Category Archives: Retirement planning

I’m Retired!

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I’ve been sitting here watching the last few minutes of the countdown go down to zero and now its official – I’m retired! 

It’s nine months earlier than planned when I started this blog in December of 2017 with a goal of retiring in five years – ‘and so it begins’. 

This last week didn’t really go as planned. DH had a bike accident and ended up having surgery – he’s doing OK, just has a lot of sitting about ahead of him for the next few weeks while he recovers. So I ended up only working three days this week.

I had wonderful farewell with a few tears, lots of laughs and sharing of memories. I’ve been given a VERY generous Spotlight gift voucher to spend on fabric – they know me well lol!

We’re having a celebration dinner tonight – theres a roast dinner in the oven – and I’m pretty confident of a good nights sleep ahead. 

And so a new chapter begins in the morning.  I’m planning on spending the day sewing. I have fabric parcels to open, Sweet Dreams to get caught up on and so much I want to do!

I also just want to send a special shout out to Simple Savers friends who’ve been such an encouragement over many years and played a big part in me achieving my goal xxx

 ” A wise woman once said ‘I’m Outta Here!’ and she lived happily ever after.”


December Final Progress Report

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Well its time for the monthly progress report and I’ve decided this will be the last one. The way I manage our money is changing now as we get closer to retirement & I am ready to focus less on the financial side of life and on tracking every cent.  Keeping track of our progress every month has really helped to keep me accountable and to stick with saving and debt payoff even when it felt so slow. What I have learned from tracking everything is that small amounts make a difference and that tracking every cent IS important when you’re paying down debt and trying to turn around your finances. So will continue to track our expenses in YNAB but I won’t be doing monthly finance updates here on the blog anymore as our goal has been reached exceeded. 

Here’s the numbers:

Mortgage

We are not paying more off the mortgage anymore, instead that money sits in the offset account as our emergency fund/everyday expenses account. A summary of the mortgage payoff since I started this blog is on the Mortgages page.

Monthly Progress:

  • current balance: $30,470
  • total reduction: $0
Annual Progress:
  • start balance: $62,991
  • end balance: $30,470
  • total reduction: $32,521
Savings:
Our savings are in our super accounts and we both salary sacrifice the maximum amount. I am gobsmacked at how much this has grown in the last year due to a good share market & compounding interest.  A summary of our savings since I started blogging is on the Savings page.
Monthly Progress:
  • current balance: $719,588
  • up from: $708,860
  • total increase: $10,728
Annual Progress:
  • start balance: me: $194,374  DH: $368,364 = $562,738
  • end balance:  me: $259,119  DH: $460,469 = $719,588
  • increase:        me: $64,745    DH: $119,243 
  • total increase: $156,850
So 2021 has been a really busy year for me with all my focus being on work. I’m not sorry I did the management job but I’m glad it’s over. I didn’t post much as there really wasn’t a lot to say.
But this last week I have slept so well and I am starting to feel a bit more energised. I started decluttering my sewing room, which I am thoroughly enjoying. I gave the blog a makeover because now I’ll be blogging about things other than work and yes, a lot of it will be sewing & quilting and work around the house & garden.
We spent the year close to home due to Covid, and we all worked at home for several months in 2022. Right now Omicron is just spreading like wildfire here. Our new premier and our out of touch government have just let it rip and they don’t give a toss for those in the community that are vulnerable. I will feel a little safer when we have had our boosters but I’m keen to avoid going back onto campus with a lot of people so I may even leave a bit earlier if I am forced to go back to soon.
Well this is the end for the financial part of this retirement journey. Theres only 12 weeks until I finish at work but essentially all I will be doing is finishing up an handing over, Heres hoping that 2022 is the year that covid starts to lose its grip and we can return to a bit more normal life. 

98 Days – 14 weeks to go.

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How amazing to see my retirement countdown showing only 98 days to go today!  At the moment I’m technically on leave for a week but in reality I’m still working & attending meetings. Only one more week to go,  then holidays and then I can hand back a lot of this work and start slowing down a bit.

A few things have happened since my last post. I had my birthday and was given some beautiful quilting fabrics – (I’ll get back to posting some pics soon), we decorated our Christmas tree on the weekend, & the Christmas shopping is done. I’ve signed up for a quilting BOM next year and been poring over my sewing magazines marking projects I’d like to make.

We were going to have Christmas with family but now that Omicron is on the rise and cases in our town are on the rise we’re going to have Christmas at home again.  We can’t get our booster shots until the end of January and we had AstraZeneca so apparently our immunity is pretty low right now.

DH had alerts that he’s been in contact this last week even though we rarely go anywhere, but two weeks ago we had huge sporting event here with thousands of visitors and it was then declared a Covid exposure site.  Fortunately we are now all at home, either on leave or working from home so we’ll just stay in until we get the booster dose.

Well thats just a quick little update for now. Hoping to get back to more regular blogging soon.