I am writing this somewhat later than normal this month, quite simply because I have been spending far too much time travelling and enjoying myself! As we always gravitate towards rural locations with more animals than humans, connectivity can be an issue. In fact, for us disconnecting is part of the point. We even spent a week in a favourite corner of the Isle of Skye, where we had no WiFi, no TV signal and not even a phone signal without hiking up a large hill.
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Spring flowers and……snow, obviously! I wasn’t sure which image to share this month, it has been such a contrast depending on which day you pick. I went for spring sunshine. A lot has changed in the last month, and not just 20 deg sunshine turning into 2 degrees and snow in the space of 2 days.
Continue readingFinally, after what seemed like forever, enough of the functional build was done to start making the project look more like a camper than a builder’s van. We decided on painted wooden cladding for the majority of the internal cosmetic finish, with grey 3 way stretch carpet for awkward areas (including doors). We started with the carpeting on the doors and around door openings, so the cladding would overlap it when finished.
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February was a bit m’eh for me. I spent more of it working than not, so that may be a contributing factor to it being a bit of a non-event. We spent most of our time off de-cluttering the house and completing a few jobs, as we decided to get the house valued. The first step to pressing the go button on our rural living plan. The good news is, it seems 3 agents all agree that our house is worth more than we thought.
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January has a bad reputation. I accept that starting and finishing work in the dark can become a little depressing, but I can’t help think the media make it a whole lot worse. There were some beautiful days last month, and I was feeling very positive, so the constant bombardment of negative messages really stood out. Who ever invented ‘blue Monday’ has a lot to answer for. If you weren’t feeling down on that day, you started to question if you should be, with all the media attention. My employer even did a raffle to cheer people up, but the verbiage that came with the communication was very negative – telling people how down everyone must be feeling and why we shouldn’t worry, because “the month was nearly over”. Positive mental attitude is somewhat of a cliché, and definitely one of those over-used corporate mumbo jumbo type of phrases, but there is definitely something in it.
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As far as the numbers go, 2021 was a productive year, so let’s deal with the data first.
The freedom fund grew by 22% or £221,482 during the year. I know this is not a sustainable growth rate long term, but I’m happy to enjoy it while it lasts. I haven’t calculated exactly, but less than £30k of this came from new contributions. The first 4 months of the year I worked full time, and continued to save around 50% of my salary, and all of my bonus. Since May, my reduced salary has covered our expenses, but not allowed for much in the way of additional accumulation. My occupational pension continues, albeit at a reduced level.
Income is just one side of the FIRE equation, the other side is outgoings, so how did our spending compare with previous years?
| 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | |
| Vehicles | 1803 | 10193 | 2596 |
| Utilities | 4084 | 4184 | 4452 |
| Groceries & Household | 3524 | 4917 | 5050 |
| Presents | 169 | 603 | 441 |
| Home & Garden | 9923 | 976 | 875 |
| Travel | 3480 | 1454 | 2526 |
| Entertainment | 1064 | 540 | 937 |
| Pet | 2084 | 1733 | 2324 |
| Other / Misc | 660 | 1210 | 2764 |
| Indiv. allowances | 7200 | 7200 | 7200 |
| TOTAL | 33991 | 33010 | 29165 |
December marked 2 years since we first hit our number. After sharp drop at the beginning of 2020, the value of the freedom fund has soared since then, with very few additional contributions from us. Once you reach a healthy value, compounding truly is a magical thing.
The end of the year is a time I often catch up with people I haven’t seen for a while, and this year was no exception.
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I can’t believe it is a month already since my last post, it seems to have passed in a flash. November brought the first frosts in East Anglia and some lovely crisp mornings for pre-work walks at the start of the month. The second half of the month was pretty much all travelling round the country for family birthday celebrations and catching up with some school friends who I hadn’t seen for over 2 years, because of, well, you know why…….
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October has felt like a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. We started the month on a high coming back from our first van adventure, but shortly after getting back
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Electrickery is very much not my area of expertise, so as well as my vague descriptions for the systems we decided to install in our van conversion project, I have also asked Mr. Wombat to draw out a circuit diagram. This is included at the end.
When we scoped out how we would use the van, a few things stood out as being necessary to make it work for us when it came to electrics:
After much research and weighing up of options, this translated into a shopping list that looks something like this:
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Finding Enough 