I dont know how time passes so quickly but it seems like an eternity since I was here.
Lets have a catch up. How is everyone?
Life has returned to normal in our house. No-one is in hospital or off sick. I hope I am not tempting fate, especially as I don't believe in such things, but at the moment we are all good. Fahed has some knee pain but its fading. The back is good and the vitamin D supplements seem to me to be life changing. He is so full of energy, its so lovely. So life hasn't returned to normal but to a new normal.
Having so much time on my hands has given me plenty of time for reflection. Also we had major changes at work. Lost most of our directors and worse, our direction. Bearing in mind we are social housing providers and what we do is important to us minions. Amongst many other changes we had our pension scheme stopped. So from July this year I feel my golden handcuffs removed.
So that has led me on to doing our budget from now until retirement and beyond. Just to make sure we are going to be okay. Ladies and gentleman, let me unveil my new priorities!
Year 1 (which randomly runs until October in my strange mind)- plenty of travel and fun
Year 2 Oct 2018-Oct 2019 Make a concerted effort to save £20k to finish the old house in Crete. That's the house we call Villa Aziza. Any further money to be spent in Crete must come from renting out the Crete properties. In these years I also have pocket money budgeted so plenty of super economical travel still gets done.
Years 3, 4, 5 and maybe 6 Up to 2022/23 - All the extra cash goes to the mortgage. I think I can overpay sufficiently to really get the mortgage wiped up by the end of that time.
Year 6 or 7 onwards - At this point I could sensibly afford to leave work. And I probably will.
We also have a plan that when we retire we will travel for longer periods. Fahed has mild Aspbergers and short trips drive him bonkers but long trips are fine, so we are going to be all over that!
Bring it on!
Hi Lizzie!
ReplyDeleteSix years isn't so far away -- I'm excited for all of your plans! Very happy to hear Fahed is better.
It is legal for companies to just change pension plans like that? That is a MAJOR adjustment! I can't imagine anyone not feeling the effects of that. Will it be replaced with a different program?
For us here, the ones currently on a plan gets to continue and new hires are subject to any new changes to the program. So there is some protection and security.
I know. Its so exciting. I have to be careful not to wish the time away, hence filling it up with enjoyable things.
DeleteHi MW. They are 'consulting' about the pension scheme but I am in the finance team so i know we dont keep it. They valued it when the economy was at rock bottom so it appears to have a massive shortfall and if we want to stay in then we have to fill that gap ourselves. Their idea is that none of us will do that and then they can safely close it. Of our 800 staff only 200 are in the scheme as new hires for the last 8 years didnt get the option. So they didnt close it but from my point of view that is how it feels! However I do at least get the benefit of 23 years of investment