With the news that we should be getting the keys to the new house next Thursday, my first job of the day was to re-plan the rest of my month. As expected, all the jobs I’d tentatively booked in were moved to the first few weeks of July. Out came all of the ‘housework hour’s, the ‘reading hour’s, the ‘blog post hour’s, etc, and in went the ‘moving house’ blocks, the ‘packing’ blocks, and the meetings and important dates and times already confirmed.
All this planning lark is such hard work!
I moved the last of the money into the bank accounts that are easily transferrable. Daily withdrawal limits have made this a bit of a slog. I could have just contacted the banks and asked for a temporary increase, but it’s been fun too, seeing the balance steadily grow ready to be sent to the solicitor.
The money has been in several bank accounts until now for several reasons. First of all, I wanted it to work as hard as it could as I’ve been living off the interest on some of it. I needed to keep some of it easily accessible. And I also wanted to keep each balance below the FSCS compensation limit in case the banking institutions went bust.
The bulk of the money has been tied up with a maturity date of 1 June 2026. If we needed it before then, we could have accessed it, but we would have been fined between 90 days and 120 days interest. That means that since January, when we made the offer on the house, I’ve not allowed myself to include any interest from those accounts in my banking.
Fortunately, with the delays, we now get to keep all of that interest! Which will help pay for some of the things that need doing. And also due to the delays, the property price has already appreciated by around 9%, just by sitting there doing nothing. For 4 months. That’s a far better return than any bank account at the moment, with interest rates so low. We could flip it straight and still make a lot of money on it. Invest a bit more, and we’ll get a bit more back.
Everything happens for a reason, and all that. I knew putting it into property would be the best thing to do when interest rates plummeted. Finger’s crossed it doesn’t all go Pete-Tong now, and crash!
I fed and watered the birds, using water out of the dehumidifier when it was full rather than out of the tap. I fed the dog. I emptied the dishwasher, put a washload through, hung a washload up, put a washload away. And then I packed another box. This time with ornaments and other breakables. I labelled all the boxes packed so far. And then, because I didn’t do any the day before, I filled 3 large carrier bags.
One of the bags, a jumbo clothes store bag, now has all of my knitting and sewing in. One bag, a gift bag, is full of other unused, brand-new gift bags. And one bag has all of the greetings cards in that the poet and I have sent to each other over the years. The bag they were in had fallen apart.
And that was yesterday’s nod towards the packing. There’s also a small pile of rubbish starting to build up.
I wrote up and published yesterday’s blog post and I started today’s. And then, with the next few weeks laid out before me and ready to tick off as I go, I settled down and cracked on with the proofreading work, which I worked on until the end of the day.
I have more of that to do today, the proofreading. Because I want to spend as much time on it as I can, there’s nothing else booked in for today. Not even housework or reading hours.
Whatever you’re up to at the weekend, I hope it’s a good one.
