace pensions are going to offer a basic income which is considerably less than I take home now and as I don't see my living costs reducing that much when I retire, I will need to increase my income for that time!)

I'm aware that as retirement approaches I may need to make changes to the funds inside the ISA to less risky ones but I think investment is the only way I can increase my wealth to any significant extent. My cash ISA will remain as is and untouched; I may or may not add to it next year - depending on how much I put into the S&S ISA I guess.

My remaining Premium Bonds probably need to be transferred to either the S&S ISA, a SIPP or Cash ISA to maximise their potential … but they're also my/HRH's emergency fund so equally, I'm kind of reluctant to let them go at the moment.

Do I try to add to the SIPP as well as the S&S ISA ??? I just don't know which to prioritise. The finance course has been really good for clarifying some things but also left me with more questions in other areas.

Perhaps I need to ask these questions on the Pensions board… 😱 The folk over there have SERIOUSLY large amounts of money and salaries already and I'm wary that my tiny pots and plans may invoke ridicule and being told to 'increase my income / get a new job / find a side hustle etc … which will just be annoying as I have no plans to do any of that, I like my job, I get annual increases, I don't want more work to do and more of my time taken up, I just want to do what's best with what I have!

I had to return a product recall item to Wait Rose yesterday and did some shopping while I was there; £59.55 spent which seems to be the norm now for a weekly shop of fruit, salad, chicken and ice cream ( ok - no one needs to spend £14.80 on ice cream & lollies but so it is) which has become my staple diet! I have actually lost about 5lbs through no efforts of my own at all - simply the weather dictating what I can bear to eat !

In other news, I decluttered all the mail in one of my email accounts today - I find that particular one really annoying in how it decides what's a priority / important / spam etc for me. Also unsubscribed to every variety of email I found in there.

I also chased up missing cashback for 5 orders I have placed which should add up to about £10 😆.

It's now just a week away and whilst I'm really looking forward to the wedding next weekend and hoping the bridge and groom have a wonderful day 🤗 I am also kind of looking forward to getting back to normal after, with life and finances and routines.

A big event like this kinda occupies my every waking moment when I'm not at work; just wondering how it will pan out, what the weather will be on the day, hoping everything goes to plan etc. and although I've not been involved much in the planning, that in itself has been difficult for me as I'm such an organiser at heart 😂.

Time to get something to eat and then I'll be heading to the yard to hay and water HRH. Feels too hot to ride so we'll probably go for a walk instead.

Have a lovely day x

Skint_yet_Again

Your garden sounds similar to mine Arrietty. My few shrubs are doing ok in the heat but my rockery is mostly dead 🫤 apart from the rosemary bush so it may need replanting next year.

I love reading your financial updates, but I don’t know enough about pensions to help. Maybe the pension board would be able to advise. Do you have a union that can help with pensions?

Hope the wedding is wonderful for all ☺️

Arrietty

Hello hello,

two weeks since my last update and how on earth are we in the second week of August 😮

The wedding was an absolute dream of a day; the lakeside setting was perfect, the temperature was a pleasant 25 degrees, the groom and his men looked so smart and handsome for the ceremony in their military uniforms and the bride was beautiful and utterly radiant in her gown. Heavy uniforms were swapped for linen suits after formalities and photos and the bride shed the under and over layers of her dress 😄 so everyone was more comfortable for eating and dancing which we all did until the early hours of the morning.

There were some hotel shenanigans for me in that the first room had a blocked sink, the second room they offered was dingy and had a horrible shower but the third was perfect, I was offered a couple of drinks vouchers which we didn't get to use but the overall cost came out £100 less than expected so that was good news.

I spent Sunday feeling rather the worse for wear and eventually stumbled to the yard to feed HRH who turned his back on me when I croaked out his name 🤣. I'm not sure if that was disapproval at the state of me or huffiness as I hadn't been down the day before. He hadn't been abandoned, one of my friends had gone to feed him and given him his after dinner carrot as well so there was no need for it but it did make me laugh; he's such a diva!

Returning to work on Tuesday was a reality check; the majority of my work had not been covered during my 3 days off and with my people-facing colleague now on holiday, for 2 weeks, the manager had chosen my return day to 'work from home' so I had to cover my colleague's role rather than catch up on my own work! I still haven't caught up and tomorrow the manager is 'working from home' again so I will have to cover colleague's people-facing role again rather than do my own office-based work again, so I'll fall further behind….

It's not a huge issue and I think arranged with confidence in me ( manager has said she knows I'll catch up ) rather than malice but I have noticed this pattern whenever I go on leave ( whereas colleague's work is always done when she returns as manager makes sure to do it ) and frankly it just serves to motivate me to bring my retirement ever closer 😁. Previously, I would have burnt myself out to get back up to date with everything in my job as well as covering colleague's… but now I don't feel the need or desire. I am paid for doing one role so that is what I will do.

To the money…

HRH account = £ 240.34

We seem to have accrued a bit of a buffer again which is great as farrier due in a couple of week and we also need to do another feed re-stock.

Car & Christmas fund = £2100.07

I'm not entirely sure how this has gained an extra £200 since my last update - my bank account offers no clues and I recently re-set my spending app so it's a bit of mystery. It's the account that PB wins and PB withdrawals are paid into so it's possible that I miscalculated previously. Oh well, better to have more than less!

Linked Saver / Water = £505.51

A few scoops of stray pennies from my current account - nothing dramatic!

Monthly Saver = £750

As the hotel bill was less than I'd expected I sent a final £250 to this account which ends on the 17th. I don't think I'll have earned much interest as I stopped paying in for months but it will clear my CC ( car aircon repair, hotel, meals out etc) and the remains will either go into a new monthly saver or the ERF. I won't find out the interest rate on a new monthly saver until I apply to open it 🙄 but if it's over 4% I'm thinking it may be worth having anyway as I can pay in and withdraw up to £250 a month multiple times without penalty.

Early Retirement Fund = £10,097.79

There was an interest payment of £34.16 on 1st August and regular scooping scooping of untidy pennies resumed last Monday; three payments of £11.84, £9,42 and £3.11 last week. It feels good to be back on track with this. I've been doing a fair bit of pondering and have pretty much discarded any thoughts of dropping down to 4 days a week. Having the half day on a Friday has actually made a significant difference to my week and I really haven't noticed the extra half hour Monday to Thursday which enables it. The fact that I've been able to do this without losing any salary or pension contributions is fantastic and currently I see no reason to change this.

I think I'd prefer to just retire completely a bit earlier than State and Workplace Pension age if possible. My current retirement forecast date is January 2035 which seems a long way ahead in terms of getting up and going to work each day; who knows how fit and healthy I'll be in 9 years time. but not long at all in terms of building a retirement fund 😨. I think I'm going to aim for March 2033 instead.

March rather than January as I keep reading that it's better to do it at the end of the financial year and also it will be nice to work through that one last dark and gloomy winter and then stop as spring arrives 😊

So, I have 7 and a half years to build my savings and investments to a level where I feel confident that I have enough to live on for the rest of my life and more significantly enough to carry me through those 21 months before SP & WPP kick in.

I should point out that I would not be at all averse to working 2 days a week once at retirement age - in fact, I'd probably quite like that to give my week some structure as well as to keep a bit of money coming in but I know that my current role would not allow that so I need to plan for complete retirement.

To get this plan going, I withdrew £2000 of my PBs this week and have invested them through my SIPP. I do need to check when I can start withdrawing from my SIPP; for some reason I have it in my head that it's 55 which means I could use it now… and I'd have enough money to live for about 2 months, frugally 🤣 I won't be putting any more in the SIPP this year but HMRC will be topping up my contributions - thank you kindly.

I am focused on saving cash in order to invest in my S&S ISA as from April.

Now, however, I'm going to get ready to go spend a small fortune on groceries just to keep myself alive in order that I can save for the future in order to keep myself alive with groceries….

It's all rather dystopian so once I've done that I'll go and play with HRH - thank god for horses ☺️

Have a lovely day x

Arrietty

Hello!

popping in on a Saturday because there's an opportune pause in between laundry & chores and I needed my second cup of coffee and some toast.

I'm an early riser and even at the weekend I'm up and getting stuff done in the morning. Weekdays my alarm goes off at 5:55 and whilst I don't set one for the weekend I still usually wake between 6 and 7. My neighbours are away ( which is bliss - no barking dog or doors slamming all hours) so I got the first wash load on at 6:30 and the second is now sloshing away. My bed has been stripped, mattress flipped, aired and remade and I'm delighted with the new bolster pillow which arrived yesterday. I don't spend a lot of time lounging in bed but I am going to try to train myself to spend a couple of hours reading in bed from a BOOK on a Sunday morning.

I was always such an avid reader 📚️ and now I really struggle to concentrate and it annoys me. I can happily gaze mindlessly at a screen for hours, so why can I no longer do this with a book? I have a few unread ones and I'm determined to get through them so I can then declutter them if they're mediocre.

New health plan also starts today; I weighed myself and have already regained 2 of the 8lbs I lost pre-wedding 🙄 That's not a surprise at all because not only has the weather cooled down by about 10 degrees but some unhelpful habits have started to creep in again ( post dinner sweet treat has increased from 1 to 3 chunks of chocolate and I have been using the larger bowl rather than ramekin-sized one for my daily ice cream allowance 😝. I'm not hugely overweight but for optimum health and feel-good (vanity) I could do with shedding a stone to a stone and half so I have reset my Lose-It app which recommends losing 1/2 a lb per week which gives me 1496 calories a day and a completion date of May 27.

The heat made exercise extremely uncomfortable so I didn't do more than what was essential but since it's cooled down I've ridden twice already this week, walked HRH in hand for 2 laps of the field yesterday and will do so again today - still only walk-hacking as ground is still dry and rock hard but at least we're both getting exercise and I'm considerably less cranky when I can ride. I've recognised that when I no longer have HRH I will have to take up hiking/walking/rambling or join a gym to keep myself fit and good humoured!

To the money…

I've completed the finance course and have a firm plan in mind. It's a shame that the interest rate on my ERF saver is reducing in September and I'm not yet decided whether I will move it to another account for a few months or just wait until April before I add the balance to my ISA. Probably the latter because I'm unlikely to get to the £12k max cash limit by then as my focus has shifted…

The monthly saver account closed and I earned £13 interest 😄 I paid off my CC and then opened a new monthly saver which now offers 8% interest rate so my priority for the next year is to pay the maximum £250 into that each month and whatever's left along with daily scoops will go into the ERF.

Alongside the new bolster pillow, I also bought some new white 100% cotton pillow cases to use as pillow slips - half price in M&S and much cooler in the heat than the 50% poly/cotton ones I had which were also quite old and thin. I also bought an afternoon tea hamper delivery for ED and family when they return from honemymoon/holiday and I signed up to a new loo roll subscription. I've used WGAC for years and have no complaints about quality or delivery but this one had a TopCashBack offer, a £5 discount on first delivery snd more importantly they're made in the UK from recycled paper rather than shipped from across the globe so that was a £33 spend rather than the £46 which the WGAC next payment would have been. I also had a naughty breakfast at work one day which didn't help either the weight loss or the money gain!

HRH had a new tub of his anti-allergy supplement, a new fly mask and some new fly spray which was about £100 and then he had a new pair of shoes yesterday so his balance has reduced a bit. Healthy horse programme still to go out next week. The cost of hay has now gone from £9.20 to £11.80 a bale which is to be blunt - feckin' outrageous I have not yet asked how this increase is justified when nearest feed shops are selling for under £10 for an individual bale and manager buys in bulk of at least 100 bales a time … and I'm sure this is just a coincidental increase along with yard owner/manager getting a new horse … 🤨

HRH account = £ 80.34

Car & Christmas fund = £2100.07

I cannot wait to get my new water bill so I can then budget properly for the next one as I'm sure saving £50 a month has been a bit unnecessary but until I get the bill I just don't know… and the interest rate on that account is now less than 1% so I don't really want to have more than £200 in that account.

Linked Saver/Water bill fund = £510.04

New Monthly Saver = £250

I have made regular scoops to the ERF account this month which so far have added up to £87.09p which is considerable … but then I have done a fair bit of shopping for bits and pieces despite previously declaring I would be having an abstemious August. As we know, once I start, it's difficult to stop me. Yes, there is a pair of black trousers awaiting collection from M&S as I type… for some reason I had £7 worth of rewards to use so they only cost me £23 rather than £30… and of course I used TopCashBack earning me another 96p so only just over £22 in reality - see, I can justify pretty much ANYTHING if you give me the opportunity 😉

ERF = £10,160.51

It's payday on Wednesday so there will be more shuffling about and payments to accounts and then on 1st September there will be interest payments added and I can make the next payment to the monthly saver. I also have some subscriptions due in September so need to decide if I'm keeping them…

I'm away now to do some more cleaning and tidying before heading to the yard.

Have a lovely day x

Skint_yet_Again

Hi Arrietty I know what you mean about reading. I have 3 books waiting to be read but I think that will be a bad weather pastime for me. I also need to get back to healthy eating.

Sounds like the yard owner is taking liberties with the price of hay but I suppose they are a business and have a captive market 🫤

Enjoy your new bolster cushion and your Sunday lie in