Cheery's path to fulfilment - finishing the DIY, looking after myself, appreciating the garden 🌻

Merlin's_Beard

KajiKita said:

Ummm ... sorry to rain on your parade but have you not heard of rose replant disease ...?

Replant disease | RHS Advice

Maybe go for something else there - a hibiscus or a summer jasmine?

KK 

One day someone will tell me about You Looked At It Wrong disease that affects roses and I will believe them

Cheery_Daff

Gosh, there are so many flipping things to go wrong in the garden aren't there?! 😱 Hmm. Well that does at least give some advice. I'll see if I can dig the old one out before I make a decision - if not, it'll just have to stay there 😂 If I don't use that rose, I might try the fig tree that's sat producing literally nothing in the greenhouse for the last 5 years. Can't produce any less than it is now! 😂

Cheery_Daff

Evening MSE chums 😊

We have had a little more snow but still functioning, thank goodness. As always, very grateful for all weather tyres 😁 I even overtook a couple of cars who'd stopped because they couldn't get up a hill the other day 😬 (I did briefly consider stopping but in my little 3 door Yaris I couldn't exactly have dragged them up behind me 😂)

Anyway. We are having a nice and uneventful week 😊 I found a cafe loyalty card in a coat I haven't worn for over 3 years (it had chicken antibiotics in the pocket 😱😂) and there was only one stamp needed, so we took that out and nabbed ourselves a free coffee this afternoon 😁

Tomorrow the rat man is supposedly coming again - will he cry off because of the snow? Most of the roads are fine now, but our lane isn't gritted, and they may have a general policy of not sending people out into the sticks in questionable weather. But we have received no communication, so will wait in and hope for the best.

We are meeting a friend in a new cafe tomorrow, not seen her for months. Also been doing some bigger pondering, which may need its own post...

Cheery_Daff

So. I often get a bit frustrated at pottering round the charity shops every weekend, going to cafes etc - things i love dearly, but sometimes I get a bit grumpy because I'd like to stay home more and Get Stuff Done. 

However, I had a bit of a revelation today. 

As you know, we have a bit of an age difference (18 years) which means that if I wait to retire til I'm 68, Mr C will be 86 😱 As such, we won't be getting the 'conventional' retirement together. (I do realise that's never guaranteed anyway, and any number of ailments and accidents may carry one or the other of us off at any point, but the balance of probabilities is definitely against us here).

So I only work 4 days a week, and plan to drop to 3 days at some point. I **KNOW** all this, and yet it hadn't really occurred to me to think of that extra time off as being technically our 'retirement' together. 

I can't really tell you what difference it's making, other than a bit of a shift in thinking today, away from wanting to cram all the jobs in, to just appreciating each other's company in a more gentle way. I don't know - at this point I've had nearly 3 weeks off work and I'm quite mellow and things might change when I go back 🙄😂

Anyway, it got us to thinking about plans. Mr C is eligible for the state pension in just over 3.5 years, and the current mortgage fix ends a couple of months after that, so that seems like a good time frame for planning. 

By that point, we'd like to have finished all the big house jobs. Not saying we'd look to move then, but if we did want to consider moving at that point, we don't want another 2 years of DIY before we go, like we had last time 😱 

At that point, I will also definitely drop down to 3 days a week. The plan really is to get promoted (or find a new job, I suppose), which will allow me to to 3 days earlier than that, but we can't do it until there's that extra influx of income. If I do get a substantial enough wage increase, I might do another year at 4 days to build a bit more of a cushion, as things do feel a little precarious in terms of savings at the minute, but as we do have that guaranteed increase in 3.5 years anyway, I'm not sure. Let's see if and when that happens. 

I'd like to plan to retire altogether with 10 years - I'll be 55 at that point, and Mr C will be 73. I won't be able to claim my works pension until 58 (I don't think) so it'll need a bit of planning. 

If & when we do move, it's VERY likely we'll go back to the city where we lived before, and we'll buy somewhere where we don't need a mortgage. We'd paid off the mortgage on the old house before we moved, so that's doable - we certainly don't need somewhere as rambling and ridiculous as this 😂 I want to be able to walk to places, and be within easy reach of a bus. We could ditch the second car (we only had one until we moved out here). Our expenses would be MUCH less in a smaller house, and we wouldn't be spending £300 a month on diesel for a start 😱 

So. Nothing really radical, but it's the first time I've really thought of this time, now, as being an early extension of my 'retirement', and the first time we've both together really thought of a proper plan for Mr C's official 'state retirement' (I've previously thought of chucking his state pension at the mortgage, but this feels more of a concrete decision point).

Anyway, not sure where I'm going here, except a bit of light rambling and possibly a new diary with some kind of plan for actually retiring myself at 55. Whether I'd actually want to do that remains a mystery - I think yes, Mr C thinks I'd choose to stay on 😂 - but it would be good to work out the actual numbers, and an estimate of how much we'd actually need to live on if we moved and I left work altogether... 🤔

joedenise

It's amazing how much less money you actually need once you've retired!  When we were working we hardly had any savings, our only holidays were a couple of weeks away in our tent, trailer tent then caravan.  Now that we're only on state pensions plus my works pension we're living much more comfortably then we ever did when working and having plenty of AI holidays as well.

The main thing you need to get rid of is the mortgage as that usually takes up a large chunk of anyone's salary and as you say you're hoping to move so you're within walking distance of places and buses then you'll find you'll definitely need less money.

Good luck with coming up with a plan.  Looking forward to your new diary with those plans for "retirement".

EssexHebridean

I can well imagine that changing your "thinking" around that stuff has proved valuable Cheery, great to have crystalised that thought process now too rather than in a few years when time has already passed! Those are great plans re work/life balance as well. 

Cheery_Daff

Thank you @joedenise and @EssexHebridean 😊 Mr C already has his works pension, but the state pension will roughly match it so that'll be a nice addition! And depending on how things go I'll likely take mine early too. Anyway, some number crunching to do. 

Not today though! Today I have waited in for pest control, who have not turned up 🙄 When I rang originally, they made me book 3 appointments all at once, 3 weeks apart. The guy came for the first, I wasn't here but he spoke to Mr C, and gave him his phone number if we wanted to arrange a sooner appointment. We didn't, because these others were already in the diary at convenient points. But somewhere along the way there's been a miscommunication...

Anyway, 15 mins on the phone to the council, and a quick call to the guy himself, and he's coming out tomorrow morning. All good. In the meantime it's given us an incentive to have a quick tidy up after Christmas slovenliness 😂

Poor old Mr C is having a drama - he went to collect something from FB marketplace, but there was a large fire on the way and lots of roads were closed. I think he's found a way round now - he's not answering the phone so I assume he's on the move. 

I am going to do 5 mins of pruning outside, then I'm off to meet a friend in a new-to-me cafe - Mr C will join us when he can. I'd like to nip to the DIY shop for some compost for my tulips - although their garden centre bit was shut because of the snow the other day. Most of the snow on the ground has gone now so fingers crossed!

We're right in the firing line for a massive dumping tomorrow though by the looks of it. Not completely certain, but it might be of 2010/2018 proportions 😬 2018 beast from the east was 2 days after we moved in here, and there were drifts in the garden higher than me 😬 we didn't lose the electric though so fingers crossed! Will make sure we've at least got milk and loo roll in case we get stuck for a couple of days 😬

EssexHebridean

I read that as a massive Dumpling - and though "yum" - and then re-read and thought "eek"! I well remember that weather that hit as soon as you were in the house - not really the housewarming present you needed - in fact not "warming" at all! 

Greying_Pilgrim

I remember that you moved in, and then got snowed in - as if it was yesterday Cheery 😁 Time flies!

Greying X

Cheery_Daff

Greying_Pilgrim said:

I remember that you moved in, and then got snowed in - as if it was yesterday Cheery 😁 Time flies!

Greying X

It does indeed. It'll be EIGHT YEARS at the end of Feb!

EssexHebridean said:

I read that as a massive Dumpling - and though "yum" - and then re-read and thought "eek"! I well remember that weather that hit as soon as you were in the house - not really the housewarming present you needed - in fact not "warming" at all! 

Ha, a massive dumpling would be great No, it most certainly was NOT a warming I still remember the horror of the first night - we'd had barely any sleep, it had already started snowing, the heating wouldn't work properly, and we didn't realise we'd unloaded all the boxes into the warmest room of the house Many regrets that night Not helped by the people who'd just bought our old house ringing to tell me they were struggling to turn the heating OFF... We soon cheered up the next day and warmed ourselves up shifting the boxes to the other end of the house Not an experience I'd care to repeat though!! 

Five minutes of pruning done - I did a good bit of lopping to all four apple trees which was good. I'd like to get the pruning saw out though to do a bit more. I've promised myself 5 minutes of gardening activity every day in January (if I'm not home during the daylight, or it's the middle of a blizzard, it's permissible to do some planning or reading or watching an encouraging episode of Beechgrove Garden )

Met my friend at the cafe, but it was shut, so instead we went to her house, which was nearby, and which we'd never been to, so that was nice Mr Cheery joined us later and we all had a nice catch up. She too is planning to do some more letter writing this year so hopefully we can write to each other

Did a few errands on the way home.

* Mr C popped into Mr A for a few provisions in case the electric goes off (instant noodles etc that we can cook with just boiling water on the camping stove, plus bread, cheese, peanut butter etc). I found a pack of loo roll that didn't make it out of the car after the last shopping trip so we didn't need to panic buy that

* I nipped to the DIY shop and picked up some compost - I'll plant the bulbs in a pot tomorrow morning.

* Also nipped to get a birthday card and a top up present - that will need posting in the morning.

* And I filled the car up and put air in the tyres (the water thing was leaking so they'll have an ice rink tomorrow, and the flipping air hose wouldn't reach to the other side of the car! No idea why, it has before, but I got sick of trying to tug it and just turned the car round, what a palaver).

* Picked up some kindling and coal from the garage too - not the cheapest way of doing it, but it's worth having a tiny amount in if the electric does go off. Our open fire in my study is tiny and barely gives out any heat, but it's better than nothing. 

Anyway, blah blah blah. We are home now, and I've made a risotto with the butternut squash that we got from the food waste place just after Christmas so that was tasty, and I'll put the rest in the freezer for a work lunch next week. 

Nowt else to report. I'll do some more financial wrangling later or tomorrow - I balanced the budget the other day and set up January's cashbook pages, but didn't transfer to the bills account or update the spreadsheet. Oh, and we had £57.30 interest from the savings account - better than nowt! And I booked the car into the garage for next week. 

So all in all quite a productive day! 

Some things for tomorrow:

* wrap and post birthday present
* see about setting up a couple of regular savers
* sort out spreadsheets
* check I've got the mortgage spreadsheet right to incorporate the automatic OP
* ring solicitors about neighbour dispute (we're not disputing anything - we're witnessing someone else's dispute)
* hoover before the weather arrives
* assemble hot water bottles - I plan to fill them at regular intervals and keep them in a warm 'hot water bottle storage facility' (the bed ) so we've always got several warm if we do lose power. 

You watch - we'll have a small flurry of sleet and nothing else now after all this preparation