Le rêve est mort?

After a lovely relaxing holiday in August, I was brought back down to earth and reality not by my brimming work inbox but by an email from my current mortgage provider, reminding me that my fixed rate mortgage deal was due to expire and to consider their current mortgage product offers. If I did nothing, I would automatically revert to their standard variable rate of 8.4%, so doing nothing was definitely not an option!

Their deals were not pretty – they were all variable apart from one 2-year fix that was offered at 6.4%.

Whilst I’d been preparing myself for a big jump in interest rate (from the now almost mythical 1.25% I’m currently paying) by playing around with mortgage calculators, checking affordability and such like, it was jarring to seeing the numbers in black and white. I see now that I’d been somewhat optimistic with my calculations and wishful thinking about interest rates dropping. Or that getting my LTV down would actually make any real difference.

I contacted an independent mortgage adviser, one recommended by a friend who had just recently herself remortgaged.

Unfortunately, the best 2-year fixed rate deal would have resulted in me paying nearly an extra £300 per month for my mortgage (a 55% increase!) so I had no alternative but to look again at my current provider’s offers, where at least there would be no arrangement fee, nor would I have to provide all my financial info again.

Their best offer would increase my mortgage by £240 a month (a ‘mere’ 44% increase), a 2-year 5.30% variable rate. With the rate being variable, this might go up, so I could end up paying that extra £300 (or more), but there’s also a chance that this extra could decrease a little, if/when the interest rates fall. I’m more inclined to think (and will take the gamble) that they will likely drop, though by very little and certainly not in the short term. I reckon in my lifetime, <2% mortgage rates will be consigned to history, we’ll look back and think of ‘the good old days of borrowing’! At least we’re not back to the double-digit rates that my parents were paying for their mortgage.

I still have a month to go so I haven’t signed up to anything yet, but not sure I want to leave it too late in case even that offer I’m considering is withdrawn.

How will this affect me?

Despite shouldering all financial burdens on my own, I’m in a fortunate position in that this not-insignificant (to me) increase to my monthly mortgage payments still isn’t going to result in my struggling to keep up with payments, getting into arrears, having to choose between heating or  eating, resorting to food banks or pay day loans.

But it’s enough that it’s probably going to have some impact on my every day lifestyle; how much I’m able to put aside for my social life, holiday funds, house repairs, emergency funds, overpaying the mortgage.

Ultimately, how will my increased mortgage payments affect my ability to continue adding to my FIRE savings/investments and advance towards my goal (shifting goalposts notwithstanding)?

I’d like to think that I’m quite mentally resilient, of  stoic-ish nature but I can’t deny that increasing costs in pretty much everything have been causing me a bit of worry, about my plans, about the life I lead.

For the first time in a long time, since my debt paying days, I’m considering running a proper budget, tracking all my spending to the penny.

It’s not a task I relish, in fact, it fills me with dread and I could almost sense a small cloud of doom and gloom coalescing above me.

Bills, Bills, Bills

I have some unavoidable and quite significant expenses looming on the horizon, costs that I can’t really put off much longer or ignore.

In no particular order of urgency (since they all need sorting out):

1 – Dental costs – that private dental referral from March has finally come through and they called me to make an appointment. I’m no longer in pain but still can’t really eat on that side of my mouth. £99 paid in advance just to see the consultant and then, he will diagnose whether I need root canal treatment or extraction. Cost estimated to be around £1-£1.3k.

2 – New Glasses – my prescription has changed these past couple of years, so I need to get new glasses to avoid eye strain and headaches. Cost estimated around £350-£450.

3 – Car repairs – the advisory issues flagged up in my MOT need to be sorted as I don’t want them to balloon into reasons for my MOT to fail (and for safety reasons, as one of the issues was to do with my brakes). My air con isn’t working but I’m deeming that an unnecessary nice-to-have right now. Cost of repairs quoted at £700. I also have a slow puncture. Every week or so, I need to check the tyre pressure and pump up the tyre. That will cost another £100-140.

That cloud of doom and gloom continues to spread over me…

Lifeline

The other week, I got a last minute “quick catch up” meeting invitation from one of the big bosses in the US, my ‘interim boss’ since my previous boss had left at the end of July. I thought (with some relief) that the meeting was probably going to be news that his replacement had been found.

Only it wasn’t that – I was being given an unexpected pay rise.

I had already received a performance-related pay increase earlier this year, so I was rather speechless to get this extra increase on top!

The reason? A ‘reward for continued excellent services’. Okaaaaay…

Well I didn’t want to question it so just mumbled, “Wow thanks!!”

My mind was reeling (in a positive way), however at the same time, my chimp brain couldn’t help but negatively wonder what this actually meant. Did it mean that they weren’t going to replace my boss and that I was going to be given extra duties? Was something else on the horizon that would affect my workload and this was a sweetener to keep me happy?

Anyway, two days later, I was notified that my new boss had just accepted the job offer and would be starting in a couple of months – hurray!

Four days later however, I found myself part of a new project team, to help with the integration of a recent company acquisition. Looking at the project plan, I have been assigned a lot of tasks so my workload will go through the roof.

Is it bad that pay rise or no, I would have still signed up for the extra project tasks because that’s just the kind of ‘worker bee’ I am? More fool me, perhaps.

I’m really grateful for this extra pay, which won’t quite cover the entire monthly mortgage increase but will give me a lot more breathing space, makes things more manageable and me less stressed about it.

Annoying that in more ‘lower interest/lower inflation’ times, I would just be throwing the extra into my ISA or SIPP and not succumb to lifestyle inflation but I don’t have a lot of choice right now.

So in answer to the title question of this post, “Is the dream [of FIRE] dead?”, I’d probably say “Pas encore!“.

Onwards and upwards as always!

[Note, for those interested, I am still learning French via Duolingo! 431 days and counting!]

 

August 2023 Savings, plus other updates

Apologies to readers who tried to visit the blog over the last couple of weeks and got:

Attacked

My blog was ‘attacked’ and the attacks pushed me up to the maximum CPU seconds quota I’m allowed on my website hosting plan. Once the quota is reached, the website is made unavailable until the following month.

Such an attack on my blog has happened before, only on that occasion, I was able to block the IP/country where the attacks were coming from, so I didn’t end up hitting the CPU limit. Unfortunately, this time, I was on holiday when I was getting numerous messages like “The Web Application Firewall has blocked 101 attacks over the last 10 minutes.”

I had just enough of my CPU quota left to post my belated July update and then that was it for the month.

Have to admit that over the years, I’ve neglected the back-end stuff of my blog, so I guess I should read up/work on whether there’s anything I can do to try to prevent such attacks in the future. Still, apart from the blog being made unavailable for a period of time, at least the firewall did its job and all seems ok.

Anyway, August was a mixed bag of a month – a great holiday followed by post holiday blues/jetlag, celebrating a friend’s 40th birthday with a cocktail-making session and then catching COVID, which, whilst symptoms weren’t as bad as last time, still had me below par for a week. At least no lingering cough this time.

So how did I get on with my numbers?

I saved 14.1% of my net salary.  The above includes £49.72 from doing Prolific surveys and £10 from a charity lotto win.

Shares and Investment Trusts

I just topped up existing investments.

Current share/IT portfolio can be found here.

(Entire portfolio here)

Future Fund 

Hmmm, not great to see the dreaded ‘submarine of doom’ on the graph after last month’s rocket! However, it could have been worse, the markets were looking really rubbish mid-month but fortunately, things stabilised somewhat and my Future Fund ended the month just slightly down at £232,947. 

That sideways movement is not a great motivator, but I will just keep on keeping on, as they say.

Dividends and Other Income

A good month for dividends.

Continue reading

July 2023 Savings

Hello, I’m back after an enjoyable holiday.

I shall just quickly post the belated numbers for July.

I saved 16.1% of my net salary.  The above includes £77.08 from doing Prolific surveys.

Shares and Investment Trusts

I just topped up existing investments.

Current share/IT portfolio can be found here.

(Entire portfolio here)

Future Fund 

Finally, things were looking up but for how long!? As at the end of July, my Future Fund stood at £235,744, so the rocket makes an appearance but is highly unlikely to be sticking around for the August update!

Dividends and Other Income

Not a bad month for dividends.

Continue reading

July 2023 interim update

Just an update on the month with no numbers as decided to get this out while I could and there’s obviously one more working day for my portfolio numbers to change, dividends to be paid etc.

A blur of a month, felt like a lot was going on at home and at work.

Tennis

Another year of being lucky with Wimbledon tickets, this time, I got to see a couple of cracking quarter-final matches. The weather was great and even the trains ran on time, so it was a great day out.

NHS

The news continues to be full of doom and gloom about the NHS but for me recently, the NHS continues to chug along, doing its thing in the background.

As well as getting invited for routine cervical screening, I’m now of an age where I also get invited for routine breast cancer and bowel cancer screening.

None of these screenings are particularly pleasant (although at least with the latter, I can do the test at home) but when I get these invitations, I will always attend/accept because it’s the only time it feels like ‘someone’ (other than myself) is looking out for me.

I got my results when they said I would get them (no issues) and that’s that for now, until the next screenings.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to look after myself and my health so as to try to avoid relying on the NHS unnecessarily – sadly, it seems like all’s fine when you don’t really need them but perhaps a different story if/when you do.

Life

I considered yet another ‘try before I retire’ activity, by attending a life drawing session for the first time.

The last formal ‘art lesson’ I had was when I was 13 before I chose my options at school (I ended up doing Physics instead of Art).  I’ve only ever really done doodles and cartoons so I wasn’t sure how to use charcoal or pastels.

Anyway, it was a challenging yet enjoyable experience, which I found ‘mind-opening’! There was no teaching or guidance, it was just a free-for-all, with attendees’ skills ranging from enthusiastic beginners to more experienced artists. My friends thought my drawings were good but all I could see were the imperfections.

Budget constraints mean I probably won’t attend many of these sessions but I will certainly see what kind of free online resources I can find so that I can improve my drawing skills. And now I’ve found another thing which I enjoy doing, which I can do in retirement.

Placement

Having just completed sitting his GCSE exams, my nephew did a week’s work experience at our company. It was weird seeing him in the office and I resisted being a ‘helicopter aunt’, largely avoiding him so he could just be himself.

A product of independent schooling, colleagues commented positively on his confidence and ease at dealing with adults in a new/strange environment.  In his words, he ‘learned a bit and had a right laugh’ (he was with the Marketing team). I’ve also gone up a point in the ‘cool aunt’ stakes as he reckons I work for a good company! 🙂

Lawn

I used my birthday money to buy a lawnmower (a small Flymo). Thus far, I’d been mowing the lawn with a strimmer, a bit time consuming but quite successfully, I might add.

The strimmer however is an antique, a 40 year old Black & Decker model, and while it still functions, it’s on its last legs so should probably just be used for edging and borders.

Since the new lawnmower has massively reduced mowing time, it has meant that I’ve been able to squeeze in ‘fast cuts’ during brief sunny periods before downpours – yay!

And finally, Friends Fired

I was surprised (but also not so surprised) to learn recently that a couple of my uni friends (we were course mates) have retired at the age of 55.

I wasn’t surprised because they were always the poster couple who I thought would ‘make it big in life’. Met at uni, they were the first of our bunch of friends to get a mortgage (so grown up!), theirs was the first wedding I attended without my parents, they had 3 children in quick succession, in between both juggling what appeared to be hugely successful careers.

However, I was surprised they would retire early due to the ever increasing size of their house (the last one I was aware of was a 6-bed mansion) and his penchant for tinkering with classic cars. Success has come to them through ambition and hard work (as far as I can tell) but it looks like once all their offspring had finished uni/schooling, they evidently realised they had ‘enough’, and decided enough was enough.

They’ve never mentioned FIRE before (but who does?), yet in true FIRE-fashion, they first trialled and then bought a motorhome and will be making some road trips in that! It’s been a while since I caught up with them properly so I hope to find out more when I see them next.

A recent message to me was “Retirement is fab, do it as soon as you can!” Believe me, I’m trying! 😀

Anyway, need to finish my packing for my hols – will sort out a numbers update when I get back.

Hope you all had a great July!