February has come and gone. We were busy. I made a trip to Edinburgh to watch Ireland comprehensively beat Scotland at egg chasing. That was an expensive way to suffer pain.
We were up again the next weekend for my mum’s 70th birthday party which was also a lot of fun. It was great to see her enjoying having all her friends around. We also sold her house for the third time. We’ve been let down by two buyers who quite frankly just didn’t have enough money to buy the house. Highly frustrating. But we got there, fingers crossed. She is moving nearer my sister.
We had another night out at the theatre last week to see “Much ado about nothing”. This was excellent and if you get the chance to see it, I highly recommend. Tom Hiddleston (Loki) stars in it.
Leasehold drama
We’ve been hit with the estimated costs for the fire safety work. These include fire doors in the common areas, fire stopping, some works to heating system and a fire door to my flat. I think they issued these costs in the most indecipherable way possible, but I spent some time adding them up. I also don’t see why they have to do it all in one go too. But this is why having a leasehold flat sucks so much.
Its looking like the total will be £5800. Also, add in another £2500 for the new flat fire door that we need to install and pay for ourselves. The total is looking like £8300 I’m definitely on the hook for £2500 and the court will decide if I have to pay the other amount. I think I should plan to pay the lot.
Investments
The markets have made a sharp decline this month. Our investments are down 1.7%.
Networth is now £756k (-£13k) and our FI fund is £521k (-£14k). No new investments thanks to devasting leasehold service charges from last month.
Spending
Spending was actually pretty good this month. We cut back on spending a bit and that made a difference.
Some big spending items included further payment of the service charge to pay for lift repairs in the building and also some medical items such as vaccinations for our upcoming trip to Bali. I also made what I consider to be an unnecessary blunder that resulted in me paying £200 to park for the weekend at Stansted airport. Book in advance. (tbf I thought I had booked in advance and it turned out something had not verified my payment). Just be careful folks.
My savings rate was 52%. I managed to save some cash into my savings account to rebuild the emergency fund that I’ve used to pay for these service charges last month.
I’m not optimistic about my savings and investments for the next 12 months as we have a lot of high expenses coming up. I know I will be OK but it is anxiety inducing. Life comes at you and this is the problem. I’m going to try and not let it get to me but I can’t help but get that sinking feeling!!
