Happy New Year!!

Made myself a timetable/schedule to keep me on track to do things.

I have a holiday timetable and a timetable for the rest of the year. Christmas break and school holidays still have an affect on me even though I have nofamily members going to school at present.

So far I have been using it for less than a week and have ignored two days scheduled routines. hangs head in shame....

I am doing crochet classes online on the days that I would be doing knitting/crochet and volunteering. So far first segment is almost done. Discovered that trying to see strands in off-white is just as difficult as white and black and navy. :-) Sewing up the six blocks is 3/4 done. Next lesson is crocheting them together. Need to finish the sewn together blocks first.

My planned routine for the evenings is to sit with DH while he watches/snoozes TV. A few evenings a week are taken up with caring for his feet health and lymph drainage. Crocheting of other projects is done during the evening around planned caring.

I'm supposed to be baking today. W.e.l.l, I washed up. Fed the cats and generally tidied the kitchen, but I did not pull out any baking supplies.

Time to do some work. Me thinks.. Think it will be crochet as it is too late to start baking now. Maybe next Wednesday.

Current Balances:

• Credit card: $8258.40
• Redraw: $79,500
• Mortgage: $176,125
• Offset: $3,539
• IP #1 Mortgage $292,995
• Offset: $3,030
• IP #2 Mortgage $136,547
• Offset: $2631

I'm a few months along in my year off work on the Deferred Salary Scheme. I really struggled last year with exhaustion and health problems and I've spent a lot of time thinking about where I'm headed after this year and about our retirement goals. I've realised that even though I love the work I do, the toxic workplace has taken its toll on my health. I've spent the last few weeks unwell again & I find myself wondering how I ever had time to go to work lol!

DH & I have had a lot of discussion about what we both want as we head towards retirement and so its time for me to refocus and set new goals. I've decided to blog my progress & challenges here in the one place to help me keep on track. here's an overview of what our plans our:

Financial

• pay off mortgage asap - redraw first, then the mortgage loan
• change back to not using credit cards - the rewards are good but subtle overspending is creeping back in
• reduce grocery spending!
• build retirement funds

Lifestyle

• continue to travel - we discussed putting travel off but I just see too many people put if off & end up not doing it for health reasons
• both of us have an agreed budgeted amount for our hobbies

House

• set up house & yard for retirement - ease of maintenance -? solar power - veggie garden - easier access - efficient appliances
• a LOT of work needs to be done on the house & yard - draw up a list of priorities & budget for these
• declutter!

Work/Retirement

• be in a financial position to leave full-time work by age 60 ( 5.5 years away) - December 2022

Health

• reach a weight in healthy weight range & maintain
• develop an exercise program that I can maintain

It feels good to have that all written out!

Our #1 priority is to get stuck into the mortgage payoff & to do that I need to redo the budget & cut our spending.

On Thursday our very old fridge died. We had shopped the day before and I have the freezer section full of food - about 60 home made spring rolls as well - all the food in the fridge had to be thrown out as it was warm and everything in the freezer had melted. I took the time to research fridges and I bought a small fridge (327litres) with a freezer on the bottom ( more efficient & I have a bad back injury) - it was on sale so I saved over $200. It won't be delivered till Tuesday though so we have a little bar fridge on the bench at the moment.

that's probably enough for today :)