June 2020 Net Worth

It’s been a while since I’ve put my figures up, although I have continued to track them myself. I’m not quite sure why I’ve stopped posting them, as I always feel that it’s a way to keep myself accountable. I guess I feel that I’m already keeping a check myself, but it can be useful to share them to anybody who is out there and listening. Normally I would put last month’s figures in brackets for comparison. This month however I’ve put January’s figures in brackets just to show what’s happened since the start of the year. I break down my figures to both include and exclude my house equity. The latter figure is to show how I’m doing in my quest to reach mortgage neutrality.

Debts

Mortgage £98,281.81 (£80,767.87)

Assets

Cash £36,507.46 (£14,988.95)

Money in share save £0 (£15,304 )

AVC’s £5,567.13 (£5,175.36)

Shares £36,282.17 (£33,554.66)

House £250,000 (£250,000)

Total Assets £328,356.76 (£319,022.97)

Net Worth including house equity

£328,356.76 – £98,281.81 = £230,074.95 (£238,255.10)

Net Worth excluding house equity

£78,356.76 – £98,281.81 = -£19,925.05 (-£11,744.90)

There’s probably quite a few things to say about these figures. So first up the mortgage. Clearly from what’s showing above I have borrowed more money on the mortgage. There are a number of factors that came into play with regards to this. I have access to a base rate mortgage through work. Only having to pay 0.1% is a pretty compelling reason to borrow money against your house. It is a benefit in kind, so there are some tax implications, but still you know, it’s 0.1% This is a benefit that work are going to remove for any new borrowing this year. What you have at base rate you get to keep, but if you want to borrow extra, move house or don’t yet have a staff mortgage then tough luck, it won’t be available.

On that basis there was an argument to be made for borrowing extra even if it wasn’t needed and tucking it away in a cash ISA and being up on the deal. I am going to need access to extra money at some point. My boiler is not in a brilliant state. We have a few days every year where it doesn’t work, so we have no heating or hot water. Not ideal, but also not a disaster. Rather crucially though they can no longer get spare parts for it, so it’s no longer able to be repaired when it does hit a problem. So far it’s always spontaneously started working again, but I can’t bank on this forever. My en suite is also not useable due to a cracked shower tray and subsequent leaking through the kitchen ceiling last year. Add that to the fact that the loo in there has never really worked. At some point a total redoing of the en suite will be in order. And my car had been proving very expensive to repair, so I was thinking about replacing it. With lockdown and the consequent lack of driving I’m currently rethinking that, but we’ll see.

Anyway I figured that I would not spend all this extra money for as long as possible, but that I would borrow it and stick it away and earn some interest on it and be up on the deal. I’d done the application just before lockdown with the thought that I wouldn’t draw the funds down straight away. Once everything kicked off Coronavirus wise though I decided to get the money in my bank account ASAP in case they pulled extra borrowing. I was worrying unnecessarily, but it was certainly nice to have the extra cash in my account. So that explains the extra cash in my balance.

The next big thing is the share save money. A big fat zero in there. I had two share saves still on the go, but as the share price dropped like a stone and it became clear that it wasn’t going to get anywhere near the option price anytime soon I cashed them in and took the cash without any penalty. This worked out really well as it allowed me to put the money into index trackers. I finally have got myself a bit diversified. Not nearly enough, but I’ve made a really good start. I’m not doing any more share saves. It’s index trackers all the way for me now. I’ve gone from putting £500 a month into share saves to doing £600 month to Vanguard Index trackers. It’s been my plan all along to do this. I don’t know what took me so long, but at least I got there eventually.

Work do a share match where when I buy £30 shares each month they’ll give me £45 worth for free. If I keep them for five years it’s even tax and NI free. I’ll keep doing them, but other than that I’m done with work shares. I just need to offload the ones I have already. Due to the current share price and what I paid for them I can’t quite bring myself to do that just yet, but at some point I’m just going to have to accept that money is gone and it’s never coming back. The index trackers are doing really well, so I’ll be better off putting the money in there. I’ll start to do that gradually to make sure that I get everything in ISA’s.

I had a share save mature in January. I got totally stung on that. I was in the process of transferring the shares to my share dealing account ready to sell immediately and put into index trackers. It took two weeks to move them across and during that time I could see the price getting lower and lower, I went from having £1200 profit to being so much down on them that it barely seems worth selling them now. At some point they will need to go, but the pain is too recent to make it real by selling and realising the loss.

The values of my shares are up slightly from January, but considering that includes the matured share save where I was saving £500 a month for three years, that’s pretty rubbish. The least said about that the better. I’m not expecting the work share price to recover any time soon. There’s always something with it. First it was let’s just get past the PPI deadline then the price will be better, then it was Brexit (remember that?!) and now it’s Coronavirus and the subsequent economic fallout. I feel like it’s the end of an abusive relationship. I can’t believe I stayed with them so long, what was I thinking, my life is so much better without them in it etc etc etc. The final straw was when they announced that they wouldn’t be paying the dividend. I realise that wasn’t their decision, but I was furious as it was actually the final dividend from last year. We went so many years without one being paid at all, so to have it pulled now is doubly gutting. Maybe that means next year’s dividend will be extra good, but I don’t think I can count on that.

The AVC balance is not looking too healthy either. There seems to be a bit of a pattern emerging here! It’s up slightly, but considering I have quadrupled the amount I’m paying into my AVC’s that’s pretty piss poor. My thoughts on this one are to stop overpaying my mortgage so much and take advantage of the tax benefits of the pension. So I’ve borrowed an extra £20K on the mortgage, but reduced by monthly payment by £200. I was massively overpaying the mortgage, and I still am paying about £80 a month more than I need to. At such a low interest rate though it seemed silly to be bringing my mortgage down. I still would love to clear my mortgage, but for now my priority is to build up enough money in my AVC balance to get my £50k cash lump sum at retirement without needing to reduce the amount of my annual pension. I can then use that lump sum to hopefully more or less clear the mortgage. I’m slightly conflicted on this strategy as the mortgage feels like somewhat of a burden, but for now I’m happy to go with the maths.

So to summarise, I owe more on my mortgage, my work shares have tanked, my AVC balance is not great and my net worth is down. On the plus side though I have a lot more cash on reserve at a very low interest rate that gives me scope to do something useful with. I have finally diversified, even if there is still plenty of work to do on that front. I’ve made the decision to not overpay my mortgage as much but instead to put more into my AVC fund. The index trackers I’ve got are doing well and hopefully demonstrating that I’ve made a good decision with my finances. So I’m going to try and take the positives from what could be a very depressing update. Yes the figures are pants, but I’ve finally got my finger out and made some decisions about my money. Whether they are the right decisions remains to be seen, but as always taking action is a good thing. Action conquers fear as they say, so here’s hoping I’ve made some good choices and I’ll start to reap the rewards moving forward.

My First Net Worth of 2020

That’s us well into 2020 now, so time to see how my figures are looking for the first month of the year.As always last month’s figures are in brackets for comparison. I break down my figures to both include and exclude my house equity. The latter figure is to show how I’m doing in my quest to reach mortgage neutrality.

Debts

Mortgage £80,767.87 (£81,415.99)

Assets

Cash £14,988.95 (£15,248.10)

Money in share save £15,304 (£14,804)

AVC’s £5,175.36 (£5,055.46)

Shares £33,554.66 (£36,932.81)

House £250,000 (£250,000)

Total Assets £319,022.97 (£322,040.37)

Net Worth including house equity

£319,022.97 – £80,767.87 = £238,255.10 (£240,624.38)

Net Worth excluding house equity

£69,022.97 – £80,767.87 = -£11,744.90 (-£9,375.62)

Slightly depressing to see things going back the way. Although actually, when I look at the figures properly it’s really “just” the shares that are letting the side down. Slightly less cash, but hardly anything to speak of. Considering that I had two much larger than normal credit card bills to pay, with Christmas and a couple of trips away for this year to pay for, that’s really rather encouraging. Slightly helped by a couple of hundred pounds for a forced sale of some old work shares. That’s just sitting there in my current account just now waiting for me to have enough for the minimum lump sum payment to my index trackers.

The share save balance has gone up again. One of the schemes has finished now and the money is just there waiting for me to give my instruction to buy and immediately sell to take the profit. I’m waiting rather optimistically for the share price to go up a bit to optimise my profit. Once I’ve done that the money will be going straight into my Vanguard Index trackers.

My AVC’s balance is pitifully low, so just today I’ve increased my monthly contribution to that. Looking at my budgets I don’t have any spare money left over to put more into AVC’s, but I’m working on the philosophy that I always have money left over at the end of the month, so I’ll manage somehow. I’m due a pay rise in April which is what I was hoping to use to put towards my pension. They’ve announced that it’s going to be a flat percentage rise irrespective of performance, which is not how it’s normally handled. Not exactly providing an incentive to go the extra mile. It doesn’t bode well for the bonus either. The pay rise is going to be tiny, but at least it will go towards the extra I’m going to put to my AVC’s.

I’m trying not to get too downhearted about the figures looking worse for this month than last. I need to remember that it’s the big picture that’s important, not the month to month fluctuations. I am definitely going in the right direction, albeit maybe just not quite as quickly as I would like.

Maybe it’s worth a quick look at how I’m doing compared to this time last year. That’s me been recording my net worth for a whole year now, so it will be interesting to see how I’m getting on. So this time the figures in brackets will be from January 2019.

Debts

Mortgage £80,767.87 (£89,432.06)

Assets

Cash £14,988.95 (£15,404.81)

Money in share save £15,304 (£9,304)

AVC’s £5,175.36 (£3,278.05)

Shares £33,554.66 (£31,206.67)

House £250,000 (£228,000)

Total Assets £319,022.97 (£287,193.53)

Net Worth including house equity

£319,022.97 – £80,767.87 = £238,255.10 (£197,761.47)

Net Worth excluding house equity

£69,022.97 – £80,767.87 = -£11,744.90 (-£30,238.53)

So suddenly I don’t feel quite so bad about my figures. I can see that I am definitely making some progress. If I was just starting out then I would feel fabulous about these figures. As it is, I keep getting frustrated with how long it’s going to take me to reach FIRE. Now saying that, there is one big figure missing from my net worth. My defined benefit pension is going to pay me out £10K a year if I can stick it out until I’m 60. That’s only just over ten years away. So I’m only really needing to bridge the gap between that £10K a year and what I need for a decent life.

Retiring at sixty is definitely possible, whereas before that was just a pipe dream. I would love to stop working at 55, but I just can’t seem to make the figures work for that. I guess if I sold up and bought somewhere smaller for cash then it starts to seem a bit more realistic. Realistically though I will probably still have kids at home at that point, for at least part of the year.

My eldest is going off to university this year. I’m starting to realise some of the financial implications of this. I’ve already had my letter through saying that his child benefit is going to stop. I also get a tiny amount of child tax credit and maintenance, which will reduce. He will still be spending about half the year at home though with the amount of holidays that students get. I’m delighted that he’ll still be spending time at home, but I can foresee that my finances are likely to take a bit of a hit as a result. No doubt I’ll adapt and figure out a way to try and help him a bit with his money and not bankrupt myself in the process.

So my plan for this year continues to be to diversify. I still have a ridiculous amount in shares of the company I work for. Moving forward I’m just taking the profit from any share saves that I do and putting the money straight in to index trackers. I also need to sell off some of the existing shares I have. Again, I’m waiting for the share price to look a tiny bit better.

I’ll keep going with my plan to try and increase my AVC fund so I can use that to get my cash lump sum without needing to reduce the amount I get from my defined benefits pension annually. I’ve got some work I need to do to the house this year. I managed to get my bathroom sorted on the cheap last year, but it is slightly ridiculous that I have an en-suite that I can’t use because of a cracked shower tray and a toilet that doesn’t flush. I might use my dividend this year to put towards sorting that out, rather than reinvesting. It goes against the grain for me, but the only other option is to use up my emergency fund, which I’m loath to do. At some point I’m going to need a new boiler, and my car is not going to last forever. One step at a time though.

All in all then not a bad set of figures. Not as good as December’s, but when you look at how far I’ve come in a year I’m reasonably happy with that. I’ll keep plodding away and try and manoeuvre the eldest moving away to university. The mortgage is coming down steadily, although not as fast as I would like. I would definitely have more freedom if I didn’t have that commitment. I’ve decided though that the seven hundred pound a month I pay towards it is enough. It’s more important to increase my investments rather than reduce that debt. Especially as I have a base rate mortgage. I’ll just have to be patient with that and remember that in the grand scheme of things another ten years of mortgage payments is not the end of the world.

December 2019 Net Worth and Update on End of Year Goals

A very quick round up today to put my December figures out there and have a look at how I got on with the goals I set myself towards the end of the year.

As always last month’s figures are in brackets for comparison. I break down my figures to both include and exclude my house equity. The latter figure is to show how I’m doing in my quest to reach mortgage neutrality.

Debts

Mortgage £81,415.99 (£82,063.70)

Assets

Cash £15,248.10 (£15,568.45)

Money in share save £14,804 (£14,304)

AVC’s £5,055.46 (£4,750.46)

Shares £36,932.81 (£35,562.18)

House £250,000 (£250,000)

Total Assets £322,040.37 (£320,185.09)

Net Worth including house equity

£322,040.37 – £81,415.99 = £240,624.38 (£238,121.39)

Net Worth excluding house equity

£72,040.37 – £81,415.99 = -£9,375.62 (-£11,878.61)

That was a pretty good month for me. Cash is down a little bit, but considering I paid the balance on my Berlin trip and booked a June break to Fort William for myself and the folks for a trip on the Jacobite steam train over the Glenfinnan viaduct made famous in the Harry Potter films, I think I’ve done not too badly. My December credit card bill is in now and that’s higher than I’d like it to be, but that’s Christmas for you. It’ll get cleared anyway, so no doubt the cash will be even lower in January, so time for a wee bit of belt tightening.

All the other categories are doing pretty well. As always the one that is pleasing me the most is the net worth excluding the house equity. Barring any disasters I should reach mortgage neutrality this year. I’ve been there before, but to get back there only three years after buying a bigger house and effectively starting again with my mortgage is especially pleasing. The good thing is that although I am undoubtedly spending more on housing than I need to, I have a lovely house to live in just now whilst my boys are still at home. Once the kids are out in the world and living independently I’ve got something there to sell to free up some cash to add to the FIRE coffers.

One of my share saves has now matured, so I’m just keeping an eye on the share price to offload that. I’m going to cash them in and take the profit, which should be a good few thousand hopefully, and invest the whole lot in index trackers. I opened up a Vanguard ISA last year, which currently has just over £650 in it, which was set up using the final dividend payment I received last year on my work shares. I’m looking forward to being able to put a good chunk in there and start the all important diversification of my investments, which is what 2020 is going to be all about.

Now let’s have a look back at how I did on my end of year goals.

Go to running club twice a week. Continue to work hard and challenge myself so that I start to see improvements. It’s difficult to quantify what “work hard” means, but I’ll know if I’ve been taking it easy or not. PASS I missed a few sessions due to illness, but I went along to all the ones that I was able to. I have really been pushing myself and there have definitely been some encouraging signs of improvement. I was getting a few comments about how I was running strongly, and I was keeping up with people that I normally only see in the distance, so I’m taking that as a good sign.
Watch at least one film every week with at least one of the kids. PASS I didn’t actually track this, but we definitely watched quite a few films, so I’m going to say that I did this.
Meet up with my parents in Edinburgh for the Christmas markets and generally a bit of a catch up. PASS We had a lovely day out at the markets and a delicious lunch. Great to get together and spend some time enjoying the Christmas atmosphere in Edinburgh.
Keep my Duolingo streak going and get section 3 of the Spanish tree finished. PASS I just checked my streak, and I’m currently on 228 days. I finished section 3 on Christmas day.
Get caught up on my volunteering debt with parkrun. PASS I’ve volunteered 6 times now, and did my 69^th parkrun on Christmas day. I’m subsequently up to 72 parkruns, so I’ll need to volunteer again to keep my 1 in 10 quota up, but it feels good to have repaid my volunteering “debt”
Do one new parkrun. PASS I got Polkemmet done in November, which I really enjoyed. I’m getting ever closer to tourist status, with seventeen completed now, and just another three to go for this particular challenge.

I’d set myself some nice fun goals for the end of 2019, and it was nice to achieve them. I’ve been working really hard at my running, and am starting to reap the rewards from that. I was spending a lot of time working on my Spanish, not just on Duolingo but listening to podcasts and watching TV in Spanish with Spanish subtitles on (Big Bang Theory in Spanish without Spanish subtitles was a step too far for me, I just about had a nervous breakdown trying to keep up with the breakneck speed!)

So overall I think that’s been a pretty solid finish to the year. The Net Worth figures are looking fairly promising, going in the right direction anyway. Now that we’re in 2020 it’s probably time to sit down and assess my finances again. I definitely need to be paying more into my AVC fund, so I need to work out how I can afford to do that. Some rejigging may be required.

I had a nice balance of a fun time at the end of the year enjoying the festivities, but also running and studying reasonably hard. I’ve eaten too much, but I’ve kept running right through the holidays (not that I had many actual days off work, but you know, it’s still holiday time) including a parkrun on Christmas day and two parkruns on New Year’s Day. I even had the chance to try out my new trail shoes on a forest run, so all is good with the world. Hope you all had a great time over the holidays and are raring to go now that we’re in 2020.

November 2019 Net Worth

Time for a quick update on how my figures looked for last month. We’re flying through the year, so it will be interesting to look back to how I was doing at the start of the year compared to where I finish up. For now though I’ll just look at November. As always last month’s figures are in brackets for comparison. I break down my figures to both include and exclude my house equity. The latter figure is to show how I’m doing in my quest to reach mortgage neutrality.

Debts

Mortgage £82,063.70 (£82,712.71)

Assets

Cash £15,568.45 (£15,289.89)

Money in share save £14,304 (£13,804)

AVC’s £4,750.46 (£4,573.30)

Shares £35,562.18 (£33,128.09)

House £250,000 (£245,000)

Total Assets £320,185.09 (£311,795.28)

Net Worth including house equity

£320.185.09 – £82,063.70 = £238,121.39 (£229,082.57)

Net Worth excluding house equity

£70,185.09 – £82,063.70 = -£11,878.61 (-£15,917.43)

So I’m definitely happy when it comes to November’s figures. Absolutely every category has improved. I’m not entirely convinced about the Zoopla house estimate that I’ve put in there, but it’s difficult to know how else to judge it. As I’m not planning on moving any time soon it’s not really a vital figure anyway. Even my cash amount increased slightly. I’m pretty sure that will not be the case for much longer, with Christmas to pay for and the final payment for my Berlin trip due two days before Christmas.

The share price is still going in the right direction and giving my figures a much needed boost. My plan is still to sell a good chunk of my work shares and put them in Vanguard Index Trackers. I’ve got my next Share Save maturing in January so I’m going to buy and immediately sell those so I’m not increasing the amount of my work shares anymore. I was doing a few back of an envelope calculations yesterday in a quiet moment at work, and I reckon I can probably fill my £20K ISA allowance before April with my January Share Save and selling some of my other work shares. I’ve only used £650 of my allowance so far this year, so it will be great to get that filled up. It will be the first time I’ve ever been in the position to put the full amount in. I’m just keeping an eye on the share price and trying to figure out a good time to sell.

I’m absolutely delighted to see that I’m getting closer and closer to mortgage neutrality. It was lovely to duck under the £12K figure for the first time this month. I think I like this one so much because it’s something that seems achievable in the short term. My mortgage is still ten years away from being paid off, my investments are nowhere near a position where I’d be able to live off them, but at least I know I could almost cash everything in and be mortgage free. Clearly that’s not the plan, but still, it’s nice to know that it’s getting near to that being an option. I need to work on building my AVC pot up. That’s looking pitifully low. I used my pay rise this year to start that up, and the plan is to do the same next year. Unfortunately it’s not looking like the pay rise is going to be all that great, so I might need to have a think about how I can bump up my contributions another way.

All in all things are looking not too bad in the Sassenach garden. I’ve got Share Saves maturing in January 2020, 2021 and 2023. Based on the current share price I’m due to make just over £10K profit on those three schemes, so I’m happy with that. Clearly a lot can happen in the meantime, but there should be a nice wee boost to my net worth once they have all matured.

I’m already starting to think about next year and things that I want to achieve. I’m not really a big Hogmanay person in the sense of wanting to go out and have a wild old time. Even before I stopped drinking it didn’t really float my boat. What I do like though is the opportunity to reflect on the year that’s just past and looking forward to what’s to come. I enjoy setting up all my budgeting spreadsheets for the year to come. As this is the first year I’ve properly tracked my net worth, I am really excited to play around with the figures and see how much progress I’ve made.

So once Christmas is all done and dusted I’ll settle myself down and have a look at how I want next year to pan out. I already have a few fun trips booked, so I have high hopes for 2020. In the meantime though I’d better go and get myself vaguely organised for Christmas. With teenage kids there’s not too much actual shopping to do, but I’m still fairly sure I’ve been a bit lax in my preparation this year. The tree’s up though and I finally got around to buying lights for outside the house that I’ve meant to buy for a few years now. They fill my heart with joy every time I see them, so that was money well spent and well worth the wobbling on a chair I did to put them up. We also have candy canes, many many candy canes, so all is good with the world.

October 2019 Net Worth And Trying Not To Buy Yet Another Party Dress

Here we go with how my finances are looking for the month of October. As always last month’s figures are in brackets for comparison. I break down my figures to both include and exclude my house equity. The latter figure is to show how I’m doing in my quest to reach mortgage neutrality.

Debts

Mortgage £82,712.71 (£83,459.58)

Assets

Cash £15,289.89 (£15,897.60)

Money in share save £13,804 (£13,304)

AVC’s £4,573.30 (£4,530.85)

Shares £33,128.09 (£30,833.00)

House £245,000 (£245,000)

Total Assets £311,795.28 (£309,565.45)

Net Worth including house equity

£311,795.28 – £82,712.71 = £229,082.57 (£226,105.87)

Net Worth excluding house equity

£66,795.28 – £82,712.71 = -£15,917.43 (-£18,894.13)

I’m pretty happy with those figures I think. My cash figure seems to be getting a little bit lower every month. This seems to be an almost imperceptible creep down the way. With one thing and another it seems to have been quite an expensive year. House and car expenses have been quite high, as have general life costs. I guess that’s just the way it goes sometimes. The good thing is that I’ve not needed to touch the £10k that I have in a cash ISA, but rather I’ve been using the surplus that I keep in my current accounts. So it could be worse, but I could do with a cheap few months. Seems unlikely with Christmas coming up and the fact that I’ve just booked a trip to Berlin with friends to run the half marathon over there next year. You have to live a bit though, so I’m not going to worry unduly about it.

My AVC’s seem to be faltering a bit, but I’m trying to ignore that and remind myself that this is the long game I’m playing, rather than get caught up in the month to month values. That’s the downside of a monthly catch up on what you’re worth. It’s great for keeping you motivated, but it can cause a certain amount of fixation on what’s happening to particular parts of your money.

Overall things seem to moving in the right direction. The big picture figures all seem to be doing rather nicely (helped by a healthy share price of the work ones that I own). I can see that I’m getting closer and closer to mortgage neutrality, which is something I’m really looking forward to. I’ve got a big birthday coming up next year and it would be lovely to get to the point where I could cash in enough assets to clear the mortgage if I was so inclined. There’s something about a birthday with a zero on the end of it that makes it even more important than normal to have FU money. I don’t think I’ll quite hit the sweet point of mortgage neutrality by the time I get to 50, but I won’t be far off it. Something to aim for anyway.

I’ve started playing around with some graphs showing how my figures have been doing this year, the first year that I formally started tracking what I’m worth. It’s interesting to see the upwards trajectory, despite a few dips over the months. Once we get to 2020 I’ll put out a summary of 2019 showing how I’ve done. It will be nice to have a record of where I started the year and how I got to the end point.

So overall I’m feeling quite positive about my figures. I feel like I’m haemorrhaging money at the moment, so it’s good to see that things are still going in the right direction. I’ve got some potentially expensive times coming up. My boiler is a little temperamental at times. It doesn’t seem to cope all that well in very cold weather, which is inconvenient in a boiler to say the least! Last weekend it died a death and refused to come on, just when we needed it most. We don’t have an electric shower, so if the boiler isn’t working we have cold showers, which is a character building way to start the day. I’ve managed to coax it back to life, but I think I either need to accept that every few months we’ll have a couple of days without heating or hot water, or bite the bullet and replace it. For now I’m ignoring the issue and hoping that we’ll get another couple of years out of it. At some point I’ll need to address the issue though.

As I said I’ve booked a trip to Berlin with the girls for a bit of a running getaway. I’m very excited about this, but of course it all has to be paid for. Entry to the race, the all-important T-shirt (which you have to pay for separately!) and rental of the chip so you can get a time(I’ll never complain about the cost of entry in to the Great North Run again) comes to just shy of 100 Euros. It’ll be worth it though. This trip is to celebrate a couple of us turning 50 next year, and quite frankly I can’t think of a better way to mark my advancing age.

I was talking to someone at work this week about my finances. I was saying to him that I still can’t use my ensuite, as since the shower tray cracked and the subsequent leak I haven’t got it fixed. He thought I was crazy and should get it sorted before Christmas. I explained that what made most sense was completely doing out the bathroom, as already the loo won’t flush, the wet wall could do with replacing and the floor will need to be changed. I said that I would get it done, but just not immediately. I said that instead I’d spent £700 getting my main bathroom sorted so that we had a shower screen, new wet wall and the existing shower attached to the wall. He clearly thought I was crazy for having an ensuite there but not spending money on it to get it usable again.

Now I definitely will be getting the ensuite sorted, but the money isn’t there in the budget just now. Yes I could dip into my cash ISA money. It’s there for emergencies, and isn’t this an emergency? Well not really. We still have a bathroom that we can use. In our last house we only had one bathroom and we managed just fine. And in this house we also have the luxury of a downstairs loo, so there’s no crossing your legs if someone is in the shower. I’m pretty sure we can wait until next year to get the extra bathroom sorted.

The general consensus at work seems to be that I’m loaded but very tight with my money and won’t spend any of it. There is an acknowledgement that I am in such a relatively good financial position because I am careful with my money, and yet still I get some good natured ribbing for my reluctance to part with my hard earned cash. I’m not tight when it comes to collections for people at work, or paying my share when we’re out, just on spending unnecessarily on myself. I get told on the one hand that I have done so well as a single parent to get myself so financially sorted, but then the same people also tell me that I should spend more on myself. I do get where they’re coming from, but sometimes you can’t have it both ways. There’s only a finite amount of money coming in to the family coffers, so I can either save and invest it or spend it. I can’t really do both. Well I could, but that would slow my plans down, and quite frankly they’re going to take long enough to achieve as it is. I just smile, agree that I should treat myself more and carry on as I am.

I seem to be out of step with much of the world in this way of thinking though. The mind set seems to be I want it now and I deserve to not to have to wait. I think that’s one of the reasons why I like the FIRE movement so much and the idea that planning for the future sometimes means delaying your gratification. And realising that maybe the thing that you think you want/need is not all that it’s cracked up to be.

Case in point, Christmas night out dresses. I have a Christmas ceilidh to go to next month with my running club. I found myself in Debenhams (my guilty pleasure) and suddenly I was perusing party dresses. I don’t need another going out dress, particularly as I don’t go out very often any more. Somehow though I was in the dressing room with a very fetching green number on twirling in front of the mirror. I tried very hard to remember what The Minimalists would say about this. I could definitely have done with Josh and Ryan on speed dial to talk me down from that dress. I remembered their rule about waiting for purchases, so I put it back and went home. I then went to my wardrobe and counted the twelve perfectly nice dresses that I already had that would be perfect for a Christmas night out. I’ve decided that next time I think I need a new dress I’ll just go shopping in my own wardrobe.

I’ll continue trying to not buy things unnecessarily, without depriving myself. I’ll spend money on experiences that will enhance mine and my family’s life, and try to avoid buying yet more unneeded party dresses, no matter how pretty they are or how nicely they’ll twirl around when I’m trying my best to follow the directions at the ceilidh. I love a wee ceilidh, even if I didn’t have the advantage of learning all the dances when I was at school. I usually get cut a bit of slack though, on account of me being a Sassenach. Going wrong and getting confused is all part of the fun, especially at Christmas time.

September’s Net Worth

It’s almost time to do the October figures, so I’ll do a quick update on how September went as far as my net worth is concerned. As always last month’s figures are in brackets for comparison. I’ve included my net worth both including and excluding the house equity. The latter figure is to show how I’m doing in achieving mortgage neutrality.

Debts

Mortgage £83,459.58 (£84,107.72)

Assets

Cash £15,897.60 (£16,157.39)

Money in sharesave £13,304 (£12,804)

AVC’s £4,530.85 (£4,486.86)

Shares £30,833.00 (£31,523.07)

House £245,000 (£245,000)

Total Assets £309,565.45 (£309,971.22)

Net Worth including house equity

£309,565.45 – £83,459.58 = £226,105.87 (£225,863.50)

Net Worth excluding house equity

£64,565.45 – £83,459.58 = -£18,894.13 (-£19,136.50)

Nothing to write home about, but nothing horrendous either. Cash and share values are down a bit. I feel that my cash reserves are getting a bit depleted. I haven’t touched my cash ISA, but I’ve needed to dip into the excess cash that I have in my various current accounts. Life’s just a bit expensive sometimes. I can’t even really remember what I’ve spent the money on, but I do know it’s not been anything extravagant. Continuing car and house expenses. My budgets are still balancing, but I do feel that I’ve been paying out a lot over the last few months.

Saying that, it’s nice to see that my net worth both including and excluding the house equity have improved. There’s not much I can do about the share price, but at least if I keep chipping away at the mortgage and saving each month then I’ll hopefully keep going in the right direction. I think the key is not to get too het up about the volatility of the market. It’s strange times that we’re living in, which is being reflected in the markets. As long as I continue to keep my expenses as low as I can, whilst spending on things that add value to my life (I’m thinking travel and experiences with friends and family rather than hitting the shops for the latest designer whatever) then I should continue to move toward my goal of reaching FIRE at some mythical point in the future.

I think the next focus for me needs to be building my AVC pot to a much better level. I’ve had confirmation from my pension that I can use my AVC fund to take the tax free lump sum from my defined benefits pension, rather than using the funds from the main fund and so reducing down my annual pension amount. So if I can get my AVC fund big enough I can get my tax free lump sum and the higher level of pension that I could expect if I didn’t take the cash. Sounds like a win win situation to me, so now just the small matter of saving enough in AVC’s to make this happen. I think my next pay rise will again be siphoned off straight away to AVC’s before I get used to the extra money in my pocket.

I don’t really know what my finances will look like over the next few years. This time next year one of the kids will have just gone off to university, and the other one will have either one or two years left at school, depending on whether he goes off to uni a year early or at the usual time. He’s banking on a general election brining in a Labour government and a subsequent abolition of tuition fees. He’s in the lucky position of having free tuition fees here in Scotland, but he’d like to go to an English university if he doesn’t need to pay fees. So he’s hedging his bets and waiting to see what happens in the mess that is our political system.

Anyway, either way for a good few years to come I’m going to have kids away at uni, but no doubt spending a good part of the year back home for the holidays (or half the year as us regular folks call it). So I’ll still have plenty of upkeep costs for them, but my maintenance, child benefit and tiny amount of working tax credit will have stopped. My plan was always to do the share saves whilst I had maintenance etc coming in, so that when that stopped I would be able to stop saving to make up the shortfall. Then I discovered FIRE and realised that if I ever want to retire then I need to keep saving and investing.

So now I’m thinking that I really need to find a way to earn more money so that I can keep saving and working towards FIRE. No doubt there are areas of my life where I could reduce my spending, but whether I’m prepared to or not is another matter. After my recent experience of riding the buses, part of me did think that getting rid of the car might be the way to go. This was reinforced by the very first day that I was allowed to drive again I went out to Aldi and heard an ominous noise coming from the car. New brakes and discs and £200 later I was on the road again. It’s almost like the universe was taunting me with my decision to go back to the car. For now though, no car is a step too far for me.

Rather than cut my spending down further I do think that earning more might be more realistic. I’m working on that, but I’m not sure it’s going to be a quick thing to fix. Maybe it doesn’t need to be though. I’m exploring a few options at the moment, which is quite exciting. I don’t know if anything will come of these ideas, but if I don’t try then I’ll always be asking myself “what if?”

That’s about it for today. I was delighted to discover the extra hour this morning with the clocks having changed. My phone had changed automatically, so I was up at the right time to meet my friends for a run this morning. When I got back home from the run I couldn’t work out why I’d been out running for so long. Turns out I hadn’t changed my digital running watch, so I was an hour ahead of myself. Love a bonus hour like that. I’d love to say I’d done something really productive with that hour, but honestly I just wrote this blog post, which I was planning to do anyway. At least I still have a good bit of the day left to enjoy.

August 2019 Net Worth Figures

Last month was not so great for the net worth figures, so let’s see how we’ve done for the month of August. As always I have put the previous month’s figures in brackets for comparison. I show my figures including my house equity, which is always a nice figure to see, even though I know that I’ll always need somewhere to live, so it’s not a true reflection of what I have to live on. I also show the figure excluding the house equity but including the mortgage. Although this seems counter-intuitive, as without the house you wouldn’t have the mortgage, I include it to show how I’m doing in my quest to become mortgage neutral.

Debts

Mortgage £84,107.72 (£84,843.68)

Assets

Cash £16,157.39 (£15,750.70)

Money in sharesave £12,804 (£12,304)

AVC’s £4,486.86 (£4,217.63)

Shares £31,523.07 (£27,982.60)

House £245,000 (£245,000)

Total Assets £309,971.22 (£305,254.93)

Net Worth including house equity

£309,971.22 – £84,107.72 = £225,863.50 (£220,411.25)

Net Worth excluding house equity

£64,971.22 – £84,107.72 = -£19,136.50 (-£24,588.75)

It’s nice to see a bit of a bounce back of the shares that I own. Last month was a bit of a tricky month, with a big drop in the value of my shares. It’s satisfying to see that this has only been a temporary setback (here’s hoping!) and that things seem to be on the up again.

I’m very happy to dip under the twenty grand mark in terms of how far from being mortgage neutral I am. This continues to be a two pronged attack from me. I’m throwing as much as I can afford towards the mortgage to bring it down and also saving as much as possible to increase my assets. This is a really important target for me. I didn’t formally track my net worth in my last house, but I would periodically do a back of an envelope calculation, and was always delighted to know that my non-house assets totalled more than my mortgage. Psychologically there’s something very comforting about knowing that you could cash things in and pay off what you owe.

Then I decided that I wanted a bigger house for myself and my boys to enjoy now, and to have enough space for them to keep coming home to visit when they fly the nest. I’ve gone back and forwards on this decision about whether it was the right thing to do. We were probably ok where we were, but I’m such a homebody, that I really appreciate the extra space that we have now. And the thing is that I have an asset here that I can sell. There’s no saying that I have to stay put as and when my situation changes. I’ll definitely feel more comfortable though when I’m mortgage neutral.

Pensions, Pensions, It’s All About The Pensions

It’s nice to see my AVC contributions growing there. I don’t pay a lot towards this, it was basically just a pay rise that I got a year ago that I decided to put into AVC’s before I got used to having the money. As I’ve got a defined benefits pension that I don’t need to pay into, I’m in a reasonably good position. Saying that, because the company screwed us over big time as far as this pension is concerned, it’s nowhere near as good as it should/needs to be. So my plan is to try to enhance this pension with AVC contributions and shares.

I was blindly paying AVC’s without much thought having gone into it. This month I decided I needed to do a bit of research, so I’ve been ploughing through some rather heavy documents figuring out what charges I’m paying, looking at how I’ve got my money invested and what my options are when I do finally pull the trigger on work. I was pleasantly surprised on the charges side of things and I already knew that I needed to diversify the investments as it’s all UK based at the moment.

My plan on the pension side of things is to rejig the investments a bit to get a bit of diversity in there and to contact the pension company to ensure that my understanding of what happens to my AVC pot when I retire is correct. It looks as though I can put my AVC balance towards my cash free lump sum on my main pension, so that I’m not taking as much cash out of that side of things and so keep my pension income as high as possible.

I’ve Finally Embraced Index Trackers

I’ve opened up a Vanguard index tracker ISA this month and have put in the money I received from my dividend payments. At just over £600 it’s not a massive amount, but it’s a start. The next two sharesaves that mature I’m buying and immediately selling to get my money along with the profit, and that’s going straight into the index trackers too.

Water, Water Everywhere But None Of It Covered On The Home Insurance

I’ve got a bit of an expensive time coming up. I’ve had some home emergencies this month, with a leaking toilet downstairs and then a more serious problem with the ensuite shower developing a crack in the shower tray and water coming through the kitchen ceiling. Luckily I realised the ceiling was sagging ominously, so managed to poke to a couple of holes in it to avoid total collapse. I seem to have got to it just in time.

I thought I might be covered on the home insurance, but it seems not. There’s a £500 excess for water escape anyway, so it probably didn’t make much sense to claim. I’m not great at DIY, so I got my handyman round to have a look for me. The ensuite basically needs a fair amount of work to get it fit to use again. As the toilet in there is such a shocking design it can’t cope with a single sheet of toilet roll, there’s an argument to be made for starting from scratch with it. I’d keep the shower and shower screen, as they are fantastic, but other than that it’s basically a new bathroom that’s needed.

I’m not wanting to shell out for that just now, but we do need a bathroom that we can all use, as up till this point we’d all been making use of the ensuite as the shower in there is amazing. The plan that I’ve come up with is for him to sort out my main bathroom. Just now it’s only tiled half way and only has a hand held shower and no shower screen. He’s going to take off the tiles, put up wetwall, attach the shower to the wall and put up a shower screen. Total cost under £700. He’s also shaved a little bit off the bottom of the downstairs loo door which would no longer shut because of the leak. That means we can now use it again, and we’re just going to live with slightly wobbly floor tiles that have lifted because of the escaping water.

At some point I will get the ensuite done properly, but in the meantime at least we’ll have a fully functioning main bathroom. Oh, and at some point I’ll get something done about the kitchen ceiling. I’ve got a dehumidifier going to dry it out, but actually it doesn’t seem too bad, and I might even get away with just paining over it. Disaster averted. I always meant to get the main bathroom done at some point anyway, so this has at least forced my hand. Hopefully this won’t impact on my figures too much for next month. These things happen when you’re a home owner, and at least I have the money there to make use of.

Generally speaking I’m really happy with the figures for this month. They’ve definitely perked up a bit since July. There are still changes that I need to make to my finances, but I know what they are and I just need to wait for the right time as far as the share price is concerned. A little bit of tweaking to do with my pension, but nothing too drastic. I seem to have things fairly well automated, which for me is probably the key to being consistent. If things happen automatically with my money without me being involved then all I need to do is set and forget. That’s the plan anyway.

July’s Net Worth

It’s that time again. Time to step back and have a look at the bigger picture and see what I’m worth. In financial terms anyway. July was holiday month, which was lovely but probably not all that conducive to tightening of the old belt and keeping the finances in order. Life’s to be lived though, and to be honest we probably didn’t go all that crazy. As I put everything on the credit card and pay it off in full when the bill comes in, the holiday spending won’t really show until August’s figures in any case. So, without further ado, here’s my net worth for July, with June’s figures showing in brackets after for comparison.

Debts

Mortgage £84,843.68 (£85,539.21)

Assets

Cash £15,750.70 (£16,174.12)

Money in sharesave £12,304 (£11,804)

AVC’s £4,217.63 (£4,138.87)

Shares £27,982.60 (£32,684.43) YIKES!!!!!

House £245,000 (£245,000)

Total Assets £305,254.93 (£309,801.42)

Net Worth including house equity

£305,254.93 – £84,843.68 = £220,411.25 (£224,262.21)

Net Worth excluding house equity

£60,254.93 – £84,843.68 = -£24,588.75 (-£20,737.79)

Well that’s not gone quite as planned!

OK, so I’m going to try and take the positives from this. I’m a glass half full kind of girl, so it goes against the grain for me to be all doom and gloom. The things that I have any control over are going pretty well. Cash is very slightly down, but to be honest I’m amazed it stays relatively stable. I’ve had an expensive year, and I don’t think the cash figure has changed all that much. I’m still saving the full £500 a month in to my work’s sharesave scheme and I continue to overpay my mortgage. I know, I know, from a financial point of view it makes absolutely no sense. From a sleeping at night and feeling like I’m making progress perspective though it’s invaluable. The mortgage is coming down nicely, although more slowly than I would like. I probably need to give myself a bit more credit on that though, as I have paid off £15k in just over two years.

The rest. Well, what can I say? There’s not much to say really. Except I really hope Brexit gets sorted at some point, things settle down and the share price recovers. It reiterates what I’ve known for a long time that it’s madness to have all my shares in the company that I work for. I’m no longer reinvesting the dividends in more shares, instead I’ll put that money in index trackers. There’ll always be times when the market tanks, there’s nothing to be done about that except hold your nerve and hunker down. But I’m too vulnerable with absolutely no diversification.

My next sharesave matures in January and I’m going to take any profit and run and put the money in index trackers as fast as I can. Of course, since I’ve done my net worth figures for this month the share price is down even lower, so there might not be any profit to take if this keeps up. This is turning in to a bit of a depressing update, which is not what I want. I’m still in a pretty positive place. My Happy Path Fund is still over £60k (for now) and my mortgage is coming down nicely. I was really hoping to get mortgage neutral in the next year, but that’s looking a bit of a tricky ask now. Saying that, things often change quite quickly. As long as I keep doing my thing then I’m in a better position than I would be if I wasn’t on the road to FIRE.

Life’s good despite the state of my July Net Worth

So that’s not been the most upbeat of an update, which is a shame as I’m feeling really positive about life. That’s me finished my second week back at work after my holidays. I came back feeling really energised, full of ideas of what I wanted to change in my life and generally wanting to embrace life and make the most of opportunities that present themselves. Sometimes those sorts of feelings disappear quite quickly as the routine of working sets back in. I’m happy to report that hasn’t happened to me. Not yet anyway!

I’m remembering the good things that I like about my job and trying to focus on those, rather than getting sucked in to feeling ratty about the nonsense that goes on no matter where you work. I’m getting more sleep, which is definitely helping with my positive frame of mind. Going to bed earlier is also having the knock on effect of me getting up earlier, only five minutes after my first alarm goes off, rather than my normal twenty minutes of snoozing. I’m actually getting some things done in the morning before I go to work. And not boring domestic things. Things that are actually important to me, like doing my physio exercises for my knee and doing some Spanish studying. This is setting me up for the day nicely, as I feel that the day’s started well and the momentum keeps me going in that direction.

As I’m getting more sleep on a night time I’m no longer feeling the need to have a lunchtime sleep in my car. The knock on effects just keep on coming. So not only do I avoid coming back to my desk after a lunchtime snooze feeling all groggy, I’m even going out for a walk instead so am getting a bit of exercise and hitting the afternoon feeling all energised. I’m not saying that I never feel tired during the day, but things are definitely going in the right direction.

So I feel that my holiday has really done me some good. I’m feeling rested and refreshed. I’ve had a chance to think about some of the things that I want to change in my life. I think I’ve always known what I wanted my priorities to be, but I wasn’t always necessarily committing to doing anything about that. It’s all well and good saying something is a priority, but if you don’t build that into your day somewhere then nothing well get done about it. Now I feel that I’m addressing some of the issues that stopped me having my priorities in the right place. There’s still a long way to go, but I feel that I’m moving in the right direction.

Not So Glorious June Net Worth

It’s that fun time of the month again when I get to tot my figures up, see how my finances are doing and stare wistfully at a spreadsheet willing the figures to look as though I’m closer to FIRE than I actually am. I include my net worth with my house equity in the mix, even though realistically I’m always going to need a place to say, so it’s not like I can really put all of that towards my dream of a new life. Saying that, I’m now definitely at the point where if I was so inclined I could sell up and buy a perfectly nice house outright. I’m not so inclined at the moment, but never say never.

I also include my net worth excluding the house equity, but including my mortgage. This is really so that I can track how I’m doing in my quest to become mortgage neutral. In my last house I got to the point where I could theoretically have liquidated my assets and paid off my mortgage. Sadly in my new house that is no longer the case. I’m working on it though. I reckon at some point next year I’ll hit that point again. This is a real biggie for me. I’m not sure why it bothers me so much, I just know that I like to be able to clear the mortgage if I want to. Clearly selling everything I have isn’t a route I’d be wanting to go down, but from a psychological point of view getting to that stage is important to me.

I’ve put last month’s figures in brackets so that I can see my progress or not as the case may be. I did my figures a week or so later than normal this month, which meant that my mortgage payment had gone out, which isn’t normally the case. I’m going to try and stick with this slightly later date for calculating my net worth moving forward, but for this month it makes the improvement in my mortgage balance look slightly more impressive than it actually is as it includes two months’ worth of payments.

Debts

Mortgage £85,539.21 (£87,050.51)

Assets

Cash £16,174.12 (£16,728.33)

Money in sharesave £11,804 (£11,304)

AVC’s £4,138.87 (£3,987.82)

Shares £32,684.43 (£32,759.19)

House £245,000 (£245,000)

Total Assets £309,801.42 (£309,779.34)

Net Worth including house equity

£309,801.42 – £85,539.21 = £224,262.21 (£222,728.83)

Net Worth excluding house equity

£64,801.42 – £85,539.21 = -£20,737.79 (-£22,271.17)

So I’m really liking having last month’s figures there to see as it makes the whole comparison thing a whole lot easier. As I said, there’s two mortgage payments come off since I did last month’s figures, but also I made an additional overpayment of £220 from matched betting profits. I think this is going to be a bit of a balancing act of having enough cash to take advantage of matched betting offers that come along whilst not having more cash in the bank than I need to. It felt important to put my first lot of matched betting profit into an extra mortgage payment to motivate me to keep going with it. I have to say that it was a lovely feeling transferring that money and seeing my balance come down.

What’s interesting is that it feels like I’ve had a lot of expenses recently. We were away to Alton Towers with the cost of the hotel, passes and eating out to pay for. We’ve also had a few more meals out closer to home, as I was starting to feel that we weren’t doing a lot as a family. Time together definitely doesn’t need to involve spending money, but sometimes it’s nice to go and have a night out and not worry about spending a bit of extra cash. So I was a bit concerned about what the impact would be on the old finances, but actually looking at my figures it’s not looking too bad.

I’m managing to continue to overpay the mortgage, pay the maximum in to my work share save scheme, put some money into AVC’s, pay my credit card in full each month and avoid any non- mortgage debt. Mind you I do have another doosey of a credit card bill getting paid this month and a family holiday at the end of the month which will involve plenty of petrol, eating out and generally spending money on holiday stuff. I’m going to try not to worry too much about the money side of things and focus on having a lovely time as a family. With a bit of luck the books will continue to balance and the general direction will be downwards for the mortgage and upwards for the net worth.

What’s quite nice to see in a way is that practically everything has gone down in value. I know that doesn’t sound like a good thing, but stick with me on this. I have a wee bit less cash in my account and my shares are worth less. On the face of it this doesn’t sound like a great thing (it really isn’t!) and yet despite this I’m closer to being mortgage neutral and my Happy Path fund at £64,801.42 is very slightly up on last month. (Although not as high as it was in April – but we’ll not mention that!) So the positives that I’m trying to take from this are that even if the markets don’t behave for me, which let’s be honest they aren’t always going to, then as long as I keep plugging away paying off the mortgage and investing then I’m going to continue to move in the right direction.

Trying Out A Post FIRE Life

I’ve had a nice little insight this week into what my post FIRE life might look like. I had a week’s holiday from work and the kids were away staying with my folks. So I had the week in the house on my own without needing to go to work. I had a lovely time to myself, pottering around and generally feeling very relaxed. I had a little bit of social interaction with a night at running club and a trip out to the cinema with friends. Apart from that though I was flying solo.

I’ve always known that I like my own company, but this week has really reinforced for me how much I crave time on my own. The kids were home for one night before they went off for two weeks with their dad. We really made the most of that one night, getting a carry out and having lots of fun with a games night in the house. We really appreciated the time that we had together, and the night was lots of fun. The rest of the week though I spent time Matched Betting, working away at my Spanish course and starting to learn a little bit of German. I had a massive long list of things that I wanted to get done. I got some things done, but not as much as I hoped. As always time just got away from me. Saying that I don’t feel like I wasted any time, rather that I just spent a bit more time than I had planned on Duolingo working away at my Spanish and German courses. It also made me realise how long things take to get done. It’s no wonder that my To Do list never gets finished when I’m trying to fit things around working full time.

So I was busy all week with a lovely mixture of things. I thought I would get out for some walks, but that didn’t happen. I also didn’t feel the slightest need to get the decorating done that I had planned. Oh well, maybe next time. The point is though that I also didn’t feel the need to sit around mindlessly watching the telly. I was busy all the time, but not in a rushed way. I had the luxury of taking my time and allowing my day to unfold naturally. I also treat myself to one episode a day re-watching Peaky Blinders in preparation of the new series starting next month. So I think this has shown me that once I reach FIRE I’ll not be short of ways to amuse myself.

Yet Another Mid Life Crisis?

Having lots of free time to think has also allowed me to consider my life and changes that I want to make. I’m hitting the bit 5-0 next year, and it’s making me take stock of my life and consider if I’m really happy. I feel that I’ve got lots of the basics right. My family life is great, if sometimes a bit chaotic. I’ve got some great friends and a lovely extended family. I’ve not got a significant other, but I’m used to that and I’m not entirely sure I’m all that fussed about doing anything about that. My running is a huge thing in my life. I love the social aspect of it, and I’ve met some great friends through this hobby. It’s one of the things that makes me really happy, and as long as I manage to stay injury free I’m hoping to keep doing this until I’m on my last legs.

The one part of my life that I’ve never really got sorted is work. Whilst I have an alright job that pays the bills ok, I wouldn’t exactly say that I’m passionate about it. I’m going through a spell just now where I absolutely hate it. I’m not sure this is particularly about the job itself, as that hasn’t changed significantly, but more about my frame of mind. I feel as though I’m counting down until I can pack in my job, and this is not exactly the most positive way to live your life. Whilst I am committed to reaching FIRE, I think there must be a way to balance this with enjoying your job and making the most of opportunities that come your way.

I had a really strong urge the other day to hand my notice in. I was at the cinema watching Yesterday (great film by the way) and it was all about a person following their dreams. As the film finished this feeling just came over me that I should quit my job. I felt very calm about it, but also convinced that it was what I wanted to do. Luckily?? I managed to talk myself down. As I don’t have a clearly defined dream that I want to follow, I would be quitting without an alternative plan in place. It would somewhat force my hand though and mean that I would have to make some decisions about how I wanted my life to go.

Now clearly from my Net Worth figures above, leaving work would not be a smart move. I’ve got a base rate mortgage through work, I’m saving into Share Save schemes and I have a pension that I could do with some more years of service to increase the value for when I do pull the plug on work. I do have an exit plan. Kind of. Admittedly it’s not exactly imminent, but it’s more defined that it was before I discovered FIRE. Now saying that, I do have emergency money, so I am definitely in a position to be able to walk in on Monday and hand over my resignation letter. I would be able to live for quite a while off my emergency fund before I’d start running into problems. Of course if I do that then if there is an actual emergency then I would have spent my contingency money.

I’ve come up with an embryo of a plan. I figure that if something as innocuous as going to the cinema can lead to a total revaluation of my life and make me want to pack it all in and move to a hippy commune (well maybe nothing quite that extreme, but definitely have me questioning my life choices thus far and thinking seriously about shaking things up), then it’s quite likely that I need to implement some changes in my life.

So I’ve had a bit of a look at my pension forecasts and been pleasantly surprised. I already knew that if I retire at 60 I can either get £10K a year or £7K a year and a £50K lump sum. I requested a calculation for leaving at 55 and I can either get £6,900 a year or £6,100 and a £40K lump sum. I’ll turn 55 in six years’ time. So that’s leaves me six years to get my mortgage small enough to be able to be cleared by the lump sum. Six years to establish enough extra income from something that doesn’t involve being in an office seven hours a day and with all the nonsense that goes along with that. Six years to build my investments sufficiently to give me enough extra to pay my bills and allow me to have a good life.

Six years is a good period of time. It’s long enough for me to do any training that I need to avail myself of. Time for me to establish a business, buy a property, increase my investments……………….. Basically enough time for me to design the life that I want and work out how I’m going to pay for it. The challenge is going to be to actually do something about this. It’s so easy to get caught up in the day to day grind and not implement the changes that you need to make to improve your situation. I need to just get on with it. Action conquers fear as they say.

I May Be Worth Less Than I Was Last Month

So this is the first month since I started properly recording my figures that I’m worse off than I was the month before. I might as well get used to this, as I don’t imagine market volatility is going to disappear any time soon. I’ve used a higher Zoopla based house value for the first time this month. I’m not quite sure how good I feel about that, but I guess just keep using my purchase price from two years ago isn’t much better. The higher house value figure has bumped up my total assets figure from the month before. For the net worth excluding the house equity, which is the one that really matters to me, I’m down. I need to learn to deal with that though, and see it as an opportunity to buy shares at a lower price. I’m working on that state of mind, but I wouldn’t say I’m quite there yet.

Debts

Mortgage £87,050.51

Assets

Cash £16,728.33

Money in sharesave £11,304

AVC’s £3,987.82

Shares £32,759.19

House £245,000

Total Assets £309,779.34

Net Worth including house equity

£309,779.34 – £87,050.51 = £222,728.83

Net Worth excluding house equity

£64,779.34 – £87,050.51 = -£22,271.17

So despite things not going in the right direction, I still have almost £65K in my Happy Path fund. I’m actually pretty happy with that. I’ve decided to start trying to appreciate what I’ve already achieved, rather than looking mournfully at my spreadsheets thinking about how long I’ve still got to go till I achieve my freedom. In terms of other people’s figures mine look pretty pitiful. But I’ve never really been one for comparing myself to other people. This is my journey that I’m on. It’s never going to look exactly (or even much at all) like other peoples.

I started late and with not all that much income coming in, so it was always going to be a bit of a struggle for me. When I think back to fourteen years ago when I was newly divorced and moving in to a new house with a two and a four year old, I think I’d be pretty happy with the point that I’ve now reached. I was working part time, only earning about £17K a year and had just taken out a £100K mortgage. I had childcare to pay for, and quite frankly I don’t know how I balanced the books and made it all work. I did though.

I’ve come a long way since then. I’m now working full time and bringing in a bigger salary. I’ve been able to buy a bigger house thanks to overpaying my last mortgage and maxing out my work sharesave schemes. Quite frankly there was never a lot of cash to splash around, and I just kept that same money philosophy when I got a better job. We have our Alton Towers trips away now and the odd meal out, but apart from that our spending hasn’t changed all that much.

At work I’m in the same office as the old department that I used to work in. When I start early in the morning it’s really quiet in there and I can hear the phone calls that I used to have to take. Short servicing calls that suck the life out of your soul. I moan about my job from time to time, but when I hear those colleagues taking those calls and having to deal with those mundane enquiries I count my blessings. I used to be counting down until it was time for my next break. Sometimes I would have to put a post it over the clock to stop me checking it every few minutes. Now don’t get me wrong, I needed that job and the hours that I was able to work to allow me to fit in with my childcare. But honestly it nearly finished me off. I could not go back to that. Luckily, unless something goes badly wrong, I won’t have to.

Now saying that, there are a few people in that department that really seem to love their job. They mostly seem to be slightly older people, probably in their sixties I would think. They seem to get a real kick out of talking to customers. They’ve all been there a long time, but they don’t seem to have got jaded at all. I sometimes try and figure out what their secret is. It’s funny how two people can do the exact same job but experience it completely differently. I guess that’s down to your attitude. I know when I come in to work feeling stressed and not wanting to be there then I have a totally different day to when I come in with my positive head on. It really is all about your mental attitude.

The people I’m thinking about who love their job seem to work part time, so maybe that’s the secret. I know one of them is a carer for his disabled wife, so it may be that work is a change for him and a chance to get out of the house. For the most part I get the impression that work is something they enjoy doing, rather than something they have to do. I might be wrong, but maybe they have FU money.

In my department we’ve had a couple of departures recently. They’re doing shift reviews at the moment to try and standardise our working hours. We’re open till 8.00pm – but quite a few of us are on fixed day time shifts. They’ve now said that everybody will have to do at least 1 week out of 8 with an 8.00 finish. I can live with that, so I’ve agreed to the change. Apparently not everyone felt so accommodating. Within about a week of news coming out about these changes then two people had put their notice in. One of them had managed to find another job to go to, but the other just quit with no back up plan. I know he has plenty of investments stashed away. He’s a pretty private guy, but from what I know about his past I’m pretty sure he’s financially independent or at the very least well on the way. It was great to see FIRE in action.

They’re recruiting for new staff as we’re expanding. We’re bursting at the seams already, so there really is nowhere for any new people to sit. We already hot desk, but they literally have no room for any more bodies. So they are offering home working. We would need to work from home 4 days out of 5. I initially thought this would be great, but on reflection I don’t think it would be good for me. I think I would miss the social interaction. I think I would get a lot more done, but I would miss the banter. I only have a 15 minute each way commute, so that’s not a big deal for me. All the benefits that people talk about for working from home don’t really seem to apply to my job. As I take inbound calls I need to be logged on and all the stats are monitored, so there’s no just popping to the shops to get milk. I’m struggling to think of any big benefits to me in the job that I do.

I’m not sure if I’m just being naïve, but I thought that there would be some expenses covered for home working. The business needs people to work from home as they would have to get another building if we didn’t take them up on this. Now I get that some people would be delighted to work from home, and if you have a long commute then you’re quids in, but at the same time it’s definitely a plus for the company too. So they’re going to provide a laptop, keyboard and mouse. They’ll also put a privacy screen in so that customers can’t tell that you’re at home when you’re doing a video interview with them. Apart from that though we’ve to cover everything else. So we just use our own broadband and pay for electricity and heating. We even have to provide our own desk and chair. Now I don’t imagine I’d be using that much extra electricity, but working at home in Scotland in the winter I would definitely need my heating on all day, and that’s going to get expensive. Is this normal? Or would companies normally compensate you for your increased expenses?

Anyway, either way I don’t think I’m going to put in for it. Especially as I don’t have a partner I think the social part of work is particularly important to me. Which is now making me worry about FIRE. If I don’t think I am going to be able to cope with the social isolation of working for home then how the hell am I going to cope with no work at all? I suppose I won’t be tethered to the house in the same way that I would be if I was working.

I think the key when I do finally pull the plug on working is to make sure I get out of the house enough. I have hermit like tendencies, and have to be dragged kicking and screaming out in to the real world sometimes. I enjoy it when I’m out, and I most definitely need the social interaction, but I don’t always have the inclination to go out and be social. At least I have my running clubs now, which give me a much needed social structure. I just have to hope I don’t get injured, as so much of my socialising revolves around running.

One of the managers was saying that she thought home working would suit me down the ground, and she also said that she thought I’d never retire as I would never want to stop working. My immediate thought was that she’d got me all wrong, but the more I thought about it the more sense it made from her perspective. I can’t be bothered with all the office politics and just want to get on with the job in hand. From that point of view home working would be perfect.

As far as never retiring is concerned, that’s definitely not right, but I know where she’s coming from. Although I want to stop working, I don’t want to sit about the house watching telly and painting my nails. I need to have a purpose to my life and feel that I’m achieving my goals. But those goals don’t need to be provided through the structure of work. I already set myself goals that have absolutely nothing to do with my working life, and that won’t change come FIRE. In fact it just means that I’ll have all the more time to work towards ever more stretching goals.

I’ve already started looking at Open University courses that look really interesting. I always fancied doing a modern languages degree, and FIRE would give me the time and mental energy to work on something like that. I’m already working on improving my Spanish skills, and think I might add German in to the mix at some point. I’m not sure languages are necessarily a natural fit for me, as I find them quite difficult, but I do enjoy the learning process and I enjoy the fact that they have such practical applications. That’s definitely something for me to think about.

So I think now is the time for me to start designing what I want my ideal post FIRE life to look like. My son was saying to me the other day that I shouldn’t wait for FIRE to do all the things that I want to with my life. “You might never reach FIRE mum”. He’s absolutely right. Tomorrow is never guaranteed, and finding what you’re passionate about now means that come FIRE time you’ve got those interests in place and the time to spend on them.