Finding Enough

Phew, what a scorcher! June was very atypically hot and dry in S W Scotland, we even hit 30 degrees for a couple of days. I am not sure our friends and family really believed it was 10 degrees hotter here than down south at the start of the month, but we made the most of it while it lasted. We enjoyed a much calmer month, mostly in one place after a rather hectic May.

Our rental house is a traditional one and a half storey stone cottage, so it was nice and cool downstairs, but quite the opposite upstairs. The windows open onto a fairly busy road (for a small town). Sadly the combination didn’t make for restful sleep, but we enjoyed the garden and exploring the local area and wildlife in the cooler mornings and evenings. I recently discovered the Cornell Merlin bird identification app, which allows you to record bird song and identifies the birds for you in real time. We are very lucky in this part of the world to have a huge range of wild birds, so I have learned to identify many new species – especially differentiating between those ‘little brown jobs’, which all look the same.

We actually started May down south. I haven’t talked about it before, but we own a sports car. The plan was to sell it before we made the big move, but after 3 ‘serious’ buyers strung us along only to go cold at the last minute, we ran out of time and decided to just bung it in storage and deal with it later. Luckily, we managed to secure a rental with a garage (albeit a rather wonky wooden one that has definitely seen better days). This meant that one last trip was required to liberate it from it’s climate controlled warehouse near Cambridge, and drive it up. The glorious weather meant this wasn’t too much of a chore and we have now ended our last (and most expensive) storage agreement.

I know, a sports car isn’t exactly a sensible frugal choice, but all the costs related to this extravagance have been included in the spend I publish every month. It is a long way from being a supercar, but it has become something of a classic over the years. We bought the car way back in 2009, when Mr Wombat was cycling to work, so didn’t need a sensible everyday car and he had received a small inheritance from his Grandmother. That was 5 years before I came across the term FIRE, and very far from having any comprehensive financial plan. Over the years, the value of the car went up by more than we were spending to maintain it, so we kept it and enjoyed it.

Collecting a second vehicle on this trip did mean that both of us had to drive the whole way, but with a stops every 2 hrs, it really wasn’t so bad. The car just managed to squeeze between our rented house and the house next door to access the garage round the back, and it is now safely tucked up in it’s new home. Once we have renewed the MOT (another reason for needing to get it out of storage this month), we will have the option of using a vehicle that isn’t a large van, and we plan on enjoying some scenic days out in the sunshine. Once we are settled, we may look at selling it again, but really there is no rush.

So, what about that property news? Well, we have had an offer accepted on a different property. Around the middle of the month, a property was listed for sale, which is only about 3 miles from the smallholding we were trying to buy last year. It has less land than the last one, but plenty for our needs, and there may be the option to buy more in the longer term if we want to. It is also cheaper than the last one, and having more cash in your back pocket is rarely a bad thing.

We arranged a viewing the same afternoon it came on the market and thanks to being chain-free cash buyers, we were able to wrap up a deal with the owners the next morning, less than 24 hrs after it popped up on the agent’s website!

The media is full of doom and gloom over impending house price crashes, and I have been surprised it hasn’t happened sooner (why we were so keen to get ours sold), but that still does not seem to be the reality up here. Perhaps it just takes longer for the impact to reach this far from London, or perhaps it is down to the shortage of available of smallholding / ‘lifestyle’ properties, but there was a huge amount of interest immediately in this place, so we were keen not to let it go to a closing date if at all possible. Thankfully, the owner was keen on a quick sale as she is moving closer to family for support in caring for her mother who has dementia.

We aren’t worried about buying a house when a market crash, or at least 10-20% price falls, are predicted. If we were in a different position, we might feel differently, but we sold at the peak in July 2022, and we need somewhere to live and the right place came up. If it had all gone through last year as planned, we wouldn’t have thought twice. Being chain free cash buyers in the current climate enabled us to drive a very reasonable deal, despite a lot of other interest. In Scotland, if more than one party formally notes interest through their solicitor, it goes to a closing date. We were keen to wrap things up before that happened, and it benefitted the seller to have us on the hook quickly so they could secure their onward move. Maybe we could have driven a slightly harder bargain, but we also know we would have bid higher if it came to a closing date, so all in all it was probably about right. Could we have done better if we had left it another few months / a year? Maybe, but in a downturn fewer people list property, so we could equally have been waiting a very long time. Now we are just keeping everything crossed that there are no major legal issues discovered which cause more delays. Please send positive vibes 🙂.

While we were enjoying carefree summer days and negotiating property deals, the freedom fund was quietly doing its thing, and made slight gains after the steep fall last month.

• Freedom Fund Value: £1,171,579 (up £8k on last month)
• Monthly expenses: £4,485* or a withdrawal rate or 4.8% if we were to maintain this rate of spending
• Earned Income: £0
• Miles walked: 134 vs. a target of 146**
• Books read: 10 vs a target of 12 (2 per month)

Expenses are still a bit choppy, with a few new home expenses like a TV licence and some storage solutions to include. We sold a lot before we moved and we had a lot of built-in storage in our last house, so we needed a few things to make the tiny rental kitchen workable and to store clothes. We have tried to buy as little as possible to get by short term, and only things which will be useful wherever we end up. Time will tell how well this strategy has worked.

Finding a new property finally closed off our previous offer, as we had been waiting to see if the previous vendor could find something else, in the absence of anything else we wanted to buy. This prompted our solicitors to bill us for the work done last year relating to that. With VAT, the total added an extra £1,225 to our spending this month.

It was another disappointing month on the walking front. The heat at the start of June meant we did quite a lot of sitting around trying not to get burnt. We did pick up the pace in the last week or so when it cooled off, but were still a few miles short of target.

After a manic May, I got back in the habit of reading and read 2 books this month as well as joining the local library, which is less than 10 mins walk away. I still plan on catching up the 2 missed books from May before the end of the year.

The last week of June, and the start of this month, was spent back at our favourite house sit in the Yorkshire Dales. We first stayed there last August / September and we got on really well with the owners and their black lab called Brio. We loved the peaceful location and the stunning scenery, 75 acres of which they own. When they asked us if we would come back, we jumped at the chance and it is very likely we will do so again in the future. The house is certainly much more impressive than anything we would pay for as a holiday home, and it is just the kind of place we would holiday and walk anyway, so why not do it for free in upgraded accommodation!

As well as local flora and fauna in south west Scotland, Brio the black lab made quite a few appearances in my photos this month, she even ‘assisted’ with the monthly spreadsheet updating. Check out the reflection in the wing mirror in the shot of her with her head out of the van window😆

*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