Finding Enough

May was improbably warm and dry in SW Scotland. The weather was glorious, but drought is perilous for those (like us) with private water supplies. A daily hike down to the well became the norm once the burn (stream) past our house stopped flowing. Just the circumstances you want for when your in-laws are about to visit 🙄

Mr Wombat’s parents had been planning to come and visit for a fortnight in May for some time. I wasn’t enthusiastic, as they’re always fairly hard work, but family, right? They always say they’ll be self sufficient and head out on their own, but that is never the reality, and sure enough we had a fairly full on couple of weeks with them. It was nice to see them, I was just rather wrung out after a stressful April. All the cooking (for fussy eaters) and running around after others grated more than usual.

They were very generous, and treated us to a couple of days on the Isle of Bute in the middle of their stay, and having other people cook for me was a lovely change. I also found a perfect beach for swimming with a view of Arran. There was a bit of tension caused by my in-laws’ dashed expectations of haute cuisine on a very small island, whose normal audience are happy with chips and a pint of Tennents or three. We always notice the contrast between where we live and our visits to them in the South East of England, but we are pretty flexible and un-fussy and will just fit in with everyone else. It’s easy to forget that not everyone thinks like us. I always tell people to think what supermarkets were like 30 years ago down south and that’s probably what to expect in our forgotten corner of the country. My mother in law was adamant we were bound to find puy lentils in the local supermarket. She was disappointed.

While they were staying there wasn’t any progress with the house renovation, but I did manage a little pottering round the garden and catching up with sowing some veg seeds which I was behind on this year. The fabulous weather meant they germinated in the conservatory very quickly, but a warm spring can lull you into a false sense of security. I didn’t plant anything out until June for fear of late frosts.

All in all, it probably shouldn’t have been a shock that I was a bit run down and the day after they left I was laid low with a horrible cold / virus that has taken nearly 3 weeks to clear. Feeling rubbish prevented much happening that required physical exertion, but I did manage to get a lot of admin jobs out of the way. June is shaping up to be an expensive one on the renovation project, as I have now spec’d a new extractor, the volumes of lime plaster and mortar required to finish the main room and bathroom. I also got round to a lot of small jobs that have been on the list for ages – like ordering stickers to deter birds from flying into the living room window and some storage for my art studio area.

Taking it easy for a couple of weeks also meant plenty of time to enjoy the wildlife. We found a glow worm larva just up the road – I had no idea they could me found this far north. I recorded the sighting online and was contacted by a very knowledgeable researcher and learned a huge amount about glow worms. Apparently, they believe there are probably many unrecorded populations north of the border, just no-one out after dark to spot them and record them. He was very pleased to receive a record that wasn’t from Sussex.

The longer evenings mean the pine marten is out and about before dusk and visible. It has definitely taken to the new peanut feeder we installed, which we can see from the conservatory. It’s has been remarkably bold and carried on eating when it must have been us watching through the window. I guess peanuts are more important than avoiding humans.

When we returned from the Isle of Bute, there was a letter waiting for me which contained the grant of probate for my mother’s estate. It is dated one month to the day from the date she died, which means probate was granted 3 weeks from when I started the process. It was a very simple estate, but it just goes to show that solicitors slow the process down, quite apart from charging hansomely for the privilege. The online process was straight forwards, although some questions did require reading several times. It’s very similar to completing an online tax self-assessment, in that the language can be quite opaque and ambiguous.

It remains to be seen how responsive the banks involved will be now we have probate granted, but I am fortunate that the vast majority of the estate is with one financial institution.

Our freedom fund notched back up a little in May, which was nice to see. We are still down from this year’s high, but back to where we were at the start of the year.

Freedom fund value – £1,345,170 (up almost 34k on last month)

Expenditure – £2,025.87 (or a 1.81% withdrawal rate) including renovation costs, or £2,020.87 (or a 1.80% withdrawal rate) without renovation costs

Earned income – £0

I spent very little time this month considering the freedom fund, but I did spend an afternoon tax year planning. A new tax year used to be to be exciting when we were accumulating – a shiny new ISA allowance! It would be filled on day 1. We now have a different perspective, drawing down rather than building up. That felt odd for the first year or so, but we have now settled into a rhythm. I was a bit late considering the new tax year this time around. We are now using ISA allowances for Cash ISAs to shelter our property renovation fund. We don’t have enough cash outside of tax wrappers for the interest we earn to push us over the annual tax free allowance (none of our allowance is currently taken up by income, as it all comes from ISAs). This means it is not critical to shelter our property renovation fund in an ISA, but who knows what the future holds. It is probably more likely that ISA allowances will change, than rules surrounding funds already accrued in an ISA. If in the future we don’t need all the cash allocated to the house project, then we might be glad it is in an ISA – assuming the rules for transferring cash ISA funds into S&S ISAs don’t change of course….. On the whole, as we don’t currently have the funds to top up ISA investments, we thought it was probably sensible to use our allowances, while we have them, to protect the chunk of cash we have on hand. If we end up earning again in future, protecting interest from tax may be beneficial.

May expenses seem low again, but this is a bit misleading, as the travel portion of our expenses this month was negative (-£258). We were refunded our share of the cottage holiday we had to cancel in April and I received a £58 refund from my £65 train ticket returning home in April, as I arrived 2 hrs late. I was astonished how simple the process of claiming the refund was and how quickly it arrived. The big expenses this month were car insurance for the sports car (£260), National Trust membership renewal (£160) and TV licence renewal (£175). Grocery spending as eating out were also higher this month with my in-laws staying and our trip to Bute.

I am expecting June will be an expensive one, with a few large orders for renovation-related materials due, but with a fair wind I might also be paid for the consultancy job I did at the beginning of April.

What about my non-financial goals?

Reduce plastic waste by making one change every month – My deodorant switch in April is still going well. The first refill lasted about 6 weeks, which is probably a bit less than a roll on anti-perspirant used to last me, but still no pong. That was during some warm weather too. In May I wasn’t really focussed on this, but I did make one switch that was intended more as a way to avoid emulsifiers and modified starches than a single use plastic saving, but I guess it still counts (although may be cancelled out by buying more sunflower oil in plastic bottles?). I started making my own mayonnaise. I tried a few years ago using olive oil and really didn’t like the result. It turns out you need to use a very lightly flavoured oil like sunflower or rapeseed or it is too over powering, so I had another go with much improved results. I have had 2 trial runs, the first using a blend of cold-pressed rapeseed oil and a little avocado oil and the the second using mainly sunflower oil with a little avocado oil. Both were good, but quite different. The sunflower oil version was much paler and I used less vinegar and lemon juice to balance the flavour, so it was also thicker. I will keep experimenting until I can pin down the right blend for our taste.

Do something creative every month – I had to cancel the outdoor sketching session I had planned with a local art group, due to illness, which I was really disappointed about. I have bought some new art materials to experiment with, but not actually used them yet 🙄. I did make one very silly project using materials I already had – part of an old roofing slate, a chalk pen and some car lacquer. Sadly I failed to come up with any peanut or pine marten based restaurant puns, so kept it simple.

Record the birds and mammals spotted around the house each month

Another month with a huge range of birds in the garden and even a few mammals spotted out of the window. I have just ordered a book to keep all my tallies in one place as well as a few notes. The cuckoo is still around, but we’re not hearing it quite as often as we head into June. I can’t believe we’re nearly half way through the year already.

I was out and about less this month, but here are a few from the Isle of Bute….and a glow worm larva (in case you were wondering).