JollyScot's Journey Starts

Where are you and where are you going?
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JollyScot
Posts: 212
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2015 3:44 am

JollyScot's Journey Starts

Post by JollyScot »

Like a few people who end up starting a journal I have been reading the site for a little while in the back ground and thought I would share what I am up to. However unlike a lot of people when I found the site I was already on the path and it was more a moment of “ah, I’m not the only one”.

As some of you make see from my name I am actually Scottish and I am not far from being a 30 year old, I am currently letting the financial world nibble at my soul a little. That said my journal may be a little different to others as I am now very close to the point of pulling the trigger and leaving to do something else. Over the last 6 years of work I have been saving as much as I could and have reached the point where I can set my life up in such a way to have a 2.5% withdrawl rate (I spent a couple of years in Switzerland too that boosted the speed of this a little).

My journal is more going to be a long the lines of well what do you do next as the finishing line was never really the point for me it was the what I can do afterwards that drove my decisions. On my todo list will be the following:

1) Build a business
2) Pick up a martial art
3) Learn to program again (finance took a lot of this skill out my head)
4) Live in several countries, initially this will be Scotland again until I get myself going
5) Expand my industrial scale cooking recipies
6) Learn Spanish (my fiance would kill me otherwise)

Once I am no longer bound by a job then I would plan to expand this list but this will be a good start.

With regard to how soon this will be happening my resignation day will be on 27th march, so 2 weeks from now. Then there is a 3 month notice period that will take me end of june. With regard to the numbers I can share these if you are interested but had I not come to Switzerland it probably would have taken me another couple of years to reach this point.

JollyScot
Posts: 212
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2015 3:44 am

Re: JollyScot's Journey Starts

Post by JollyScot »

Been pretty busy over the last month with my unfortunately broken laptop, this has now been fixed though.

@cimorene12. Yes spain is one of the list of places we could potentially move to, specifically the south of spain where there is a nice beach. I have joined duolingo and I am sitting at a pretty impressive score of 200 points.

I have now officially resigned though and will be moving back to Scotland fairly soon. The plan is to stay near one of the bigger universities for a while to get access to the Library and stary working a little on my business ideas and some of the other things I would like to earn.

As for the office well they took the news reasonably well but have tried a few options to keep get me to stay. I have agreed to stay a little longer than I actually need to as they have a busy period coming up. Since I don’t dislike my team or team mates I have no reason to be difficult I will delay my plans for a couple of months.

Most of my colleagues are now aware but it hasn’t actually been announced yet. Most were a little shocked but generally supportive when I explained what I was planning to do next.

Almost as soon as I had officially said I quit though my enthusiasm for what I’m doing day to day dropped a lot but I’m sure I can still be useful for the remainder of my time there. I have started to move onto thinking about business things and what I want to start learning next.

For those of you on the path though, the eventual moment of taking the plunge does feel good along with a hint of omg what have I done. That said I don’t regret the move to something more interesting and what I would like to do.

Ydobon
Posts: 412
Joined: Fri Aug 29, 2014 9:15 am
Location: Scotland

Re: JollyScot's Journey Starts

Post by Ydobon »

Greetings from a fellow Scot (although I question your Scottishness, I am yet to meet a Jolly Scot!) :lol:

May I ask what field you worked in? You must have exercised some real discipline to get to where you are. I am c. 20% of the way through my journey at 32.

JollyScot
Posts: 212
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2015 3:44 am

Re: JollyScot's Journey Starts

Post by JollyScot »

Well my jolliness doesn't mean I still don't like a good complain. Also my levels of sarcasm are sufficiently high to be very scottish.

With regard to field I worked in the insurance sector as a bit of a number cruncher. Which of course nowadays means I move things on spreadsheets and can't count to save my life.

For discipline, I guess but I never really saw it that way as I never had the big upgrade from being a student that most did. Within 6 months of starting work I went eff this and figured out my path out.

My expenses in the UK when I get back will be just under the £8000 mark so it is pretty low. I could move it lower but there's things I like, e.g proper meat because as you know cheap meat in the UK is appallingly bad.

Ydobon
Posts: 412
Joined: Fri Aug 29, 2014 9:15 am
Location: Scotland

Re: JollyScot's Journey Starts

Post by Ydobon »

I know what you mean about the sarcasm, I strongly suspect my English relatives think that I am far more bitter and sardonic than I really am :lol:

Your experience of being a student was the polar opposite of mine. I spent like an idiot living the life I thought that I would live once I graduated. Ironically now that I've 'made it' (well, in the eyes of my student self), I actually spend a lot *less* on crap that I don't need back when I couldn't afford to spend it.

I am interested to see that your expenses aren't a million miles from mine. My 'survival' expenses are maybe 10% higher than you, probably more like 20-25% if I allow for fun spending.

You make a good point re. meat. I find Lidl to be a pretty good source of offers (they even do free range chicken for £3.33/kg, occasionally I'll strike gold and find it orange stickered (standard 30% off)).

What part of Scotland will you be coming back to (feel free to be as vague as makes you comfortably anonymous)? I'm in one of the two biggest cities, property prices are higher than I'd like. A move to the far North might be on the cards once FI is a realistic option.

JollyScot
Posts: 212
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2015 3:44 am

Re: JollyScot's Journey Starts

Post by JollyScot »

Well I will probably end up in the more fun version of the 2 cities. I will own the property that I end up living in and at the point the expenses are pretty negligible. I bought this prior to leaving the country for switzerland and it has been sitting paying for itself.

Once you get over a simple 2 bed place I agree the prices can be high. If you are willing to do some of the renovating then there are some reasonable ones.

I remember seeing a 3 bed house in Edinburgh for 120k that needed work not so long ago. That's a lot less than going rates though so if you have the time, which at the ERE point you would it's worth considering.

I also considered some Scottish islands, however unless you buy land and build it seemed expensive. Maybe at some later point in my life I will look at it again.

When trying a business though I would like to be a bit closer to people rather than a bunch of sheep.

Ydobon
Posts: 412
Joined: Fri Aug 29, 2014 9:15 am
Location: Scotland

Re: JollyScot's Journey Starts

Post by Ydobon »

120k for a 3 bed in Edinburgh? I'm mentally substituting 'total tip' for 'needed work'! :)

JollyScot
Posts: 212
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2015 3:44 am

Re: JollyScot's Journey Starts

Post by JollyScot »

So it’ been almost a year since I last posted here, thought I would give an update as to what happened.

So my last few months of work involved just sitting in meetings and answering question. I didn’t really produce any real ‘work’ so to say. I agreed to stay a bit longer to help people pick up what I used to do before I left. In reality they faffed about and put it off so things will be more difficult that it needed to for them.

Immediately after stopping I picked up a small contracting role for a company I previously came into contact with. This was for a couple of months in London. There were a few benefits of this.

1. It forced me into getting a company set up, something I probably would have put off for a while in my new ‘business’ endeavours
2. The two months’ work pay a rate that was equivalent to 2 years of expenses
3. It gave me a couple of months to go around London and see the sights and decide I never want to live there in a million years

I then head back up to Scotland and spent Christmas with my family and started work on learning some programming. I had forgotten how bad the weather can be in Scotland can be though so I am rethinking about whether I will set up here. I do enjoy it though but maybe it will only be to visit for a little time each year.

I am currently in Spain living for the next 2 months and trying out what it is like here. So far it has been nice, weather has been good and it is helping somewhat with me learning Spanish. Although my commitment to it is not the best.

After my Spain stay I am not sure where I will head to next, I am considering a stint in Germany. I know that regardless of where I stay the day to day life will be much the same so I am thinking it will come down to what weather I want and if I want to be in a city or not.

JollyScot
Posts: 212
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2015 3:44 am

Re: JollyScot's Journey Starts

Post by JollyScot »

I am not so good at doing an update for this but hey ho eventually I get round to it

Since last time a fair few things have happened, I spent a few months in the sun over the winter months last year and certainly enjoyed not having rain blown in my at 50mph which is the usual winter experience.

As the cost of an Airbnb was about the same as renting somewhere in Scotland it ended up not being about the same cost as anything my normal expenses. Just a little bit extra for the travel there and back again and the odd extra meal out we had.


I was once again talked into picking up some contract work for 6 months. This time round I linked the price I asked for to a percentage of my net worth. This way if I do work I will save more and next time round my price will be higher. I will probably never say no to these roles but eventually the hope is my price to people will be too high and then I just stop getting asked.

When the end came round they asked me to stay longer and I changed my price based on net worth they agreed. Weird position to be in, both simultaneously happy and sad, obviously I can’t really explain the sad part to other people.

During the time in this role I managed to save 92% of what I earned so it means that relative to before when I was just at the being able to retire stage I now have some more wiggle room for things.


The downside of all this working is my attempts to buy a house for myself hit a bit of a road block. I wasn’t able to really look at homes and do the contract role, I put in offers on some places but was either outbid on them or the owners were just looking for too much.

It was probably for the best as now that the UK has decided to leave the EU I am less sure about where I will end up. Scotland is not quite as happy with the decision so I am moving towards the wait and see camp. Initially I thought house prices and sales would become a bit more normal after the vote but it seems people are start to rush (panic buy) even more now.


I am not back being free to do whatever and I will be starting up on my learning to program again. So far since stopping for a second time I have been reading quite a lot. Currently averaging about 2-3 books a week. Listening to quite a few podcasts and things too, the deciding what to do with myself issue is starting to get easier. I think I managed to flush the computer games binge out of my system last time round.

JollyScot
Posts: 212
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2015 3:44 am

Re: JollyScot's Journey Starts

Post by JollyScot »

With the New year well under way I have finally gone through and summarised my expenses and movement in NW etc so people know where I am and how I have got on.

First my expenses

Image

I have spent a little more than I expected for the year, but equally the UK ended up being a little more expensive than I thought before I returned. That said there were a couple of areas that could be worked on, namely the electronics as I am not sure how I spent that much on new items. Then after gong back through what they were it was a new phone (old one was 4 years old), the PS Vita for when I was travelling (didn't need this) and then a second screen, keyboard and mouse for a portable office. The second screen is one of those USB3 powered ones and is actually really good. I hope these expenses are not so regular but I will need to watch it.

The second on is the rent, in reality my costs should have been lower than this. When I picked up the work contract the initial place I stayed at had a somewhat crazy landlady and I ended up having to leave fairly soon after arriving. With lost rent, deposits and having to get a hotel for a few days it left me about £1500 out of pocket relative to where I should have been. Lesson learned here, I had some warning signs when I first went but gave the lady the benefit of the doubt and was drawn by the room being 100m from the office I was at. Next time I will stick to my judgement and not give someone the benefit of the doubt.

The last issue is the eating out and the "other" section. During the year with the work I had a tendancy to order takeway when I was feeling a little lazy. In the past when I had a more permanent place I would generally cook on a sunday and that would be my meals for the week. This year I didn't really do that at all so would be good to figure out where I want to stay and get back to doing that. As for the other section, I don't really remember what all of these little items are and will maybe try and split these out a bit more as a bit too much just gets lost in here.

As for my NW that jumped up quite a bit this year, So even though expenses ended up being higher than I expected I added enough that I can move my "safe" numbers to be more in line. That said I still expect to earn money in my life so I am less concerned.

Image

During this year I worked for 8 of the 12 months and for those months as mention I managed to saved a very high percentage. A couple of other things went my way, at the end of last year when I came back to UK I shifted a lot of my cash to Bullion as with Brexit and US election I didn't really want to buy any stocks. It was higher than what most would consider for risk but I was ok with it. This did well and I sold some just after the Brexit vote and started to move into shares a little more when there were a few choices just after the vote.

I am still waiting to see what happens before shifting the remainder of the bullion and cash into a house.

As for the coming year, hopefully I can get some proper progress on building something else. I started ok in the first 3 months of last year but when I picked up more work all the extra stuff I was doing more or less stopped. I am now back in the limbo stage of not being sure where I want to end up or what to get going with. As with last time I will just start and eventually this should snowball into something.

At the beginning of Feb I will be off for a two month stay in Spain again to get this spanish learning back on track. Now I said this last year too so I might also need to add actual school trips when I'm there to force me. With regard to costs the 2 months rent will come in at about £500 a month and food maybe £200 since I will eat out when there a bit more. In general though not too much more than UK.

JollyScot
Posts: 212
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2015 3:44 am

Re: JollyScot's Journey Starts

Post by JollyScot »

I have spent the last month in Spain and it is not quite as warm as I had hoped and think that if I am to do a winter trip away somewhere again I will stick to the canary islands in Europe or head to another continent for the trip.

As for expenses whilst here it hasn't been too bad the rent was still at the £500 mark but the food and other items a little higher than expected at about £300. That said I think this is mainly because the £ has had a disaster in the last year making it relatively more expensive for me when comparing to my trip away last year.

I think the next month should start to warm up and hopefully be a little more of a worthwhile change than the UK.

I have still been keeping my eyes on houses to buy in the UK but without being able to go and see things it has just been looking at the pictures. I will still probably hold fire on any actual purchase until the UK and Scotland figure hout what they plan to do in the next 3-5 years.

This will mean renting for a while, after experience from last year people don't understand "I'm retired and have assets" as proof of being able to afford rent of a place. So I am not particularly looking forward to having to try and explain and deal with the tick-a-box estate agents when I get back. Some people have said that if you find the right estate agent they are fine but we will see.

As for assets, not much has happened in the last month, I generally check the totals once or twice a month or if there is some kind of big movement in a day or over 2-3 subsequent days. Things have calmed down somewhat after the chaos of end of last year.

Noedig
Posts: 191
Joined: Tue Aug 26, 2014 10:15 pm

Re: JollyScot's Journey Starts

Post by Noedig »

Hail JollyScot. That's an interesting tale.
You reached the threshold very young. Plainly it doesn't hurt to have tight budget tracking.
Amazing Net Worth jump - I'm guessing the contract is at a much higher rate than mine!
Can't tell from the mails but I'm guessing the fiancee thing didn't work out, shame if so.
Good luck on forming meaningful goals and figuring out where you want to live and what you want to do, with all that freedom.

I laud your awesome progress.

ellipsis_has_expired
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Contact:

Re: JollyScot's Journey Starts

Post by ellipsis_has_expired »

This time round I linked the price I asked for to a percentage of my net worth. This way if I do work I will save more and next time round my price will be higher.
This is clever. Never heard of doing that. What percentage do you use?

JollyScot
Posts: 212
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2015 3:44 am

Re: JollyScot's Journey Starts

Post by JollyScot »

Cheers Noedig, yeah I am glad I made a point of tracking the expenses at the end of each month. Over the years it has helped me find things I was spending on that I wouldn’t have realised otherwise. In general though I don’t really “budget” per se, I just slowly shift how I do things until I can then just do what I like based on that.

As for finacee, we are still together she is trying to finish her studies, so once that's done we can move onto the next steps. Probably won’t have a wedding, I asked her what she would rather have a wedding or one year of travelling at some point in life since cost wise they are about the same. After slowly coming round to the non consumerist way of thinking she wanted the second choice. For me it was an obviously better use of resources, seems the rest of the world disagrees.

I see you live in London though, I swear I have no idea how you do that. Every time I got on a subway or went out for a walk I would just end up being upset at all the people. Heard a lot about he crazy property market when I was there though. Seems it is starting to spread which I am not sure will end well. Maybe one day we will learn ever increasing house prices isn't always a good thing, I doubt it though.

Ellipsis, on the percentage I set my day rate at 0.2% of my net worth. I would be more inclined to do some consulting on an hourly basis from home but companies aren’t interested in that. Even though in reality people only do at most 4 hours or real work each day and the rest will be “being busy”. Trying to explain that I produce as much for less cost is a waste of time as they can’t move beyond 7-8 hour days usually. Probably because they would need to admit that they are inefficient.

JollyScot
Posts: 212
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2015 3:44 am

Re: JollyScot's Journey Starts

Post by JollyScot »

I have finally been able to find a house for myself after about 18 months of looking. The place I have is a two bed in a building that comes with a swimming pool and a gym. I wasn't sure about the extra costs associated with it but the maintenance is covered by people who live in the complex as opposed to a company so the costs are not too bad.

Overall the monthly costs of the place will be about the following

Utilities £100
Council Tax £120
Maintenance £130 (this covers insurance, repairs, cleaning of communal areas and the gym and pool)

Total £350

The benefit of this place is that due to the pool and gym and the nice location I can rent out the second room about £500 per month. So it will mean my annual cost due to housing will be reduced down to basically zero as the extra portion of the room rent can would cover most of my usual food costs.

Although I don't think UK is a particularly good place for a home "investment" just now that is not why I bought one. Fact is that I need somewhere to stay and it will put my annual required expense base at a lot lower level.

Should make the move sometime in May and have a nice base to figure out my post job life.

Eureka
Posts: 340
Joined: Fri Jun 10, 2016 11:03 am

Re: JollyScot's Journey Starts

Post by Eureka »

Congratulations on the new place! What a wonderful setup. It seems the time spent searching was well spent. So did you just buy it without any mortgage?

JollyScot
Posts: 212
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2015 3:44 am

Re: JollyScot's Journey Starts

Post by JollyScot »

I did buy it without a mortgage, I sold the bullion I had for it. I thought about getting a mortgage because the interest rates are so low but I was dealing with a lot of box tickers and in their mind I couldn't afford it. I suspect I was too far away form what they can understand as normal but not high enough wealth to be the "rich" category for them, who knows though.

I ended up getting outbid on about 10 places over the last 18 months, which would be fine if I was offering low amounts but all my offers were fair. I remember on one property a couple outbid me with a 95% mortgage so I suspect there might be some tears in the housing market here soon.

For me now it doesn't matter so much if it does as I basically locked in the housing costs now. Hopefully I don't have to look for a house in a long while. I didn't like the process at all, dealing with estate agents and sellers just upset me.

herp
Posts: 171
Joined: Sat Apr 08, 2017 1:11 pm

Re: JollyScot's Journey Starts

Post by herp »

Hi JollyScot

Very interesting journal you're keeping. It's a pleasure to read.

Congratulations on the house! Renting out the second room seems like a smart idea to keep costs at rock bottom.

JollyScot
Posts: 212
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2015 3:44 am

Re: JollyScot's Journey Starts

Post by JollyScot »

So been waiting for my house sale to go through and trying to figure out what (if any) type of renovations I could do. I am obviously leaning towards the not really do anything as nothing "needs" to be done. I am aware that if I don't do changes when I first move in then I will probably never do them.

The changes I am considering are to reorganise some of the walls and open out the whole place as just now there are walls up between kitchen and living room and a large hallway that I don't think is really needed. If I do make the changes then I could take my time and learn some skills to do a lot of the work myself. I have an electrician and architect in the family there is maybe more incentive for me to consider it than most.

In the process of organising a trip to Japan for a month, it is somewhere I have always wanted to go but for whatever reason the trip has just never happened. it doesn't seem too expensive, I have found flight, accommodation and rail pass for 2 coming in at £2400, so £1200 each. Someone has suggested to see a travel agent and see if they can beat what I can find myself. I doubt they will but kudos to them if they do and they will have earned whatever commission they get.

The UK is about to go and have itself another vote, it has been something like 4 in the last few years with independence, general election, EU vote, general election. I tend to just not speak to anyone about it now as I just end up getting annoyed with how people decide. My choice at election is always to get the main party manifestos, decide which one I agree with the most and vote for that. Everyone else seems to be pretty clueless to what they are really voting for, most conversations break down when I actually start digging into the reasons for a choice.

I just send vote and move on realising that UK doesn't really have much of a democracy. The key things that I don't like about the UK all of the parties do the same on. Any choices they do make will impact me less than most I suspect (although loss of free movement was a pain) so will all be pretty much they same. Until the rest of the NHS gets sold and becomes insurance base that will be rubbish when it happens.

As for finances, a little reorganisation and sales after the movement into the new tax years but value is pretty much the same.

Eureka
Posts: 340
Joined: Fri Jun 10, 2016 11:03 am

Re: JollyScot's Journey Starts

Post by Eureka »

Sounds wonderful with a month in Japan, but how can you have both accommodations AND rail pass up front? Are you going to stay in one place and make day trips or have you made the full itinerary up front? Anyway, it surely sounds cheap.
Enjoy!

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