Finding Enough

My update is rather late this month. April has certainly been eventful, and not always in a good way, and May is shaping up the same way so far, but more about that next month. We started the month calmly in South West Scotland in a lovely rural house surrounded by wildlife, waterfalls and plentiful supplies of wild garlic (one of my favourite foragable ingredients). We only had one cat to look after, so we were free to do whatever we wanted most of the time….so long as a warm lap was provided at least once a day. We didn’t know it at the time, but this was the calm before the storm.

Dougie the cat was quite a character, and very food-oriented (roast chicken had his undivided attention). We were never in any doubt when he thought it was dinner time – often a couple of hours before it actually was. It was difficult to sit down for more than a minute without him appearing on your lap and he was good at expressing his displeasure if he happened to find a laptop or book in his way. I was quite entertained by his tendency to practice his Olympic diving pike position is his sleep……

As well as all the wildlife (Roe Deer, Hares, bats, birds of prey and even a weasel), there were numerous walking options right from the door including a woodland walk only metres away with two spectacular waterfalls (see one of them in this months images at the end of the post).

Being in the right area also gave us the opportunity to view a couple of rental properties without having to drive 3 hours across the country. In fact, we were finally offered a tenancy! At last! It has been interesting navigating an online portal for references, which has clearly never come across anyone in our position, but we managed it and we have just moved in. That’s the good news…..

After that it all got a bit more complicated. A planned house sit in Yorkshire was cancelled at the last minute, so we brought forward our plans to visit family down south via a couple of nights on a campsite in the Yorkshire Dales.

We have speculated what would happen if our campervan had a serious issue, as we are currently so reliant on it, not just for transport, but our only storage for essentials and somewhere to sleep. Just off the A1 near Grantham, we found out.

The van lost power and stopped and would not re-start. When I called the breakdown company, I got a nasty surprise when they told me they didn’t cover campervans. We had clearly missed something in the small print when taking the cover out on the move last September. The best they could offer was to organise paid recovery. I figured that if I had to pay for it, I would probably be better off going local, in terms of time and cost, and as it turned out customer service too.

A quick Google search provided a shortlist, and a scan of reviews made me call a garage called Reteuro first. I spoke to Simon, who couldn’t have been more helpful and even though he didn’t have a suitable vehicle to recover us on site, he called in a local subcontractor, and we were rescued from a rather precarious position just off a roundabout about 40 minutes later. Back at their small garage, the diagnostics showed we wouldn’t be going anywhere in the van for a while. They couldn’t look at it for several days with all the other work they already had booked in.

Ironically, we had already booked some maintenance work a week and a half later at a Ford Transit specialist near my in-laws. We just didn’t quite make it that far. A call to that garage confirmed that they couldn’t look at any sooner, and didn’t have anywhere to store it until the day before it was booked in over a week hence.

After 2 hours of phone calls and dead ends, we established there was nowhere to hire a car (or a van) in the whole of Grantham, so we devised the least worst plan to get us and the van to where we needed to go. A frantic pack of the essentials for us, before hiking across town to get the train with whatever we could carry. For the van, an agreement that Ed from Ed’s recovery, would trailer it down the A1 in a week’s time. Reteuro kindly allowed us leave the van in their yard (with cameras) for a week at no cost.

We were supposed to stay with my parents in Norfolk that night, but public transport options to get anywhere near there were ridiculous and all involved heading into London and out again, so we called on my in laws to pick us up from the station near them. They put us up for the night and dropped us off to collect a hire car in the morning, to drive to my parents in Norfolk for a week as planned.

With trains, hire cars, house deposit and the first months rent on top of storage costs, we knew it was going to be an expensive month, and the freedom fund value was more or less flat with last month…….

• Freedom Fund Value: £1,183,553 (up £2k on last month)
• Monthly expenses: £3,938* or a withdrawal rate or 3.9% if we were to maintain this rate of spending
• Earned Income: £0
• Miles walked: 181 vs. a target of 146**
• Books read: 8 vs a target of 8 (2 per month)

I suppose we should be happy that even with all April’s unexpected costs, we still squeaked in just under a 4% withdrawal rate. I haven’t worked out what we are averaging for the year so far, but I probably will next month to make me feel a little better about the sudden uplift in spending. Hopefully things will settle down a little in June, albeit at a higher monthly spending rate than the last few months.

On the plus side, a rural house sit at the beginning of the month, coupled with having limited access to a vehicle has given the walking total a real boost this month. I only managed to read one book though, and that was at the start of the month before things all went a bit nuts, with plans seeming changing every day. Luckily I was a book ahead already after last month.

May is shaping up to be even more expensive still, with the last storage fees overlapping with rent, utilities, chunky removal costs to get our belongings up to Scotland and an eye-watering van repair bill all on the horizon. On the plus side, I have been assured that my coaching invoices from January to April will all be paid by the end of May.

All in all April, and the start of May, have been a bit of a rollercoaster. The fact that we are financially stable and don’t have the added complexity of a job, has made it so much easier to navigate all the challenges life has thrown our way. We are naturally frugal, so just throwing money at a problem isn’t our way, but when there is little choice, not having to worry how we will pay for a hire car for a week, removed much of the stress. We did (of course) spend some time finding the best deal😉. This financial independence lark is definitely a great thing.

A few photos from this month’s adventures are below. Spot the very tame hedgehog in my parents’ garden, the first I have seen this year and I did get to see it up quite close! My dad feeds them, so they probably don’t think humans are so bad.

*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