Quarterly Report

 

Well, it's now nearly three months into my official retirement and close to half a year since I actually stopped working for Openreach. My initial concerns over losing nearly a grand a month's worth of income as my salary gave way to my state pension have proved pretty much unfounded; even given the brakes that COVID-19 has put on our business plan for the cottage: we can't go much further with that until the vaccination programme is well under way and things start to ease back a bit.

The truth is, we're not spending money like it's going out of fashion any more, and it hasn't taken a great effort of will to achieve that; which has come as rather a pleasant surprise to me. It also highlights just how easy it is to waste money when you have a decent income and don't really need to count the pennies. A sobering fact when reflecting on the lives of the very many people who don't have that facility.

When I did the cashflow forecasts at the point of my decision to pack work in - so a good year before I actually went - I simply went on our monthly expenditure as it was, and worked out several scenarios based on different income-generating strategies, using the pensions as the baseline: on the face of it, we would be about a grand short of break-even without the cottage up and running in some form. Concerning.

Then COVID-19 hit just as we were making plans for the following Autumn's transition to pensions. It didn't look at all good on paper, but we rolled with it anyway; and whilst my salary was still being paid, we spent and worked on the renovations to the cottage. Expecting a shortfall just after Christmas, and to be frank not having anywhere to go due to the pandemic we just cut back on spending: almost subconsciously on my part, without spending any less on day-to-day living.

No shortfall came, and to date we're managing quite happily, without having to scrimp. We've even got a safety net in overdrafts, credit and savings. Trying to figure out how this was working, I totted up what I was spending while at work. I realized quite quickly that, not only was I randomly spending around £130/month on Amazon and eBay, I was drawing twenty or thirty quid cash out of the machine every day whilst generally paying for stuff on cards. Our monthly magazine and newspaper spend alone was around £150.

It's dawned on me that the predicted shortfall was only there based on unnecessary spending. Online fripperies, newspapers, periodicals and cash alone accounting for nearly three-quarters of it. Rub out a few service subscriptions and other automatic payments for stuff that we just weren't actually using, like Netflix; and magically we're back to where we were, and I don't have to climb telegraph poles in the pouring rain to earn money: win/win in my book. All this without a company pension, either. Another lesson learned; thankfully, painlessly. I count my blessings, gratefully.