Finding Enough

The first week of 2023 was a bit of a non-event, being spent recovering from the lurgy with my in-laws. Luckily, both Mr W and I tested negative in time to head off to our next house sit, eliminating the need to have any difficult conversations with the homeowners. As we had written off December and January as dead months for house hunting, it didn’t really matter where in the country we were based. We searched for housesits in January for a minimum of 2 weeks and came up with a few options, by far the best of which (for us anyway) was in south Shropshire.

The homeowners were off to New York and Boston for a just over a fortnight and we had their beautiful timber-framed home, dating back to 1520 something, to ourselves. That is apart from their huge cat. Juno is a Maine Coon and is the first cat I have come across who is tall enough to reach the kitchen worktop while standing on the floor. She is very beautiful, but definitely believes herself to be superior to humans (especially substitute humans), who are obviously just here to serve. Apart from the odd painful occasion when she tried to climb up your leg if you were cooking something she liked the smell of (chorizo or chicken in particular), she was easy to get along with. We had to complete a couple of rescue missions under furniture for a bank vole and a particularly cunning wood mouse, but armed with tupperware, we managed to release them physically unharmed to be hunted another day. A shrew was less lucky, and was played with to death before we spotted it.

As cats are fairly self-sufficient, this sit left us plenty of time to get out exploring. Although set well back from the road, it wasn’t possible to walk safely from the house, as it was on a main road with no verges. The land across the back of the house was apparently part of the estate of a huge house now owned by a hedge fund manager. He had somehow upset some Russians, so he now has ex-SAS security around the clock. The homeowners told us they used to walk across a field at the back of the house to join up with a footpath, but since this guy bought the property ‘Security Dave’ would be on you in minutes, so it wasn’t worth the hassle.

Although it meant a van ride, the Wyre forest was only 5mins down the road, and provided loads of different walking routes and lots of wildlife. We were also close to Bewdley, which is a very pretty little town on the river Severn. For the first week it was on flood alert, with the ancient bridge closed, and some huge aluminium flood barriers installed, so it wasn’t quite as picturesque as the postcards. Bewdley was also the place we were introduced to battered chips. Mr Wombat is a big fish and chip fan, so we have been sampling local variation around the country. We had deep fried Wensleydale in the Yorkshire Dales, and the USP for this place was battered chips. I wasn’t entirely convinced, but we thought we should at least try it. They weren’t horrible, but I think a case of innovation for innovation’s sake, and definitely not an improvement on the plain old chip.

The end of the month saw us head over to Norfolk to visit my parents, and pick up our post for the first time in several months. We were supposed to visit for New Year, but didn’t want to bring germs with us, so it was a case of better late than never. They had a freezer full of food saved from our previous aborted visit, so we dutifully helped them reduce the inventory 😉

We had a day out at the seaside with the accompanying bracing wind off the North Sea, but spent much of the time helping them with a few DIY jobs, as they find it increasingly hard to get any tradespeople to actually turn up for smaller jobs. We also bit the bullet and changed our address with banks and investment accounts. As we have now reached the 6 months limit for temporary increased FSCS protection for ‘life events’ with still no purchase in sight, we needed to start distributing the proceeds from the house sale. In order to open new savings accounts we needed ID with the new address on, so also changed the address on our driving licences. As well as splitting cash down into £85k chunks for protection purposes, we will also actually start to earn interest. As long as you don’t think too long about the current rate of inflation, it is nice to see more passive income rolling in each month.

While we were floating round the countryside, the freedom fund was more up than down for most of January, and ended with a healthy increase on last month.

• Freedom Fund Value: £1,201,551 (up nearly £29k on last month)
• Monthly expenses: £1,832* or a withdrawal rate of 1.8% if we were to maintain this rate of spending
• Earned Income: £12
• Miles walked: 114 vs. a target of 146**
• Books read: 1 (and three quarters!) vs a target of 2 per month

Expenses were very low this month, as food was effectively subsidised during stays with both sets of parents, and we had no van related expenses except fuel. We continued to pay storage fees for our belongings, but also continued to benefit from having no utility bills of our own to pay (a definite upside to not having our own home in the winter months).

I have still not received a payment for the coaching and mentoring work I am doing. I have started to chase, but actually the more invoices that are paid in the next tax year, the better. I will have to pay 40% tax on any income earned before 5th April. Despite only working part time for the first half of last year, the income received when I liquidated employment-related equity awards when I left, put me into the next tax bracket for 2022-23. We did earn a huge £12 in January doing a mystery shopper visit at a National Trust cafe, that we would probably have visited anyway. We got a free tea and cake out of it too. I am signed up with IshopforIpsos, but have only done food and drink visits when they pop up near where we will be anyway.

Although 114 miles was 11 more than I walked last January, it was not the 146 I was aiming for, so not a great start. I will blame recovery from the lurgy and do better next month.

I am writing this post a little later than normal, as we are currently enjoying some beautiful weather during a house sit in Barnard Castle (no eye test jokes please***). Teesdale is stunning in the sunshine, so we’ve been out exploring, leaving little time for post-writing. Next week we are moving north, over the border into Scotland, and plan to stay ‘north’ for a couple of months. Hopefully the spring will bring some new properties to the market and we want to be ready to react quickly.

I do love low winter sun, especially on a frosty morning or through woodland. Here are a few images from my first few weeks of 2023:

*Includes £500 per month personal allowances (£250 each), which may not be spent in the month, but which is not tracked. Some of it may show up in the freedom fund in the future, if savings build up and are invested.

** I completed my challenge to walk the equivalent of Lands End to John O’Groats and back in 2022. This is the longest overland distance between 2 points on the UK mainland or 1748 miles. In 2023 I want to maintain the 146 miles a month this required.

*** If you are not from the UK, there was a lot of publicity during Covid lockdowns about a prominent government advisor who drove to Barnard Castle to ‘test his eyesight’ when he should have stayed at home like everyone else who were not allowed to leave home except for essential reasons.