julicorn's journey

bexster1975 · 1 May 2018 at 6:45PM

I am indeed still enjoying it. No idea whether it will grow but I am currently working on financial independence within the next eight years and am on track for that do we will see! I very much enjoy Tuesday afternoon being my "normal" job Friday afternoon however.

Will look forward to seeing your updates.

Bexster

JennyP · 2 May 2018 at 9:09AM

Julicorn, happy shiny new diary!

Re veg....if you take it out of the plastic immediately, dry it and then store it unwrapped it lasts longer. We moved two months ago from being five minutes walk from Morrison's to a twenty minute drive from the nearest supermarket. We're only shopping every ten days now and the veg is lasting surprisingly well!

With current acoount, to stop myself spending too much and to avoid having to check it alot, I have two accounts. One has no direct debits or standing orders. I pay myself a monthly allowance and use that account for everything variable like paying by card in shops for clothes, groceries, petrol etc and cash withdrawals.

The other account has all my standing orders and direct debits and receives all my income. It has worked as a system for me for over 20 years!

Bexster, I would love to know what your sideline is if you feel able to share!

bexster1975 · 2 May 2018 at 10:04AM

Hello JennyP

It is by no means a secret. I will preface this with the fact that the two days a week I work cover all my bills and some spending money so everything else just allows me to enjoy travel, hobbies etc.

I run my own business which is currently largely tutoring ( online and in homes) but also involves working with homeschooled youngsters, young adult life coaching, examining in my subject area and running revision courses ( mainly Easter and May half term). There are a few other areas under development, largely linked to the above. I also do matched betting which brings in a nice tax free income per month.

The main thing about all this is that my time is managed by me five days of the week, rather than the two days ( weekend) that it used to be. If you can manage your outgoings and find a side hustle you love, I thoroughly recommend it.

Bexster

julicorn · 2 May 2018 at 9:19PM

Runders wrote: »

Hey Julicorn,

I've just read through your diary and looking forward to seeing how you get on I hope Redbubble works out well for you! I too have to trick myself into saving money at times - I have more going into my utilities account then I actually nedd, then I just skim off the excess at the end of each month into savings. It's funny how we all have little things we do

Hi Runders, thank you - and nice to see that I'm not the only one shifting money around to trick myself into saving :rotfl:

julicorn · 2 May 2018 at 9:25PM

JennyP wrote: »

Julicorn, happy shiny new diary!

Re veg....if you take it out of the plastic immediately, dry it and then store it unwrapped it lasts longer. We moved two months ago from being five minutes walk from Morrison's to a twenty minute drive from the nearest supermarket. We're only shopping every ten days now and the veg is lasting surprisingly well!

Thank you, really appreciate it! I think at the moment I'm just finding it quite depressing to buy veg wrapped in plastic in the first place, it just seems so unnecessary when we've been going without it for years! I think there are a few shops around that send more loose veg though, and if not there's always going back to the veg box. Shop wise, it sounds like we have almost opposite problems - we live near too many small ones, which makes it tempting to just go in and buy random bits all the time! I think we've not been too bad so far though.
Also cool to hear your system for saving - sounds like the 'multiple accounts' thing is working well!

Bexster, that sounds like a great company to run. Teaching can be so rewarding. Really glad you're still enjoying it, and the flexibility sounds so nice to have.

julicorn · 2 May 2018 at 9:34PM

I know I'm updating waaayyyy too regularly right now, but I'm clearly still in the honeymoon phase when it comes to overpaying

it's just such an exciting prospect to be able to pay off early!
This evening I set up the mother of all spreadsheets (MOAS, you heard it here first!) which compares projected mortgage balances and interest amounts each month to the actual values, taking into account the overpayments. It's even got a little column that shows in what month we would have reached the current balance had we not overpaid (we would have only reached our current balance next month, for example). Pretty proud of that last column, that was quite the excel formula (for my standards, anyway

).

Curious to see where we'll end up this month in terms of OP, because we're going on holiday for a few days. I don't even know how expensive the city we're going to is going to be, because I have no clue where we're going. Booked a trip with a website called srprs.me, and they only tell you where you're going once you get to the airport. I'm pretty excited! On Monday we'll get a weather forecast though, so we'll know what to pack.

bexster1975 · 2 May 2018 at 10:11PM

Ooh, I've heard of that website. Do tell how holiday goes. Have fun!

Bexster

julicorn · 3 May 2018 at 5:27PM

Thanks Bexster, will do! This weekend we're actually headed to Bath with my parents which will be lovely I think. Had a really busy time at work recently and am looking forward to just going away somewhere for a few days, so May will be a great month in that respect.

julicorn · 7 May 2018 at 2:49PM

Aaargh! Did that thing where I wrote a long post, pressed 'send' and then lost my Internet connection. That will teach me for not copying posts before posting on the train!

We're on a (very hot) train home from Bath. It's been such a lovely weekend! A much-needed break indeed. I'm already looking forward to our mystery holiday next week as well, we should receive the weather forecast for it from tomorrow.

This May is a bit of an unusual month, because of all these little trips away, so it's a bit hard to really assess how much we'd be spending normally. After payday this month (25th), we'll start properly tracking our spending again, like we used to when we were saving up for a deposit. Meanwhile, the spreadsheet is so inspiring! I keep playing around with various overpayment amounts, and daydreaming about the kind of budget we'd have for a new place in 5-6 years.

Our regular payment will take us below £200k this month, which (although not far off the balance we started from) will be great - im looking forward to seeing a "1" at the start of the balance. I'd love for us to be able to get below £190k by the end of the year. With just regular payments, we'd only reach that point in December next year, and being a year ahead of the game after only 1 year of regular payments and 9 months of OPs would be amazing. No idea whether it's realistic just yet, but certainly a good stretch goal to have.

julicorn · 8 May 2018 at 6:09AM

We got our first weather forecast this morning for our mystery trip next week - Monday 25° and cloudy, Tuesday 27° and cloudy. Sounds perfect to me! Still no idea where we're going, although I couldn't resist looking up the weather forecast for a few cities. Madrid comes pretty close for the temperature, but it says sunny there. Will see!

julicorn's journey

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