julicorn's journey 3 - The House on the Hill

South_coast

On my bucket list too, thanks for sharing 🩷

Figures looking great, as always 😀 On the upping income front, how about looking for something 1 day per week doing something completely and utterly different to your normal day job? It would likely fall short of increasing your hours again from a cash perspective, but maybe just getting a bit more coming in and using your brain a different way would be enough of a boost?

julicorn

South_coast said:

On my bucket list too, thanks for sharing 🩷

Figures looking great, as always 😀 On the upping income front, how about looking for something 1 day per week doing something completely and utterly different to your normal day job? It would likely fall short of increasing your hours again from a cash perspective, but maybe just getting a bit more coming in and using your brain a different way would be enough of a boost?

It's definitely worth a thought, thank you! I wonder what kind of Monday jobs there are out there... 

julicorn

debtfreewannabe321 said:

That holiday sounded amazing, seeing the northern lights is on my bucket list! Fab pic.
Great figures to end the year on too! Well done! 

It was really fabulous. I think one of my favourite moments was seeing a tiny bit of Northern Lights behind the clouds as we entered the Troll Fjord at midnight - it was really eery and a bit spooky. I keep thinking back to that. 

julicorn

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81814527#Comment_81814527

I missed the January update, but here is my end of Feb update :)

Current figures:
Investment ISAs: £125,830.55
Mortgage: £204,975.31
% towards being mortgage neutral: 61.4%

Total retirement pot: £281,976.49
% of early retirement savings: 29.7%, target date: September '35
% of early retirement savings - lower goal: 34.2%, target date: May '34

Good progress so far, mainly due to investments doing well at the moment. We've hit a couple of milestones in February - getting to a third of our lower goal, and hitting £275k in total retirement savings.

We went on a couple of holidays in February too, technically still are on one (in Berlin - my friends are just all having a lie-in so I'm using the quiet time this morning to do my end-of-the-month life admin.

I've really dropped the ball on Prolific though, I want to try and get back into the swing of that in March :)



debtfreewannabe321

I've dropped the prolific ball too. I'd open it up and feel dread at another boring survey and close it down.

Enjoy Berlin! 🤗

South_coast

Prolific motivation definitely comes in fits and starts!

julicorn

It's nice to hear I'm not alone in that one @debtfreewannabe321 & @South_coast !

I do have quite a busy week at work for once, so getting paid for some overtime which is nice :) I guess that's a chunk more per hour than Prolific would pay me anyway, so I don't need to feel too bad about it.

julicorn

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81903305#Comment_81903305

Morning all! I'm back for the end of March update, figures are looking a little less rosy because… well, the state of the world I guess! But we've made a bigger contribution than usual this month (I worked some overtime, and we've got all the tax savings together now so actually needed less money to fund our April expenses).

I'm also back on Prolific, although mainly to fund sessions with a Spanish tutor at the moment. I've really found a crazy amount of motivation somehow to learn Spanish, and am spending quite a bit of time on Spanish learning and consuming Spanish media right now. :)

Anyway, here are the numbers:

Current figures:
Investment ISAs: £122,812.35
Mortgage: £204,462.21
% towards being mortgage neutral: 60.1%

Total retirement pot: £273,742.19
% of early retirement savings: 28.8%, target date: January '36
% of early retirement savings - lower goal: 33.2%, target date: September '34

So around £10k has been knocked off our savings over the last month! Ah well. Rollercoaster and all that.

julicorn

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81948481#Comment_81948481

Aaaand I'm straight back with an end-of-April update! Barcelona was such great fun, especially the Rosalia concert, we had such a good time. And YNAB didn't take too much of a hit :)

I'm also officially now back up on 75% of hours at work rather than 50% because we're much busier again (long may it last) and my mental health is also much better than it was start of last year (again, long may it last), so projected timings here are now based on that income as well (woohoo).

Without further ado, here are the current figures:

Investment ISAs: £131,213.73
Mortgage: £203,947.52
% towards being mortgage neutral: 64.3%

Total retirement pot: £289,986.78
% of early retirement savings: 30.5%, target date: July '34
% of early retirement savings - lower goal: 35.1%, target date: April '33

What a difference a month makes, eh? In terms of milestones, we've now reached 30% of our savings target, and I guess the change in hours as shaved quite a bit of time (a year and a half) off the projected timeframe as well. Although the crystal ball only ever works so well, of course.

I hope you all had a good April too!

Jessy103

Glad to hear you had a lovely time in Barcelona! Great figures too x