julicorn's journey 3 - The House on the Hill

julicorn

South_coast said:

Wow, that's great work on Prolific 😯!

Thank you! I wonder if it's just a fluke, but I'll take the money either way  

julicorn

I feel like it's been an absolute age since I've written a proper update that wasn't just figures, so here we go!

My ankle is healing pretty well, it's been a bit over 6 weeks since I broke it and I can walk around just fine, just feels a bit achy in the evening. I bought an ankle support to wear while we're in Cornwall. We're off on holiday in a week and a half, I can't wait! Going to see the Totoro stage show in London too before getting the night train to Penzance. We'll be there for a bit over a week this time, and going to a concert too. 

Prolific has been very good to me this month, I've made almost £250 so far! Haven't done anything last couple of days because I was busy with other bits, but if I could keep that sort of level up, that would be fantastic. 

I've also applied to take part in a craft fair in December, bringing my etsy shop into the real world so to speak! It's always very oversubscribed, and I'll find out whether I've been accepted in mid October I think. It would be really nice, fingers crossed. 

I've been fiddling with my spreadsheets and projections a bit over the last couple of days, and I think I've possibly overcooked our income target a little for the early retirement calculations. If I base it more on what we've actually spent over the last 12 months, plus some buffer, I can shave a fair bit of money off the retirement goal. I think that could work quite well, because of us are theoretically up for doing a bit of part-time work and still continuing some side hustles while we're 'retired', so I'd rather pull the plug a little earlier with the risk of having to bring in some more money. I think I'll run both goals in parallel for the moment, essentially a lean FIRE and a less lean FIRE goal, and see how our thinking develops over the next few years. For what it's worth, we're currently at 28.8% of the lean FIRE target. I guess at a minimum, it'll give me more milestones to celebrate! (although it may well make my updates even more convoluted and hard to follow, apologies in advance)

Speaking of milestones, we've just hit 25% of our main target. And that's before we've made our contributions for this month. Feels good!

beanielou

Sounding good. 

seventh88

Positive to hear the ankle is healing well, and things look good on the money front too! 

julicorn

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End of November update:

Current figures:

Investment ISAs: £74,454.31

Mortgage: £213,005.57

% towards being mortgage neutral: 35.0%

Total retirement pot: £201,061.05

% of early retirement savings: 21.6%

End of December update:

Current figures:

Investment ISAs: £77,493.45

Mortgage: £212,517.37

% towards being mortgage neutral: 36.5%

Total retirement pot: £205,494.55

% of early retirement savings: 22.1%

End of January update. Also worth noting that the overall goal has increased with inflation to £949,500.00, so the percentage of early retirement savings is based on a different overall target. 

Current figures:

Investment ISAs: £84,246.03

Mortgage: £211,503.04

% towards being mortgage neutral: 39.8%

Total retirement pot: £217,487.16

% of early retirement savings: 22.9%


My book currently stands at around 14,000 words, for what it's worth

Stopping by for an end of Feb update with the figures only for now - struggling with a few things at the moment and trying to work out what I want to do about work mainly, so things might either get shaken up quite dramatically or not, who knows. Will post a proper update when I have the mental bandwidth. 

The stock market has not been doing great this month, let's put it like that, but we made some half decent contributions (to the ISA especially) which have at least made up for the reduction in value. 

Current figures:

Investment ISAs: £86,191.96

Mortgage: £211,010.18

% towards being mortgage neutral: 40.8%

Total retirement pot: £217,309.29

% of early retirement savings: 22.9%

I'll stop by for a more in depth update next few days, but here is one with just the figures. Investments have not been great as we probably all know, and we're officially no longer half-millionaires when it comes to our total net worth - I guess that means we can open another bottle of bubbly as and when we hit that milestone again!

Current figures are as follows:

Current figures:

Investment ISAs: £84,779.86

Mortgage: £210,515.79

% towards being mortgage neutral: 40.3%

Total retirement pot: £211,012.58

% of early retirement savings: 22.2%

My income will be much lower from April so I guess the heady days of the really high investments are over for the moment, although I will try and see what side hustles I can fire up or reignite. 

Stopping by for an end-of-April update! The stock market has further declined, so even with additional contributions it's been a step backwards rather than forwards. The part time work is going well so far though, so that's definitely a massive positive!

Current figures:

Investment ISAs: £83,417.55

Mortgage: £210,019.87

% towards being mortgage neutral: 39.7%

Total retirement pot: £205,050.93

% of early retirement savings: 21.7%

Time for an end-of-May update Things have definitely gone up this month which was nice to see. I also went to a Rebel Finance Group meet-up, which is broadly about early retirement, but people were so supportive about me cutting down my hours that it made me look at it in a whole new light (not taking a step back from early retirement, but rather taking some of it even earlier). 
Anyway, here are the figures:

Current figures:

Investment ISAs: £88,986.80

Mortgage: £209,522.41

% towards being mortgage neutral: 42.4%

Total retirement pot: £215,725.58

% of early retirement savings: 22.7%

I just noticed that the mortgage is now under £210k as well, that's a nice little milestone  
Oh, and we're half-millionaires again, so had some bubbly to celebrate that (again) the other week
I hope you're all doing well  

I know my updates are pretty much non existent right now, but I should at least give some numbers updates!

End of June:
Current figures:

Investment ISAs: £92,611.87

Mortgage: £209,023.41

% towards being mortgage neutral: 44.3%

Total retirement pot: £223,058.73
% of early retirement savings: 23.5%

My own retirement account has just gone above £100k again as well. 😊

My main next hurdle was going to be £225k, let's see when we get there. 🤞

Here I am with another numbers update Good market movements this month, so although we've contributed a little less, it's all going in the right direction at the moment. 

End of July:
Current figures:

Investment ISAs: £99,024.34
Mortgage: £208,522.86
% towards being mortgage neutral: 47.5%

Total retirement pot: £236,219.24
% of early retirement savings: 24.9%

We hit the £225k retirement savings milestone this month, which is quite exciting! The next milestone to aim for will be having 25% of our retirement savings goal. As you can see, we're not far off that at the moment, although we all know things can go up and down. 

In other news, I broke my ankle three weeks ago! So I've been a little trapped at home picking up old craft projects. At least the weather has been pretty variable, making me not quite as jealous of the people wandering around outside - and I'm getting a lot more mobile now again as well. We're off to a holiday in Cornwall beginning of September and I hope I'll be properly back on my feet again by then, fingers crossed.  

Thank you both!  

As it's the last weekend of August and investment amounts won't change any more, it's time for another numbers update. 

Current figures:

Investment ISAs: £101,127.09
Mortgage: £208,020.76
% towards being mortgage neutral: 48.6%

Total retirement pot: £239,945.07
% of early retirement savings: 25.3%, target date: February '36
% of early retirement savings - lower goal: 29.1%, target date: October '34

The credit card has taken a bit of a hit this month because the Hurtigruten balance is due, so I'll need to take some money out of a savings account to cover that next month, but it's all saved and accounted for in YNAB.  

powerspowers

Glad the ankle is healing well. I think I’ve missed an update about Hurtigruten, we’re planning a trip to Norway next year so interested to hear your plans!
enjoy Cornwall! 

julicorn

powerspowers said:

Glad the ankle is healing well. I think I’ve missed an update about Hurtigruten, we’re planning a trip to Norway next year so interested to hear your plans!
enjoy Cornwall! 

Thank you! I think I last mentioned the Hurtigruten about a year ago, that's how long it was since we booked it, haha! They had quite a good offer on at the time. I can't believe it's actually not toooo long now, we're going over Christmas  

LadyWithAPlan

How great those % are ever moving in the right direction !!