Steadying the ship - a perilous voyage across the financial middle

edinburgher

I am off until Monday - starting tomorrow with a lunchtime float 🙂

rtandon27

Woohoo - hooray to extra long weekends!

KajiKita

Fabulous! Enjoy your time off 🤩

KK

edinburgher

I had a very nice two days off. Predominantly pottering, which was a lovely change. I am still sleeping quite badly and feeling a bit worried about both unknown changes to pay and conditions at work and my new university course. Will need to try and screw the nut because it is making me grumpy with the family, which is unfair 😕

Thanks to the very good spot from @julicorn we have switched our ISA funds to VALL, which looks like a very keenly priced global tracker including things such as small cap stocks that VWRP doesn't. Will take our total ISA fee down to 0.22%. The fee for the ETF is something like 1/3 of the fund it replaced, so we'll buy julicorn a pint after a couple of years when we've saved enough for a pint! 😂 It all helps.

I also paid £4 of sin tax into my SIPP into the same ETF. Longer term, I think that my current Target Retirement fund is probably a little conservative because of my guaranteed DB pension (acts liked fixed income), but I am wary of switching large amounts of money all at once in case of an insta-crash. Would be just my luck.

Have managed a wee bit of tasty cooking during my extra days off and am continuing that theme this weekend with pan-fried scallops with roast new potatoes, roast keta salmon fillets, samphire and a dill chimichurri tonight, a nice beef shin stew for tomorrow. Stew is already in the SC, tonight is far easier than it sounds (oven, one frying pan, food processor for the sauce in advance).

Right! Off to wake up, have a shower and a shave, and take my head out of my ****. Might revisit that order… Have a lovely weekend all 🙂

julicorn

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82126543#Comment_82126543

I'll very happily take you up on that pint offer! 😂

edinburgher

A bit of cooking and gardening did wonders for my mood and I ordered a secondhand book for my new course. Only recommended before starting, but £14.50 seems a reasonable price to pay for a little peace of mind that I know what I'm getting into.

Removed a wheelie bin full of brambles, honeysuckle vines, and a mysterious tree with red berries that has invaded from next door (sort of like holly without spiky leaves)? All went well apart from being whipped in the eye (twice) by brambles, and from getting a fright from seeing a bright orange European garden spider with a body about 1" across 😱 Brambles really are stubborn buggers - the longest vine I removed was 15'+!

South_coast

Keep them - free blackberries every year 😋!

rtandon27

We keep our wild brambles trimmed into a tidy bush - every year we get enough for several apple blackberry crumbles over the winter! Free as opposed to 3+ pounds a punnet.

edinburgher

We have a large corner plot. The place they have decided to grow is the very edge of the corner, right onto the street. They get so big that a child on a scooter recently got caught in them 🤣 So, secateurs it is!

rtandon27

Haha - Built in natural defense for the homestead! - Obviously the child was two close to the perimeter! 🤣🤣🤣