We started February in Norfolk, but soon ventured north again for a couple of dog sits. We hoped that the approach of spring would bring some new property to the market, so wanted to be in striking distance if anything interesting came up.
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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.
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I conceived this blog at the end of 2019, when we had just hit our FIRE number. Back then, it would have been very easy to keep plodding along as before for fear of making a change and getting it wrong. I didn’t want that to happen. What’s the point of all that saving and investing if we didn’t take advantage of the freedom fund as the enabler it was intended to be.
In May 2021 I reduced my working hours from full time to 50%, and in July 2022 I stopped being an employee altogether. I guess that means I spent 25% of 2022 working for someone else. It is now almost 6 months since my last salary landed in my account, and I can honestly say I don’t miss working. I do miss some of the people, but have made an effort to stay in touch and meet up with friends when I have been in the right area. That is the one of the major downsides to our current nomadic lifestyle, the amount of time we spend with other people is much reduced. That and the inevitable occasion when it would be really useful to have something to hand that is packed somewhere in a shipping container…..
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Having accepted not much was going to happen on the property front for the next few months, December was partly spent with family and partly spent in a rather palatial (but very cold) house sit in Suffolk. Sadly, having seemingly outrun CoVid for nearly 3 years, it caught up with us just in time for Christmas 😦
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Thankfully there is no new Prime Minister to talk about this month, but plenty of cost of living doom and gloom. The outlook for our planned property purchase is sadly not much more cheerful than the current UK economic outlook. Having started November hopeful that we might be in before Christmas, with our seller agreeing to move into rented accommodation and rent back the grazing, things changed quite quickly. We haven’t quite drawn a line under the idea of this particular smallholding, but the seller can not find anything suitable to rent (near enough to her livestock). After her planned onward purchase fell through, she found something else she was keen on, but last week she was outbid at the closing date. This leaves us almost back at square one, but with much less currently on the market 😦
Continue readingAnother month and another UK Prime Minister! The idea would have been ridiculous not long ago, but now anything seems plausible. It’s at times like this I’m quite glad I am not working with colleagues around the world anymore. It was embarrassing enough having blustering Boris representing the UK, but the antics of the last month have been absurd. Let’s hope the grown ups have now taken charge and those in government remember who they are actually working for.
While the media have been having a field day and financial markets have been in chaos, we endured yet more obstacles to buying our smallholding.
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The UK saw a lot of change in September with a new Prime Minister followed quickly by a new Monarch and then an interesting ‘mini-budget’ that was really anything but mini. While the world was changing around us, we remained in limbo regarding the property we want to purchase in Scotland, so carried on with our mid-life house-sitting vanlife adventure.
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Having sold and moved out of our house, August was a truly nomadic month for us. We stayed in 6 different locations, helped friends and family lay the tiled floor in a new garden room and put a the mist coat on new plaster in a new home office. We also house sat for 2 different dogs (and 2 chickens) for complete strangers! The beautiful weather continued which made a few nights in the camper van between stops, a breeze.
Continue readingFor us, the bed was a key element that would determine whether or not the campervan conversion was a success. If we didn’t like sleeping in the van, then we wouldn’t use it as much as we planned.
The factory fit campervan ‘rock’n’roll beds just look really small and uncomfortable, so we knew this wasn’t the way we wanted to go, and was one of the main reasons we didn’t consider buying a ready built camper (that and the cost!). As we don’t have to worry about transporting children safely, we had no need of proper seats in the back, so had a lot of freedom in what we could do. After much debate, internet searching and consideration of where mattress joins would be (“that would mean a join just where by bum would be, I don’t like the sound of that”), we opted for a configuration which has 2/3rds fixed and 1/3rd removable. The smaller piece would then double as the back of the sofa (and the join would be under the backs of our legs ;-))
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July was a milestone month for us. We moved out of our home of 11 years, I left a company I had worked for in different roles for 15 years, and we set off in a campervan having packed 99% of our possessions into a storage container. “Darling, there are a couple of vagrants at the door” was how we were cheerfully welcomed by friends shortly after.
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Finding Enough 